Ezekiel 37:13, commentary and pictures

The verse belongs to the vision of the valley of dry bones in Ezekiel 37:1-14, in which at God's command life returns to the slain and they stand as a great army, showing that God can restore what appears utterly lost and that those who trust Him need not give up hope, since no work of restoration is beyond His power. The dry bones in graves are God's own people, the house of Israel, who can become spiritually dead, lifeless and backslidden. That lifeless condition means icy hearts having only a legal religion, padlocked and hardened by prejudice and unbelief. It means people who profess to believe the truth yet lack an experimental knowledge of Christ as the world's Redeemer and of the vitalizing, sanctifying power of truth, holding the form of truth in darkness while its power and simplicity are lost in a round of ceremonies. Outward religious form and ceremonies cannot take the place of that power.

Opening the graves and bringing the people up, by which they know that He is the LORD, means God Himself stirring them by a life-giving power and breathing His Holy Spirit upon them with a deep moving upon the heart, which He must do before He can use them. That breathing is brought to bear upon hearts at ease to wake sleepers who are off guard and unready. Without that life, truth becomes a dead letter, leaving churches and institutions sleeping, reckless, insensible to the results of sin, and heedless of warning. That life comes through the light and knowledge a lifeless church needs, received as a life-giving message of sin and atonement in Bible light, the better things provided, Christ and His righteousness.

Apart from this reviving, even reproducing the miracles of Christ before the impenitent would not add to conviction or turn them to repentance. Divine truth shining in clear rays is convincing enough to condemn those who do not receive it, and Christian love works the grandest of all miracles to bring professed believers to repentance and living power. Obtaining a hearing for that life-giving light requires work and prayer rather than closing the door to it, or many souls will be lost. God breathes His Spirit in answer to united prayer, and this work brings spiritual revival marked by solemn conviction, weeping, desire to be Christians, and heartfelt testimonies giving evidence of connection with God.

When the word of the Lord is believed and obeyed and this life is received, steady advancement is made and the church has heaven below to go to heaven in. Those made alive come to know the Lord and can give light to others and work together with God in gathering in and bringing home the sheep of His fold. They labor with self-denial and self-sacrifice to proclaim the third angel's message and the last warnings before Christ's second coming where they have never yet been heard and to enter new fields. The verse calls for humbling of the soul before God, seeking Him while He may be found, turning from independence and self-counsel, and working in an opposite direction so that purposes change and the purity and meekness and lowliness of Christ are brought into the work.

The end is near and steals upon sleepers stealthily, imperceptibly and noiselessly like the muffled tread of a thief in the night, so that by the Spirit they no longer sleep as do others but watch and are sober. Even now after waiting and wasting much of a lifetime they consent to give the will as clay into the hands of the potter and to cooperate with God in becoming a vessel molded unto honor, passive and susceptible to receive divine impressions, standing in the bright beams of the Sun of Righteousness where no earthly or selfish motive is suffered to live, and thus renewed in the divine image. In His own time God will literally call forth the dead by giving the breath of life again and bidding the dry bones live. Personal identity is preserved, with spirit and character kept with God so each person will have his own character, and the same form will come forth bearing the same individuality of features so that friend will recognize friend, but free from disease and every defect, not from the same identical particles of matter that went into the grave but from much finer material as a new creation and new birth that pleases God.