“The True Light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him” (John 1:9-10). Last Sunday, we took a tough and hard look at the darkness before the dawn, with a big helping hand from the 'Preacher' we met in Ecclesiastes. His crisis was born of viewing the world with semi-secular eyes, as a cage closed off as an isolated system. And yet he himself knew that there was a breach. “God is in heaven, and you are on earth” – true enough, Preacher – but still there was on earth a “house of God” where one could “draw near to listen” (Ecclesiastes 5:1-2). And because of that, the days we remember in Advent were not an unmitigated darkness after all.
For although “the world did not know him, he came to his own” (John 1:10-11). As a ragtag bunch of tribes had surrounded a desert mountain, suddenly the summit “was wrapped in smoke, because the LORD had descended on it in fire” (Exodus 19:17). And after a covenant had been stated and sealed, “Moses went up the mountain, and... the Glory of the LORD dwelt on Mount Sinai.... Now the appearance of the Glory of the LORD was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the Children of Israel. Moses entered the cloud and went up on the mountain, and Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights” (Exodus 24:15-18). Amidst fire and smoke, the True Light laid bare to Moses his plan to extend his dwelling into our world in a carefully regulated way – don't play with fire! – in a special tent where he could meet with humanity: “Let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst” (Exodus 25:8).
Despite self-corruption in Israel that put the plan in jeopardy, in the end the project went forward. “And all the craftsmen among the workmen made the tabernacle with ten curtains” (Exodus 36:8), hung over a frame and surrounded by a large courtyard. “Thus all the work of the tabernacle of the Tent of Meeting was finished” (Exodus 39:32); and, after being assembled and furnished on New Year's Day and consecrated with holy oil, “then the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the Glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle; and Moses was not able to enter the Tent of Meeting, because the cloud settled on it and the Glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle” (Exodus 40:34-35), “and fire was in it by night” (Exodus 40:38). As Israel recentered the community around this roving tent wherein the Glory dwelt, they needed to be scrupulously holy.
In the land of promise, they anchored this Tent of Meeting at Shiloh (Joshua 18:1), where it rested for centuries and proved, alas, that even there, worship could be exploited by the likes of Eli's sons (1 Samuel 2:22-36). The Ark of the Covenant was foolishly abused in battle, where it was captured by the Philistines – “the Glory has departed from Israel!”, went the words of woe (1 Samuel 4:21) – and even when it came back, it was returned not to the Tent of Meeting but to the ordinary house of Abinadab at Kiriath-jearim (1 Samuel 5-7). Only years later did King David fetch the Ark from there – though, when a man died for touching the Ark on the way, King David was gripped with fear: “How can the Ark of the LORD come to me?” (2 Samuel 6:9), leading him to store it for three months with Obed-edom the Gittite, whose house the LORD blessed through its presence (2 Samuel 6:10-11). Reinvigorated with hope, David then led the Ark to Jerusalem, where David had pitched for it a new tent (2 Samuel 6:12-17), while the vacant original tent found its way to Gibeon (2 Chronicles 1:3).
David felt this wasn't a permanent solution. He lamented that “I dwell in a house of cedar, but the Ark of God dwells in a tent” (2 Samuel 7:2). God replied that he had never questioned his earthly living arrangement (2 Samuel 7:6-7), but, in honor of David's desire, he would give David a son to “build a house for my name” (2 Samuel 7:13). In time, that son, Solomon, declared that “David my father could not build a house for the name of the LORD his God because of the warfare with which his enemies surrounded him..., but now the LORD my God has given me rest on every side..., and so I intend to build a house for the name of the LORD my God” (1 Kings 5:3-5). For seven and a half years, Solomon's workers labored on a stone-and-cedar building ninety feet long, thirty feet wide, forty-five feet high, with a fifteen-foot vestibule in front and surrounded by side chambers all around, embedded in a lavish court up on the mountain height (1 Kings 6:1-10). “So Solomon built the house and finished it,” dividing off an inner sanctuary inside it as a Holy of Holies, “and he overlaid the whole house with gold,” inside and outside, “until all the house was finished” (1 Kings 6:14-22).
