ISAIAH 29 AND EZEKIEL 37

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Nov 4, 1930

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 57, No. 43.

ISAIAH 29 AND EZEKIEL 37

Mrs. Jessie Deason of Utah is perplexed concerning certain statements in Isaiah 29 and Ezekiel 37. She also asks other questions.

In Isaiah 29:9-12 we have a graphic picture of the inability of those who profess to be God’s people to understand the prophecies of the word because of their sins. The context of this section of Isaiah makes this plain. See Isaiah 28:7ff.; 30:8ff. The “book that is sealed” has no reference whatever to the “sealed book of the angel Moroni.”

Ezekiel 37 gives a beautiful description of the reunion of the restored Israel of God into the coming glorious Messianic kingdom to be ruled over by Christ as “My servant David.” Hence, it is fantastic and bizarre to apply the two sticks of this chapter, one for Judah and the other, “Ephraim,” for Israel, representing this restoration of spiritual Israel, to the Book of Mormon and the Bible combined as one. Ezekiel 37 has no fulfillment this side of the second advent of Christ.

In a spiritual sense it is true that those who will be redeemed in God’s everlasting kingdom will belong to the twelve tribes of Israel. See Romans 2:28, 29; Galatians 3:29; Revelation 21:9-12.

Ministers of the gospel, or “elders,” as the Bible terms them, are ordained to this sacred service after they have been duly appointed by church leaders, by prayer and the laying on of hands. (Acts 13:3; 14:23; 1 Timothy 4:14.) They must be of irreproachable Christian character and satisfy the consecration criteria named in 1 Timothy 3:1-7 and Titus 1:5-9. Seventh-day Adventist ministers are ordained according to this Scriptural plan. This denomination has no “apostles” or “seventies” in its organization.

Seventh-day Adventists do most certainly believe in divine healing, for it is a Scriptural teaching. See Mark 16:17, 18; James 5:15. They do not, however, believe in the sensational, spectacularly popular, wholesale, advertising type of so-called “divine healing,” so prevalent in these days of deception, and so often, unfortunately, connected with evangelistic movements. The Gospels do not reveal that our Lord did His divine healing in any such way. The enemy of all righteousness delights to counterfeit the true workings of God, and Biblical prediction plainly declares that such will be particularly true of these last days, days just before the return of our Lord. (Matthew 24:23, 24.)

If the questioner will add the 1810 years to A. D. 34, the time that she admits marks the close of the 490 years, and which years do not form a part of the 490 years but are to be added to them, she will arrive at 1844. Her confusion comes from taking 1810 as a date, whereas it a sum of the years after the period of 490 years.