Ezekiel 37:12
Therefore prophesy and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel. Therefore prophesy and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel.
The promise belongs to the vision of the valley of dry bones, where the command to prophesy to the wind is answered with life restored to the slain until they stand up as an exceeding great army. The figure declares that no work of restoration is too hard for God to accomplish. None who trust in Him need ever say that hope is lost.
The dry bones are God's professed people, the house of Israel. They include the church at Battle Creek, pictured as a valley of dry bones spiritually dead and without life. They are backslidden, asleep and at ease, holding truth as a dead letter without the deep moving of the Spirit upon the heart and its life-giving influence. Their religion is form and ceremony and merely legal religion, without experimental knowledge of its vitalizing, sanctifying power. Their hearts are icy, made cold by prejudice and unbelief.
God will breathe His Holy Spirit upon His people to bring the dead dry bones to life and energize them. This breath is the Holy Spirit bearing upon hearts to awaken them to watch and be sober because the end is near. It is the deep, life-giving moving of the Spirit upon the heart, without which truth remains a dead letter, and He must do this before He can use them. Those who profess truth but lack experimental knowledge of its vitalizing, sanctifying power need God to breathe His Spirit and life into them. Religious form that has displaced vitalizing, sanctifying power shows the need for this spiritual renewal.
The life comes by power from God through the life-giving message of Christ and His righteousness. That message presents sin and atonement in Bible light, bringing life to hearts made cold by prejudice, unbelief, and merely legal religion. It turns form and ceremony back into simplicity and power and brings people from darkness into living knowledge of Christ as Redeemer and the world's Redeemer. Those who see the better things provided for them receive light to give to others and become workers together with God in gathering in and bringing home the sheep of His fold.
The breathing comes in answer to earnest prayer for the working of the Spirit, raising people to living Christian experience. That experience is seen in solemn conviction, weeping, coming forward to choose Christ, gaining evidence of connection with God, and bearing heartfelt testimonies. It comes also through working and praying to bring needed light and knowledge even when the door is closed against it, to stir with some power what is spiritually dead and give it life. The revival is present when the word of the Lord is believed and obeyed. Then it fits the people to carry the warning messages to the world before Christ's second coming, to proclaim the third angel's message with self-denial and self-sacrifice where it has never yet been heard and to enter new fields. It brings steady advancement and the use of all powers for God.
The revival requires working out salvation with fear and trembling while God works within to will and to do of His good pleasure. It requires humbling the soul before God, drawing near to Him, turning from self-chosen ways and counsel, seeking Him while He may be found, and forsaking wicked ways and thoughts to receive abundant pardon. It requires changing purposes and yielding the will to God as clay in the hands of the potter, cooperating with Him in passive, susceptible cooperation to become a vessel molded unto honor. Those revived stand in the bright beams of the Sun of Righteousness with no earthly or selfish motive suffered to live, so as to be renewed in the divine image. They bring Christlike purposes and the purity, meekness, lowliness and grace of the Redeemer into the work instead of independence, self-counsel, and counterworking the divine purposes.
In His own time God will also literally call forth the dead by giving again the breath of life and bidding the dry bones live. Personal identity is preserved, with spirit and character kept with God and each person rising with his own character. The same form comes forth bearing the same individuality of features so that friend will recognize friend, yet free from disease and every defect. God gives the righteous dead a body that pleases Him, made of much finer material as a new creation and new birth, sown a natural body and raised a spiritual body. The same identical particles of matter that went into the grave are not given back, for no law of nature requires it.