Charles Spurgeon’s Amazing Prophecy: Dry Bones Will Come To Life
Halloween has come and gone, yet many people have left their giant skeletons standing. Since 2020, what I call the “skeleton craze” has continued to grow. What began with 12-foot-tall skeletons towering over front yards across America has evolved into an elaborate display of skeletons in every imaginable shape and size. This year, there seemed to be skeletal versions of just about everything—from dogs and cats to birds and bats. They were hanging from trees, scaling the sides of houses, and perched along fences and rooftops. Everywhere you looked, skeletons were on display!
I sense that there may be something more to this skeleton craze than meets the eye. Skeletons are unmistakable symbols of death, and their growing popularity could be seen as a reflection of how the enemy has influenced our culture to embrace and even celebrate what would ordinarily inspire fear.
But when I see these skeletons, my thoughts turn to something entirely different. Rather than dwelling on death, I am reminded of God’s resurrection power and His ability to restore life to what seems hopelessly lost. Each time I encounter one of these gigantic bony figures, I envision the extraordinary scene described in Ezekiel 37—the valley of dry bones. It is one of Scripture’s most remarkable prophetic visions, revealing God’s promise concerning the nation of Israel and a future restoration that has yet to reach its ultimate fulfillment.
I’ve written about this before—you can read about that HERE, but I want to share more about why I feel this way.
Charles Spurgeon’s Sermon about Israel
Recently, I came across an extraordinary sermon delivered by the renowned theologian Charles Spurgeon on July 16, 1864, more than 162 years ago.
For those unfamiliar with Spurgeon, he was known as the Prince of Preachers and is widely regarded as one of the most influential Christian pastors of the 19th century. His powerful messages continue to inspire believers today, particularly those who understand that salvation comes through God’s grace rather than human effort. What I especially appreciate about Spurgeon is his unwavering focus on Jesus Christ and what only He can accomplish. He also had an unshakable confidence in the authority of Scripture, firmly believing that what God has promised WILL COME TO PASS.
The message Spurgeon delivered that day, entitled The Restoration and Conversion of the Jews, is especially fascinating because of its prophetic implications. Consider that he preached these words many decades before the Holocaust and the establishment of the modern State of Israel in 1948, when the Jewish people regained national sovereignty in their ancestral homeland.
Spurgeon wasn’t claiming to be a prophet or offering predictions of his own. Rather, he was simply proclaiming what the Scriptures had already revealed. Drawing particularly from Ezekiel 37, he explained that the Jewish people would one day be restored to the land God gave them and, ultimately, reconciled to their Messiah, Jesus Christ.
In Ezekiel 37, God gives the prophet a remarkable vision of a valley filled with dry, lifeless bones. As Ezekiel speaks the words God commands him to proclaim, the bones begin coming together, eventually becoming covered with sinews, flesh, and skin. In the midst of this, something essential is still missing: the breath of life.
The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. 2 He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. 3 He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”
I said, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.”
4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! 5 This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. 6 I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’”
7 So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. 8 I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.
9 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’”10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.
Pastor Spurgeon preached that these verses are clearly referring to the nation of Israel and that what is written in Ezekiel 37 WILL HAPPEN. He stressed that this passage prophesies a future resurrection of the “dry bones” (Jewish people).
Before Israel became a nation again, Spurgeon stated in his 1864 sermon,
“Israel is now blotted out from the map of nations; her sons are scattered far and wide; her daughters mourn beside all the rivers of the earth. Her sacred song is hushed; no king reigns in Jerusalem; she bringeth forth no governors among her tribes. But she is to be restored; she is to be restored ‘as from the dead.’”
Here Spurgeon is proclaiming that the nation of Israel will be resurrected! A nation that was once dead will be brought up out of the grave and live again!
He goes on to declare,
“When her own sons have given up all hope of her, then is God to appear for her. She is to be re-organized; her scattered hones are to be brought together. There will be a native government again; there will again be the form of a body politic; a state shall be incorporated, and a king shall reign.”
