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TENDER MERCY AND THE PROPHETIC WORD: FROM MALACHI TO JOHN THE IMMERSER
The ancient prophecy of Malachi said the next prophet to come would be a forerunner to prepare hearts and would announce the Messiah through the prophetic Word.
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The Messiah is always announced through the prophetic Word. That is why there is no Messiah wherever there is no prophetic Word.
JOHN
John the Baptist—I prefer to call him John the Immerser because this title is both accurate and illustrative in the original Hebrew—was a mere man. Yet he was a man with a powerful spiritual anointing. His anointing was so powerful that it was aligned with the anointing of the ancient prophet Elijah. This is what the prophecy in Malachi actually entailed. It did not refer to a mere man or to a return of Elijah but to a particular powerful prophetic anointing which would show up in the Last Days.
MALACHI
He was the last prophet of Israel before the prophetic Word ceased. For roughly four and a half centuries until John there was no prophet in Israel. Imagine that. For perspective, if we traveled back through time from now for 450 years we would arrive at the year 1572. This was way before anything America. It predates Plymouth (1620) and Jamestown (1607). It even predates the Lost Colony of Roanoke (1585-87). Hence, Israel was prophetless for an incredibly long time.
Malachi’s ministry occurred in the late fifth century BC and ended at some point prior to 400BC when he spoke his last and passed from the scene. His voice was stilled. Having no successor, the prophetic Word went silent. One may wonder how or why this happened but it likely had something to do with an age-old fight between two elements meant to work together but were often effectively at each other’s throats. This ancient battle between priest and prophet continues to play out in our day but’s that’s another story for another time. Suffice it to say that the priests won their battle against the prophets when Malachi breathed his last.
We get an indication of the timing by taking a closer look at Daniel’s prophecy of weeks. He speaks of a distinct division in time that occurred after forty-nine years (seven weeks) which coincided with the completion of the rebuilding of Jerusalem in approximately 407BC. One can easily read into this as a time when the priests had taken full control of the city of Jerusalem and the second temple. They had everything going their way though they achieved it in part (likely a major part) through guile, mammon, and self-serving determination. Now they no longer had to worry about that confounding variable of God speaking to His people and stirring them up against their dead religious order. They had finally eliminated their great nemesis the prophet who was ever exposing their corruption. Does this sound familiar?
The anti-prophet effort had been brewing especially during the time when what was left of the nation of Israel was in Babylonian Captivity almost two centuries before. The nation had been banished there due to its great sin and faithlessness. A defiant faction of the priestly element never did repent but grew further from God and more rebellious. They also picked up some bad demonic stuff while in Babylon and incorporated it into their teachings. When they finally returned to the land after their 70 year penalty phase it was only a matter of time before their evil hearts would overtake the dutiful priests honorably adhering to the Law of Moses and the pure honesty of the prophets and rid the land of not only the prophetic Word but the edifying and preserving influence of God Himself.
Thus, the words of Malachi have special import. Imagine a friend or relative at the end of life speaking his or her final words. This person would never be heard from again. One would therefore want to spend time with the passing one whose speech would soon cease forever. Whether Malachi knew this or not we may not ever know but I think he did. He was a prophet after all. Unlike the priests who performed routine quotidian tasks and ceremonial duties, prophets had to stay close to God at all times or would not be able to fulfill their callings. They could never fake it. Their lives were not composed of man’s order but the comparative wildness of spiritual warfare as reflected in nature when one may not know what may come next—crashing oceans, great thunderstorms, raging blizzards and the like—but had better be equipped and able to deal with it. They were given a most difficult task to achieve that demanded the crucifixion of flesh. They were often greatly humbled. It sometimes appeared that God had little concern for their welfare or physical comfort. They were driven to be the best and to achieve their calling against great odds. These were tough men. Very strong. God demanded of them a high level of spiritual discipline and the outworking thereof because the people needed to hear from Him for their direction and salvation and this could only happen through the prophetic Word delivered through humanity.
Obviously very few men qualified to be prophets, not necessarily because God was partial or particularly choosy but because He had a hard time finding those who would willingly submit to the rigors of the calling. I cannot imagine how hard this process must have been for the Lord but I get a pretty good clue whenever I think about the working out of my own walk and its hopeful effectiveness and how the Lord must be forever patient but also demand commandment-keeping, curriculum-learning, calling-achievement, and having something great to show in our lives for what He did for us on the cross. He built a great foundation which gave each real Christian a tremendous head start. I would think He expects us to strive to be the best we can be. This is how it was for the OT prophets, though to the nth degree.