Then came the blessed moment of dedication, when “they brought up the Ark of the LORD, the Tent of Meeting, and all the holy vessels that were in the tent” (1 Kings 8:3). “Then the priests brought the Ark of the Covenant of the LORD to its place in the inner sanctuary of the house, in the Holy of Holies, underneath the wings of the cherubim” (1 Kings 8:6), “and when the priests came out of the Holy Place, a cloud filled the House of the LORD, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, because the Glory of the LORD filled the House of the LORD” (1 Kings 8:10-11). What had been true of the Tabernacle was true now of this new Temple: “Sinai is now in the sanctuary!” (Psalm 68:17).
And so the True Light dwelled secretly amidst “thick darkness” in “an exalted house, a place for you to dwell in forever,” said the king (1 Kings 8:12-13). “But will God indeed dwell on the earth?” he wondered. After all, “heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built!” (1 Kings 8:27). Nevertheless, hoped Solomon, God's name and glory would fill the house, which would thus be specially linked to “heaven, your dwelling place” (1 Kings 8:39). “The LORD our God be with us, as he was with our fathers,” Solomon prayed, and “may he not leave us or forsake us” (1 Kings 8:57).
In response, God gave Solomon a vision, assuring him: “I have consecrated this house that you have built by putting my name there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there for all time” (1 Kings 9:3). But he warned him that, if the sons of David were faithless stewards of the kingdom, then “the house that I have consecrated for my name, I will cast out of my sight..., and this house will become a heap of ruins” (1 Kings 9:7-8).
Over the years, a few kings were faithful, but many were faithless indeed. Solomon's own son Rehoboam led the people after “the abominations of the nations” all around (1 Kings 14:24), so no wonder the Egyptians invaded, stealing “the treasures of the House of the LORD” (1 Kings 14:25-26). But Rehoboam's grandson Asa “was wholly true to the LORD all his days, and he brought into the House of the LORD the sacred gifts of his father and his own sacred gifts, silver and gold and vessels” (1 Kings 15:14-15) – until even Asa quickly took them back to use as a bribe to secure a military alliance with Damascus (1 Kings 15:18-19).
In a later day of crisis, this Temple was a safe haven for Asa's infant great-great-grandson Prince Jehoash, saved by his aunt Jehosheba, wife of the high priest Jehoiada. The little prince was sheltered in the Temple's side chambers for six years (2 Kings 11), and after he came to the throne at age seven, “Jehoash did what was right in the sight of the LORD all his days, because Jehoiada the Priest instructed him” (2 Kings 12:2). Jehoash had ordered a collection taken up for repairs to the Temple, “but by the twenty-third year of King Jehoash, the priests had made no repairs on the house” (2 Kings 12:6), and only after a royal scolding did they “pay it out to the carpenters and the builders... and to the masons and the stonecutters, as well as to buy timber and quarried stone for making repairs on the House of the LORD” (2 Kings 12:11-12). But even Jehoash, when a military emergency came, raided the sacred gifts and gold from “the treasuries of the House of the LORD” to bribe the king of Damascus to leave Judah alone (2 Kings 12:17-18).
Jehoash's great-great-grandson Ahaz began to pollute the Temple courts, as a sign of his service to the Assyrians (2 Kings 16:10-20), while Ahaz's son Hezekiah, though righteous, paid off invading Assyrians with “all the silver that was in the House of the LORD” and even “the gold from the doors of the Temple of the LORD” (2 Kings 18:15-16). Only with the encouragement of the prophet Isaiah did King Hezekiah recover courage enough to lay down the Assyrian threat in the temple courts and pray for deliverance (2 Kings 19:14-19) – “and that night, the messenger of the LORD went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians” (2 Kings 19:35). Hezekiah's son Manasseh more severely defiled the Temple when “he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the House of the LORD, and he burned his son as an offering..., and the carved image of Asherah that he had made, he set in the House” (2 Kings 21:5-7). But his grandson Josiah, like a new Jehoash, ordered further repairs to the neglected Temple (2 Kings 22:3-7), and when the high priest Hilkiah rediscovered Deuteronomy in the temple archives (2 Kings 22:8-11), Josiah sought with all his might to reform the people, purging the Temple of every implement of paganized worship (2 Kings 23:4-14).
