"See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse."

We live in exciting times. Where God is reigniting His church with a message of truth and of grace- a message of "no compromise" in believing that He is the "way, truth and life", and a messgae that Christ is the "unmerited favor" of God. He is breaking down legalism and dismantling arguments for lawlessness either. He is not for both. He is the God of truth, and of grace. You have him- you have both grace and truth, you cannot have one without the other. Like waves after waves of renewal from Heaven, God is raising up a Church that knows its Gospel, having a reasoned faith, and sending them out to display the relevance of the Gospel, as the Gospel always has been, to a broken world.

Like I was telling nessa yesterday, to be holy, to be the church...is to be "called out". Just as much as we love the idea of sacred unity within the Church, we must be ready to be forsaken, rejected and even persecuted for the relevation God has given us, for our lives and our society. No true sacred unity is achieved without the cost of discipleship. What is the cost? It is to get up from our fishing nets and boats and follow the Master when He comes calling. It is to forsake the glory of yesterday's encounters and experiences and methods to receive the new encounters, experiences and methods. It is never to say, "the old is better".

Back to the verse in malachi. Basically, if you understand the verse literally, it means that God in the end times (which by the way I believe is now) would do a special work in restoring families. He wants to bridge any and all "generational gap"- by this I don't only mean, gap caused by preference or culture, but a gap caused also by deeper sources like lies, abuse, indifference, ignorance etc. i think that's why people like nessa is so passionate about raising Godly families one day... It is God's plan for this hour.

Metaphorically, I believe it is speaking about spiritual fathers and sons. Who are your spiritual fathers? I am not just talking about your church leader, or the Christian leader you are under. A spiritual father is a godly christian that others imitate. So when you imitiate a godly Christian, you are in fact his spiritual son or daughter. When you influence someone in godliness, he is your spiritual son or daughter. You and he are in a "spiritual family".

Do you know that spiritual modelling does not only happen between Christians...? You might be an example of godliness to a non-Christian- though the latter does not understand what godliness is, he is attracted nonetheless to the reflection of God in your life. Why would God say that in the last days, that He will bring a revival of "spiritual modelling"?

One- spiritual modelling reveals God. Two- The Church in the post-modern world is perceived as irrelevant by too many in our generation...society is meant to model after the Church in its morality, meaning and motives. However, society has marginalised the church, and the church has isolated itself- because both do not realise how important modelling is, and that the call to be the Church is actually a call to model Christ to the world. But God is going to bridge the "gaps" caused by insensitivity and apathy on the part of the church, and the "gaps" caused by offenses that the world has done to the Church...these strains on the relationship between the Church and the world will be taken away in this hour so that the world would understand the relevance of the Church and have its hardened heart broken, and that the Church would have compassion and model Christ correctly.