The book of Malachi has been described as “a beautiful expression of God’s love for a nation that continues to disobey Him,”[1] and in one sentence: “The Great King will come not only to judge his people, but also to bless and restore them.”[2] It is composed of four chapters. The verses we are concerned with in this paper come from Chapter 4 and describe that distant time four and a half centuries from Malachi’s era into the future when the great closing prophetic events occur in the final generation of Israel in the first century AD. Here is Chapter 4, the last verses of the Old Testament, in full:
Final Admonition
1 “For behold, the day is coming, burning like a furnace; and all the arrogant and every evildoer will be chaff; and the day that is coming will set them ablaze,” says the LORD of hosts, “so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.
2 “But for you who fear My name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings; and you will go forth and skip about like calves from the stall.
3 “You will tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day which I am preparing,” says the LORD of hosts.
4 “Remember the law of Moses My servant, even the statutes and ordinances which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel.
5 “Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the LORD.
6 “He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not come and smite the land with a curse.” [Malachi 4:1-6][3]
Those who are aware of the final conflagration of the nation of Israel will see in this passage the absolute accuracy of the prophetic Word of the Lord spoken through the prophet Malachi. This man was given a pure vision of the future by God and he captured it in written form. As I wrote earlier, the vision within this short passage directly refers to the final generation of Israel and the “Last Days” spoken of in the New Testament writings. They were the days of the next prophet after Malachi, a man named John, who the Lord Jesus referred to as the greatest man born of a woman. And of course, right after John arose the greatest Prophet, a Man excepted from the former description since He is truly the greatest, who was the long waited Messiah as referred to by Malachi in verse 5, “the coming of the great and terrible day of the LORD.” This day was great primarily because He would arrive and save all believers from their sin and grant them eternal life. But the day was terrible in that:
V1: It would burn like a furnace and all the arrogant and every evildoer would be chaff; the day that is coming will set them ablaze and leave them neither root nor branch.
V3: The wicked would be tread down and be ashes under the feet of the righteous on the day “which I am preparing.”
In the last verse the Lord speaks of one final chance for the nation. If not heeded He would “come and smite the land with a curse.” Of course we know it was not heeded. The prophet John was rejected. The Messiah was rejected. The prophetic Word was rejected. Every warning ever spoken was rejected.
The nation crashed and burned, as did the great city of Jerusalem, the city of David. And the brand new sparkling gold-laden and gold-filled third temple was also burned to the ground and every last trace of it vanished.
For the righteous believers who welcomed John and welcomed the Messiah and respected the prophetic Word we have:
V2: “But for you who fear My name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings; and you will go forth and skip about like calves from the stall.”
We see this prophetic truth mentioned once again as reflected in the next passage from the Gospel of Luke when John’s father Zechariah spoke the following prophecy at baby John’s circumcision ceremony:
“Praise the Lord, the God of Israel, because He has visited and redeemed His people. He has sent us a mighty Savior from the royal line of His servant David, just as He promised through His holy prophets long ago. Now we will be saved from our enemies and from all who hate us. He has been merciful to our ancestors by remembering His sacred covenant—the covenant He swore with an oath to our ancestor Abraham. We have been rescued from our enemies so we can serve God without fear, in holiness and righteousness for as long as we live.
“And you, my little son, will be called the prophet of the Most High, because you will prepare the way for the Lord. You will tell His people how to find salvation through forgiveness of their sins. Because of God’s tender mercy, the morning light from heaven is about to break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide us to the path of peace.” [Luke 1:68-79 NLT]
© 2022 by RJ Dawson. All Rights Reserved.
[1] city.org.nz/kit/bible-overview
[2] biblestudytools.com/books-of-the-bible/
[3] Unless otherwise noted all Scriptures are taken from the New American Standard Bible, © 1960, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.
JULY 4TH PRELUDE
Tomorrow we celebrate the 246th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Tomorrow’s post will contain the entirety of that great document and the hope thereof.
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America has been under attack for several years now. The ongoing planned destruction had previously been slow and steady. And though there are great sinister forces from without, the primary attack has come from within. The enemy hates individual freedom. The enemy hates strong well-informed individuals. The enemy hates Spirit-filled believers who have sided with the Lord Jesus 100% and are determined to do His will.
