The last Old Testament prophecy finds fulfillment after more than 400 years. We read in 2 Kings 2 that God takes Elijah directly to heaven in Elisha’s presence. We read later that Elijah will return before the Lord exacts judgment on the earth:
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. (Mal 4:5-6)
Many believers still wait for Elijah’s return, though the Gospels say that he has already returned.
And the disciples asked him, “Then why do the scribes say that first Elijah must come?” He answered, “Elijah does come, and he will restore all things. But I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him, but did to him whatever they pleased. So also the Son of Man will certainly suffer at their hands.” Then the disciples understood that he was speaking to them of John the Baptist. (Mt 17:10-13)
Earlier, Jesus told a crowd the same thing—that John the Baptist is Elijah; they needed only to accept it (
Mt 11:13-15). But such a concept was difficult to comprehend, especially when John the Baptist denied his kinship to Elijah (
Jn 1:21), for Elijah and John were two different men, each born of two different sets of parents. John the Baptist thought not as the priests and Levites thought, that Elijah would return in the flesh, for Elijah was not literally John the Baptist. “No,” therefore John answered. He was not the Elijah they expected. The reality was that Elijah was instead
manifest in John the Baptist. Corroborating Jesus’ statement was John’s own father, Zechariah, who heard from an angel that his son will go before God 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 for the Lord a people prepared” (
Lk 1:17). In John the Baptist lived the spirit and power of Elijah.
