Ezekiel 47:6, commentary and pictures

The verse belongs to the vision of waters issuing from under the threshold of the house eastward at the south side of the altar, flowing toward the east country and down into the desert and into the sea, whose waters shall be healed. The river begins as a small, very small rivulet and constantly deepens and widens as it flows and advances. It rises from waters to the ankles to waters to the knees to waters to the loins until it becomes a river that cannot be passed over. Its deepening and widening in its course continues until its life-giving waters are spread abroad.

The question hast thou seen this calls attention to that increase, and the return to the brink of the river directs attention to it. What is then seen is the result in very many trees on both banks, healing to the sea and desert, life to everything the river reaches, a great multitude of fish, and trees whose fruit is for meat and whose leaf is for medicine because their waters issue out of the sanctuary. The vision in this way shows how the truth for this time, God's work, is to go, beginning small and extending to the east and to the west and to the north, to the islands of the sea, and to all parts of the world until its life-giving waters are spread over all the earth. That spreading is the advance of God's people, His chosen kingdom, as the gospel spreads.

The river is the gospel to be given in its purity as a stream of living water and in action, and it represents God's people advancing, not a stagnant pool but a river constantly flowing. Wherever the river is received its grace heals the maladies and harms sin has produced, bringing sanctification, comfort, victory over the world, light, strength, and refreshing to all who look to God and walk humbly in the footsteps of Christ, with the good fruit they bear witnessing to a work of righteousness. The growth means a large work is to be done by many who commence in a small way, with many souls reached not through display or any devising on the part of man but through the working of the Holy Spirit on the hearts of human agencies, in the same way the Saviour worked, so that when His methods become the methods of His followers His blessing will attend their labors.

The deepening and widening means a series of events revealing that God is master of the situation, with the truth proclaimed in clear, unmistakable language under the overruling guidance of the Holy Spirit to prepare the way of the Lord. Men in all fields nigh and afar off are called from the plow and from common commercial vocations and educated in connection with men of experience to proclaim the truth with power. Mountains of difficulty are removed by wonderful workings of divine providence and cast into the sea so the message that means so much to the dwellers upon the earth is heard and understood and men know what is truth, advancing onward and still onward until the whole earth shall have been warned and then the end shall come. The increase teaches that the work with its great and living interest is not to be centered in any one place nor have its strength and efficiency concentrated in one place by human wisdom or consolidated under one management, but to spread abroad and be managed in many places by human instrumentalities with each institution independent under God's direction and individuality and personal responsibility preserved, so that workers in different localities bear responsibility and their characters develop and their powers strengthen.

The work at Madison illustrates this vision and shows how the message should be carried in many places. Workers who have begun small are therefore to continue to learn of Christ, to not be daunted, to be free in the Lord, and to go forward with an acceptable work.