IN order that we may approach the study of this book intelligently, it is necessary that certain principles of interpretation should be recognized and accepted. To the statement and consideration of these principles this introductory chapter is devoted.

Read first in Paul's letters to the Romans, (Rom 15:4): "For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope." If we consider that verse in its setting we shall find that Paul, having made a quotation from the Old Testament Scriptures, interpolates upon the general scheme of his argument, a declaration that the inspired writing of Scripture does not exhaust itself in that particular age to which it is addressed. That is one of the peculiar notes of inspiration. Inspired writings differ from all others, in that they are not produced for one age exclusively, but have perpetually a varying application to varying ages.

The finest literature the world has produced, apart from the literature of the Bible, while it will remain interesting for long years - even though the conditions of the age to which it appealed may have changed - will not have a living and practical application to any age save that in which it was penned. The writings of Chaucer are of absorbing interest to Englishmen to-day, because they reveal to us the age in which they were produced, but they have no vital message to the men of to-day.

In that particular, this whole Book of God is in entire contrast to all other writings. All Scripture "written aforetime" had a local application, and a distinctive message to the times in which it was written, but it was written also "for our learning."

The apostle, in this verse, makes use of the word "Scriptures" - "that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope." This word occurs in the New Testament no less than fifty-one times; and, with only one exception, is used in reference to the recognized Scriptures of the people of Israel, known to us as the Old Testament. It may be well for us to turn to that one exception, because it will enable us to keep that fact in mind. 2Pe 3:16 : "As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other Scriptures, unto their own destruction."

It is probable that when Peter makes use of the phrase "other Scriptures," he may be referring principally to New Testament writings which are beginning to be scattered. It is not an established fact. He may have referred in this case, as in every other, to the Old Testament, but there is a probability that he is making reference to New Testament writings - to those letters that are being distributed to the Church of Jesus Christ. That is the only case in the New Testament where it is at all possible to read into the expression "Scriptures" that interpretation. In every other case the term refers to the recognized Scriptures of the Jewish people; and in that fact we discover that the New Testament has put its decided seal upon the Old. You cannot say, "I take the New and not the Old." If you accept the New, the Old is interwoven into every book that the New contains.

In this connection I would suggest a profoundly interesting experiment to Bible students, which, while it is an experiment, is nevertheless profitable. Take your New Testament, and for once read it through from a literary standpoint, with the object of finding out how many chapters there are in which there is no quotation from, and no allusion to, the Old, and see how much you have left.

Here then is a principle that we must keep in memory - what was "written aforetime" was written not only with a direct bearing upon the time, but "for our learning." In other words, when the Holy Spirit of God moved men of old to write, He not only moved them to write with a view to the interests of the times in which they lived, but with a view to all who should come after them.

Let us now turn to one of the most important of the Old Testament Scriptures, Deu 6:1-4, "Now these are the commandments, the statutes, and the judgments, which the Lord your God commanded to teach you, that ye might do them in the land whither ye go to possess it: That thou mightest fear the Lord thy God, to keep all His statutes and His commandments, which I command thee, thou, and thy son, and thy son's son, all the days of thy life; and that thy days may be prolonged. Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it; that it may be well with thee, and that ye may increase mightily, as the Lord God of thy fathers hath promised thee, in the land that floweth with milk and honey. Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord." Among the written "written aforetime" is to be found this statement of a great principle underlying all life. The whole economy of Divine Government gathers round that verse: "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord." That was the special truth that was committed to the nation of Israel to preserve as a sacred thing, amid the nations of the earth. It is the central truth of all Divine Government and of all human life: "God is one."

Mathematics is spoken of as being an exact science. Is it exact? I think not. Nothing is absolutely proved. That two and two make four, no one can prove. It never has been proved, and it is quite impossible to prove it - that is, you cannot demonstrate the truth of it.