I have told you several times in recent posts of the three types of American Colonists that existed in 1776. Each type comprised roughly one third of the colonial population. One type was fully on the side of the English king and Parliament. One type was fully disengaged, ignorant, apathetic, selfish, and completely unaware of the battle at hand and its future ramifications. And one type comprised the greatest generation, the great American Patriots who put everything on the line to fight for freedom.
These three types also comprise the Americans of the present. Whether or not America survives will depend on which type eventually wins. I encourage you to do your own research, make your own evaluations, and come to your own studied conclusions regarding these three types of Americans.
As of now, it appears that the forces of evil have gained the upper hand. But I must remind everyone that the same dynamic was in play 246 years ago. The American Patriots appeared to have no chance but that never stopped them from taking that chance. They knew they would have no chance at all unless they went all in. Their great victory proved again that good is greater than evil and that Light always overcomes darkness.
To date, American Christians have generally become spiritually weak, dumbed-down, compromised, and overcome by the culture. Many rarely or never read and study the Word of God and thus fail to apply it to their lives. Most American Christians are not dedicated disciples of the Lord Jesus. One may wonder how this could have happened but it’s actually quite simple: The majority of American Christians have rejected the total Lordship of the Lord Jesus, have refused to honor and follow His Word, have rejected the Book of Acts in particular, and have instead dedicated themselves to fruitless socially acceptable counterfeits including the leaders thereof.
However, there is a group on the rise that has been on the rise for several years now. I saw this at least thirty years ago when I began my initial research for my book Real Christianity. I saw that if real Christianity was to survive in America it must overcome the massive forces of Unreal Christianity. I certainly expressed the hope that this group of real Christians would continue to rise, and for that to happen there must be an Awakening. I mentioned this in the book.
However, it was not until late August of 2010 that I received the definitive proof. The Lord told me America was in the early stages of a national Great Awakening. That was almost twelve years ago. It has proven to be true.
Since then the enemy stopped his slow gradualism approach and went full bore into the open, no longer all that concerned with attempting to hide his sinister plans or keep his subterfuge secret. Of course, it pretty much stayed secret anyway because the great bulk of Americans and American Christians remained absolutely clueless and ignorant with no desire to change for the better. It has made things very easy for the enemy. He now does his dirty work in plain sight and most Christians still do nothing about it.
Real Christians, however, back in the 1990s, did see. They had the Spirit of God. They had eyes to see and ears to hear. Sadly, they were by and large castigated and rejected by their own, those who could only manage to live in the present and chose the way of compromise and friendship with the world. If the real Christians could survive and manage to coalesce, real Christianity in America could be saved. Thus, SOMETHING profound must have happened in this country in the roughly fifteen year period of 1995-2010. This was a time when enough real believers, largely as mere disconnected individuals, remained dedicated to the Lord Jesus and doubled down on their dedication in the face of persecution from their own. The Lord was apparently greatly pleased. He needed this group and fought for this group. This was a Remnant group of His making that would be necessary for His future plans. It was these who would be used to bring forth the current Great Awakening.
After 246 years this country is at a terrible crossroads. Most never saw what was coming during the good times but the few did. Presently, more can see it, if not by spiritual eyes then by experience. Empirical evidence always promotes clarity. Americans will experience more in the immediate future—dire circumstances from seemingly every direction—that will cause them to start waking up. They will see that all the warnings they previously rejected had great merit. They will see that those who had it right all along but had their names and lives destroyed should have been listened to and honored.
Perhaps the best verse of Scripture which perfectly illustrates what has happened over the last three decades is the following:
Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and among his own relatives and in his own household.” [Mark 6:4][1]
The Lord always has witnesses. One might recall what happened to His great and powerful personal witness. One might recall what the Lord’s own did to Him. What might recall what the unbelievers of His nation—the forces of antichrist—did to the members of the Lord’s Community. This same dynamic plays out every day in every nation. It has certainly played out in America.
Thanks to the Lord Jesus, however, we have great hope. Thanks to Him and His real followers, everyone will have the opportunity to gain the spoils that go to the victor.
246 years ago a group of American Revolutionaries openly declared themselves independent and free of corrupt government. They would go on to fight another five years to win the prize. When they won, and it was a GREAT victory, the spoils of war were shared by all Americans, even the traitors and cowards.
