It is commonplace for students to ‘fail to see the forest for the trees’ when looking at passages such as Ezekiel chapter one. In other words, in speculating about what the ‘wheels within wheels’ or what the ‘four living creatures’ represent, students fail to see what the entire passage is divinely intended to convey. The significance of this error cannot be overemphasized. It bears upon the overall message of the entire prophecy. In other words, in order to understand the overall thrust of this book, we need to rightly embrace what is placed before us in this first chapter. This we will do by asking and briefly answering three simple questions:
1. Unto whom was this prophet commissioned by God to prophesy?
The first few verses (of chapter one) identify that Ezekiel saw this vision while in captivity with the captives of Judah in Babylon. Later, in 2:3, the Lord makes it very clear to Ezekiel that He was sending him to speak ‘to the children of Israel, to a rebellious nation that hath rebelled against me.’ So then, Ezekiel was not commissioned to do ‘evangelistic’ work among the heathen.[1] Right in the passage the Lord makes it clear that He is speaking of the children of Israel, and not ‘lost folks’ in some general way. Ezekiel was a watchman unto Israel, and his warnings to the wicked were cautioning Israel about their wrong views of God and the consequences.
2. At what point in their history was Ezekiel commissioned to preach thus to them?
Ezekiel’s ministry among the ‘people of God’ took place after they had already been taken away into Babylonian captivity for their failure to rightly regard God and the sin it brought among them. God had sent unto them prophet after prophet, warning them of impending destruction if they did not repent, and rightly regard Him. Ezekiel’s ministry was among a people that had disregarded such warnings over a period of centuries.
3. What is significant about God beginning His ministry through Ezekiel by giving him this magnificent vision?[2]
From the time of the Exodus from Egyptian slavery to the time of re-enslavement in Babylon had been a period of approximately nine hundred years. In that period of time Israel had gone from being a favored people, the people of the true and living God, to being a people whose daily existence exhibited a caricature of God. Claiming to be His favored people, they had come to perpetually misrepresent Him before the nations of the earth. It was literally as though they had completely forgotten His purpose and his radiant glory among them. It is for these reasons that God began His work through Ezekiel by confronting Israel with this revelation of Himself in such otherworldly terms.
This brings us to a simple statement of the central message of the book of Ezekiel as a whole:
A Call to full alignment by Obedient Faith with the Glory of the Transcendent God
How is this relevant to twenty-first century Christians?[3] America began with a strong Christian base. Not all the early Fathers in American history were genuinely Christians, but many were. Some had fled spiritual persecution in Europe, much as Israel had fled bondage in Egypt. Their hope was to live according to the Truth, honoring God in all sincerity in an atmosphere of freedom from governmental interference. Today, just over four hundred years later,[4] American Christianity has become little more than a shadow of what it once was. The Truth, for which they literally uprooted themselves and their families and sailed to the other side of the world, is now entirely taken for granted.
This is disconcertingly comparable to how things had gone in Israel, only having progressed far more quickly in the churches. God is not rightly regarded, even among those claiming to be His people. The God of contemporary twenty-first century Christianity is very different from the God Who manifested His glory through Ezekiel in this first chapter. What this suggests is simply that the message of Ezekiel is indisputably appropriate for Christians today.
What was God seeking to accomplish in the lives of His people through Ezekiel? This holds the key to what He seeks to accomplish in our lives today through Ezekiel’s timeless prophecy. He began by manifesting His glorious transcendence so powerfully that they were confronted with their disturbingly low views of God, views that had developed through centuries of over-familiarity with Him. Surely, this is what is needed today among Christians!
Why did God permit the inhabitants of Judah, the very people in whom He had fully invested His purposes on the earth, to fall into enemy hands? Why was it necessary for their lives to be so deeply uprooted that they literally lost everything? What is He saying to us [His professing people] right now? In the same way that they had entirely lost a genuine sense of His glory and transcendence among them, we have done so as well. The only way God could get their attention was to take them into brutal captivity. Like Israel then, twenty-first century Christianity has ‘left its first love.’
How long will God wait before He permits even more catastrophic events to unfold for us as they had to for Israel? How long will He be misrepresented among those who claim to be His, before He sends calamity upon us, then once again reveals Himself as the transcendent God He is? All of these questions are evidence that Christians and churches today are standing in need of Ezekiel’s message. But, will we hear it?
[1] This fact, by the way, reveals that the “Watchman” passages [Ezekiel 3:16-21 and Ezekiel 30:1-20] have nothing directly to do with evangelism, regardless of what preachers may say about them.
[2] Apart from understanding the answers to such questions as these, we will fail to grasp its true central message.
[3] Speaking here about American Christianity. What is true of the majority of ‘Christians’ here is not necessarily true of those in China, or other places in the world where God is not presumed upon to the degree He is here.
[4] Measuring from the landing in Plymouth in the early seventeenth century.