“I will send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me! The Lord, whom y’all seek, will suddenly come to his temple. Look, the messenger of the covenant, whom y’all desire, is coming!” says YHWH Almighty. “But who can endure the day of ʜɪꜱ coming? And who will stand when ʜᴇ appears? For ʜᴇ is like a refiner’s fire, and like a launderer’s soap. Hᴇ will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and ʜᴇ will purify the sons of Levi, and refine them as gold and silver. Then they will bring to YHWH offerings in righteousness, and the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to YHWH as in the days of old and as in former years.
I will come near to y’all for judgment. I will be a swift witness against sorcerers, adulterers, perjurers, and those who exploit laborers, widows, and the fatherless, and who deprive the foreigner of justice, and don’t fear me,” says YHWH Almighty.
Robbing YHWH
“I, YHWH, do not change. Therefore, sons of Jacob, y’all have not come to an end. From the days of your* ancestors, y’all have turned away from my commandments and have not kept them. Y’all return to me, and I will return to y’all,” says YHWH Almighty.
“But y’all ask, ‘How can we return?’
Will a human being rob God? Yet y’all are robbing me!
Then y’all ask, ‘How have we robbed you?’
In tithes and offerings. Y’all are under a severe curse—this whole nation—because y’all are robbing me. Y’all are to bring the entire tithe into the storehouse, so that there will be food in my house. Y’all test me now on this,” says YHWH Almighty, “and see if I will not open the windows of heaven and pour out such a blessing on y’all that there will not be enough room for it. For y’all’s sake, I will rebuke the devourer so that it will not destroy the fruits of the ground, and the vines in the field will not drop its fruit before harvest,” says YHWH Almighty. “All nations will call y’all blessed, for y’all will be a land of delight,” says YHWH Almighty.
“Y’all’s have spoken arrogantly against me,” says YHWH.
“Yet y’all say, ‘What have we said against you?’ Y’all have said, ‘It is futile to serve God,’ and ‘What profit is it that we have followed ʜɪꜱ instructions and that we have walked mournfully before YHWH Almighty? But now we call the arrogant blessed. Indeed, those who do evil are build up, those who test God escape!’”
Renewal for The Faithful Remnant
Then those who feared YHWH talked to one with another, and YHWH listened and heard. A book of remembrance was written in ʜɪꜱ presence about those who feared YHWH and who honored his name. ”They will be mine,” says YHWH Almighty, “on the day when I prepare my own possession. I will spare them just as a man spares his own son who serves him. Then y’all will return to discerning between the righteous and the wicked, between the one who serves God and the one who doesn’t serve ʜɪᴍ.