Alas, it was too late; the sins of Manasseh had marked a point-of-no-return (2 Kings 23:26-27). And following Josiah's premature death, it didn't take long for everyone to return to their abominations. The Babylonians laid siege to Jerusalem in the year 597 BC, and Nebuchadnezzar “carried off all the treasuries of the House of the LORD... and cut in pieces all the vessels of gold in the Temple of the LORD, which Solomon king of Israel had made, as the LORD had foretold. He carried away all Jerusalem..., ten thousand captives” (2 Kings 24:13-14), among whom was a twenty-something priest-in-training named Ezekiel.
Living in exile, Ezekiel began having visions (Ezekiel 1:1-3), where he saw “the appearance of the likeness of the Glory of the LORD” like “brightness all around” (Ezekiel 1:28). Fourteen months later, in September of 592 BC, his visions whisked him all the way back to Jerusalem, to gaze through the north gate into the temple courts, “and behold, the Glory of the God of Israel was there” (Ezekiel 8:1-4). But as Ezekiel dug his way in, what he found shocked him to his core. “There, engraved on the wall all around, was every form of creeping things and loathsome beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel; and before them stood seventy men of the elders of the house of Israel,” burning incense in the darkness (Ezekiel 8:10-11). In an escalating series of abominations, Ezekiel found women wailing over a pagan god and men facing away from the Temple to worship the rising sun (Ezekiel 8:14-16). No wonder God complained of Judah that “when they slaughtered their children in sacrifice to their idols, on the same day they came into my sanctuary to profane it” (Ezekiel 23:39), as “her priests have done violence to my law and have profaned my holy things” (Ezekiel 22:26). And so, step by step, Ezekiel watched in his visions as the Glory withdrew from the Holy of Holies to the threshold (Ezekiel 9:3), then to the eastern gate of the temple courts (Ezekiel 10:18-19), and at last flew away from the city altogether (Ezekiel 11:23). The Temple had become an unholy house of darkness, forsaken by its God.
There could be but one outcome. A few years after Ezekiel's vision, “Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came with all his army against Jerusalem and laid siege to it” (2 Kings 25:1), until at last they broke through, and his commander “burned the House of the LORD” down to its foundations (2 Kings 25:9). “Should priest and prophet be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord?” Judah wondered (Lamentations 2:20). But why not? There was no Glory in the place any more. The high priest Seraiah was executed in Nebuchadnezzar's presence, and “so Judah was taken into exile out of its land” (2 Kings 25:18-21).
It would have been so easy then to give up – to say that the Glory had disappeared for good, that the True Light had been extinguished from our earthly realm, to say that the darkness had overcome. But when Ezekiel heard of the great burning, then he began to hear the promises of hope. Israel seemed as dead and gone as an army decayed to dust in the valleys, but the Spirit of the LORD could bring life to dry bones (Ezekiel 37:1-14). “And I will set them in their land... and will set my sanctuary in their midst forevermore; my dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people. Then the nations will know that I am the LORD who sanctifies Israel, when my sanctuary is in their midst forevermore” (Ezekiel 37:26-28).
Years passed, and in 573 BC, Ezekiel's eyes were opened once again. “In visions of God he brought me to the land of Israel and set me down on a very high mountain” (Ezekiel 40:2). Gazing south, his guide showed him a vast city, over 45,000,000 square feet, ringed by twelve gates named for the twelve sons of Israel (Ezekiel 48:30-35); and there was a temple which dwarfed the one that had burned down (Ezekiel 40-42). After a tour of its courts, gates, and sanctuary, “then he led me to the gate, the gate facing east; and behold, the Glory of the God of Israel was coming from the east, and the sound of his coming was like the sound of many waters, and the earth shone with his glory” (Ezekiel 43:1-2). Ezekiel witnessed its entry and received a commission to go “describe to the house of Israel the temple, that they may be ashamed of their iniquities” (Ezekiel 43:10).
