Elijah the Prophet

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 5, 1870

Elijah the Prophet.

In Malachi 4:5, we read, “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.”

For some years past there have been found individuals to argue from this prediction, that Elijah the prophet was literally and personally to appear among men just before the opening of the great day of the Lord.

It could easily be foreseen that the result of such teaching must be evil; and its bitter fruit is beginning to appear in a vigorous crop of impostors who are rising up and claiming to be the august personage in question. We charge this result upon the doctrine before mentioned, for no one would ever be in danger of being left to put forth the conceited claim that he was Elijah the prophet, unless he had first been led to believe that that prophet was to appear literally and personally among men.

But these individuals are very apparently overdoing the matter. The supply is greater than the demand. Granting for a moment that Elijah is personally to appear, the prediction must be fulfilled in some one person, not in any two, three, or more. If, therefore, more than one person shall rise up and claim to be the prophet, we have just that number too many. Now there are quite a number of rival claims to this illustrious honor. We have in mind, at this moment, three individuals who each claim to be the prophet that was to appear. And how are we going to decide between these rival claims? Should we grant that one of them might be the person in question, only one of them could be; and all the others must be impostors. S. S. Snow, of New York, has the oldest claim to this distinction. Ever since 1845, he has given out that he was some great one, even the Elijah that was to come.

The second claimant we have in mind is one Mr. Moore, of this State, who lately passed through Battle Creek, declaring himself to be not only Elijah, but that prophet, of Deut. 18, like unto Moses, and claiming to hold various other positions of distinction brought to view in the Old Testament; and he proposed to establish his title in the following summary manner: “If I am not the person, who is? Point out the man; if you cannot, you are bound to receive me as such.” N. B. We did not conclude to receive him, though we could not point out any “other man.”

A third claimant, we learn, has arisen in the person of a Mr. Curry, of Massachusetts. And now we inquire, How can any one of these individuals establish his claim in opposition to the others? What is the distinguishing feature by which one is proved to be genuine, and the other false? Let these gentlemen, who each have a claim so presumptuous that with every sensible mind it ought to prove its own refutation, settle the question between them as to which of them is entitled to bear the burden of this prophecy, before they trouble others with their crazy pretensions.

Again, if Elijah is personally to appear, it must be Elijah himself, the very one who lived nearly a thousand years before Christ, and who was taken up alive into Heaven. Therefore, let him who claims to be the Elijah of the prophecy, first give us a few particulars of his previous earthly history, and his long intervening heavenly existence. Elijah was received up into Heaven there to remain till he should suddenly appear to accomplish his mission among men, if he was thus to appear. Hence, let no one pretend to be he, who has been born and reared within the lifetime of the present generation. If he says that Elijah is in him, we reply that that is a kind of incarnation concerning which we have no information in the word of truth. If he says that the spirit and power of Elijah is with him, then we answer that that would be taking it in a figurative sense; and when we come to that, we can show a movement which can lay better claim to being a fulfillment of the prophecy, than can be put forth by any one individual.

But the investigative reader may be inclined to seriously inquire what the prophecy does mean. We have the prediction that Elijah should be sent before the great and dreadful day of the Lord; and there can be no dispute that that day is the one which all prophecy shows to be now just upon us. What, then, shall we do with it? for we have evidently reached the time when the fulfillment is due, and when we may look for something which answers reasonably and scripturally to the prediction.

There are several allusions to the prophecy in the New Testament which will first claim our attention. They are spoken with reference to John the Baptist. It was prophesied of John in Luke 1:17, that he should go before Christ 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 just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. When John came upon the stage of action, and commenced his preaching in the wilderness, the Jews asked him plainly if he was Elijah, and he as plainly answered that he was not. John 1:21. And yet when He who was greater than John appeared, he told his disciples distinctly that if they would receive it, John the Baptist was the Elias, or Elijah, which was to come. Matt. 11:14.

In these statements, apparently, at first sight, contradictory, we find a key to the solution of this question. The Jews were expecting Elijah personally to appear. See Bloomfield’s Greek Testament on Matt. 11:14. And when John in answer to their question tells them that he was not Elias, he simply affirmed that he was not that prophet in the sense in which they were expecting him, that is, the same identical person.

