In his
commentary on Mal 4:5-6, J.R. Dummelow understood OT “Elijah” to act as a generic
term for any forerunner, similar to how Joseph Smith used NT “Elias” to denote
a forerunner, too:
Though John the Baptist was the last and
greatest Elijah before that great ‘Day of the Lord,’ when ‘the Word was made
flesh,’ there had been other fulfilments of Malachi’s words before his time, as
there have been since. Whenever the old order changes, giving place to new.,’
God sends the word an Elijah. (J.R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible [London: Macmillan and Co., 1909], 615)
Further Reading