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

I love the message of Ezekiel’s vision of the Valley of Dry Bones.  The story makes the point that God can bring life where ever He wills.  The people in this vision were not just dead, they were decomposed so that they were just bones piled together.  Nevertheless God was able to revive them and turn them into an army.  So, if God gives you a vision of a task He wishes you to take on, don’t think it can not be accomplished.  If you are part of a congregation which appears to be dying, or even dead, but you believe God has a plan for it, take the actions to which God guides you.  Do not think, “There aren’t enough people here to accomplish anything.”  When God breathes His Spirit upon it, He will raise up the people to get the job done.

The rest of the passage contains two prophecies about God re-establishing the nation of Israel.  There are other prophecies in the Old Testament in which God says that He will restore Israel.  Some of those prophecies may be fulfilled by the Church, but at least a few of them seem to refer to God establishing an actual nation of Israel.  Some people believe that the modern nation of Israel to be the fulfillment of those prophecies.  That does not seem to me to work because all of those prophecies tell us that the nation of Israel which God will establish will be united in being faithful to God.  However, today’s nation of Israel is a secular nation.  So, what does this all mean?  I believe that God still desires to bring all of the Jews to Him.  What I am unsure of is whether He intends to establish a nation on this earth which will for the Jewish people who faithfully follow Him, or if it will be part of His Kingdom which He has established through the Church.  I started this paragraph thinking that my thoughts on the meaning of Ezekiel’s prophecies on the rejoining of the “sticks” of Ephraim and Judah and on Gog would come together in a different way, but this is where it went.

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