Can you explain the vision of Ezekiel 37 about the valley of dry bones?
Well, my dear friend, this is a very interesting chapter indeed! I believe that the Holy Spirit gives us the answer in verse 11 where we read: “And he said unto me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost: we are cut off!” (JND version). I believe this vision shows that Israel, as a nation, is dead as a people, so dead that there are only very dry and unattached bones. However, going on in verses 13 and 14 we read: “And ye shall know that I am Jehovah, when I have opened your graves, and have caused you to come up out of your graves, O my people. And I will put my Spirit in you, and ye shall live, and I will place you in your own land: and ye shall know that I Jehovah have spoken, and have done it, saith Jehovah,” (JND).
The nation of Israel, as you probably know, has had a long history of infidelity to God and to His commandments. At the time of Rehoboam in 1 Kings 12, the nation was split in two, with the northern kingdom of Israel demonstrating an increasingly ungodly list of kings, and the southern kingdom, Judah, demonstrating a more encouraging line at the first, but eventually falling utterly away from the Lord as well. Both nations experienced judgment for their sins by removal from the land of Israel (the Assyrians for the northerners and Babylon for the southerners). Some of the southern kingdom were allowed to return to the land after the captivity of Babylon; however, I do not believe that the vision of Ezekiel 37 speaks of the return from Babylon. When Christ came, the children of Israel (Judah), as a nation, rejected their Messiah, our Lord Jesus Christ, and shortly thereafter, they were forced out of their land by the Romans and dispersed all over the world, and thus Israel ceased to be a recognizable nation.
And so it is to this present day. I believe the valley of dry bones reflected how thoroughly dead and dried up Israel has been as a people; but God in His grace will one day put life back into His people. They will, as it were, be resurrected as a nation, and indeed, God will give them life through His Spirit and will return His dispersed people back to the land of their promised inheritance (see Malachi 3:1-3 and 4; Zechariah 14; Ezekiel 36:24-28 and 43:7; Revelation 1:7, and many other portions). And when will this return to the land of God’s people occur? I do not at all believe that we saw this in the action of the United Nations in 1948 when a portion of Palestine was designated as “Israel,” and Jewish people were allowed under the protection of the UN to begin migrating there.
It is not by the action of men that Israel will be revived and restored as a nation, but by God Himself. This, I believe, will happen in its fulness when the Lord Jesus returns to the earth to judge and put down His enemies, and to set up His millennial kingdom on the earth. Christ will come back to the earth, after He has first come to the clouds to gather up all born-again Christians (1 Thessalonians 4:16-18); then, after the rapture of the Church, there will be a 7 year period of tribulation; then after the worst of this, He will come again to the earth to set up His Kingdom. At this time, the faithful remnant of Israel will be brought back into the land, and Israel, as a nation, will be restored and blessed, being ruled by their King, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will be seated on the throne of David in the restored temple in Jerusalem. Thus, Israel, as a nation, will be brought up from the dead, as it were, being brought back to life by the Spirit of God which will now be in them. We are not talking about Christians in their heavenly blessing, but rather Israel as a nation, being blessed in their own land by their King. Moreover, in Ezekiel 37:19 we find out that God will bring back from all over the world the faithful of His people, both the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern (Judah), and they will be a total house of Israel once again. J. N. Darby in his Synopsis of the Bible says: “The dry bones of Israel, of the nation as a whole, are gathered together by the power of God. God accomplishes this work by His Spirit. The result of this intervention of God is that the dispersed of Israel, hitherto divided into two peoples, are gathered together in the earth, reunited under one Head, as one nation. It is the resurrection of the nation, which was really dead and buried. But God opens their graves, and places them again in their land restored to life as a nation.” (SF) (624.6)