Suddenly

We often think that when something happens in a sudden fashion that it was totally random or the product of luck.  And while that may be true for winners of the lottery, it usually isn't true in many areas of life.  Suddenly a volcano will burst forth.  But while the eruption was sudden the pressure beneath the surface had been building for some time.  And once that build up had hit a critical mass the slightest tremor caused the mountain to blow.

This "build up" was in the spiritual air of Israel after they were permitted to go back to their homeland by Cyrus King of Persia.  Although being encouraged that they were finally back within the borders of their national heritage they were likely discouraged that they were under the direction of the Persian throne.  This discouragement likely only grew after they were then under the rule of Greece following the conquests of Alexander the Great.  It then likely became worse when after an 80 year stint of national independence under the Hasmodian Kingdom, they found themselves submitted to Rome.  And it was from this place that a cry began to build in the Jewish people.  A cry for a Deliverer, a cry for a Savior, a cry for help, a cry for the Messiah.

And so it was 30 years after His miraculous birth, Jesus appears on the scene.  Centuries, even millennia, of build up culminating in a 3 year period.  A volcano erupted over humanity and we will never be the same again.

This is referenced, among other places, in Malachi 3:1 which reads

Behold, I am going to send My messenger, and he will clear the way before Me.  And the Lord who you seek will suddenly come to His Temple; and the messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight, behold He is coming.

The Book of Malachi, unlike many of the other prophetic books, has no direct reference to the time it was written. Unlike Isaiah or Jeremiah which both start by naming the kings that ruled during the time that they received their revelations, Malachi starts simply with "The oracle of the Word of the Lord to Israel to Malachi."

We are however able to place it in a certain time period due to the fact that Malachi references "the governor" in Malachi 1:9.  This places Malachi after the destruction of the First Temple, after Babylon and into the days where Israel was permitted to live in its native land but under the governance of the Persian Empire.  For up until the expulsion from their land by Babylon, Israel had only been ruled by its own kings.

Therefore the reference in Malachi 3:1 to the "Temple" is a reference to the Second Temple.  Built by Israel by the permission of King Darius of the Persian Empire.  This Temple which was later to be renovated by Herod the Great would stand for 586 years from 516 B.C. to 70 A.D.  when it was destroyed by Rome.

The exactness of this prophecy is profound:  In the Second Temple that only stood for 586 years, the Lord would suddenly come.  I can see no other fulfillment to this prophecy than that of Jesus Christ the Eternal Son of God coming as a Man to teach in this Temple.

What makes this even more profound (if that wasn’t mind-blowing enough) is that it calls "the Lord" the "Messenger of the Covenant".  The ramifications of that phrase are tremendous and took the entire New Testament and then years of Church history to unpack. What is being said here is that it isn't just that God is coming but that He would bring in a New Covenant.  For why would there need to be a messenger of a Covenant unless it was a new one.

This really opens up something deeply profound as we consider the plight of the nation of Israel.  They fought so hard and sacrificed so much to return to their homeland and to re-establish their system of worship and its likely that they couldn't fathom what would come from their devotion. They probably thought they would fight to get by and would pass on a torch, though a weaker one, to the next generations in hope that Israel would be great again.  But their obedience was being used by God to position all of humanity to receive the Incarnation.

And this is really the beauty of this period.  It was no doubt one of the more obscure and more filled with a sense of weakness periods in Israel’s history but their prophets spoke of something great - something that spurred them on to obey the Lord unto great sacrifice but something that they likely couldn't imagine -- God was coming to earth.