The sun of righteousness will
rise with healing in its wings.
—Malachi 4:2
All the prophets were dead except Malachi. His was the last prophetic voice of the Old Testament. There wouldn’t be another until John the Baptist, 400 years later. Malachi is a somber book; God’s people had become spiritually comatose.
Yet, Malachi isn’t all gloom. There were a faithful few that God called “my treasured possession” (3:17). To them he promised, “the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings.”
Christ would one day come as the sun to bring light to a dark world and as the healer to bring health to a sick world.
Sure enough, four centuries later he came. “In him was life, and that life was the light of men … The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world” (Jno. 1:4, 9).
Light and life. Without him you
have neither. With him you have both.