During the first world conflict their spiritual condition had become like that experienced by the Israelites after their national capital, Jerusalem, had been destroyed by the military forces of Babylon in 607 B.C.E. and they had been deported to distant Babylon, to lie spiritually dormant there for 70 years.

6. How was the prophet Ezekiel used to make a prophetic picture of the revival of the Jewish nation and of its restoration to worship in its homeland?

⁶ That state of affairs for ancient Israel during 607-537 B.C.E. was referred to by Jehovah’s prophet Ezekiel, himself an exile in Babylon. In one of his visions he saw a low plain full of dry bones. He was told that these disorganized bones pictured the whole house of Israel in its exiled condition. When, in obedience to God’s command, Ezekiel prophesied over those scattered bones, they reassembled into skeletons, and these skeletons became clothed with flesh. Finally breath entered into them, and those bodies stood up erect upon their feet. (Ezekiel, chapter 37) In the typical fulfillment of this prophecy, this pictured how the Israelites would be released from Babylon after its downfall, and they would come alive again as a nation, worshiping their merciful God once again at a rebuilt temple in their restored national capital, Jerusalem.

7. What like that national revival was foretold in Revelation 11:3-13?

⁷ Centuries after that national resurrection, something like that was foretold in symbolic language, in Revelation 11:3-13:

And their corpses will be on the broad way of the great city . . . And after the three and a half days spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet, and great fear fell upon those beholding them. And they heard a loud voice out of heaven say to them: ‘Come on up here.’ And they went up into heaven in the cloud, and their enemies beheld them. And in that hour a great earthquake occurred.”