Wow! Just consider the significance of those words! On May 14, 1948, just 84 years after Spurgeon delivered this sermon, the modern State of Israel was established, and the Jewish people once again had a sovereign nation in their biblical homeland. A government was formed, and Jews from around the world continued returning to this tiny but historically significant place.
For centuries, the Jewish people had endured exile, persecution, and repeated attempts to destroy them. Hitler’s horrific campaign of extermination during the Holocaust was not the first time they had faced such hatred, but it was among the most devastating. Millions were murdered, and countless families and communities were torn apart.
Yet, despite centuries of suffering, the Jewish people survived. And in 1948, the world witnessed an extraordinary moment in their history. For those who share Spurgeon’s understanding of biblical prophecy, Israel’s reestablishment was a powerful reminder of God’s faithfulness and the promises He had spoken long before.
Spurgeon stated,
“Israel has now become alienated from her own land. Her sons, though they can never forget the sacred dust of Palestine, yet die at a hopeless distance from her consecrated shores, But it shall not be so forever, for her sons shall again rejoice in her: her land shall be called Beulah, for as a young man marrieth a virgin so shall her sons marry her. ‘I will place you in your own land,’ is God’s promise to them. They shall again walk upon her mountains, shall once more sit under her vines and rejoice under her fig-trees. And they are also to be re-united.”
Spurgeon understood that God’s plan extended far beyond simply returning the Jewish people to their homeland. Something even greater was yet to come! As he emphatically declared in his sermon, “ISRAEL IS TO HAVE A SPIRITUAL RESTORATION OR CONVERSION.”
Although Spurgeon acknowledged that he didn’t know which would occur first—the Jewish people’s return to their ancestral homeland, or their spiritual restoration—he remained confident that both would eventually come to pass.
Spurgeon describes the spiritual restoration below:
“Both the text and the context teach this. The promise is that they shall renounce their idols, and, behold, they have already done so. ‘Neither shall they defile themselves any more with their idols.’ Whatever faults the Jew may have besides, he certainly has no idolatry. ‘The Lord thy God is one God,’ is a truth far better conceived by the Jew than by any other man on earth except the Christian. Weaned forever from the worship of all images, of whatever sort, the Jewish nation has now become infatuated with traditions or duped by philosophy. She is to have, however, instead of these delusions, a spiritual religion: she is to love her God. ‘They shall be my people, and I will be their God.’ The unseen but omnipotent Jehovah is to be worshipped in spirit and in truth by his ancient people; they are to come before him in his own appointed way, accepting the Mediator whom their sires rejected; coming into covenant relation with God, for so our text tells us- ‘I will make a covenant of peace with them,’ and Jesus is our peace, therefore we gather that Jehovah shall enter into the covenant of grace with them, that covenant of which Christ is the federal head, the substance, and the surety. They are to walk in God’s ordinances and statutes, and so exhibit the practical effects of being united to Christ who hath given them peace.”
Spurgeon is saying that at some point in the future, the nation of Israel will finally recognize JESUS CHRIST AS THEIR MESSIAH. When they do, it will be like life from the dead. Those dry bones will be fully alive, complete with the spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Nowadays there are people in this world (and even Christians) who say that God is done with the Jewish people. They declare that they had their chance and they blew it. Some say that the regathering of the nation of Israel was an accident, or done through the works of Satan.
THIS IS ABSURD AND UNBIBLICAL…
The Bible clearly tells us that the Lord Himself will resurrect the nation of Israel. He is the one who will bring them back to their land so they can eventually receive His spirit and recognize His son.
Spurgeon states,
“All these promises certainly imply that the people of Israel are to be converted to God, and that this conversion is to be permanent, for the tabernacle of God is to be with them, the Most High is, in an especial manner, to have his sanctuary in the midst of them for evermore; so that whatever nations may apostatize and turn from the Lord in these latter days, the nation of Israel never can, for she shall be effectually and permanently converted, the hearts of the fathers shall be turned with the hearts of the children unto the Lord their God, and they shall be the people of God, world without end.”