Ezekiel died in exile, but Babylon's darkness was overcome, as the prophets had foretold. In the reign of the Persian conqueror Cyrus, the first wave of exiles returned to their lost homeland. There, “the builders laid the foundation of the Temple of the LORD,” but “many of the priests and Levites..., old men who had seen the first house, wept with a loud voice” (Ezra 3:10-12). God raised up prophets like Haggai and Zechariah to inspire Governor Zerubbabel, a great-great-grandson of King Josiah, and the new high priest Jeshua, to “rebuild the House of God that is in Jerusalem” (Ezra 5:1-2), despite the people's obvious uncleanness (Haggai 2:14). Even though the temple they were building clearly didn't match what Ezekiel had seen (Haggai 2:3), God assured them that “the latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former” (Haggai 2:9). Zechariah heard God declare, “I have returned to Zion, and... Jerusalem shall be called the faithful city” (Zechariah 8:3). Around 515 BC, this Second Temple was completed and dedicated (Ezra 6:14-18). But unlike in the days of Moses or Solomon, and unlike what Ezekiel had seen, nowhere do we read of the Glory of the LORD filling it.
More years began to pass, and new names creep across the page: Ezra, Nehemiah, Malachi. To tell the truth, 'Malachi' might not even be a name; it means 'my messenger,' and traditionally Jews have supposed it was a pen name used by Ezra, a scribe and priest who was some relation to Jeshua. Some modern scholars have suggested that Malachi was a prophet who followed Ezra and Nehemiah,1 but there's a better case that Malachi preached a generation after the Second Temple opened but still a couple decades before Ezra's arrival.2
In a day when the Persian king was sending out messengers to intimidate the nations into submission, Malachi lifts up the awesome responsibility of the priests in Jerusalem: “The lips of a priest should guard knowledge, and they should seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the messenger of the LORD of Hosts” (Malachi 2:7). But that was obviously not what was happening: Israel's priests “have turned aside from the way” and so have “caused many to stumble by your instruction” (Malachi 2:8) – hence why God picked 'my messenger' to preach to these failed messengers.3 The messengers needed a renewal of their rightful message, else hope would die.
Given the failure of the priests to inspire and guide them, the people were in an even worse shape. After such a long back-and-forth history, with the lofty promises of prophets seeming to vanish into thin air, they observed that, so far as they could see, “evildoers... put God to the test and escape” (Malachi 3:15). They struggled to believe that the LORD actually upheld any difference between good and evil; an amoral god seemed the most plausible explanation for the course history had taken, and they despaired of seeing a God of Justice in the world (Malachi 2:17). No wonder they concluded that “it is vain to serve God” (Malachi 3:14) – empty, false.
As a result of their despair, they grew morally and spiritually lax: “Judah has been faithless, and abomination has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem” (Malachi 2:11). Despising the LORD's Table, the sacrificial altar in the Temple, they offered sickly sacrifices that would never impress if sent to a Persian governor as a gift of tribute (Malachi 1:7-8). Withholding their tithes because of the crushing burden of Persian taxes, they were effectively robbing God, as much as every king before them who'd raided the temple treasuries for monies with which to pay off worldly powers (Malachi 3:8-9). By these kinds of behaviors, “Judah has profaned the sanctuary of the LORD, which he loves, and has married the daughter of a foreign god” (Malachi 2:11).
So Malachi has a message for them – an uncomfortable renewal of hope in darkened times. Only in the day of salvation would they actually “see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked” (Malachi 3:18). They have to understand that, if they fear threats that the Persian king will come and burn their city down unless they roll over and beg, there's a Greater King coming, a Glory arriving. “The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple” (Malachi 3:1). Their fears have been misplaced onto a succession of worldly empires, when this is what should concern them. “Who can endure the day of his coming,” asks the prophet, “and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap” – abrasive, agonizing, leaving behind a purity raw and scorched but clean (Malachi 3:2). “The Light of Israel will become a fire... and will burn and devour his thorns and briers in one day” (Isaiah 10:17).
