END OF DAYS, PART 2: DRY BONES

Deuteronomy 30:1-9, Ezekiel 37:1-14 (NASB)
David Bruce Linn, Pastor-Teacher
12 November 2006
All Rights Reserved

Two thousand five hundred years before you were born, a crusty Jewish prophet named Ezekiel had a vision which effects you and your future, whether you are a believer in Jesus Christ or not. Ezekiel was known for bizarre visions, such as the wheel which was "way up in the middle of the air," as the song goes. The following vision seems like it might have been part of a horror film, a video game, or a nightmare, but it reveals a hidden truth about the geographic, political, and spiritual epicenter of God's redemptive plan of the ages. I will be your guide through the valley of bones: "The hand of the LORD was upon me, and He brought me out by the Spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of the valley; and it was full of bones. He caused me to pass among them round about, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley; and lo, they were very dry. He said to me, 'Son of man, can these bones live?' And I answered, 'O Lord GOD, You know.' Again He said to me, 'Prophesy over these bones and say to them, 'O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD.' Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones, 'Behold, I will cause breath to enter you that you may come to life. I will put sinews on you, make flesh grow back on you, cover you with skin and put breath in you that you may come alive; and you will know that I am the LORD.' So I prophesied as I was commanded; and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold, a rattling; and the bones came together, bone to its bone. And I looked, and behold, sinews were on them, and flesh grew and skin covered them; but there was no breath in them. Then He said to me, 'Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, 'Thus says the Lord GOD, 'Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they come to life.'' So I prophesied as He commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they came to life and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army" (Ezekiel 37:1-10).

It is crucial that we see what happened in this vision because it affects us directly today. Ezekiel was carried in the Spirit, we know not how, into a valley virtually filled with dry, dead human bones. To a Jew, it would not only be a horror but a defilement. The Spirit of the Lord gave Ezekiel a tour of the valley and then posed a question: "Can these bones live?" On the face of it the question is absurd. Dead means dead. No one comes back from the dead.

Then the Lord insisted that his mouthpiece, Ezekiel, speak to the bones as if they could hear and tell them that the Lord was prepared to reconnect the loose pieces with sinews, regrow the organs and muscles, and then cover them with skin. Ezekiel was told to prophesy that the Lord would breathe the breath of life into them and the newly reconstituted bones would come alive. When Ezekiel spoke these words a great rattling of bones took place, the skeletons of the dead came back together with sinews. Flesh grew on them, and then skin grew over that. But they were not alive. Untold numbers of perfectly healthy yet dead human bodies lay strewn all over the valley.

Then the Lord commanded Ezekiel to call for the wind to blow, the Spirit to come, and breath to enter the dead. He prophesied as he was told, and to his astonishment the entire valley of inanimate cadavers took a breath, began to live, and stood up as "an exceedingly great army."

1. PROPHECIES BEFORE OUR EYES

I think we are all fascinated with stories about ancient prophecies which come to pass. The Lord of the Rings is built around them, as are The Chronicles of Narnia. The ancient world was full of them. In the Middle Ages the legend of King Arthur was born and the story of the sword in the stone transfixes us today. Do you remember? A marvelous sword was buried deep in a stone, hilt upward. Whoever was able to withdraw the sword would be the king. Princes and nobles came from afar and failed until finally, a boy no one expected stepped up, grabbed the hilt, and swung the sword out of the stone and into the air.

Ezekiel's ancient prophecy of the bones lay dormant for some two and a half millennia until today. We are living in the days not of King Arthur, but King Jesus who makes ancient prophecies come to pass. Ezekiel was given the explanation of the vision in the next verses: "Then He said to me, 'Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel; behold, they say, 'Our bones are dried up and our hope has perished. We are completely cut off.' 'Therefore prophesy and say to them, 'Thus says the Lord GOD, 'Behold, I will open your graves and cause you to come up out of your graves, My people; and I will bring you into the land of Israel. Then you will know that I am the LORD, when I have opened your graves and caused you to come up out of your graves, My people. I will put My Spirit within you and you will come to life, and I will place you on your own land. Then you will know that I, the LORD, have spoken and done it,' declares the LORD" (Ezekiel 37:11-14).

