In film there is a story telling technique that allows the viewer to experience one scene from many perspectives and angles. This helps us as the viewer begin to come to grips with the reality of the scene and not just one person's perspective.
We see this often with detective themed movies like Sherlock Holmes and Murder on the Orient Express. The Bible does something similar with the Babylonian captivity of Jerusalem.
During this timeline we have three main prophets and their stories.
There's Jeremiah the prophet who warns Jerusalem and its kings of the Babylonian invasion.
There's Daniel who was taken as a youth into the Babylonian captivity.
Then there's Ezekiel who is also taken into Babylonian captivity but receives visions and insight about Jerusalem and their spiritual state.
So who was Ezekiel?
Ezekiel like Daniel was taken from Jerusalem during the first Babylonian siege of Jerusalem, but unlike Daniel, Ezekiel wasn't taken to the palace but camped outside the city in a refugee camp.
It's there besides the Chebar Canal that Ezekiel receives a vision about God.
You can read this vision in Ezekiel 1.
There's these four living creatures each has 4 faces and there's a wheel besides each one. On top of them is a throne and a human with fire around him sits on this throne. Weird right?
Later Ezekiel receives more visions.
He sees the temple in Jerusalem but instead of its people worshipping God, they are worshipping idols from various nations including the gods of Babylon. In the distance Ezekiel can see that man on the throne with the living creatures who have four faces leaving Jerusalem and heading towards Babylon. Still pretty weird right?
What's going on here?
Ezekiel is being told why Judah was sent into Babylonian Captivity. They had served other gods instead of the true God and this caused God to go away from His temple in Jerusalem.
But what's amazing about all of this is God doesn't abandon His people. While they are being sent to Babylon as punishment, God is also traveling with His people. Even when they have sinned and wanted to worship other gods, God still loves them enough to not leave them alone.
Ezekiel is then tasked with relaying this message to his fellow exiles and help them understand all that has happened. There's just one catch though.
No one is going to listen.
So Ezekiel does outlandish things to prove his point and make it easier to understand.
Like shaving his head then cutting all his hair with sword.
Or laying on his side for a year while only eating food that has been cooked over a fire made from poop.
But still no one listens because their hearts are hardened and they need new hearts.
God promises that one day He will remove their hearts of stone and replace it with a heart of flesh.
Ezekiel 11:19
"And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh."
God intends to do this through a Messianic King. But this won't be until we enter the New Testament.
Don't worry though God's got a plan!
God bring Ezekiel to valley filled with dry bones. It's possible this was site of a terrific battle. This valley of bones is yet another example of the spiritual state of God's people. But God tells Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones. He does and they slowly begin to be built back up into humans. First with the ligaments, then the muscles, and finally the skin.
This is what God wants to do with His people. He wants to restore them and give them life again.
At the very end of the book, God promises Ezekiel that He will one day destroy all evil in the world and establish a new temple in Jerusalem for His people where people of all nations can come and worship the true God of all.
God goes so far to even provide literal blueprints for this new temple although it is never built.
But why? Because sin has dug too deep a hole in humanity's heart and the only way for them to have a true heart transformation is to have an experience with God.
The good news of the book of Ezekiel is that even when we fail and have to be put in exile God still loves us and actually joins us in exile because God would rather be with you in a barren wasteland then be removed from you in a beautiful palace. Talk about love!