Verb-Rich Dynamism: 

Malachi, Herder, and the Prophetic Preamble to Eschatological Healing

Rev. Dr. Douglas Blake Olds (Ret.)

December 2, 2025

"The poet is a sophist…a maker of counterfeits that look like the truth." --Plato, Republic

"The sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings." --Malachi 4:2: 

ABSTRACT: This theological-prophetic essay proposes a radical re-reading of biblical prophecy not as typological form or symbolic closure but as verb-rich dynamism—an unfolding momentum of divine initiative. Drawing on Aristotle’s correction of Platonic stasis and Herder’s linguistic insights into the Psalms and Prophets, it contends that biblical prophecy operates through verbal lexemes that displace ontology with conative witness. The prophetic mode is reframed as a kinetic preamble to eschatological healing rather than a foreclosed historical pronouncement. Malachi is reinterpreted not merely as the final prophet of the Hebrew canon but as an enduring vector of covenantal purification and pre-apocalyptic heraldry, bearing relevance for both John the Baptist at the advent of the messiah and for the eschatological return of Christ. In contrast to Derrida’s différance and secular semiotic collapse, a Pentecostal grammar of invective and theopoietic affirmation of prophecy as linguistic participation in divine motion—where kinesis, not form, discloses the coming Kingdom. The result is a poetic theology of covenantal responsibility and eschatological hope that views the return of Christ not as static terminus but as the generative vector of healing action.

 

The only solution to the current leading to the abysses of terror and conceit is to read prophecy as dynamism, not form, as Aristotle explores after Plato’s false launch, and Herder’s reading of the Psalms like the prophets, where nominals are re-implied by verbal lexemes, where interpolated trajectories are renewed for extrapolates.

Herder’s insight that biblical poetry (especially Psalms and Prophets) foregrounds verbs—action, motion, unfolding—is the core metaphysical lexicon: not abstract ontology but concrete, responsive participation-- prophecy as unfolding momentum rather than typological closure. Biblical poetry is verb-intensive, relational, and temporally charged. Nominals are re-inscribed by verbs, displacing ontology with unfolding witness. This movement of the Logos aligns into eschatology by implicitly reframing prophecy as preamble—not a fossilized forecast, but a kinetic precondition for participation in apocalyptic healing. Participatory momentum heals Calvinism’s (Barth) far too hasty foreclosure of the Kingdom of God.

Christian eschatology evokes the notion of a “preamble” to the Parousia—the second coming of Christ. In this light, the prophetic tradition is not a closed canonical past but a present-tense vector, a hyper-linguistic and pre-liturgical, proleptic reform toward the rupturing inbreaking of divine justice and healing. The apocalyptic wave of healing is proleptically symbolic but turns real: it comes with the signs in the heavens, as Jesus foretold in Matthew 24 and Luke 21, and with the judgment that both purifies and restores.

Malachi as the final prophet of the Second Temple period is emblematic: not as the last word on the earthly but as the eschatological herald of the new heaven—“the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings” (Malachi 4:2).

John the Baptist bears this mantle in the Gospels, yet Malachi’s message returns spiritualized as the eschatological prophet of the Parousia itself. Malachi has an ongoing spiritual office that reappears as a hermeneut of the eschaton. His purification of the temple (Mal 3) is maps onto Ezekiel’s vision and culminates in Revelation’s tree of life. This moves Malachi from an historical “last prophet” into an archetypal figure of preamble healing and covenantal return. His call to return, to purify the heavenly temple (Ezekiel 40-44) and to restore covenantal justice is not merely historical but perennial—resonating as the preamble to Christ’s final appearing and the healing of the nations (cf. Revelation 22:2).

Theopoetic invective laments against performative decadence and simulacral collapse-- grotesque spectacles of self-assertion devoid of covenant or eschatological orientation. Theopoetic invective is also an apocalyptic homiletic, a theological counterpoint grounded in a grammar of unfolding prophecy, verb-rich dynamism, and eschatological healing. Where Derrida deconstructs, the Pentecostal Spirit reconstructs—reading not for form but for kinesis, not for pattern but for orientation, not for closure or system but for covenantal response that walks into eternity’s unfolding. Eschatology is not an end but a precondition for right action.

Prophecy’s “verb-rich dynamism”—the Spirit’s conative motion in history and language. This is not a grammar of analogy (as in Balthasar or Aquinas), but of disclosure and direction: where language sets a course rather than laying down a mirror that entraps.

From the wreckage of post-structural semiotics comes Pentecostal eschatology: not mystical retreat nor fundamentalist aggression, but the poetic grammar of divine motion, embodied ethics, and covenantal repair.

Where Derrida’s différance dissolves presence cast as frozen form, verb-rich theopoiesis insists on a conative presence neither reactionary nor utopian—it is prophetic and directional: a call to read, speak, and live the Scripture as living dynamism—a grammar of rupture and stabilizing healing of soul that advances as a vector of harbinger that makes history rather than watches or reacts. Christ’s return in solace and virtue that moves into closures and shines the light of repairing life.

Anti-coda:

Peeing into wind—thank you, mr. derrida.
No more call for expertise,
just redlines of tautegoric flair:
perspective, privilege, protocol—
all normed by purchasing power parity.

Performative immediacy thrones,
pragmatism peddled by Philistines to dolts
plantations of plenteous decadence
for rituals of phallic dilation.

The Logos—no longer Word that walks or calms—
only twitches in screenlight,
gooning to entropy’s wolf-fold system,
a grammar collapsing on cued program.