Euclid is exact surely; it is built up step by step; you cannot do Book II, until you have done Book I. Come back to the early days of school life, and every boy knows he cannot do his "Pons Asinorum" without knowing the first proposition. It must then be exact. Let us examine it. How is it built up? Unless you learn your definitions, and believe in them, you cannot do Euclid. What are your definitions? "A point is position without magnitude." Absolutely absurd! You cannot have position without magnitude. The instant you admit position you admit magnitude, "A line is length without breadth." Equally absurd! You cannot have one without the other.

So our exact things are built up on impossibilities and absurd positions. All mathematical science may be reduced to a common fact. What is that common fact? One! "When you have said "one" you have said "two," and when you have said a "million" you have said "one." You cannot get beyond "one." One is essential, two is accidental.

"The Lord your God is one Lord." God is behind everything the final certain One. You cannot analyze, or divide, or explain Him, yet He is the one and only absolute certainty. He is One, all-comprehending, indivisible. When you have said that, you have said all. When you have omitted that, you have left everything out, and babbled only in chaotic confusion.

From that truth I make a deduction. If God is one, then the principles and the purposes of His government never vary. Dispensations and methods change; the will of God never changes, never varies, never progresses, in that sense. What does progress mean? Failure! What does advancement mean? Past limitations! You cannot progress unless there has been failure somewhere. If I can be better in five minutes than I am now, I am wrong now. Progress is a confession of failure. When this age boasts of its vaunted progress, it is telling the story of the failure of the past. God never makes progress, never advances. Consequently He is not always doing as we are, legislating for man - framing new laws because the old ones have failed. The will of right, love, and tenderness. His will is eternal.

Dispensations come and go, dawn and vanish; but God remains the same, underneath, with, and in each. Some people speak as though God had not only altered His methods, but His mind. I agree that He has changed His methods, but His mind, never! God did not begin to love man when Jesus came. Jesus came to roll back the curtain and show man the heart that was eternal, the love that was always there. Christianity is not God's alteration of attitude toward man. It is not that in the old dispensation He was a policeman, and in this a father. He has always been a father. He never changes.

Dispensations and methods mark the change of man, and the necessary change in the way the Divine Hand is placed upon human life, but behind everything - God!

We must get our feet down upon this abiding rock. It is for this reason that the Old Testament Scriptures are of value. The accidents of human life perpetually change; the essentials abide forever.

If we accept these principles we can now move forward another step. The prophetic messages are preeminently suited, as it seems to me, to the age in which we live, and there is a sense in which they are of more value today than even the writings of the apostles.

I do not undervalue these apostolic writings, but there are reasons why the prophetic utterances come with greater force.

The apostolic writings are expositions of God's new application of eternal truth in a new dispensation. With Jesus, the new dispensation dawned, a fresh light broke upon the senses of man. New methods came into operation. The Eternal God is the same, but fresh light from the essential light of Deity broke forth, and the apostles under inspiration - inspiration which grew out of local requirements - wrote their definition of that new light. To us, their writings are the prisms which divide the essential light into its component parts and glories. And so I read the apostolic writings, and I have my theology. They are most valuable, we can never do without them.

The prophetic writings are not expositions of truth in that sense at all. They are almost invariably addressed to people who know truth as enshrined in their own dispensation, and they are messages to call these people to be obedient thereto.

In that sense the prophetic writings come to us with a force that the apostolic writings do not possess. We know the truth of God as no other age has ever known it, and yet there never was a time when men, knowing and living under its blessings, were less obedient to it than now. So then the "Scriptures written aforetime for our learning" demand our attention, and will always repay solemn searching, and prayerful inquiry as to their deep and inner meaning. Such are the principles upon which we base our study.

Now as to the times of the book of Malachi and its author. It is almost universally admitted - indeed, one may say that it is so far admitted that there remains no doubt or question about it - that the book occupies its right place in the arrangement of the Old Testament Scriptures, that Malachi himself was the last of the Old Testament prophets.