American Christians must therefore thank those who have been in the spiritual battle all along, those who were most usually never or rarely supported and who were forced into long term survival mode. It was the real Christians, the only ones the Lord was allowed to work through and with, who brought us to this time of opportunity and hopeful victory.
The Great Awakening is here. Whether it will be enough or not remains to be seen.
© 2022 by RJ Dawson. All Rights Reserved.
[1] Unless otherwise noted all Scriptures are taken from the New American Standard Bible, © 1960, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.
REJECTING THE TRUTH (When It Hits Too Close To Home)
At first the prophets were respected. Then their pronouncements caused discomfort. Then the people got angry. Then the prophets were rejected.
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This is the way it always goes. The message of the prophets never changed. The only thing that changed was the reaction to the message. The reaction was worse in relation to the prophet’s closeness to home. Rejecting truth caused unrepentant people to turn inward, ingrown, and interbred. They eliminated the possibility of receiving the seed of God which always came from without. They became anti-fruitful, grew spiritually lazy and sluggish, and wanted an easy time of things. God would have nothing of it.
The Lord Jesus spoke nothing but Truth. The Truth inevitably caused a bad reaction. The bad reaction denoted the place the reaction came from in that the hearts of such people had grown far away from God though they all considered themselves just fine with God.
THANK YOU LORD THAT WE ARE NOT LIKE OTHER RELIGIONS
Christianity in general likes itself and sees no problem. This is the problem. The Lord is fixing the problem. That’s why we are in the early stages of a national Great Awakening. But the Awakening is still being opposed by the very people who should be supporting it. They oppose it because they like things the way they are. They are resistant to change. This is not new. They take the correcting and reforming words of the Lord as an offense.
I wrote the following 16 months ago: Americans Deciding with Their Feet: The Ongoing Exodus from Traditional Christianity. It speaks of the fast-approaching future, ready or not, some of which has already arrived, which demands TC get its act together or face complete irrelevance.
I have written hundreds of well-researched articles like this reflecting the exact scenario regarding the closed hearts and minds of so many so-called Christians who oppose the Lord while claiming to support Him. The evidence for this should be obvious to any nominal believer by the very lack of evidence among the unreal believers of actually obeying the Lord and carrying out His plan.
“You men who are stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears are always resisting the Holy Spirit; you are doing just as your fathers did.” [Acts 7:51]
Their hearts are not right. They resist. They oppose. None of it surprises the Lord. He has a bit of experience in this area. The same spiritual dynamic always happens and it always happens the same way. For a refresher course, it goes like this:
(1) An obscure nobody suddenly speaks forth something so profound and so different that the first reaction from the entrenched religious traditionalist status-quo is silent shock (“What did He just say?”).
(2) They try to throw Him off a cliff.
IDOL O’ PROTOCOL
This is exactly what they attempted. Only it was not, as one may suppose, the actions of some strange evil street protesters who advocate for killing everyone who doesn’t believe exactly everything they believe. But wait. It kind of was. But before they assumed that form they were nice church-law-abiding pew-sitting go-along-with-the-program types who somehow found great spiritual nourishment in silently watching the pros perform while making sure such pros performed in exactly the way they were accustomed. They had no hankering for anyone even thinking of doing anything even the slightest bit different or break in any way from the correct time-honored protocol.
Then the Lord Jesus broke protocol. Actually, on His very first visit to His home town church after beginning His ministry when asked to read He proceeded to the front, turned and faced the crowd, and read a very familiar passage. Then he said some other things from right out of the very Scriptures those people supposedly honored but never, ever mentioned. About this time and in that process He let everybody know that things would be different from now on and demonstrated it by very calmly picking up the dead carcass of religious protocol in His strong and mighty construction-worked hands and slamming it against the nearest wall splintering it into a thousand pieces. It was pretty cool. The church people were not happy. Here is the narrative:
And He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up; and as was His custom, He entered the synagogue on the Sabbath, and stood up to read. And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. And He opened the book and found the place where it was written,
“THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD IS UPON ME, BECAUSE HE ANOINTED ME TO PREACH THE GOSPEL TO THE POOR. HE HAS SENT ME TO PROCLAIM RELEASE TO THE CAPTIVES, AND RECOVERY OF SIGHT TO THE BLIND, TO SET FREE THOSE WHO ARE OPPRESSED, TO PROCLAIM THE FAVORABLE YEAR OF THE LORD.”
