Malachi 4

The Day That Burns, and Elijah

The coming day burns the proud like stubble and rises with healing for those who fear the Lord’s name; the people are told to remember the law of Moses, and the Lord promises to send Elijah before that great and dreadful day.

Malachi chaptersChapter 4 of 4

After the exiles’ return to Jerusalem. The Bible Dictionary dates the prophecy to about 430 B.C.; the exact timing is uncertain. Also in 3 Ne. 25 Read with footnotes in Gospel Library

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Background

Malachi 4 is the last chapter of the King James Old Testament, but the Hebrew text of Malachi has no fourth chapter.

Malachi 4 is the last chapter of the King James Old Testament, but the Hebrew text of Malachi has no fourth chapter. These six verses are Hebrew 3:19–24, so “Elijah the prophet” stands in Hebrew 3:23.

The chapter finishes the book’s last exchange. In chapter 3 the people had said, “It is vain to serve God,” and “we call the proud happy; yea, they that work wickedness are set up” (Mal. 3:14–15). The Lord answered that He keeps a book of remembrance for those who feared Him, and that “then shall ye return, and discern between the righteous and the wicked” (Mal. 3:16–18). Chapter 4 describes the day on which that difference becomes plain.

Malachi preached to the Jews in Jerusalem after they returned from Babylon. The Bible Dictionary dates his prophecy to about 430 B.C., though the exact timing is uncertain; chapter 1 takes up who he was (Mal. 1:1).

Other scripture takes this chapter up repeatedly. Jesus commanded the Nephites to write the words the Father gave to Malachi, and they are in 3 Ne. 25. Moroni quoted the chapter to Joseph Smith in 1823, “with a little variation from the way it reads in our Bibles” (JS—H 1:36–39). On April 3, 1836, Elijah himself appeared in the Kirtland Temple and said that the time Malachi spoke of “has fully come” (D&C 110:13–16).

The thread through the chapter

Malachi 4 sets two outcomes of one day side by side. The same coming day burns the proud and wicked to stubble (verse 1) and rises with healing for “you that fear my name” (verse 2).

Malachi 4 sets two outcomes of one day side by side. The same coming day burns the proud and wicked to stubble (verse 1) and rises with healing for “you that fear my name” (verse 2). The two verses answer the people’s complaint in chapter 3, that serving God was pointless and the wicked prospered.

The chapter then closes the book with a command and a promise: remember the law given at Horeb (verse 4), and expect Elijah (verses 5–6). Latter-day teaching joins the first verse to the last. The day leaves the wicked “neither root nor branch,” and Elijah turns the hearts of fathers and children to each other “lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.” Roots and branches can stand for ancestors and descendants, and Elder D. Todd Christofferson reads the two verses together: without sealings “we would be left in eternity with neither roots nor branches,” and if that became the norm “it would be tantamount to the earth being smitten with a curse” (see the notes on verses 1 and 6). That link is an apostle’s teaching about the image; Malachi does not state it in so many words.

Tap any highlighted phrase to open a note beneath its versein the margin.

Verses 1–3

The day that burns, and the Sun that heals

In plain words

The day is coming that will burn like a furnace. All the proud, and everyone who does wickedly, will be stubble, and the day that comes will burn them up, says the LORD of hosts, so that it leaves them neither root nor branch. But for you who fear my name the Sun of righteousness will rise with healing in his wings, and you will go out and leap like calves from the stall. You will tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day I do this, says the LORD of hosts.

1 For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.

Literary Structure #

The day answers the people’s complaint

Verse 1 answers the complaint of chapter 3 almost word for word. The people had said, “we call the proud happy; yea, they that work wickedness are set up” (Mal. 3:15).

Verse 1 answers the complaint of chapter 3 almost word for word. The people had said, “we call the proud happy; yea, they that work wickedness are set up” (Mal. 3:15). Now “all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly” become stubble. The Hebrew is the same in both places: zedim, “the proud,” occurs in Malachi only in 3:15 and here, and “they that work wickedness” and “all that do wickedly” are the same two words (ʿoseh rishʿah, plural in 3:15 and singular here). The two expressions “point back to Malachi 3:15”: the people the audience called happy are the ones the day burns.

