What were the 400 years of silence?

The silence of the prophetic testimony between the close of the Old Testament and the commencement of the New, which continued over four hundred years, is very significant. Before that, all through the course of God's ancient people, notwithstanding their many sins and departures from Jehovah, sacred history faithfully gave its inspired record of them, until Malachi closed it with the saddest denunciations of their ways. And what makes this long and silent gap so remarkable, is, that the final testimony of the prophet links itself with the beginning of Luke's gospel in foretelling the coming of John the forerunner of our Lord. He said, "Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me." (Mal. 3:1; Luke 1:13-17; Mark 1:2-3.) Our Lord also associated the prophets with the Baptist ― "The law and the prophets were until John." These links certainly unite the Old and New Testaments in a very remarkable way. May we learn the lessons they are intended to teach us!

Very solemn indeed is Jehovah's silence for four centuries in the history of His favoured people; especially when we consider the abounding evil which they so long pursued, as recorded by their inspired writers, notwithstanding the goodness and patience God had exercised toward them. Their sad state weighed heavily on the spirit of the prophet Malachi. He began his message to them by saying, "The burden of the word of Jehovah to Israel by Malachi," and ended it by alluding to "the great and dreadful day of Jehovah." True, he added, that Elijah would be sent before that, to "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." (Chap. 1:1; 4:5-6.) In this solemn way the Old Testament writings were closed; and we have no divinely-given annals of the Hebrew people during the following four hundred years. May we ponder its grave significance! Was it because of their many sins, that divine communications and miraculous intervention ceased? Was it on this account that prophetic inspiration was discontinued, and they were left to their own devices? Of one thing we may be well assured, that, under the circumstances, inspiration was suspended in God's wisdom and faithfulness.

The occasion on which our Lord spoke in this Galilean synagogue was a very momentous one momentous for this reason. Communications from God had ceased for a considerable time. From the days of Malachi onwards, no prophetic voice had come from Him. This world was left alone as it were without any communications from on high. God was silent for four and a half centuries, and that is a considerable while. Look back 450 years in our own history. How far back the year 1460 seems, and what a time of darkness! People had no English Bibles to read 450 years ago. A period of similar extent passed in the history of the Jews without a voice from heaven. All the prophecies regarding Israel were completed. God had no more to say to His people until John the Baptist appeared — a voice crying in the wilderness, announcing the coming of the Messiah.

For about 400 years the Lord had sent no communication to His people Israel. The silence of heaven is at last broken. The ministering Priest Zacharias beholds the Angel Gabriel, the same wonderful being, who brought heaven's messages to Daniel. The names of the aged and pious couple are significant. Zacharias means "Jehovah remembers," and Elizabeth is translated "the oath of God." If we join them together we have the sentence "Jehovah remembers the oath of God." The time of remembrance had come. Prophecy is about to be fulfilled.

The prophet Malachi has the solemn duty of delivering God's last message to His earthly people before the coming of Christ. The message having been delivered, God speaks no more for a period of four hundred years. Then at length the silence is broken by the voice of one crying in the wilderness, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His paths straight."

The historical narrative ends B.C.445, the only recorded intervention of God subsequently being the touching prophecy of Malachi (B.C.397). Then for nearly four centuries there is silence till the veil is lifted with the story of the marvelous intervention of God in the affairs of this world in sending His beloved Son into it, thus fulfilling many a glowing prophecy recorded on Old Testament page.

Secular history gives us much information as to the history of the Jews in that interval.

The endeavor of the Jews to regain their independence under the Maccabees, resulting in Palestine's becoming tributary to Rome, prepared the people and the land for that condition of things into which Christ was born. This period we do not enlarge upon. We will pass on to the moment when Scripture lifts the veil once more.

For nearly four centuries the prophetic voice had been silent in Israel. After the return from Babylon, the remnant were privileged to listen, first to Haggai and Zechariah, then to Malachi, after whose day the divine voice ceased to be heard. The Old Testament was thus completed, and the people were left in expectation of the promised Messiah, whose coming, if only they would receive Him, would end, not Israel's griefs merely, but the griefs of the whole creation.

Four Hundred Years Four hundred years were to elapse from the day that Malachi wrote the last inspired prophecy of the Old Testament, until the veil should be lifted at the beginning of the Gospel of Luke, just prior to the birth of our Lord into this world. The prophecies of Daniel and their fulfilment help us to bridge over these four hundred years.

Run down the ages, and we get Malachi writing the last inspired book of the Old Testament, and silence falls for nigh four hundred years. The lamp of faith burns low. There is no national testimony. Things seem as dead as possible. Is God defeated? Nay, Luke lifts the curtain, and we get Joseph, “a just man”; Mary, the honoured mother of our Lord according to the flesh, whose Magnificat shows that, humble as she was in distant Nazareth of Galilee, her mind was deeply saturated in and formed by Scripture, for her song is a veritable mosaic of Holy Writ; Elizabeth and Zacharias, Simeon and Anna, and there were others, whose names we know not.

This is succeeded by four centuries of silence; but while Jehovah was silent the cultivated intellect of man was allowed to shine with its mightiest achievements. During that time the unrivalled philosophers, orators, statesmen, sculptors and warriors of Greece flourished, but instead of bringing about a deliverance for the human race, it has been said that this gifted race was eaten up of its own corruptions. Thus God in His wisdom demonstrated that man by wisdom knew not God. In the New Testament we find that the time had arrived for God to break the silence. We read in the Epistle to the Galatians that when the fulness of time was come God sent forth His Son.

Malachi prophesied over four centuries before Christ came, and then followed a period of silence on the part of heaven. We today are living in a long period which has been spoken of as the Silence of God. Men are mightily perplexed because God seems to have retired into His heaven, and shut the brazen gates. The world is being convulsed and yet there does not seem to be any utterance from the Divine lips. Heaven has been silent, but for a very good reason. God has spoken in His Son and fully offered all He has to say in the way of grace. The only thing that remains is for God to speak in His wrath, and vex the nations in His sore displeasure. Unconverted people blame God and ask, Why does He not do something? But if He did, they would be overwhelmed in condemnation. Having said all He has to say in grace, He is silent until He speaks again in judgment.