And He closed the book, gave it back to the attendant and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on Him. And He began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” And all were speaking well of Him, and wondering at the gracious words which were falling from His lips; and they were saying, “Is this not Joseph’s son?”
And He said to them, “No doubt you will quote this proverb to Me, ‘Physician, heal yourself! Whatever we heard was done at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well.’”
And He said, “Truly I say to you, no prophet is welcome in his hometown.”
“But I say to you in truth, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the sky was shut up for three years and six months, when a great famine came over all the land; and yet Elijah was sent to none of them, but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.”
And all the people in the synagogue were filled with rage as they heard these things; and they got up and drove Him out of the city, and led Him to the brow of the hill on which their city had been built, in order to throw Him down the cliff. [Luke 4:16-29] [1]
© 2017 by RJ Dawson. All Rights Reserved.
[1] Unless otherwise noted all Scriptures are taken from the New American Standard Bible, © 1960, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.
Reject God’s Prophets At Your Own Peril
The preceding link will direct you to an incredibly timely post from the blog, Manoah’s Wife, and for me, one with clear and current prophetic overtones. Many voices have been going forth from the Lord over the last several years warning this country of what is coming. Without repentance there is no way to hold back the tide. Our national and personal sins have demanded judgment. This passage is a perfect word to each of us, to our “churches” and spiritual communities, and to the nation of America itself.
The good news is that many are not only hearing the prophetic word but are acting upon it. Our former righteousness will not save us in the day we sin, yet the wicked that turn from sin will be saved. This is happening right now. Many sinners are turning to God but many “righteous” are falling away and do not even know it. These “believers” have closed their hearts and minds to prophetic warnings and the full truth of the Lord’s message. They have substituted false doctrines that appear perfectly Biblical and subsist on dry formalism, dead religion, and watered-down “Christianity light” instead of embracing the Lord Jesus in all His power and glory.
It is an exact rendering of the Lord’s words from so long ago directed to His own people:
“But what do you think? A man had two sons, and he came to the first and said, ‘Son, go work today in the vineyard.’ And he answered, ‘I will not;’ but afterward he regretted it and went. The man came to the second and said the same thing; and he answered, ‘I will, sir’; but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly I say to you that the tax collectors and prostitutes will get into the kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him; but the tax collectors and prostitutes did believe him; and you, seeing this, did not even feel remorse afterward so as to believe him.” [Matthew 21:28-32]
Many Christians have fallen asleep and insist on playing games and engaging in mere dutiful routine because they have rejected the prophetic word and disfellowshipped every prophet whom the Lord ever sent their way. The passage in Ezekiel reveals exactly the heart of God but many “Christians” insist that such is mere “Old Covenant” drivel and that God is no longer like that, in that the New Covenant has transformed God into an uncaring and worldly pansy who would rather we all act like a bunch of Sunday School kids and go through mere motions every Sunday morning. Those who have adopted this false view of God have no chance, because they refuse to listen to prophetic warnings and strong teaching, and instead substitute a fleshy, worldly, and wimpy “Christian” outlook devoid of spiritual strength and power.
What a sad state of affairs it is when most “Christians” would rather reject God for their own “Bible-based” religion or simply live in sin with no conviction or desire to honor the Lord Jesus properly.
“If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” [John 14:15]
Based on this, most “Christians” do not love the Lord and therefore do not show His real love to others. They are dealing with a substitute. They “say” but do not “do.” They cannot possibly send forth the seed of the Gospel simply because they do not possess it, nor want to possess it.
“But as for you, son of man, your fellow citizens who talk about you by the walls and in the doorways of the houses, speak to one another, each to his brother, saying, ‘Come now and hear what the message is which comes forth from the LORD.’ They come to you as people come, and sit before you as My people and hear your words, but they do not do them, for they do the lustful desires expressed by their mouth, and their heart goes after their gain. Behold, you are to them like a sensual song by one who has a beautiful voice and plays well on an instrument; for they hear your words but they do not practice them. So when it comes to pass—as surely it will—then they will know that a prophet has been in their midst.” [Ezekiel 33:30-33] [1]
© 2012 by RJ Dawson. All Rights Reserved.
[1] Unless otherwise noted all Scriptures are taken from the New American Standard Bible, © 1960, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.