The other half of the answer is in verse 2. Those who kept serving God, when the people called it vain, are the ones “that feared the LORD, and that thought upon his name” (Mal. 3:16), and the Lord now promises the Sun of righteousness “unto you that fear my name.” The day is what lets the people finally “discern between the righteous and the wicked” (Mal. 3:18).

Sources: Westminster Leningrad Codex, with morphology, Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (OSHB), openscriptures/morphhb. Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Malachi, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Imagery #

Oven and stubble

An oven and stubble are two pictures of a fire that leaves nothing behind.

An oven and stubble are two pictures of a fire that leaves nothing behind. The oven is the fire at its hottest, since a fire burns more fiercely shut in a furnace than in the open air. Stubble is the cut stalks left in a field after harvest, which farmers burn off to prepare the ground for the next planting. So the burning also clears: the Church reads the verse of the Savior’s Second Coming, when “the earth would be cleansed and the wicked would be destroyed like stubble in a fire.” The revelation that commands the Saints to prepare for that coming quotes the verse (D&C 133:64).

Moroni gave Joseph Smith the verse in slightly different words. The wicked “shall burn as stubble; for they that come shall burn them” (JS—H 1:37), where Malachi has “shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up.” In Moroni’s wording it is those who come, and not the day, that do the burning; the account does not say who they are.

Sources: Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Malachi, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub. Malachi, Scripture Helps: Old Testament (2025). The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Imagery #

Roots and branches

“Neither root nor branch” means total destruction in its plain sense, and the Church draws a second meaning from the same image.

“Neither root nor branch” means total destruction in its plain sense, and the Church draws a second meaning from the same image. The figure is a tree. The Hebrew shoresh, “root,” is used of a people “under figure of tree, involving firmness, permanence,” and of a person in the same way, as it is here (Hebrew 3:19). To leave neither root nor branch “denotes total destruction, so that nothing will be left of them.”

The Church’s reading builds on the same picture and takes the roots and branches as ancestors and descendants. Elder Christofferson: “Without the sealings that create eternal families and link generations here and hereafter, we would be left in eternity with neither roots nor branches—that is, neither ancestry nor posterity.” Elder Cook draws out the tree: “For a tree to live and grow, it needs both roots and branches. We likewise need to be connected to our roots—our parents, grandparents, and other ancestors—as well as to our branches—our children, grandchildren, and other descendants.” This is the Church’s application of the image, not something the Hebrew says by itself. It matters because Elder Christofferson carries it to the book’s last verse (see the notes on Mal. 4:6).

Sources: Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Malachi, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub. Malachi, Scripture Helps: Old Testament (2025). D. Todd Christofferson, “The Sealing Power”, general conference, Oct. 2023. Quentin L. Cook, “The Joy of Family History Work”, Ensign, Feb. 2016.

2 But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall.

Witness of Christ #

The Sun of righteousness

The image is a rising sun with wings, and Restoration scripture reads it as Christ.

The image is a rising sun with wings, and Restoration scripture reads it as Christ. A winged sun disk was for centuries a symbol of divine beings in Egypt and Babylon, and “this symbol was also used in ancient Israel during the eighth and seventh centuries BC”; a royal seal of Hezekiah, king of Judah, bears it. What the wings are in Malachi’s verse is uncertain: they may be the sun’s “rays,” or the picture may be a “winged sun-disc.” The sun and the Lord’s healing also come together in Isaiah, where the light of the sun is “sevenfold” “in the day that the Lord bindeth up the breach of his people, and healeth the stroke of their wound” (Isa. 30:26).

The Book of Mormon uses the image of the Savior. Of Christ’s crucifixion Nephi says, “after he is laid in a sepulchre for the space of three days he shall rise from the dead, with healing in his wings” (2 Ne. 25:13), and of the Savior’s coming to the Nephites, “the Son of Righteousness shall appear unto them; and he shall heal them” (2 Ne. 26:9). The image “would have been familiar to Nephi, either from Old Testament passages on the plates of brass or from his education as a young man in Jerusalem,” and he and Malachi “may have been independently drawing upon a common earlier tradition.”

