Malachi 4

All but bluntly stated, Malachi explains how the Presence of God polarizes everything. For those who cling to sin, His presence is like a fiery furnace, consuming everything and leaving nothing. For those who love Him and His revelation, the very same fire warms and brings healing. If we cling to His name, His Presence is ultimate freedom. Like lambs freshly shorn of their winter coat of wool, we can scamper about in sheer joy of relief that sin has been purged. Our feet will stomp on the ashes of those consumed by His wrath.
We should observe here how the Hebrew language avoids assuming a fixed meaning to his image. It applied most certainly to the coming of Christ in this world. His presence in the flesh of Jesus brought life and freedom to those whose spirits longed for the revelation of God’s glory. At the same time, it hardened in sin those bound up in sin. Yet again, in That Final Day, this might seem more literal in what we might see, with His wrath blasting evil into oblivion and bringing the rest of us into Eternity. The difference in human fate is whether they belong to Him and cling to His Word.
So He calls to mind again the revelation through Moses at Mount Sinai (“Horeb”). We are also reminded Jesus said those who studied the Law of Moses would find it taught about Him as the Messiah. Just to make sure we stand ready, the Lord mentions again He would send a prophet in the Spirit of Elijah, whom we know was John the Baptist. Perhaps we have a hard time realizing how the ministry of Jesus could be so terrifying, but we note those who rejected Him eventually were destroyed. That is, His death on the Cross was the ritual end of the Covenant of Moses. Those who did not cling to Christ and follow Him into the Covenant of Blood and Grace were left with the dead covenants of old. The stinking corpse of literal Israel lay rotting in the sun until Rome swept it away. Meanwhile, the entire focus of God’s dealings with men on this earth moved to the New Israel. That was the terrible end of those who rejected His message.
Christ is the full embodiment of revelation. Truth has always been a person, impossible to render as a mere proposition. Malachi foresees that clinging to the Living Truth is a matter of getting to know the mind of the Son of God. Jesus brought to life a new nation and a new Household of Faith (“fathers and children”). Wherever and whenever in this time-space continuum people stand in His Son and live His Laws of the Spirit, God’s wrath serves to purify, not destroy. The difference is whether we cling to sin or to Him.