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Much has been written about Isaiah’s vision of the Messiah to come. The prophecies Isaiah wrote about a child to be born, the suffering to be endured, the peaceful kingdom to be established all come true in the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Daniel was given the visions of the political empires to come, and I believe the visions of Ezekiel were a picture of the church to come.
From the first chapter we read of a vision of four faces: “Their faces looked like this: Each of the four had the face of a man, and on the right side each had the face of a lion, and on the left the face of an ox; each also had the face of an eagle” (Ezek. 1:10 NIV). These are the same faces we see in the four directions on the standards of the Israelites as they camped about the Tabernacle in the wilderness.
These are the same faces seen later by John the Revelator when he gets a vision of the throne of God (Rev. 4:2-9). These four faces have been variously interpreted to signify the four gospel writers, the four directions, four virtues, or four groups of Israel. I would prefer to accept all these interpretations and to further submit that these are all descriptions of the church that was to come.
The four Gospels gave birth to the church through the preaching of the Word to all God’s people both Jew and Gentile in all four directions around the world. The church has become the new Israel, the new Jerusalem and wherever the Gospels are preached the four virtues often ascribed to the four creatures (courage, sacrifice, wisdom, and strength) abound.
Peter understood this when writing and preaching to both Jews and Gentiles in the early church, “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God” (1 Pet. 2:9-10 NIV).
Paul understood that the new Israel was not physical but spiritual when he wrote to the church in Rome, “A man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly; and circumcision is circum-cision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code . . .” (Rom. 2:28-29).
One of Ezekiel’s well known texts his visions of a “wheel in a wheel” and “dry bones” which have been put to song and are often what people know most about Ezekiel. These, too, became true with the advent of the church in the New Testament. In chapters 1 and 10 are two visions of a wheel intersecting a wheel with eyes around them going in all directions at once. These wheels demonstrate the omniscience and omnipresence of an all-knowing, all-seeing God whose Holy Spirit was to be all-powerful in the church to come.
The dry bones were put back together, new muscle and flesh came upon them, and new life came into the people of God. To some extent this came true when the captives returned from exile. There were only a few thousand of them and they did rebuild Jerusalem, a new wall, a new temple, and they were given new lives in their old homeland. But Israel never again had the glory and the independence they desired. Their city and wall were smaller, the temple was pitiful, and they were never again an independent nation before the birth of Christ. When I read the first chapter of John it is just as if the prophecy of Ezekiel’s bones have finally begun to come to life. “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14 NIV). The new people of God, the new Israel began with His Son Jesus and spread through the Apostles and His Word to all the world. Those who are “born again” put on new life and we call that assembly the church of God.
Chapters 40 to 44 of Ezekiel compose a beautifully detailed description of a new temple to come. The returning exiles from Babylon did rebuild the temple but as Ezra tells it (Ezra 3:12) people wept at the comparison to the temple of Solomon. The richness was not there. The glory was not there, and there was never again the mention of the Ark of the Covenant being there. This was certainly not the temple as seen by Ezekiel. It was not until the ministry of Jesus Christ that we hear of a new covenant which did not need an ark or a temple. The new covenant was to be written on the hearts of believers. This is when the words of Ezekiel came true, “This is where I will live among the Israelites forever. The house of Israel will never again defile my holy name—neither they nor their kings . . .” (Ezek. 43:7). Jesus came to His own, the Israelites, but they mostly rejected Him. The few who accepted Him took the Gospel of the new covenant to all the world and the believers became the new spiritual Israel.
The early church understood the spiritual nature of the new temple. Here is what the Apostle Paul said to the church in Corinth (he who had been a Pharisee who had been faithful to the old temple in Jerusalem), “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple” (1 Cor. 3:16-17).
Ezekiel ends his book of prophecy by describing a new city, a new Jerusalem and he closes with these words; "And the name of the city from that time on will be: THE LORD IS THERE" (Ezek. 48:35). Where is the new city which was to be called the place where the Lord is, where God dwells. It certainly was not the Jerusalem of the exiles, or the Jerusalem of the Greeks, or even the Jerusalem of the Romans in Jesus’ day. It was the same city that John saw coming down out of heaven in Revelation chapter 21. The dwelling place of God, the Kingdom of God, the Bride of Christ, the new Temple, the new Jerusalem, are all the same: the hearts of believers in Jesus Christ, who called “the church of God.”
Yes, Ezekiel saw the church, but like most prophets of old, he probably did not realize it. The new temple is a present day realty and we can be part of it when we experience the new birth that makes us members of the church of God which will truly last forever.
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