January 29, 2003 (re-edited August 10, 2005)
Dear Forever Family:
Today I found the proof I was wondering about concerning those dry bones in Ezekiel.
I have often felt in my spirit that the prophecy given in Ezekiel 37 concerning the valley of dry bones was not just to be spiritually fulfilled. Somehow in my spirit the Lord was whispering that HE was going to literally resurrect His Jewish people. But I had seen no confirmation in any other Scripture.
For centuries the Church of Jesus Christ has visualized itself in the passage about the dry bones. And it is true to a degree, whenever any person is saved and given new life in Christ, they are to some degree a spiritual fulfillment of that prophecy. They go from being a dead spirit to being a new creation in Jesus Christ.
Other believers have seen Ezekiel 37 as a parable concerning the resurrection from the dead of all true believers who are resurrected from their graves in the "Twinkling of an Eye."
However, I know that prophecies given to the Jewish Nation must primarily have a Jewish, fulfilment, a physical and literal fulfillment. And I know that this word in Ezekiel 37 was given primarily to the Jews. And, yes, someday they will recognize Jesus as their Messiah, receive Him, repent and mourn for how they rejected Him long ago. But, still I believe that the prophecy of Ezekiel 37 means more than just spiritual renewal of the Jewish Nation, or the catching away of the Gentile church. And today God allowed me to stumble upon a Scripture that affirms to me that Ezekiel 37 speaks of an event of fantastic, physical, Jewish proportions.
In Deuteronomy Moses lays out the future for Israel. God tells Moses that they will fall away and serve other gods and be scattered around the whole earth. God gives Moses the sad news that HIS people were going to corrupt themselves in the latter days and that they would terribly curse themselves by disobedience. But, then the Lord speaks through Moses that God would have mercy on them and gather them back again from all over the earth to Israel. And in that passage the Holy Spirit illuminated a verse that is truly awesome. It is the clarification concerning the physicality of the prophecy of dry bones resurrected to life. Here it is:
Deuteronomy 30:4 "If any of thine be driven out unto the outmost parts of heaven, from thence will the LORD thy God gather thee, and from thence will he fetch thee..."
In this passage, if you read all of chapter 30, you will see that the Lord promises to gather HIS people from all over the earth back to Israel, when they return and repent. And in verse four, which I've quoted above, the Lord promises that if they have even been driven "unto the outmost parts of heaven", that even from there HE will return them to Israel.
The word in the Hebrew for "heaven," used in this verse, means "the higher ether." It is not speaking so much of the Heavenly City as it seems to be referring to the spirit realm.
People of God do you catch what this means???!!! I have studied about the Holocaust. As the six million Jews were being taken to the gas chambers, many of them gave up on God. They prayed every prayer they knew. Many of those that escaped the gas chambers and were liberated came away looking like skeletons and having given up their faith. They figured that there must not be a God after all.
I grew up in West Los Angeles and knew many Jews whose families had come from Europe after World War Two. I have seen the Nazi tattooed number, engraved in the wrist of a released concentration camp victim! Many of my Jewish friends had become agnostics; some even atheists because of the Holocaust! In many conversations with my Jewish friends on the subject of God, I learned something. I discovered that some Jews had come to a new conclusion because God did not seem to answer their prayers for help in the concentration camp. God allowed six million of their kindred to be exterminated by the Nazis. Some concluded that there was in fact no God, that HE was a myth, that their fore fathers had been wrong. God was a dream. For if HE had really existed, they reasoned, HE would have delivered them. They could not grasp how a loving God would allow such a horror to fall upon those HE called HIS people.
My fellow believers, our God will answer the prayers of the Jews that rose from the concentration camps!! HE is a prayer answering God!! HIS timing is perfect! Even after Jews thought it was too late for an answer, even after the body was destroyed and left as only a pile of bones. Our God shall assemble HIS PEOPLE again and they shall be in shock as they come to life. They shall be in shock!! And they shall say, "I died! I was gassed! I prayed and God did not answer my prayer, I thought! But here I am. I'm alive! God did hear my prayer! He has restored me! Look, I'm young again! I live! Glory to God! He did hear my prayer!"
Read Ezekiel 37...it shall be fulfilled literally some glorious day! God has NOT forgotten or abandoned HIS chosen people, the Jewish Nation!
clint