Suddenly he'll arrive – but not without forewarning. “I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me” (Malachi 3:1). That echoes the earlier voice “crying: 'In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD..., and the Glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together'” (Isaiah 40:3-5). “The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming” (Malachi 3:1). “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome Day of the LORD comes, and he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction” (Malachi 4:5-6). This messenger's advent “will signal the king's imminent arrival.”4 “For behold, the Day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble..., but for you who fear my name, the Sun of Righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings..., and they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day when I act, says the LORD of Hosts” (Malachi 4:1-3).
Once the Messenger and the Lord are here, “he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver” (Malachi 3:3). Thus the LORD's “arrival and fiery purge will result in an onset of acceptable offerings,” unlike the sickly sacrifices and taken-back tithes so lamented. For “they will bring offerings in righteousness to the LORD; then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the LORD, as in days of old” (Malachi 3:3-4). Worship will be made new.
And only then will they understand the words of Ezekiel, now nearly a century old. For he had clearly seen a temple grander than the Second Temple which Malachi beheld so profaned. In this temple yet unbuilt, “the Glory of the LORD entered the Temple by the gate facing east..., and behold, the Glory of the LORD filled the Temple” (Ezekiel 43:4-5). This, God says, really is “where I will dwell in the midst of the people of Israel forever” (Ezekiel 43:7). And as for that eastern gate, “no one shall enter by it, for the LORD, the God of Israel, has entered by it; therefore it shall remain shut” (Ezekiel 44:2). “And I looked,” said Ezekiel, “and behold, the Glory of the LORD filled the Temple of the LORD” (Ezekiel 44:4), and from it would flow water that restores life and replants paradise in the world (Ezekiel 47:1-12).
Centuries elapsed, and the Second Temple was desecrated by the Greeks, reconsecrated by the Maccabees, and expanded by the cynical whims of Herod. It was in his days, contrary to all his desires, that Malachi's prophecy bore its fruit. The messenger of preparation was coming. “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John” (John 1:6). He was son of the priest Zechariah, who, while burning incense in the Second Temple, saw a messenger from heaven, Gabriel, who predicted this son to come (Luke 1:5-13). As that messenger from heaven said, John “will be great before the Lord..., and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother's womb; and he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared” (Luke 1:15-17). Zechariah, too, was moved to prophesy to his newborn son that “you shall be called the prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the Sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace” (Luke 1:76-79). And so John “came as a witness, to bear witness about the Light, that all might believe through him. He was not the Light, but came to bear witness about the Light” which was so soon to come (John 1:7-8).
What had happened, though it wasn't yet known, was that the prophecies not only of Malachi but of Ezekiel and the rest were coming to pass. For before John had even been born, that heavenly messenger Gabriel touched earth once more in Nazareth of Galilee, meeting not a priest but a village girl so lovingly prepared for a mission – she, more than any other, was fully graced by the Lord (Luke 1:26-30). Shortly, said the messenger, “the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you” (Luke 1:35). And no sooner did she consent than it happened: “The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us” (John 1:14), “using as his own body the temple that came from the Holy Virgin” (cf. John 2:21).5
For in that moment, the Glory of the LORD had arrived through the eastern gate, the Virgin Mary's womb – a gate never to be opened or entered again (Ezekiel 44:2). And the Glory of the LORD – the Word – filled the Temple – the humanity, of tangible body and rational soul, conceived that moment to incarnate God in our very nature (Ezekiel 43:5). From him would flow the rivers of living water, the Holy Spirit, which would restore life and replant paradise (John 7:37-39). What Ezekiel had seen in his vision was nothing less than the Incarnation taking place, the Body of Christ enshrining the Glory of the Living God!6
Once the Word had become flesh inside her, once the Glory had filled his Temple within her, Mary ventured to the hill country to visit her kinswoman Elizabeth, the priest-born wife of the priest Zechariah. And no sooner had Mary spoken a word than John, the fetal prophet not yet seeing, leapt for joy, as David had danced before the Ark in its procession (Luke 1:39-41; cf. 2 Samuel 6:14). Filled with the Holy Spirit, Elizabeth reacted to Mary as David had to the Ark, questioning, “Why is this granted to me, that the Mother of My Lord should come to me?” (Luke 1:43; cf. 2 Samuel 6:9). Only she spoke, not with David's fear and trembling, but with gratitude and reverence and awe. So she blessed Mary and “the fruit of your womb,” the LORD in his Holy Temple being built on uterine holy ground (Luke 1:42). “From now on, all generations will call me blessed, for He-Who-Is-Mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name!” answered Mary (Luke 1:48-49). No sooner would this Child be born, after all, than to neighboring shepherds another heavenly messenger would come down, “and the glory of the Lord shone around them,” heralding the birth of a Savior (Luke 2:6-11). And as Mary and Joseph brought the Child Jesus to Jerusalem, to make a lawful offering out of their poverty, so it began to be fulfilled: “the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple” (Malachi 3:1).
