From the Elder's Pen "Through The Years" 6/29/03 Past/Future Articles

God has always given man a law to live by.  In the first dispensation of man, there was the Patriarchal Age when God spoke His law to the heads of the families.  Then during the days of Moses, God gave man His first written law known as the Mosaic Law.  However, God continued to guide men verbally as He deemed necessary.  Then with Malachi came the last writing of the Old Testament and the dawning of the New Testament which would bring the final dispensation.  This is known as the Christian Age when all faith would pivot on the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ.  The Christian Age is the time we live in.  It is the last and final days of man.  There will be no more laws given of God.  All has been done for the salvation of man.

With Malachi, the prophetical  scriptures of the O. T. close, as with Nehemiah, O. T. history ends.  From Jonah, the first of the literary prophets, to Malachi, is an extended period embracing the history of Judah from the reign of Uzziah, and that of Israel from the reign of Jeroboam II, to the fall of both kingdoms through the period of the captivity, and for a hundred years of the Post-exilic Era, a period of nearly 400 years.
 
How earnestly and faithfully these great souls delivered to Judah and Israel the messages of Jehovah in reproving, instructing, warning, exhorting, and comforting the people.  How clearly and particularly they announced the facts relative to the coming Messiah – the time of His coming, His birth and birth place, labors, sufferings, death, resurrection, and King of His universal and everlasting Kingdom.  No nation has ever brought forth a body of men in any sense comparable with these prophets of Jehovah.
 
How fitting that Malachi should seal up the book of O. T. prophecy by such a clear statement of the coming of the Lord, the Messenger of the Covenant, the Sun of Righteousness, and thus give the last prediction of Him with whom the Evangelist begin their Gospel history.  The last ray of light, with all preceding Messianic rays, will illuminate the four centuries from Malachi to Matthew and rest at last upon the babe in Bethlehem’s manger.