Prophetic Pause

PROPHETIC PAUSE 
We are looking at the message of Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament. It is a prophecy about preparing the way for Messiah to come to his Temple people, and turning their hearts back to God as their loving Father. It is a message for us in these days, as his people, his Temple.

Malachi was the last prophet to speak in the Old Testament. He was speaking to the people who had returned from their seventy year exile in Babylon. They went into bondage in Babylon after their temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the king of Babylon. When they came back to Jerusalem they spent quite a few years rebuilding the temple under Zerubbabel their priestly ruler. Then twelve years after they had completed the temple Malachi prophesied that The Messiah would return to their temple. Here is the key verse; 

Malachi 3:1 I will send my messenger to prepare the way before me. And the Lord (Messiah) whom you seek will come to his temple, the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight is coming, says the Lord. (So this verse mentions two messengers…)

You would have thought that now was the time for something wonderful to happen, but nothing wonderful happened – everything stopped and came to a standstill until the time came for God to act. Malachi was actually prophesying about the time of the appearance of John the Baptist, four hundred years later, the messenger (the Elijah) who would proclaim the ministry of Jesus the Messiah, who was the messenger of the New Covenant (mentioned above).
During that silence of four hundred years after the final word from Malachi, there were no prophets and no revelation of God’s word or priestly instruction in the ways of God. This four hundred year time of silence is called a prophetic pause. 
There was another four hundred years of silence, another prophetic pause, at the time of Israel being taken in bondage as slaves in Egypt, after the time that Abraham was told his descendants would inherit the Promised land, the whole land of Canaan. For four hundred years there were no prophets and no revelation of God’s word or priestly instruction in the ways of God, until the Word of God came to Moses, to let my people go’. 

a prophetic pause like this speaks of preparing the way of The Lord in a time of uncertainty and ambiguity, with an expectation for something new and different to happen – a waiting time.

Background of the birth of John the Baptist (The next thing to happen)
After the four hundred years of silence from the book of Malachi it was time for John the Baptist to be born and to become the messenger (Elijah) that Malachi was talking about, who would prepare the way of the Lord, Jesus the Messiah! Zacharias the priest was told that his wife Elizabeth was going to have a child. the Angel Gabriel appeared to him to give him the news that Elizabeth was going to give birth. The Angel said; …Your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John… and he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God… he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah (John the Baptist), to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the Lord; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. These words are from Luke 1:13-16, but they are taken straight out of the prophecy of Malachi and are in fact from the last words in the last chapter of the last book of the Old Testament. But Elizabeth was barren and was well past child bearing age, being 60 years old, and Zacharias did not believe what the Angel told him, so Gabriel said to Zacharias;
‘you will be silent and unable to speak until the day that these things take place, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time’
So here we have a double emphasis upon the significance of the time of silence when Zacharias is struck dumb, a prophetic pause of a time of further preparation before the time to speak would come. The words of the Angel were a repeat of the message of Malachi but the unveiling of them was nothing like anyone expected (For John to be born and live in the wilderness and prophesy of Jesus), and many rejected or ignored the truth of the message. I believe we are in a global prophetic pause in this current time of global catastrophe. But the prophetic pause is always full of the purpose of God. I believe that the prophetic pause we are experiencing today holds the promise of worldwide Holy Spirit activity and the unveiling of that will be like nothing anyone would have expected.

We can tend to expect God to speak to his people the same way time after time or to do his sovereign acts the same way time after time. But God will not be locked into our expectations or predictions as to how he will speak or what he will do. There have been many moves of the Holy Spirit on the earth and they all came with different settings and circumstances and activities from the preceding moves of God. Some were times of weeping and repentance, some were times of healing and miracles, some were times of teaching and revelation, and some were times of refreshing and release.

An example of God varying his method and manner of speaking to a prophet was after Elijah had seen God do a mighty miracle of bringing rain upon the drought that God had brought upon the nation of Israel. Elijah challenged the bad king Ahab to have his prophets of Baal and Ashtaroth to erect altars on the top of Mt. Carmel and ask their gods to end the drought, while Elijah would set up his altar to Yahweh and call upon him - It was a competition. The prophets of Baal did all kinds of weird rituals but nothing happened. Then it was Elijah’s turn and when he called upon God there was lightning and thunder and a deluge of rain. Elijah won, God won, and a nation repented and turned back to God. Ahab’s wife Jezebel vowed to kill Elijah, so Elijah ran and hid in a cave waiting for God to speak to him again for direction. He heard mighty thunder and saw lightning flash and thought that this was God speaking to him, but the Bible says that God was not in the storm, and God was not in the lightning like before. He then had to wait and listen for the still small voice to tell him of the new thing that God had planned to do. God did things totally differently from before.

We appear to be living in a time of prophetic pause, a time of silence, a time of uncertainty and ambiguity, waiting for the Word of the Lord to come and bring new direction to God’s people (Is the Church like Zacharias waiting for the time to speak a clear word), perhaps unlike anything we have heard or seen before.

This is a time of reordering God’s people to hear from God. 
In 1Corinthians 14 Paul speaks about there being many kinds of voices in the world and they are all trying to declare or proclaim something. He also says that if the trumpet (the voice of proclamation) sounds an uncertain or indistinct sound, the people will not know how to go into battle. This means that the people will not be ready, or prepared.

We are in a time when God is preparing us and reordering many things in the earth and in his Church (Malachi said God would first visit his temple, his Church).
In the Church we are hearing many earnest and sincere voices proclaiming with great zeal what God might be saying at the moment, and there are different perceptions and opinions and discernments as to what is being proclaimed and predicted, and accountability comes with prophesy and prediction.
But just as Zacharias had to wait, and more-so just like Elijah had to wait and hear the Word of the Lord in a new way, as a still small voice after the storm and the lightning, this may be a time when we need to be still and hear and see what Jesus has to say and do, not only through what the Holy Spirit whispers to us personally, but also through what Jesus, the head of the Church, does sovereignly in the earth, and in his church - something perhaps unlike what we have seen before in previous moves of the Holy Spirit. There are many on their knees at this moment calling upon the name of the Lord.  
Hebrews 1.1 Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world…

God is preparing the hearts of all those who seek him with true hearts to be fully assured in faith that he alone has authority over all that is happening upon the earth and in the heavens at this time.

There are parallels to the Church in the message of Malachi in this strange time in which we live, in a time of standstill and disorientation. The Church today appears to have all it could need in the form of resources such as churches and worship and leaders and helpers and programs and marketing, but is God calling for something more? I cannot predict what it would be but what I would hope for is the presence of God in our midst, melting our hearts rather than just the presence of all the sincere and impressive human ability and performance and Bible knowledge in our midst, exciting our senses. Is there something deeper that God wants to do for his children
From the first verse of the book of Malachi we see that God’s purpose was to assure his people that he still loved them and was keeping his Covenant with them, and the theme of the last verse of the book is also of the love between God as our Father and us as his children. 
Malachi 4:6 I am sending you the prophet Elijah before the great and dreadful day of the Lord arrives… His preaching will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers…