Ezekiel 37 and 47 represent two distinct imageries that complement each other. One being the valley, the other being the river. It seems that if we take the chapters chronologically and symbolically it would seem before we can see the river flow we must visit the valley first.
First the Spirit of the Lord lifts Ezekiel in the midst of the valley, dry and dead. In the process of restoration it will take the Holy Spirit to lift us and place us to see something. Here the valley is full of bones from a former battle. It seems that this army had been defeated and left for dead. The key is that the Spirit is the key to bringing life.
If we look consistently down Church history, through generations like this army, fought many battles, until the enemy had overcome them, and left them as bones in a dry valley.
Here we see that the bones represented individuals long gone, disappeared and without identity. There are many causes for this to happen, when the world, the pressure, the devil come to wear out those who walk with God. They cannot win the fight without the Spirit, who gives life and strength.
We can have all the theology, doctrine, we can have a status in the earth’s universities, but nothing can substitute the dimension of the Spirit, because what we must believe must be living and be made living. This takes a process which both Mary and Hannah went through. The process of their having an interaction with a promise is what carried them through to birthing Samuel and Jesus. In this scenario we see God show us the way of receiving the restoration from spiritual captivity. The key is the Spirit, as it was said of Mary, what was conceived in her, was of the Holy Spirit. So it is essential that the Spirit be involved to bring life.
Here the dry bones first come together, and where we are now, is there a spirit of division and discord abroad. The more disagreement and denomination the devil is happy and “captivity” to this religiosity continues. Sometimes we can put so much importance on right theology and have NO Spirit, it is the Spirit that gives life, as the letter kills. So many Youtube channels are exposing theological errors and practices, but we forget the Spirit. We can be absolutely perfect in theology but DEAD in our faith. Dead because we have forgotten that even having the bones, sinews, nerves, skin, everything, and yet not have life.
Ezekiel’s first prophecy is the coming together, but even stood up they were not living. He then had to call for the Spirit from the 4 winds. And 4 corners of the earth. So then they became a living army. They complained that one of the contributing factors to their dryness and deadness was the lack of hope. 70 years was a long time, for a process that promised restoration, and as the years went by they began in degrees to abandon this hope.
Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost: we are cut off for our parts
The Holy Bible: King James Version, Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009), Eze 37:11.
So we can surmise that dryness spiritually has a lot to say about the measure of hope we possess. It is said that hope is faith for tomorrow. When our hope dies off then we begin to experience dryness in our Christian walk.
So what Ezekiel saw in preparation for Restoration that there needed to be a coming together, and we see this in Luke 2, when Anna, after praying 84 years in the Temple, once touching and seeing Jesus as a babe in the Temple went out to all those who held the same hope. This hope is encapsulated in the term: “The Consolation of Israel”. In one former series I sensed that God desires to bring the Consolation to the Church. Yet we neglect the importance of the Spirit. It is said of Simeon in the same Luke 2, that the Spirit was upon him and was revealing to him about the coming Christ, and was leading him to the Temple when Jesus the babe entered. Shows exactly the fundamental role the Holy Spirit has in this process. May we understand this.
The Kingdom is preached with the Spirit. Without the Spirit there is no life, and without life there is no hope.
What is our hope? See the King manifest today, making us walk from our Captivity on a road back to our spiritual “Jerusalem”. Where the King is manifest, so His Spirit confirms with signs. He brings together that which was dead, raises it again. Just as Jesus also dead was raised to bring us together under the umbrella of the Kingdom.
May we learn this lesson, that it is coming together, standing together, calling for the Spirit that the Church, so divided will know a fresh restoration from the Holy Spirit.
Maranatha!
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