When the Savior gave the Nephites this verse, it read “Son of Righteousness” (3 Ne. 25:2), where the Hebrew word, shemesh, means “sun.” Neither text says why the wording differs; the Book of Mormon’s reading names the person the image stands for. A revelation says of Christ that “he is in the sun, and the light of the sun, and the power thereof by which it was made” (D&C 88:7).

Sources: Scripture Central, “Why Does Malachi Refer to the Sun of Righteousness?”, KnoWhy #653, Dec. 19, 2022. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Westminster Leningrad Codex, with morphology, Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (OSHB), openscriptures/morphhb. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Language #

Calves let out of the stall

“Grow up” understates the Hebrew, which pictures calves leaping. The verb (push) means to “spring about,” and this verse and Jer. 50:11 are the two places it appears in a “simile…

“Grow up” understates the Hebrew, which pictures calves leaping. The verb (push) means to “spring about,” and this verse and Jer. 50:11 are the two places it appears in a “simile of gambolling calves.” A “stall” (marbeq) is where calves were fattened, and the figure here is a “simile of prosperity.” The Septuagint reads, “bound as young calves let loose from bonds.” The picture is of well-fed calves let out of the stall and leaping.

Sources: Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. The Septuagint (Rahlfs Greek text, with Brenton’s English translation), Elpenor Bilingual Septuagint.

3 And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, saith the LORD of hosts.

Verse 4

Remember the law of Moses

In plain words

Remember the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel, with its statutes and judgments.

4 Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments.

Related Scriptures #

The book’s last instruction

Verse 4 is the book’s last instruction, and it is a general one: “a perfectly general admonition to lay to heart and observe the law,” which “forms the conclusion not only of the…

Verse 4 is the book’s last instruction, and it is a general one: “a perfectly general admonition to lay to heart and observe the law,” which “forms the conclusion not only of the last section… but of the whole of the book of Malachi.” In the Hebrew text it is verse 3:22. Horeb is named as the place where the law was given. The command is the counterpart of an earlier rebuke in the book, “Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them” (Mal. 3:7). What the people left they are now to keep in mind, “that the Lord when He comes may not smite the land with the ban,” which is the curse of verse 6.

Jesus and Moroni both quoted these closing verses, which “symbolically stood at the end of the Hebrew collection of the prophetic texts.” Read as the close of the prophets, verses 4 and 6 sum up what the new covenant would do: it “would bind generations together through the obedience that comes from righteously remembering God’s commandments” (verse 4) and through hearts “welded into one heart by priesthood powers” (verse 6). That is one reading of how the two verses belong together; Malachi does not say it.

Sources: Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Malachi, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub. Scripture Central, “Why Did Moroni Quote Malachi about Elijah’s Coming?”, KnoWhy #591, Jan. 21, 2021. Westminster Leningrad Codex, with morphology, Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (OSHB), openscriptures/morphhb. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Verses 5–6

Elijah before the great and dreadful day

In plain words

I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I do not come and strike the earth with a curse.

5 Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD:

Related Scriptures #

Moroni’s wording, and why the Nephites received these chapters

Moroni gave Joseph Smith this verse in different words, and they say what Elijah would bring.

Moroni gave Joseph Smith this verse in different words, and they say what Elijah would bring. Malachi says Elijah will be sent. Moroni said, “Behold, I will reveal unto you the Priesthood, by the hand of Elijah the prophet, before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord” (JS—H 1:38; D&C 2:1). Joseph recorded that Moroni quoted the chapter “with a little variation from the way it reads in our Bibles” (JS—H 1:36). Elijah’s own words in Kirtland keep Malachi’s verb: the time has come “which was spoken of by the mouth of Malachi—testifying that he [Elijah] should be sent” (D&C 110:14). Nothing in the record calls either wording wrong.

