The Work of Elijah

Three Promises for the Last Days

The closing chapter of Malachi delivers three messages to those living in the final days. First, the Lord will cleanse the earth of wickedness when He comes. Second, His people are to live His commandments. Third, Elijah will come to turn the fathers to the children and the children to their fathers.

This third promise is the most misunderstood—and the most consequential. Through Elijah, the covenants the ancient fathers lived will be revealed to their descendants, and they will live them. For no one can receive a blessing without abiding by the covenant and law that pertains to it. God is immutable. He does not change His terms.

The Gospel from the Beginning

Many assume the gospel began with Moses or Abraham. But God loves all His children equally, from the time of Adam to the end of the world. For someone to be saved in any age—whether in the days of Adam, Enoch, Abraham, Moses, Christ, or these last days—it is in the same way. God does not change.

The absence of detailed records about earlier patriarchs is not proof the gospel did not exist among them. God revealed the gospel to Adam, who taught it to his children. They lived in a patriarchal order—a family kingdom—where every righteous father held the priesthood and administered the ordinances to his own family.

The Priesthood Preserved

Abel offered sacrifice and was accepted by God. He did not invent this—he received the priesthood and instruction from his father Adam, who received it from God. When Cain killed Abel, the line continued through Seth, and through Seth's descendants the Messiah would eventually be born.

From Seth to Enoch, from Enoch through Noah, from Noah to Shem, and from Shem to Abraham—the patriarchal priesthood was passed from father to son. For over two thousand years, from Adam to Jacob, the righteous lived this order: fathers as priests, families as kingdoms, gathered together in covenant worship.

Not all born into this line accepted the gospel. And many outside it did, being adopted in by faith—for God forces no one and is no respecter of persons.

What Was Lost

When Jacob's children fell into apostasy during their centuries in Egypt, the patriarchal order was preserved through another of Abraham's lines. Jethro, priest of Midian, descended from Abraham through Keturah and kept the faith and the priesthood that Abraham, Noah, Enoch, Seth, and Adam had lived. It was Jethro who bestowed the patriarchal priesthood on Moses.

Moses desired to make all Israel a kingdom of priests—every father enabled to serve as Adam's sons had. But the people could not endure it. They grew impatient while Moses was with God and turned to idol worship. Because of their unfaithfulness, the priesthood was restricted to the tribe of Levi, and a lesser law was given as a schoolmaster to eventually bring them to the Messiah.

For fifteen hundred years Israel rejected the prophets sent to restore them. They killed the messengers and eventually crucified the Son of God Himself. Even those who followed the Messiah were organized into a church pattern—appointed men administering ordinances to the people—the same Levitical arrangement, not the patriarchal order where every father administered to his own family.

What Elijah Restores

The Christian era has followed the same pattern. To this day, most worship under a hierarchical arrangement where appointed men administer ordinances to families they have no true connection to. It is the Levitical pattern, not the patriarchal one.

This is why Elijah must come. What he restores is not a church or an institution. It is the covenants and ordinances that existed before Moses and before Christianity—the gospel as lived by Adam, Seth, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The patriarchal order where every righteous father is a priest to his own family.

It is the Order of Adam that Elijah is working on the earth to restore. This is the stone cut out of the mountain without hands—established through heavenly messengers, not by man. It is a family kingdom.

Go Deeper

This page offers an overview of the work of Elijah and the restoration of the patriarchal order. For the full teaching with detailed scripture references tracing the priesthood line from Adam through the present day, read the complete article in the Treasury.