There can be little doubt further, that the message is closely associated with the work of Nehemiah, and if Malachi is to be read intelligently, Nehemiah should be read at the same time. Malachi bears a Divine message to the condition of things portrayed in the history of Nehemiah. The proofs of this are largely and mostly to be found in the books themselves. Let us turn to only three coincidences.

i. Neh 13:29 : "Remember them, O my God, because they have defiled the priesthood, and the covenant of the priesthood, and of the Levites." Remembering the force of these words, turn to the prophecy of Mal 2:8 : "But ye are departed out of the way; ye have caused many to stumble at the law; ye have corrupted the covenant of Levi, saith the Lord of Hosts." Nehemiah complains in the closing years of his history that the priesthood has corrupted the covenant; while Malachi, in this second chapter, addresses himself very largely to the priests, and the specific charge that he brings against them is that they have corrupted the covenant of Levi. It is a peculiar expression which we shall consider more closely when we come to study the book itself.

ii. In that same chapter of Nehemiah (reading from the twenty-third verse to the twenty-seventh) [Neh 13:23-27] you find that Nehemiah complains that the peculiar people of God have entered into unholy alliance with idolaters in the way of marriage, and follows that complaint by separating those thus united. Malachi speaks of exactly the same condition of things in the second chapter (verses ten to sixteen) [Mal 2:10-16], the evil of mixed marriages, and the awful neglect which ends in the tears and sobs of the women about the altars of God.

iii. Again, in the last chapter of Nehemiah and the tenth verse (Neh 13:10): "I perceived that the portions of the Levites had not been given them: for the Levites and the singers, that did the work, were fled every one to his field." Mal 3:10 calls attention to this omission, saying, "Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in Mine house, and prove Me now herewith, saith the Lord of Hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven." These three notes establish the fact that Malachi's prophecy was uttered in the days of Nehemiah's influence. I do not say in the days of Nehemiah. I know that it is a remarkable thing, upon which comment has not been wanting, that Malachi's name does not appear either in the book of Ezra or Nehemiah. It seems most probable that Malachi's name is not mentioned because he follows immediately after Nehemiah. The people have fallen back into the very abuses that Nehemiah set himself to rectify, and Malachi is raised up, the last of the prophets, to bear this message to them.

Nothing whatever is known of the nationality or parentage of Malachi. The name itself is a significant one, and there have been those who have read the name simply as a title - "My messenger." Others say that Malachi was an incarnation of an angelic messenger. I do not accept either of these theories. I believe the man's name was Malachi. The Septuagint gives it as Malachius, and so most likely Malachi is an abbreviated form of Malachia. It means "the messenger of Jehovah," but if, because it has that peculiar meaning, we argue it is merely a title, let it be remembered, Joel means "the Lord Jehovah."

But while that is so, it is noticeable that he was exceedingly careful to speak of himself only as "a bearer of the burden of the word of God." He says nothing of himself. You cannot read this prophecy without seeing how he has excluded himself from it. You read Amos, and right through, you discover his calling in the figures he uses. The man lives in it, very beautifully, but in this case the Lord's messenger is absolutely hidden behind the message he comes to bring. There is nothing from which we can gather his past history or trace anything concerning him. He is simply Malachi, the messenger, he comes to bear the message, and the burden of the word of the Lord is so upon him, and so consumes him, that we never hear a whisper of his own personality, or catch the faintest glimpse of himself.

The peculiar need of the age in which he spoke and wrote was a distinct and direct message, and it was that distinct and direct message from God that he came to pronounce. In that fact I find one of the strongest arguments for the application of that message to this age. We need more than anything else to-day, that our preachers should be messengers of God, that the people should be spoken to, as out of the divine oracles; not that the preacher is to be an oracle, for that would be a return to the worst form of priestism, but that he is to be a messenger, and that even the fact of his being a messenger is to be lost sight of in the enormous weight of the message he comes to proclaim.

Standing upon these rock foundations, we come to the consideration of truths that are fresh as the Spring; new, as God is new, and not simply to delve among parchments and musty history.