Why did Moroni vary it, when the Savior had given the Nephites the verse in the King James words? Jesus commanded them to write the words the Father gave to Malachi (3 Ne. 24:1), and afterward “expounded them unto the multitude” (3 Ne. 26:1). The record does not say what He taught. He explained why He gave them these chapters: “These scriptures, which ye had not with you, the Father commanded that I should give unto you; for it was wisdom in him that they should be given unto future generations” (3 Ne. 26:2). Moroni’s wording “may well have been based directly on the clarifications and teachings of the Lord that aren’t found in the Book of Mormon”; that is an inference, and scripture does not say so.

Sources: The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Scripture Central, “Why Did Moroni Quote Malachi about Elijah’s Coming?”, KnoWhy #591, Jan. 21, 2021.

Latter-day Prophets #

Why Elijah was the one sent

Elijah was sent because of the keys he held. Joseph Smith put the question himself: “Why send Elijah?

Elijah was sent because of the keys he held. Joseph Smith put the question himself: “Why send Elijah? Because he holds the keys of the authority to administer in all the ordinances of the Priesthood; and [unless] the authority is given, the ordinances could not be administered in righteousness.” Elijah was a prophet of the Northern Kingdom of Israel in the ninth century BC who “held the sealing keys before the Savior lived on the earth,” and he “was taken to heaven without tasting death” (D&C 110:13).

The Church teaches that the prophecy “was fulfilled in our dispensation.” On April 3, 1836, Elijah appeared to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery in the Kirtland Temple and said, “the keys of this dispensation are committed into your hands” (D&C 110:16). What he gave was the sealing power. President Nelson: “Elijah conferred the keys of the sealing power upon Joseph Smith,” and the keys given in Kirtland authorize the President of the Church “to place a ratifying seal on priesthood ordinances and covenants, and to seal families eternally.”

Sources: Chapter 26: Elijah and the Restoration of the Sealing Keys, Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith (2007). Malachi, Scripture Helps: Old Testament (2025). Russell M. Nelson, “Rejoice in the Gift of Priesthood Keys”, general conference, Apr. 2024. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Related Scriptures #

Elijah, Elias, and John the Baptist

The New Testament applies this verse’s words to John the Baptist, and the revelations show that more than one figure is meant.

The New Testament applies this verse’s words to John the Baptist, and the revelations show that more than one figure is meant. Gabriel told Zacharias that John would “go before him in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children” (Luke 1:17), language from verse 6. When the disciples asked why the scribes said Elias must first come, Jesus answered, “Elias truly shall first come, and restore all things. But I say unto you, That Elias is come already,” and “the disciples understood that he spake unto them of John the Baptist” (Matt. 17:11–13). The Joseph Smith Translation separates two: “Elias has come already,” “this is Elias, whom I send to prepare the way before me,” and “also of another who should come and restore all things” (JST, Matt. 17:11–14).

“Elias” is the New Testament form of the name Elijah, and “Elias is also a title for one who is a forerunner,” so that “anciently two Eliases were spoken of, one as a preparer and the other a restorer,” while the Elias at the Transfiguration “can only be the ancient prophet Elijah.” John was the preparer. Asked, “Art thou Elias?” he answered, “I am not” (John 1:21). The prophecy that Elijah would return before the Second Coming “was fulfilled in our dispensation,” when Elijah himself appeared in Kirtland.

Sources: The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “Elias”, Bible Dictionary. Malachi, Scripture Helps: Old Testament (2025).

Language #

What “great and dreadful” means

Many Latter-day Saints take “great and dreadful” to mean great for the righteous and dreadful for the wicked, but the Hebrew does not support that reading.

Many Latter-day Saints take “great and dreadful” to mean great for the righteous and dreadful for the wicked, but the Hebrew does not support that reading. Nora, “dreadful,” is a form of the verb “to fear” and means “fearful,” something “to be feared or dreaded.” Gadol, “great,” can describe anything large or extraordinary, and it is used of Jehovah himself. The phrase therefore means “the extraordinary and fearful day of the Lord” or, with “great” strengthening the second word, “the extraordinarily dreadful day of the Lord”; the grammar allows either, and “neither rendition conveys a sense of joyful.” Joel 2:31 has the same Hebrew words.

