Ezekiel 37: A Last Days Bible Prophecy that’s Coming True Right Now!

These are exciting times! We are witnesses to bible prophecy being fulfilled right now! God keeps His promises! Especially those He made to the nation of Israel. Therefore, it is important that we as born-again Christians read and understand end times prophecies so we can warn the lost that there is no time to waste! Let’s dig in…

Ezekiel 37 – The Valley of Dry Bones

The Lord took hold of me, and I was carried away by the Spirit of the Lord to a valley filled with bones. ²He led me all around among the bones that covered the valley floor. They were scattered everywhere across the ground and were completely dried out. ³Then he asked me, “Son of man, can these bones become living people again?”

“O Sovereign Lord,” I replied, “you alone know the answer to that.”

⁴Then he said to me, “Speak a prophetic message to these bones and say, ‘Dry bones, listen to the word of the Lord! ⁵This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Look! I am going to put breath into you and make you live again! ⁶I will put flesh and muscles on you and cover you with skin. I will put breath into you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’”

⁷So I spoke this message, just as he told me. Suddenly as I spoke, there was a rattling noise all across the valley. The bones of each body came together and attached themselves as complete skeletons. ⁸Then as I watched, muscles and flesh formed over the bones. Then skin formed to cover their bodies, but they still had no breath in them.

⁹Then he said to me, “Speak a prophetic message to the winds, son of man. Speak a prophetic message and say, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come, O breath, from the four winds! Breathe into these dead bodies so they may live again.’”

¹⁰So I spoke the message as he commanded me, and breath came into their bodies. They all came to life and stood up on their feet—a great army.

¹¹Then he said to me, “Son of man, these bones represent the people of Israel. They are saying, ‘We have become old, dry bones—all hope is gone. Our nation is finished.’ ¹²Therefore, prophesy to them and say, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: O my people, I will open your graves of exile and cause you to rise again. Then I will bring you back to the land of Israel. ¹³When this happens, O my people, you will know that I am the Lord. ¹⁴I will put my Spirit in you, and you will live again and return home to your own land. Then you will know that I, the Lord, have spoken, and I have done what I said. Yes, the Lord has spoken!’”

Reunion of Israel and Judah

From 1 Kings 11 where Israel is split into 2 kingdoms. Top image by Sweet Publishing from FreeBibleImages.org, (CC BY-SA 3.0)

¹⁵Again a message came to me from the Lord: ¹⁶“Son of man, take a piece of wood and carve on it these words: ‘This represents Judah and its allied tribes.’ Then take another piece and carve these words on it: ‘This represents Ephraim and the northern tribes of Israel.’ ¹⁷Now hold them together in your hand as if they were one piece of wood. ¹⁸When your people ask you what your actions mean, ¹⁹say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I will take Ephraim and the northern tribes and join them to Judah. I will make them one piece of wood in my hand.’

²⁰“Then hold out the pieces of wood you have inscribed, so the people can see them. ²¹And give them this message from the Sovereign Lord: I will gather the people of Israel from among the nations. I will bring them home to their own land from the places where they have been scattered. ²²I will unify them into one nation on the mountains of Israel. One king will rule them all; no longer will they be divided into two nations or into two kingdoms. ²³They will never again pollute themselves with their idols and vile images and rebellion, for I will save them from their sinful apostasy. I will cleanse them. Then they will truly be my people, and I will be their God.

²⁴“My servant David will be their king, and they will have only one shepherd. They will obey my regulations and be careful to keep my decrees. ²⁵They will live in the land I gave my servant Jacob, the land where their ancestors lived. They and their children and their grandchildren after them will live there forever, generation after generation. And my servant David will be their prince forever. ²⁶And I will make a covenant of peace with them, an everlasting covenant. I will give them their land and increase their numbers, and I will put my Temple among them forever. ²⁷I will make my home among them. I will be their God, and they will be my people. ²⁸And when my Temple is among them forever, the nations will know that I am the Lord, who makes Israel holy.”
Ezekiel 37 NLT