The Lord himself said that “all the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John, and if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come... to restore all things” (Matthew 11:13-14; Mark 9:12). John, for his part, would “baptize you with water, but He who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie! He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire! The winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor...” (Luke 3:16-17). It was the very next day that he laid eyes, maybe for the first time, on Jesus. “I myself did not know him, but for this purpose I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel” (John 1:31), and so “this joy of mine is now complete” (John 3:29). The result was that “we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
“He came to his own, and his own did not receive him” (John 1:11). “The Light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the Light, because their works were evil” (John 3:19). “I came to cast fire on the earth,” he said, “and would that it were already kindled!” (Luke 12:49). “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12), insofar as “all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God” (Romans 8:14). For if the Body of the Word is the Temple indwelt by the Glory, what does it mean for us if receiving the Spirit makes us cells in the Body of Christ? “You yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house” (1 Peter 2:5), which, joined together under Christ the Head, “grows into a holy temple in the Lord..., a dwelling place for God in the Spirit” (Ephesians 2:21-22). Here we have a hidden glory, because the Church becomes the same House wherein the True Light burns secretly in the darkness, raising up “a pure offering... among the nations” (Malachi 1:11).
Someday, as Malachi foretold, the Lord will come again “like a refiner's fire” (Malachi 3:2), “when the Lord is revealed from heaven with his mighty messengers in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance... on those who do not obey the gospel..., when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints and to be marveled at among all who have believed” (2 Thessalonians 1:7-10). But on the other side of the flames awaits the city Ezekiel saw – but its measurements will make Ezekiel's dreams look half-baked, it will outshine his wildest dreams, “and I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb..., and the Glory of God gives it light” (Revelation 21:10-23).7 Then will this Advent resolve in its Perfect Christmas; then will the Temple truth be full; then will the True Light leave no room for shadows; then will worship be infinite. Hallelujah, what joy!
1 James D. Nogalski, The Book of the Twelve: Micah-Malachi, Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary 18 (Smyth & Helwys Publishing, 2011), 993; Anthony R. Petterson, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, Apollos Old Testament Commentary 25 (IVP Academic, 2015), 307.
2 R. Michael Fox, A Message from the Great King: Reading Malachi in Light of Ancient Persian Royal Messenger Texts from the Time of Xerxes, Siphrut 17 (Eisenbrauns, 2015), 19-20; Jonathan Gibson, Covenant Continuity and Fidelity: A Study of Inner-Biblical Allusion and Exegesis in Malachi (Bloomsbury, 2016), 29.
3 R. Michael Fox, A Message from the Great King: Reading Malachi in Light of Ancient Persian Royal Messenger Texts from the Time of Xerxes, Siphrut 17 (Eisenbrauns, 2015), 91.
4 R. Michael Fox, A Message from the Great King: Reading Malachi in Light of Ancient Persian Royal Messenger Texts from the Time of Xerxes, Siphrut 17 (Eisenbrauns, 2015), 99.
5 Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John 1.9, on John 1:14, in Joel C. Elowsky, ed., Cyril of Alexandria: Commentary on John, Ancient Christian Texts (IVP Academic, 2013), 1:63-64.
6 William G. Fowler and Michael Strickland, The Influence of Ezekiel in the Fourth Gospel: Intertextuality and Interpretation (Brill, 2018), 82-83.
7 Konstantin Stijkel, Visualising the Vision: A Study of the Plan of Ezekiel's Temple (Brill, 2024), 273-274.
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