“Dreadful” here and “you that fear my name” (Mal. 4:2) are forms of one Hebrew word, yare, “to fear.” The day is to be feared, and the promise of verse 2 is to those who fear the Lord’s name. Elijah’s announcement in Kirtland uses Malachi’s words: by his coming “ye may know that the great and dreadful day of the Lord is near, even at the doors” (D&C 110:16).

Sources: Dana M. Pike, “The Great and Dreadful Day of the Lord: The Anatomy of an Expression”, BYU Studies 41:2, p. 149. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

6 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.

Language #

“Turn,” “plant,” or “bind”

“Turn” translates a Hebrew verb that means to bring back, and Moroni and Joseph Smith each gave the line in another word.

“Turn” translates a Hebrew verb that means to bring back, and Moroni and Joseph Smith each gave the line in another word. The verb is the causative form of shuv, “to return” (Hebrew 3:24), used here in the sense “bring back heart.” It is the verb of the book’s own appeal, “Return unto me, and I will return unto you” (Mal. 3:7), and the same causative form describes Levi, who “did turn many away from iniquity” (Mal. 2:6).

Moroni’s wording makes the action a planting: “he shall plant in the hearts of the children the promises made to the fathers, and the hearts of the children shall turn to their fathers” (D&C 2:2). Joseph Smith, after quoting the verse in the King James words, wrote, “I might have rendered a plainer translation to this, but it is sufficiently plain to suit my purpose as it stands” (D&C 128:18). On January 21, 1844, in a sermon on the coming of Elijah, he said, as it was recorded at the time, that “the word turn here should be translated” as “bind or seal.”

Sources: Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Westminster Leningrad Codex, with morphology, Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (OSHB), openscriptures/morphhb. Joseph Smith, Discourse, 21 January 1844, The Joseph Smith Papers, p. 181 (handwriting of Wilford Woodruff). The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Latter-day Prophets #

Who are “the fathers”?

Latter-day prophets have read “the fathers” in two ways, and the Church teaches both.

Latter-day prophets have read “the fathers” in two ways, and the Church teaches both. President Joseph Fielding Smith: “The fathers are our dead ancestors who died without the privilege of receiving the Gospel, but who received the promise that the time would come when that privilege would be granted them. The children are those now living who are preparing genealogical data and who are performing the vicarious ordinances in the Temples.”

President Nelson notes that “in ancient Israel, such reference to the fathers would have included fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” and that Moroni’s wording, “the promises made to the fathers,” clarifies the promise: “Those fathers surely include Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” He points to D&C 27:9–10, where Elijah’s keys of “turning the hearts of the fathers to the children” are named beside “Joseph and Jacob, and Isaac, and Abraham, your fathers, by whom the promises remain.”

Sources: Malachi, Scripture Helps: Old Testament (2025). Chapter 17: Sealing Power and Temple Blessings, Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Fielding Smith (2013). Russell M. Nelson, “The Everlasting Covenant”, Liahona, Oct. 2022. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Language #

A curse that is a ban

The “curse” of the last verse is the Hebrew herem, a ban of utter destruction, and it is the last word of the book in Hebrew.

The “curse” of the last verse is the Hebrew herem, a ban of utter destruction, and it is the last word of the book in Hebrew. In this verse the phrase means to “smite the land with a ban, i.e. utterly destroy it.” A herem was a thing devoted to destruction, as Jericho was (Josh. 6:17). Moroni’s wording says nearly the same thing in English, “the whole earth would be utterly wasted at his coming” (D&C 2:3), and D&C 138:48 has both together, “smitten with a curse and utterly wasted.”

Joseph Smith said how the curse is avoided: “the earth will be smitten with a curse unless there is a welding link of some kind or other between the fathers and the children, upon some subject or other,” and that subject, he said, is baptism for the dead (D&C 128:18). Elder Christofferson joins the curse to the image of verse 1. Without sealings we would be left with “neither roots nor branches,” a state that “would frustrate the very purpose of the earth’s creation.” He goes on, “Were that to become the norm, it would be tantamount to the earth being smitten with a curse or ‘utterly wasted’ at the Lord’s coming.”