A Future Hope for Israel — Bible Prophecy

It is 585 BC, a year after the destruction of Jerusalem. The surviving Jews are in exile in Babylon.
Ezekiel sees a “valley” but it’s also called a “plain” like the plain in Genesis 11, where the Tower of Babel was built.
Ezekiel, as a priest, must have felt strange because he knew that being near dead bodies made him unclean.
God is showing Ezekiel a prophecy of the future to give hope to the exiled Jews. The exiles felt like dry bones — hopeless. The prophecy gives them a future hope.
God will resurrect Israel and His Spirit will breathe new life into the nation. His Chosen People will return to the Promised Land.
The dry bones represent Israel as a dead nation. But God has the power to bring it back to life by breathing His Spirit into them. Bones – dead for over 2500 years.
There is a hope that God will remake humans to love God and others.
The restoration will happen in 2 stages…
1. A secular nation, which is represented by the bodies looking like people, but they were still dead. The nation is in a sinful state. It was fulfilled in 1948, with the creation of the State of Israel. Though it’s “alive”, it is secular. A dead language revived. A barren land now blossoming into farms and groves. A land of conflict, reborn into a rich and prosperous land. (Though it still is dealing with conflict.)
2. God breathes His Spirit into the bones and they come to life. In Hebrew, the word for “breath” is “ruach” — spirit or wind. The 2nd part of the prophecy, where God breathes His Spirit into Israel won’t happen until the 144,000 are chosen after the Rapture and during the Great Tribulation. God will use the 144,000 to evangelize to the remnant of Israel.
These were the same two steps when God created man in Genesis. God exerts His creative powers again. It’s an event of “creational” proportions.
After the resurrection and before Pentecost, John writes that Jesus breathed on His disciples…

¹⁹That Sunday evening the disciples were meeting behind locked doors because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders. Suddenly, Jesus was standing there among them! “Peace be with you,” he said. ²⁰As he spoke, he showed them the wounds in his hands and his side. They were filled with joy when they saw the Lord! ²¹Again he said, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.” ²²Then he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. ²³If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven. If you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”
John 20:19-23 NLT

In Jewish history, there are no coincidences.

The Jewish population growth in Israel…

After WW1: 50,000
1922: 83,000
1935: 300,000
1948: 640,000
1965: 2.2 million
2016: 6.1 million
2021: 9,450,000

From death to abundant life. The bones were scattered — very dry and old. They weren’t organized into graves. God asked Ezekiel if these bones could come back to life. That’s something a human brain could never fathom. Death in those days was final. However, he knows that God can do anything. God then tells him to prophecy — talk to the bones and supernaturally, they come to life. The life came from the 4 winds.

This will be a reinstatement of the New Covenant for the Jews. They will be regathered and regenerated. First, regathered in a sinful, secular state. Then, they still need the breath of God — the Holy Spirit — spiritual regeneration, which is only available through Yeshua Hamashiach.

This all is reflected in the Book of Revelation…

In Revelation 7…

Then I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds so they did not blow on the earth or the sea, or even on any tree. ²And I saw another angel coming up from the east, carrying the seal of the living God. And he shouted to those four angels, who had been given power to harm land and sea, ³“Wait! Don’t harm the land or the sea or the trees until we have placed the seal of God on the foreheads of his servants.”

⁴And I heard how many were marked with the seal of God—144,000 were sealed from all the tribes of Israel…
Revelation 7:1-4 NLT

Revelation 14…

Then I saw the Lamb standing on Mount Zion, and with him were 144,000 who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads.
Revelation 14:1 NLT

That will happen in the middle of the Great Tribulation. Gratefully, we don’t have to wait until the Great Tribulation to receive the Holy Spirit! That is part of the New Covenant that Jesus makes with His born-again believers. The Old Covenant is obsolete.

Remember this… God can do anything and He keeps His promises.

We ARE Living in the End Times!

It should NOT be frightening to you if you are a born-again believer. We have a confident HOPE that we will be removed from this earth to not have to face God’s wrath and judgment. Look around at the news — and we’ll get into it more with the next 2 chapters. Wars and rumors of wars as birth pains are ridiculously stronger and more frequent. Today is the DAY OF SALVATION!

If you’re not sure if you’re saved or not, if you truly want to be born again and have the assurance of salvation, receive the Holy Spirit, feel His Shalom — a peace that surpasses all understanding, and get a 1-way, non-stop ticket to Heaven after you die, or that you won’t be left behind at the Rapture, which can happen at any moment, this is what you have to do…