Why did this prophecy of regathering need to be made? Ezekiel's ministry spanned the time when the first temple in Jerusalem was destroyed and the nation was taken into captivity in Babylon. But remember that there were only two tribes remaining at that point. The ten northern tribes which fell into idolatry faster were carried off by the Assyrians a hundred and twenty years earlier and have never been seen again. So the promise of regathering back in the land was very precious to the Jews in captivity in Babylon, but it is vital that we realize that the return to the land seventy years later to build the second temple does not fulfill the promise of regathering. Most of Israel was still missing. Then in AD 70, after the time of Christ, even the last two tribes were wiped out and scattered over the surface of the earth by the Roman army under general Titus Vespasian who took the trouble of destroying the second temple down to the last stone, as Christ himself had prophesied.

The Israelites then entered a period of time called the Diaspora where their bloodline, faith, and national hopes were scattered over the earth like fluffy seeds from a dandelion. The nation became like dry, dead bones splayed across the ground, burnt by the sun. And over centuries of time, almost two full millennia, the nation of Israel was not to be seen on the face of the earth.

2. THE REGATHERING AND RESTORATION OF ISRAEL

But God is not willing to abandon his people Israel, and no expanse of time can thwart his sovereign purposes. Latent in the vision of dry bones is the hope of Israel, as we just read: "Then you will know that I am the LORD, when I have opened your graves and caused you to come up out of your graves, My people. I will put My Spirit within you and you will come to life, and I will place you on your own land. Then you will know that I, the LORD, have spoken and done it,' declares the LORD" (Ezekiel 37:13-14).

In the symbolism of the vision, the graves represent the death of the nation, not the death of individuals. The bloodline of Israel remained scattered among the nations. Some can be identified, most is mixed with other races, but the Lord knows where they are. So rising from their graves is a visual image of the reversal of Israel's sense of hopelessness and total destruction. The promise of God in the vision goes far beyond merely regathering the people to the specific land of promise. Ezekiel prophesied a development which had never been seen in Israel's centuries-long history, namely, that the very Spirit of God would be sent to indwell them.

So the two-part sequence is clear: physical regathering followed by spiritual renewal. Ezekiel had already given a prophecy about that sequence as recorded in the previous chapter: "For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands and bring you into your own land. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances" (Ezekiel 36:24-27). Israel is regathered to the land by a sovereign act of God before he cleanses them, before he gives them a new heart, before he puts his Spirit in them, and therefore before they come to believe that Yeshua is their Meshiach--that Jesus is their Messiah.

Because I'm going to make such a stupendous claim about this sequence I want you to be sure to see that this sovereign intention of God is not something I am reading into the Bible: "So it shall be when all of these things have come upon you, the blessing and the curse which I have set before you, and you call them to mind in all nations where the LORD your God has banished you....The LORD your God will bring you into the land which your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it; and He will prosper you and multiply you more than your fathers. Moreover the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live. The LORD your God will inflict all these curses on your enemies and on those who hate you, who persecuted you. And you shall again obey the LORD, and observe all His commandments which I command you today. Then the LORD your God will prosper you abundantly in all the work of your hand, in the offspring of your body and in the offspring of your cattle and in the produce of your ground, for the LORD will again rejoice over you for good, just as He rejoiced over your fathers..." (Deuteronomy 30:5-9).

Verse one of this passage from Deuteronomy describes the Diaspora (or scattering), verse five prophesies the physical return of Israel to the land, verse six tells the separate spiritual restoration of the people (by faith in Messiah Jesus), verse seven is the future defeat of their enemies, verse eight is the return to obedience, and verse nine is the prosperity which will belong to Israel in the millennial kingdom.

3. PHASE ONE COMPLETE

What does this have to do with us today? In the early eighteen hundreds a movement known as Zionism, named for the holy mountain in Jerusalem, began rumbling in Europe. Jews began wondering if perhaps a nation of Israel might be reestablished somewhere on earth. At first they were not sure that it was even possible to be in the original land which the Lord gave to them, proposing Africa and other sites.

In 1897 Theodor Herzl sponsored the First Zionist Congress to promote the founding of a Jewish national homeland. There had already been an attempt to resettle Israel before this which failed, but anti-Semitism in Russia drove another resettlement attempt in 1904. In 1917 the Balfour Declaration, aided by a mandate from the League of Nations, committed Britain to seek a national Jewish homeland in the geographic region called Palestine. The Jewish Agency was set up in 1924 to further the process. It is a remarkable and salient fact that Zionism was divorced from a religious intent in reestablishing a national Israel. Different groups had different motivations as they flowed back into the land even before there was a nation there to receive them.

