I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

In the year 2000, on the 23rd day of this month, my wife married me.  So here we are on day 6 of the 20 days that I am going to wish her Happy Anniversary for 20 years of marriage.  Happy Anniversary Darling!

Today, I am reading and commenting on Ezekiel 37-38.

I have always considered Ezekiel’s prophecy concerning the Valley of the Dry Bones to contain one of the most important lessons for us.  I have frequently witnessed Christians decide that a congregation has gotten too old, or too staid, or both, to ever thrive again.  While there is some truth to this, we should never believe that God’s Spirit cannot revive such a congregation.  However, the Valley of Dry Bones prophecy does not just apply to congregations, or other institutions, which we think are dead and dried up.  The prophecy also teaches us that God’s Spirit can move and bring life, even when we think something is long dead.  Let us pray that God’s Spirit will move in the world today and bring the fire of revival to it.  Let us pray that God will bring new life to the dry bones of Christianity in parts of the world where it once thrived.  But, let us do more than just pray, let us speak as the Spirit guides us to bring about that change.

I have long wondered whether the passage here about Gog and Magog attacking Israel was a figurative prophecy, or perhaps if it was a reference to the 1967 Arab-Israel War.  Now, the other day I mentioned how Meshech and Tubal were mentioned in a list of nations which Ezekiel’s original readers would have been familiar.  So, as I was reading this prophecy today, I thought about current world affairs and wondered if this prophecy might refer to something about to happen.  It is not that this is something that I know is about to happen, merely something which current world affairs, for the first time in my lifetime, make a possibility.  So, Meshech and Tubal most likely would have been nations bordering the Black Sea towards the east end.  Gomer, which is also mentioned here, would have been in an area which is now part of Turkey.  In the prophecy we have Sheba and Dedan warning this alliance against attacking Israel.  Interestingly, Sheba and Dedan were nations of the Arabian Peninsula.  With the recent normalization between the United Arab Emirates and Israel, and Saudi Arabia’s long term silent cooperation with Israel, it makes such a warning not at all improbable.  Looking at the current world situation, the alliances of nations which geographically fit those described in this prophecy are possible for the first time in my life time (during the 1967 War the nations of the Arabian Peninsula were in the alliance against Israel).