God has given us one book that can change the entire direction of our lives, the Bible.

And in this study, journeying through scriptures, we will take a brief big-picture look at every book of the Bible, tracing God's unfolding story from Genesis to Revelation.

Our prayer is that this journey will stir your heart to open God's word daily.

Let's join Scott Pauli for today's study.

Hello, my friend. I hope you're enjoying the journey today.

We have been on quite a trip together, haven't we, working our way through the Word of God,

and we've made 39 definite stops in the 39 books of the Old Testament.

You know, anytime you take a journey along the way,

sometimes you need to stop for a moment,

catch your breath, refresh yourself,

a rest area, we might call it along the way.

And so that's exactly what we're going to do today.

Today we're going to take a stop in what is called the silent years.

As a matter of fact, I have my Bible open here on my desk in front of me,

and between the book of Malachi and the book of Matthew, there is a blank page. Perhaps

there's a blank page in your Bible where nothing is written. You might think nothing was done.

But I want to suggest to you that the blank page between Malachi and Matthew

actually represents the fact that God is at work even behind the scenes.

You see, between Malachi and Matthew, there's a period of 400 years. And not only have

they been called the silent years because there was no open revelation from God being given, there was no prophet ministering, at least recorded prophets at that time,

it has also been known as the dark period of Israel's history. And people call it the dark

period because at this particular time, it seemed that the world was plunged into deeper and deeper spiritual

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