Ezekiel

Ezekiel did all kinds of wild things that got people’s attention. He did things and he saw things that probably most people thought were crazy. He did them though, and I’m sure that it at least made the Israelites pay a little attention to him.

Ezekiel ate a scroll (Ezekiel 3), which was Ezekiel literally taking in the Word of God so that he could preach it. Ezekiel also made a miniature of Jerusalem, and then was bound up lying on his side for 390 days facing his replica of the city, and then he turned to his other side for 40 days and faced the city again. He was bearing the sins of Israel and Judah (Ezekiel 4).

Ezekiel saw cherubim that had four wheels, and were completely covered in eyes (Ezekiel 10). They departed with the glory of the LORD from the temple. Even reading this passage, it is hard for me to actually get a picture of what it would have looked like. It is a passage that seems completely unrealistic, and I cannot imagine what the Israelites would have thought of it when Ezekiel shared it with them.

He also prophesied and dry bones came alive (Ezekiel 37). He had a vision that he was in a valley full of dry bones, bones that had no life left in them. God told him to prophesy so the bones would live, and he did, and the bones connected to each other, and were covered in flesh, and became a large mass of people. These bones symbolized Israel, and how dead and devoid of hope they were, but how God was going to breathe life into them and bring them back to the promised land.

Ezekiel was really radical, and he stood out. It would be hard to take a person seriously who was that outrageous. Today, that person would most likely get institutionalized because of their “visions.” His messages were probably not the most comforting things to hear either, so it was probably easier to ignore him, and just say that he was crazy, rather than to realize he was speaking the truth of God’s word.