Ezekiel 37:11-12 KJV – “Then he said unto me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel: behold, they say, Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost: we are cut off for our parts. 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.”
Ezekiel was told to preach to a bunch of people in graves—talk about a dead audience. They come alive, and God says, this is my people coming back to their land again.
It is interesting how they will say, “Our hope is lost.” One of the greatest tragedies in human history was the Holocaust, which took place during World War II. I don’t know if the United States understood the full impact of what was happening to the Jewish people throughout Europe.
Hitler had come up with this idea, which was implemented by those who assisted him, men like Adolf Eichmann, Heinrich Himmler, and others, to bring about what they called the “final solution.” And this “final solution” was the complete eradication of the Jewish race from Europe.
They wanted to kill as many Jewish people as possible. They thought of them as subhuman. At first, they had German soldiers shoot them, but they didn’t have the stomach for it. They needed a more, shall we say, efficient way of doing it. Then, they came up with the horrific death camps—these concentration camps with names like Treblinka, Ravensbruck, and, of course, the famed Auschwitz, where 6 million Jewish men, women, and children were gassed, shot, tortured, experimented on, and put to death.
This was devastating for the Jewish people globally. But an amazing thing began to happen.
Despite this horrible tragedy, Jewish people began to realize, perhaps for the first time collectively, “we cannot expect others to protect us. No one will stand up for us. We need to get back to our land.” And the Jews began to return to Israel on May 14, 1948.
History was made when Israel became a nation.
That was not the first time Israel was a nation; she had been a nation for thousands of years, but she was born again as a nation, reunified as a people, and the prophetic time clock started to tick. It was a very significant moment.
Tim LaHaye, in his book, “Are We Living in the End Times?” said, “The smell of the Holocaust is still fresh in their memories.”
In the 1950s, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion said, “Ezekiel 37 has been fulfilled, and the nation Israel is hearing the footsteps of the Messiah.”
Then, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27, 2010, in Auschwitz, Poland, Benjamin Netanyahu, the current Prime Minister of Israel, made this amazing statement: “We have returned to our homeland… from every corner of the earth… The Jewish people rose from ashes… Dry bones became covered with flesh, a spirit filled them, and they lived and stood on their own feet as Ezekiel prophesied.”
Then Netanyahu went on to quote Ezekiel 37:11-12. If a pastor said that it’s one thing, but for the Prime Minister of Israel to acknowledge that the Jewish people’s re-gathering together as a nation is a fulfillment of Bible prophecy is amazing. Bible prophecy was fulfilled!
I don’t know if Mr. Netanyahu has read Ezekiel 38 and 39… but that’s what is still yet to come for Israel.
