Judgement Day
1 “I will send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me, and the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to his temple, and the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, he will come!” says the Lord of Hosts.
2 “But who can endure the day of his coming? And who will stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like launderers’ soap, 3 and he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them as gold and silver. Then in righteousness, they will give their offerings to the Lord.
4 Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord, like they were in the days of old and in ancient years.
5 I will come near to you to judgment, and I will be quick to witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against the perjurers, and against those who oppress employees in their wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and those who deprive the foreigner of justice and do not fear me,” says the Lord of Hosts.
Robbing God
6 “For I, the Lord, do not change, therefore you, descendants of Jacob, have not perished. 7 From the days of your fathers you have turned away from my ordinances and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord of Hosts.
“But you say, ‘How shall we return?’
8 Will a man rob God? Yet you are robbing me!
But you ask, ‘How have we robbed you?’
In tithes and offerings. 9 You are doomed with a curse, for you–this whole nation–are still robbing me. 10 Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house and test me now in this,” says the Lord of Hosts, “if I will not open to you the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing upon you, that there will not be room enough to receive it. 11 I will rebuke the devourer for your sake, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your land, nor shall your fruit fall from the vine in the field before its time,” says the Lord of Hosts.
12 “All nations shall call you blessed, for you will be a land of delight,” says the Lord of Hosts.
13 “Your words against me have been bold,” says the Lord.
“Yet you say, ‘What have we spoken against you?’
14 You have said, ‘It is useless to serve the Lord,’ and ‘What profit is there, having followed his instructions and walked mournfully before the Lord of Hosts? 15 So now we call the proud blessed. Those who behave wickedly prosper. They tempt God and escape.’ ”
The Book of Remembrance
16 Then those who feared the Lord spoke one with another, and the Lord listened and heard, and a book of memory was written before him, for those who feared the Lord and who honored his name. 17 “They shall be mine,” says the Lord of Hosts, “my own possession on the day that I act, and I will spare them, as a man spares his own son who serves him. 18 Then you shall return and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between the one who serves the Lord and the one who does not serve him.”