In the last chapter of the last book of the Old Testament
there is a prophecy made by Malachi which declares that God will
send the prophet Elijah to earth whose mission will be to
reconcile families and create family unity before God judges the
land.
Mal 4:5-6
"See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great
and dreadful day of the LORD comes.
He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the
hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and
strike the land with a curse."
The prophet Elijah never died according to the Bible as he was
taken by God into heaven.
2 Kings 2:1,11
When the LORD was about to take Elijah up to heaven in a
whirlwind, Elijah and Elisha were on their way from Gilgal.
As they were walking along and talking together, suddenly a
chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two
of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind.
The prophecy of Malachi that God would send Elijah back to earth
to reconcile families would be a sign that God was preparing to
judge the world.
Given this background, one of the more bizarre claims of the New
Testament is that John the Baptist was Elijah from the Malachi
prophecy. The allegedly inspired author of the Gospel of Matthew
shows that Jesus claimed John the Baptist was Elijah:
Matt 17:10-13
The disciples asked him,"Why then do the teachers of the law
say that Elijah must come first?";
Jesus replied, "To be sure, Elijah comes and will restore
all things.
But I tell you, Elijah has already come, and they did not
recognize him, but have done to him everything they wished. In
the same way the Son of Man is going to suffer at their
hands."
Then the disciples understood that he was talking to them about
John the Baptist.
So here we see the New Testament scripture identifying John the
Baptist as Elijah come back to earth.
This creates a problem since John the Baptist denied being
Elijah:
John 1:19-21
Now this was John's testimony when the Jews of Jerusalem sent
priests and Levites to ask him who he was.
He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, "I am not
the Christ."
They asked him, "Then who are you? Are you Elijah?" He
said, "I am not." "Are you the Prophet?" He
answered, "No."
According to the allegedly inspired author of the Gospel of John,
John the Baptist denied being Elijah come back to earth.
Apparently the authors of the Gospels of John and Matthew
couldn't get their act together regarding this critical issue.
John the Baptist also never restored all things as Jesus said he
would nor is there anything in the prophecy by Malachi that
states Elijah would suffer at the hands of men.
How do Christians get around this problem of John the Baptist
denying that he was Elijah when Jesus indicated he was?
They will usually use the following passage to escape the obvious
dilemma of the contradiction between the authors of Matthew and
John:
Luke 1:13,17
But the angel said to him: "Do not be afraid, Zechariah;
your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a
son, and you are to give him the name John.
And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of
Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and
the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous--to make ready a
people prepared for the Lord."
According to the Gospel of Luke, the angel Gabriel tells John the
Baptist’s parents that John would come in the
“spirit” of Elijah. This is a neat trick used by the
author of the Luke gospel. Since this New Testament author has
redefined the prophecy so that a man only has to come in the
“spirit” of Elijah, that man doesn’t have to be
Elijah himself.
In other words, the author of Luke has modified the prophecy and
retrofitted John the Baptist into the role of Elijah. This is a
dishonest twisting of the actual prophecy by Malachi which says:
Mal 4:5-6
"See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great
and dreadful day of the LORD comes.
He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the
hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and
strike the land with a curse."
The actual prophecy says that God will send Elijah, not some
spirit filled facsimile or spirit filled imitation of Elijah
called “John”. Elijah himself was to come.
Christians will attempt to use the Luke verses to claim that John
the Baptist had the spirit of Elijah and so there is no real
problem after all. Of course, the problem not only remains but
has been compounded by the deliberate twisting of the original
Old Testament scripture in order to create an escape hatch to
avoid a major problem.
The problems don’t end at this point. Christianity has
another problem regarding this issue. If John the Baptist(Elijah)
came to restore family unity, Jesus turns right around and states
it is his mission to break up family unity and create disharmony.
Luke 12:51-53
Do you think I(Jesus) came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell
you, but division.
From now on there will be five in one family divided against each
other, three against two and two against three.
They will be divided, father against son and son against father,
mother against daughter and daughter against mother,
mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against
mother-in-law."
The following observations shine a spotlight on the chaotic
nature of the Bible:
***Elijah was supposed to come and establish family unity.
However, Jesus said he came to create family disharmony and
division, which is exactly the opposite of what John the
Baptist(Elijah) was supposed to do.
(So here we have the Bible God sending Elijah to create family
unity and also sending Jesus at the same time to create family
division and disharmony. Does this sound like an all-knowing,
perfect God whose plans for the universe cannot be questioned?)
***One author in the New Testament indicates John the Baptist was
Elijah yet another author claims John the Baptist denied being
Elijah.
***John the Baptist didn't restore anything as Jesus claimed he
would.
Welcome to the absurd theological constructs of the Christian
writers. As if these internal Biblical contradictions
weren’t enough, Paul gets into the act by declaring:
1 Cor 14:33
For God is not the author of confusion but of peace, as in all
the churches of the saints.
If God is not the author of confusion, then the Bible could not
possibly be the word of God as it exhibits all the symptoms of a
confused, sloppily compiled set of assertions and instructions
that a chaotic, unfocused mind would produce.
It's little wonder that no consistent church doctrine could be
established from this mish-mash of contradictions. The Christian
churches of the “saints” have bickered and killed each
other for centuries, each church or denomination claiming to have
the “true” interpretation of scripture from God.
The ultimate irony is that all this is straight from the Holy
Bible, the book Christians shamelessly advertise to the world as
the “word of God”.
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