Again, Spurgeon didn’t know how this would come about. HE JUST KNEW THAT GOD SAID IT SO IT MUST BE TRUE!
HE TOOK GOD AT HIS WORD!
How about you? Do you take God at His word? I hope so.
Spurgeon says,
“I am not going to theorize upon which of them will come first, whether they shall be restored first, and converted afterwards, or converted first, and then restored. They are to be restored, and they are to be converted too. Let the Lord send these blessings in his own order, and we shall be well content whichever way they shall come. We take this for our joy and our comfort, that this thing shall be, and that both in the spiritual and in the temporal throne, the King Messiah shall sit, and reign among his people gloriously.”
He adds,
“How can the Jews be converted to Christ? How can they be made into a nation? Truly, the case is quite as hopeless as that of the bones in the valley! … How can these things be ? The prophet does not say it cannot be; his unbelief is not so great as that, but at the same time, he scarcely ventures to think that it can ever be possible. He very wisely, however, puts back the question upon his God- ‘O Lord God, thou knowest.’”
I love the part where Spurgeon quotes Ezekiel by declaring, ““O Lord God, thou knowest.”
That is all we need to understand. GOD KNOWS AND HE WILL DO IT.
Yes, humans will continue to rage against the Jewish people. This is why we are seeing the rise of antisemitism in this nation and around the globe. The enemy knows this prophecy. He aims to keep the Jewish people as dead, dry skeletons.
BUT GOD HAS ALREADY SPOKEN.“These bones shall live!”
In 1864, Spurgeon had no way of knowing that the modern State of Israel would be established in 1948. Yet he was confident that God’s promises concerning the Jewish people would ultimately be fulfilled. Rather than speculating about when these events might unfold, he encouraged his congregation to trust God’s timing and respond in faith.
He explained:
“Now some of you are very sanguine about this to-night, and you are expecting to see the Jews converted very soon, perhaps in a month or two. I wish you may see it as soon as your desires would date it. Others of us are not very sanguine, but take a more gloomy view of a long future of woes. Well, let us both together come before God to-night, and say, ‘O Lord God, thou knowest; and if thou knowest it, Lord, we will be content to leave the secret with thee; only tell us what thou wouldst have us to do; we ask not food for speculation, but we do ask for work; we ask for something by which we may practically show that we really do love the Jew, and that we would bring him to Christ.’ In answer to this, the Lord says to his servants, ‘Prophesy upon these bones,’ so that our duty to-night, as Christians, is to prophesy upon these bones, and we shall then see God’s purpose fulfilled, when we obey God’s precept.”
Isn’t this amazing? Spurgeon wasn’t encouraging his congregation to make a wild guess about the future. He was urging them to pray, trust God’s promises, and actively participate in His purposes. Just as Ezekiel was commanded to prophesy over the dry bones, Spurgeon called believers to proclaim God’s Word over the Jewish people, trusting the Lord to accomplish what only He could do.
And isn’t this how we should be praying today?
Psalm 122:6 tells us, “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee” (KJV). But what is the greatest peace anyone can experience? It is the peace that comes through Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace! He alone can bring the spiritual restoration that Spurgeon so passionately preached about.
So, just as Spurgeon encouraged his congregation more than 160 years ago, we too should be praying for the salvation and TOTAL RESTORATION of Israel!
The Jewish people have returned to their ancestral homeland, but we continue to pray for something far greater: that they would recognize Jesus as their promised Messiah and receive the spiritual life that only He can give.
Remember what God declared through Ezekiel: “And shall put my spirit in you, and ye shall live” (Ezekiel 37:14, KJV).
The dry bones came together, but it was the breath of God that brought them to life. And that is precisely what we should be praying for today—that the Spirit of the living God would breathe new life into His people, opening their eyes to the truth of Jesus Christ and bringing about the spiritual restoration He has promised!
