The prophet Malachi declares some amazing prophecies about our end times, just before Jesus Christ returns in victory to rule this dying world.
One such prophecy — which many Bible students have failed to appreciate or have chosen to misunderstand or ignore — is found in Malachi 4.
Many sincere Christians — clerics and laymen alike — look at our world with its hordes of “unsaved” or “unchurched” people numbering in the multiple millions. And, with great urgency and compassion, these Christians long with all their hearts to reach out to these people with the gospel of salvation in Christ.
Indeed, as Jesus Himself said, He came “to seek and save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10). Jesus was referring here to the Jewish tax collector Zacchaeus and other human beings like him (including you and me!) who are all sinners and are “lost” on their way to salvation and eternal life. “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one, to his own way” (Isaiah 53:6).
Exercising what they consider their “freedom in Christ,” many — if not most — who profess faith in Christ eat flesh of all animals, regardless of some animals being labeled by the Old Testament as “unclean” (Leviticus 11; Deuteronomy 14; etc.). There are even some who go as far an extreme as to say that “Pork is Christian food!”
Even much, much earlier than the word “science” was coined, humans must have wondered about the world in which they lived, and have observed that certain things, certain events happened regularly and predictably.
Since dim antiquity, we humans have known that sunsets would be followed by nights, and then sunrise and daylight. We have known that (for those living in areas with four seasons) spring comes after winter, and summer before fall. We have known when to plant and when to harvest. We have known that when we sow corn seed, we will harvest corn and not rice or barley or wheat. We have known how long it takes for a woman to conceive and bear a child. We have known enough about how things work to be able to build houses, make clothes, make boats, carts, cars, trains, planes and other means to take us to places — and many, many other things to make our lives easier and more comfortable (or more complicated?!).
“He surely has gone to heaven; he was such a good man!” We hear such talk at funeral wakes. We hear it as people pay tribute to a loved one who had done a lot of good and is now lying cold in a casket. “He must be looking from up there over us his surviving loved ones, pleased with the honor we are giving him right now.”
Does a dead person still somehow see and hear and feel or otherwise sense what’s going on in the world he has left behind at death? What about stories about the “ghost” of a dead person visiting the living who survive him? Are these stories for real? When a “bad” man dies, does he — or his soul — go down at once to some fiery place called “hell?”