In 1947 the United Nations voted to partition the region the Romans had called Palestina into Jewish and Arab states. The Jewish portions were tiny, but even so there was an immediate backlash by the Arab inhabitants who gathered their military forces and attacked the fledgling nation of Israel. They stated publicly two purposes, first, to attempt to drive the Israelis into the sea, and second, to annihilate them even as Hitler had attempted to do just a few years earlier. Israel fought for its life and then won a surprising victory over the Arabs, taking over most of what we know as the modern nation of Israel. They drove out 600,000 to 800,000 Palestinian Arabs, many of whom fled the war voluntarily before it began.

Then, in 1948, the United Nations officially recognized the state of Israel. Out of the dusty valley where they had lain for nineteen centuries the dry bones came back together, were connected with sinews, and became covered with flesh and skin. The impossible had happened.

Are they the heirs of the covenant of God? No, not yet. The vision of Ezekiel and other prophecies described two phases. The secular regathering phase has indeed taken place, but not yet the spiritual restoration. It is the revived, believing nation which inherits the blessings of the covenant.

This first phase was dramatically illustrated to me in a video interview I saw between a young Jewish man and his grandmother. She had emigrated to Israel from Uzbekistan in 1935 where she participated as a teenager in Menahem Begin's youth brigade to harass the British until they left. She would dump buckets of glue on the British soldiers and then run for her life. She was present in 1948 for the fulfillment of a 2500 year-old prophecy from the Torah, yet she did not have a religious motive. When her grandson asked her whether the founding of the nation seemed to her a miracle, she replied in Hebrew: "I don't know, but it was very fortunate. In the end, it was good. We had ourselves a country."

4. THE NEARNESS OF HIS COMING AND THE RESTORATION OF ISRAEL

That may be the understatement of the millennium! What to this grandma was "very fortunate" is to Bible prophecy the cocking of the hammer on the initiation of the events of the end of days. Until 1948 Christians could read the prophecies of Christ's return but knew it could not yet happen because the nation of Israel had not been regathered. According to prophecy Israel must be present for Antichrist to persecute, they must be present to rebuild the temple so it can be desecrated when Antichrist reveals his satanic nature at the mid-point of the seventieth week of Daniel, and the entire seventieth week of Daniel must occur with reference to Israel since the prophecy was given to them (Dan. 9:24ff).

Based on our knowledge of the two phases of Israel's restoration, they must be physically regathered before the second phase can take place where they turn to faith in Christ and receive their cleansing and the Holy Spirit. Finally, they must be present in their fully-revived state to enter the millennial kingdom of Christ after being protected from God's wrath.

It is now possible for all of this to happen. We are living in the last days! The timetable for Christ's return for his church at the rapture is unfolding before our eyes. This is no time for believers in Christ to become comfortable and sleepy! This is no time for dalliances with sin. Recently the evangelical world was rocked with news of the moral failure of one of our most prominent pastors. He admitted to illegal drug use and sex with a homosexual prostitute. This pastor was once regularly consulted as the voice of evangelicalism. Now he has resigned his national office and been fired from his church.

His particular temptations may not be yours or mine, but we have all been tempted to seek our pleasures here on an earth which is destined for God's wrath and judgment in the last days. We have all struggled with the danger of falling asleep in the light and becoming comfortable while surrounded by people destined for hell unless we lead them to Christ.

To use a phrase employed by the late Robert Van Kampen, the hammer has been cocked on the rapture of the church and the events surrounding the return of Christ. The Lord himself is preparing to pull the trigger on prophecies which are thousands of years old. He has not been sleeping, and when the Day of the Lord begins, all human control of earth will be finished. Nothing anyone is doing now apart from Christ will matter then.

Do you know him? And if you do know him, are you seeking to walk with him with all your heart? The time has grown short. Grandma was wrong--the secular regathering of Israel is indeed a stupendous miracle! I advise you to confess your sins, walk closely with your Lord, study the prophecies, and share your faith with everyone you know. The clock is ticking.
[clip from Protest Warriors video, Zion section, interview with grandma, 0:04:44 to 0:08:33]