But when Christ says that John was the Elias which was to come, he evidently speaks of him in the same sense in which he was prophesied of; namely, as one coming in the spirit and power of Elias. It is the spirit and power, then, and not the person, that fulfills the prophecy. This, it seems to us, should forever settle the question that it is not necessary that Elijah should personally appear. John affirmed expressly that he was not the personal Elijah whom they were expecting; and yet Christ says that John’s mission was a fulfillment of the prophecy respecting Elijah, because, as we are compelled to conclude, he came in the spirit and power of that prophet.

But was the prophecy wholly fulfilled in John the Baptist? We answer, No; for it is more intimately connected with the great day of the Lord than was the mission of John. His work had exclusive reference to the first advent; but the prophecy must relate more especially to the second advent, which is the crowning event of the ushering in of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.

The first and second advents are in many respects parallel events. Single prophecies often contemplate them both, the prophetic utterances glancing from one to the other in quick transition. Such prophecies receive a partial fulfillment in the events of the first advent, and a complete accomplishment in events connected with the second. Of such a nature we believe are some of the predictions of Malachi. See, for instance, chapter 3: “Behold I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me; and the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his temple,” &c. Christ, in Matt. 11:10, applies this to John the Baptist, saying, “For this is he of whom it is written, Behold I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee.” Yet the very next verse of Mal. 3 reads, “But who may abide the day of his coming, and who shall stand when he appeareth?” glancing right down from the preparation for Christ’s first advent to his revelation the second time in power and glory. So with the prophecy respecting Elijah. Fulfilled primarily in the preaching of John the Baptist to prepare the people for Christ’s first coming, which was itself an antecedent step looking

to his second advent, we may look for its ultimate and complete fulfillment near the coming of the notable day of the Lord, in some work which will be at once both the herald and precursor of that great event. If, then, we can find a work, even if it should be now going on, which is the counterpart of the work of John the Baptist, or which bears the same relation to the second advent that his work did to the first advent, and, withal, is the same in character as the work in which the literal Elijah of old was engaged before his translation, may we not take our stand upon it, not timidly and falteringly, but boldly and firmly, as the ultimate fulfillment of this important prophecy?

The question remains, Do we find any such work in process of accomplishment? Need we ask this question of any who have had a knowledge of the great Advent proclamation of the past twenty-four years—a proclamation brought to view in Rev. 14, under the symbols of three angels flying through mid-heaven with important messages for the children of men, and denoting, as we understand, a body of religious teachers going through the land with the blazing light of truth, giving the announcement and warning of coming judgment? John’s work was to expose the traditions and corruptions of that age, and prepare a people for the first advent of the Lord. In like manner it is the object of the work symbolized by the messages of Rev. 14, to prepare a people for his second appearing.

Do you say that the prophecy must be fulfilled by one person? We answer, Not necessarily; for the case of John has shown us that it is not the individual, but the spirit and power, that fulfills the prophecy; and why may not this spirit and power accompany a body of men, as well as a single individual, especially if the magnitude and importance of the work demand such an increased agency?

Do you say again that the spirit and power of Elijah is a miracle-working power, and the fulfillment of the prophecy must be accompanied with such miracles as Elijah wrought? We answer, Wrong again; for John the Baptist worked no miracles; and his mission was not a failure on this account. He preached a plain and cutting message to the people, and laid the ax to the root of the tree of their pride, errors, and corruptions. The Advent message is designed to do the same thing.

In the development of the great Advent proclamation, we have now reached the third message of Rev. 14; and here we see the striking similarity between this work and that which Elijah was commissioned to perform. He was sent to the apostate kingdom of Israel, to stand up for the honor of the true God and vindicate his name in opposition to the gross idolatry of that people. What says the third message? It comes heralding the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus, enforcing the claims of the down-trodden law of God, which the Man of Sin has thought to change, and vindicating its immutability and perpetuity, to the honor of God’s great name, thus endeavoring to restore the true worship of God, in opposition to the traditions and departures from the faith which characterize the present age.

One more point of resemblance will complete our evidence on this subject. Elijah was to be sent to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the children to the fathers. The reading of the Septuagint is a little peculiar here. It reads that he “shall turn the heart of the father to the son, and the heart of a man to his neighbor.” It denotes the earnestness with which a person, on receiving the truth, would seek to impart the same light to his relatives and friends. Fathers would yearn over their children with longing desires for their salvation, and children over their parents, and both over their neighbors and friends. Such has been a characteristic of this work more or less from its commencement.

We say, then, that we believe that the third angel’s message is now completing the fulfillment of Malachi 4:5, 6. Hence, let none be beguiled with the fancy that Elijah has personally appeared, or is yet personally to appear, but give heed to the work already going on before their eyes.