Envisioning a Future

KEY VERSE: “My tabernacle also shall be with them: yea, I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” —Ezekiel 37:27

SELECTED SCRIPTURE: Ezekiel 37:1-11, 25-27

EZEKIEL WAS ANOTHER of the four major prophets of Israel and was among the captives taken to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar: He was from a priestly family, and was the son of Buzi, a priest.

He tells us that he began his work as a prophet in the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin. His writings spanned a period of approximately twenty-two years from about the period 613 to 591 B.C.

One of the remarkable visions that God gave through Ezekiel is the “valley of dry bones” in Chapter 37. This prophetic vision pertains to the regathering of the nation of Israel in the latter part of the Gospel Age, with a clear identification of the bones: “These bones are the whole house of Israel.” (Ezek. 37:11) As a nation, the Israelites became scattered a few years after Jesus was crucified, but by God’s great providence his people are now once again regathered to their own land.

The symbolic picture of dry bones, representing the regathering process of the nation, is comprised of three distinct states of development. First there was a noise, and a shaking as the bones came together to form a complete skeleton. Next were seen the growth of sinews together with flesh and skin to cover the bare skeleton.

The third and final stage of development consisted of giving these lifeless forms the breath of life. “Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord God; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live. So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army.”—vss. 9,10

For nearly two thousand years the Jewish people were scattered abroad, living as aliens and strangers with no land they could call their own. Then, in the latter years of the 19th century, a movement known as Zionism began to promote Palestine as a homeland for the Jews.

A few years later, during World War I, British troops liberated Jerusalem from Ottoman-Turkish control which had continued since 1517. Palestine came under a British mandate, and the Balfour Declaration pledged British support for a Jewish home in Palestine.

These very small beginnings are likened to the shaking of bones, as the lifeless framework ‘came together’. There was, however, ‘no flesh’ to cover the ‘bones’, and no ‘breath of life’ in them.

Next, Ezekiel saw the skeletons being clothed with ‘flesh’ and ‘skin’, and with ‘sinews’ holding them together. The bare ‘skeletons’ which began to come together after 1917 experienced various difficulties during the 1920’s and 1930’s, until in 1948 the State of Israel was formally proclaimed and began its independent existence. The skeletons had been covered, and the Jewish nation was recognizable among the world family of nations. The giving of life to this body is still future, because Israel became a nation without the Spirit of God.

Tremendous events have occurred in the lives of the Jewish people since the late 19th century, and we may expect God’s power to continue to be manifested in a remarkable way in the near future, during the time when he brings all of that nation back in the resurrection, and pours his Holy Spirit upon them as he has promised in his Word: I “shall put my Spirit in you, and ye shall live.”—vs. 14

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