Lessons From the Book of Ezekiel
WHAT an awful chapter is 23. How it points out the fearful sins of Judah and Israel. And what a sad incident is given in chapter 24 if we will but dwell for a little time upon it. The reader will note all through Ezekiel that the prophet himself is given for a sign of the people; and he shows by his own sufferings and privations which he undergoes, some of the awful sufferings which will come to Israel. Famine was to overtake them; he was to live for a time on famine diet. They were to be taken captive and bound by their enemies; he himself must lie in one position as tho he were bound, showing to them what must come to them. They were to lose their city; and the pride of their life and the joy of their heart, the temple itself, was to be destroyed. Then comes the awful blow to Ezekiel of the death of his wife, and yet over her he must not sigh, nor cry, nor wail aloud. THE closing chapters of Ezekiel are a prophecy of the restoration; a prophecy which was never literally fulfilled and never will be literally fulfilled. If God’s people had heeded the words of the prophet, the Lord would have cut off all their enemies, as He declares in chapters 38 and 39; those who had gone down in death would have been resurrected, as presented in chapters 36 and 37; and the glorious temple, with its water of life and its wonderful glory of God, would have been rebuilt, and Israel would have become a light indeed to the world; but they refused to be ashamed, and so a mere shadow of the temple was builded instead of the wonderful structure which the Lord presented by His prophet.