Sources: Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Westminster Leningrad Codex, with morphology, Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (OSHB), openscriptures/morphhb. D. Todd Christofferson, “The Sealing Power”, general conference, Oct. 2023. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Seeing Christ in Malachi 4

The chapter points to Christ most directly in verse 2. Nephi uses its words of the Savior’s rising from the dead “with healing in his wings” (2 Ne. 25:13), and the Savior’s own quotation to the Nephites reads “Son of Righteousness” (3 Ne. 25:2). He gave the Nephites these chapters because the Father commanded Him to (3 Ne. 26:2). Of the law given to Moses, which verse 4 tells Israel to remember, He said, “I am he that gave the law, and I am he who covenanted with my people Israel” (3 Ne. 15:5). Elder Christofferson closed his testimony of the restored sealing power with a testimony of Christ: “the Atonement of Jesus Christ has made immortality a verity and the possibility of exalted family relationships a reality.”

Worth exploring next

Elijah’s own account. D&C 110:11–16 and D&C 138:46–48.
Moroni’s wording and the sealing power. D&C 2; D&C 27:9–10; D&C 128:15–18.
The forerunner. Luke 1:13–17; Matt. 11:7–15; Matt. 17:10–13.
The day itself. D&C 133:64; 1 Ne. 22:15–24; D&C 112:24–26.
The Hebrew of “great and dreadful.” The BYU Studies article “The Great and Dreadful Day of the Lord: The Anatomy of an Expression” works through the grammar and vocabulary of the phrase.

This chapter elsewhere in scripture

3 Ne. 25 — The Savior gives the Nephites all of Malachi 4 in the King James words, with “Son of Righteousness” and “calves in the stall” in verse 2.
JS—H 1:37–39 — Moroni’s wording of verses 1, 5, and 6 as Joseph Smith recorded it; the same words of verses 5–6 are in D&C 2.
D&C 110:13–16 — Elijah appears in the Kirtland Temple and says that the time Malachi spoke of has come.
D&C 128:17–18 — Joseph Smith quotes verses 5–6 and says what the “welding link” is.
D&C 133:64 — Malachi 4:1 quoted among the revelation’s warnings about the Lord’s coming.

Sources & further reading

The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Malachi, Scripture Helps: Old Testament (2025).
“Malachi”, Bible Dictionary.
“Elias”, Bible Dictionary.
Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906.
Westminster Leningrad Codex, with morphology, Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (OSHB), openscriptures/morphhb.
Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Malachi, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub.
The Septuagint (Rahlfs Greek text, with Brenton’s English translation), Elpenor Bilingual Septuagint.
Scripture Central, “Why Does Malachi Refer to the Sun of Righteousness?”, KnoWhy #653, Dec. 19, 2022.
Scripture Central, “Why Did Moroni Quote Malachi about Elijah’s Coming?”, KnoWhy #591, Jan. 21, 2021.
Dana M. Pike, “The Great and Dreadful Day of the Lord: The Anatomy of an Expression”, BYU Studies 41:2, p. 149.
D. Todd Christofferson, “The Sealing Power”, general conference, Oct. 2023.
Russell M. Nelson, “Rejoice in the Gift of Priesthood Keys”, general conference, Apr. 2024.
Russell M. Nelson, “The Everlasting Covenant”, Liahona, Oct. 2022.
Quentin L. Cook, “The Joy of Family History Work”, Ensign, Feb. 2016.
Chapter 17: Sealing Power and Temple Blessings, Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Fielding Smith (2013).
Chapter 26: Elijah and the Restoration of the Sealing Keys, Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith (2007).
Joseph Smith, Discourse, 21 January 1844, The Joseph Smith Papers, p. 181 (handwriting of Wilford Woodruff).
Chapter 34: “Behold, I Will Send You Elijah the Prophet” (Malachi), Old Testament Student Manual: 1 Kings–Malachi (1982), 351–56.

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