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
Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet
before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD:
And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and
the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite
the earth 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
And it came to pass, when the LORD would take up Elijah into
heaven by a whirlwind, that Elijah went with Elisha from Gilgal.
And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that,
behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and
parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into
heaven.
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 author of the Gospel of Matthew, who was never shy about
embellishing his gospel story, portrays John the Baptist as
looking just like Elijah from the Old Testament.
Matt 3: 4
And the same John(the Baptist) had his raiment of
camel's hair, and a leathern girdle about his loins;
and his meat was locusts and wild honey.
The Old Testament description of Elijah was:
2 Kings 1:8
And they answered him, He(Elijah) was an hairy man, and
girt with a girdle of leather about his loins. And he
said, It is Elijah the Tishbite.
The allegedly inspired author of the Gospel of Matthew then shows
that Jesus claimed John the Baptist was Elijah:
Matt 17:10-13
And his disciples asked him, saying, Why then say the scribes
that Elias(Elijah) must first come?
And Jesus answered and said unto them, Elias truly shall first
come, and restore all things.
But I say unto you, That Elias(Elijah) is come already,
and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they
listed. Likewise shall also the Son of man suffer of them.
Then the disciples understood that he spake unto them of 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
And this is the record of John, when the Jews sent priests and
Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, Who art thou?
And he confessed, and denied not; but confessed, I am not the
Christ.
And they asked him, What then? Art thou Elias(Elijah)?
And he saith, I am not.
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 unto him, Fear not, Zacharias: for thy prayer
is heard; and thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou
shalt call his name John.
And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of
Elias, 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.
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
Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet
before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD:
And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and
the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite
the earth with a curse.
The actual prophecy says that God will send Elijah himself, and 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
Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you,
Nay; but rather division:
For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided,
three against two, and two against three.
The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against
the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter
against the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in
law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.
The following observations shine a spotlight on the chaotic
nature of the Bible:
1) 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?)
2) One author in the New Testament indicates John the Baptist
was Elijah yet another author claims John the Baptist denied
being Elijah.
3) 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.
Or more likely, as the evidence shows, the Bible is not the
product of one mind, but is the result of individual preferences
exhibited by the writers and the councils of men who selected
which writings would comprise the Bible.
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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