Promise in the Prophets 323: Come out of the Graves

323. Come out of the Graves

Ezekiel 37:12, 14 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. And shall put my spirit in you, and ye shall live, and I shall place you in your own land: then shall ye know that I the Lord have spoken it, and performed it, saith the Lord.

The Lord God will open the graves of His people, they will come out of the graves, He will bring them to the land, He will put His spirit in them, they will live, and He will place them in their own land. All of this verbiage is to promise one thing: I will rise from the dead; my body will be resurrected; I will live again; I will dwell in the heavenly kingdom of God. 

All who are in the graves will hear His voice and will come out. “All” means all human beings who ever lived on earth, for all died. “Graves” means simply the dead bodies, whatever happened to them, whether buried, entombed, embalmed, cremated, or dismembered. The “voice” of the Lord will shout like a trumpet, like the voice of Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus, “Come forth!” Every human will hear the voice and come alive in the body. 

For the believers, the Lord will place His spirit in them and give them life and bring them into heaven. The promise is that believers will live eternally in the heavenly Kingdom of God (the Promised Land). This is our Home, the Place we belong.

The important words of this promise are “spirit” and “life.”This we have now already, here in this earthly life. We can believe the future promise and hope, but that present promise is harder to grasp. We don’t see God’s eternal life, the heavenly eternal kingdom, the Holy Spirit indwelling. But we believe it. It is real. The Resurrected Life is indeed here and now inside us. The problem is that in this temporal earthly life we still live with this body of sin, the body of death. It is what we see and feel, and we tend to live by sight instead of walking by faith. When we are finally shed of this mortal coil the life of God in us goes on to live forever in a perfect environment with great people and a holy God. Life and Love will be all-consuming in the Resurrection.