Neither Root Nor Branch

The prophet Malachi wrote this in the final chapter of the Old Testament: “For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch” (Malachi 4:1).  This verse was repeated in the Book of Mormon in 3 Nephi 25:1, in the Doctrine and Covenants in 133:64, and in the Pearl of Great Price in JSH 1:37, so being in all four standard works it is clearly an important verse.  This day spoken of is the Second Coming, when as Peter taught, “the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up” (1 Peter 3:10).  In Zenos’s allegory this time is described this way, “The good will I preserve unto myself, and the bad will I cast away into its own place. And then cometh the season and the end; and my vineyard will I cause to be burned with fire” (Jacob 5:77).  Paul spoke of how the wicked would be destroyed, “with the brightness of his coming,” and similarly in our day the Lord declared, “the inhabitants thereof are consumed away and utterly destroyed by the brightness of my coming” (Doctrine and Covenants 5:19).  Whether this will be a literal fire or simply the glory of the Lord’s presence isn’t clear, but what is sure is that this is a day we must prepare for now. 

               The final phrase of this verse from Malachi states that those who are burned at the last day will have “neither root nor branch.”  What does this mean?  President Nelson once gave a talk in which he spoke of roots and branches in terms of our family.  He said, “each of us has ancestral roots” and that “personal branches bear the fruit of our loins,” suggesting that one interpretation is that roots correspond to our ancestors and branches to our posterity.  In other words, the roots and branches are our family.  Elder Cook gave a talk of the same name a decade later and suggested a similar notion of roots and branches: “The essential doctrine of uniting families came forth line upon line and precept upon precept. Vicarious ordinances are at the heart of welding together eternal families, connecting roots to branches.”  So with this in mind, one interpretation of Malachi’s statement could be that the wicked will be without family in the eternities—they will not have the sealing power to connect them to their roots and their branches.  Only through the covenants of the gospel can we be sealed to our families; the wicked who reject the fulness of the gospel forfeit this opportunity such that their family ties are “not valid neither of force when they are out of this world” (Doctrine and Covenants 132:18). 

            I think we can also view this phrase “neither root not branch” spiritually as well.  Christ declared, “I am the root and the offspring of David,” and in the book of Revelation Christ is referred to as “the Lion of the tribe of Juda, the Root of David” (Revelation 5:5, 22:16).  But Jesus is also referred to as the Branch.  Jeremiah wrote, “I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth….  In those days, and at that time, will I cause the Branch of righteousness to grow up unto David; and he shall execute judgment and righteousness in the land” (Jeremiah 23:5, 33:15).  Zechariah also appears to have used the word to refer to the Messiah: “Thus speaketh the Lord of hosts, saying, Behold the man whose name is The BRANCH; and he shall grow up out of his place, and he shall build the temple of the Lord” (Zecheriah 6:12).  So Christ is the root and the branch, and so to be without them is to be without Christ.  The wicked who endure the fire at the last day will indeed suffer without the saving grace of the Root and the Branch that they have rejected.