Spurgeon preaches,
“There shall not be two, nor ten, nor twelve, but one-one Israel praising one God, serving one king, and that one king the Son of David, the descended Messiah. They are to have a national prosperity which shall make them famous; nay, so glorious shall they be that Egypt, and Tyre, and Greece, and Rome, shall all forget their glory in the greater splendor of the throne of David. The day shall yet come when all the high hills shall leap with envy, because this is the hill which God hath chosen, when Zion’s shrine shall again be visited by the constant feet of the pilgrim; when her valleys shall echo with songs, and her hill-tops shall drop with wine and oil. If there be meaning in words this must be the meaning of this chapter. I wish never to learn the art of tearing God’s meaning out of his own words. If there be anything clear and plain, the literal sense and meaning of this passage-a meaning not to be spirited or spiritualized away-must be evident that both the two and the ten tribes of Israel are to be restored to their own land, and that a king is to rule over them. ‘Thus saith the Lord God: Behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the heathen, whither they be gone, and will gather them on every side, and bring them into their own land: and I will make them one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king to them all; and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all.‘”
The Civil War
Something else worth mentioning is the historical setting in which Spurgeon delivered this message. It was 1864, and across the Atlantic, the United States was in the midst of a devastating Civil War. The nation was torn apart as brother fought against brother. Meanwhile, in London, Spurgeon was boldly proclaiming God’s promise that the divided tribes of Israel would one day be reunited under one King—the promised Messiah, Jesus Christ.
What a remarkable time to declare God’s Word concerning Israel!
Today, we find ourselves in the midst of another kind of civil war – a spiritual battle in which the forces of darkness seek to divide families, churches, and nations. Even within Christianity, deep divisions have emerged over biblical morality, the authority of Scripture, and God’s continuing purposes and promises for Israel.
Some believe that God has finished His work with the Jewish people and that the promises concerning their future no longer apply to them. Others, like Spurgeon, and myself, hold firmly to the conviction that God’s covenant promises remain and that His plans for Israel have yet to reach their ultimate fulfillment.
But what does the Word of God say?
GOD IS NOT DONE WITH ISRAEL!
HE IS NOT FINISHED WITH THE JEWISH PEOPLE!
THERE IS STILL SO MUCH MORE TO COME!
And this brings me back to those giant skeletons.
What the enemy intends for evil, God is able to turn around for good. What appears lifeless and beyond restoration is never beyond the reach of His power.
For me, those skeletons serve as a vivid reminder of the vision God gave Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones. What appeared to be nothing more than the remains of the dead became an exceedingly great army when the breath of God entered them!
GOD IS NOT DONE!
HIS RESURRECTION POWER IS UNMATCHED!
HE IS RESTORING THE NATION OF ISRAEL!
HE IS BREATHING LIFE INTO DRY BONES!
DEATH DOES NOT HAVE THE FINAL WORD, BECAUSE GOD HAS A PLAN!
And here’s what makes this message even more powerful: the God who promised to restore Israel is the same God who is able to bring life into the seemingly hopeless circumstances of our own lives.
Think about those things that appear dead. Perhaps it’s a broken relationship, a shattered dream, a lost opportunity, or a promise you’ve been waiting years to see fulfilled. Maybe you’ve been praying for someone you love to come to know Jesus, but nothing seems to be changing.
Remember, the bones in Ezekiel’s vision didn’t come alive through human effort. They lived because the Spirit of God breathed life into them!
And the same Lord who raised Jesus Christ from the dead is still able to accomplish what seems impossible to us.
So the next time you see those skeletons, don’t allow them to remind you only of death. Let them remind you of the resurrection power of Almighty God! Let them remind you that no situation is too hopeless, no heart is too hardened, and no promise of God is beyond His ability to fulfill.
GOD IS ON THE MOVE!
And just as Ezekiel was commanded to speak the Word of the Lord over that valley, let us boldly proclaim His promises, trusting Him to bring life where there appears to be none.
