The Glory That Moves: Ezekiel’s Visions of God, Shepherds, and Dry Bones

Come Follow Me 2026 — Week 44 (Nov 2–8) — Ezekiel 1–3; 33–34; 36–37; 47

Introduction: A Prophet Among the Exiles

Ezekiel is the prophet of the impossible. He ministers to a people who have reached the end of everything — their city is fallen or falling, their temple is desecrated, they are captives by the rivers of Babylon. Everything they understood about how God worked — that He dwelt in the temple, protected the holy city, rewarded the faithful nation — has been dismantled. Into this theological and personal catastrophe, Ezekiel speaks some of the most extraordinary words in all of scripture.

The chapters assigned for Week 44 span the whole arc of his ministry: the initial vision of God’s chariot-throne (chapters 1–3), the warning of the watchman (chapter 33), the indictment of false shepherds and the promise of the Good Shepherd (chapter 34), the valley of dry bones and the joining of the two sticks (chapter 37), and the healing river (chapter 47). These are not isolated passages — they are a single sustained argument: God’s glory is not confined to the temple. God will find His scattered sheep. God will raise what is dead. God will cause life to flow where there was only desolation.

Ezekiel 1: The Chariot-Throne Vision — God Is Not Confined

The opening chapter of Ezekiel is the most visually complex passage in the entire Hebrew Bible. Ezekiel sees a storm cloud, flashing fire, and within it four living creatures, each with four faces and four wings; beside them are wheels within wheels, full of eyes; above them is a firmament like ice; above that is a sapphire throne; and upon the throne is “the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD.” The careful layering of qualifications — appearance of likeness — suggests that Ezekiel is struggling with the inexpressibility of what he sees.

But the most theologically significant feature of the vision is not the creatures or the wheels: it is the wheels themselves. The wheels can move in any direction without turning, and the spirit of the creatures is in the wheels. This means the throne of God is mobile. It is not fixed in Jerusalem. It is not dependent on the temple. God’s glory can appear by the River Chebar, among the Babylonian exiles, hundreds of miles from everything considered sacred.

Ezekiel 1:28

“As the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness round about. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD. And when I saw it, I fell upon my face, and I heard a voice of one that spake.”

For the exiles, this vision was revolutionary. They had lost the temple — but God had not lost them. He had followed them into captivity. His glory moved. The chariot-throne vision established the foundational conviction of exile theology: you cannot outrun God’s presence, not even by being carried off to Babylon.

This has immediate application for Latter-day Saints navigating a world where much of what we might call “sacred space” is under pressure. The temple matters — but God is not imprisoned in it. His presence is portable. He visits us in our Babylons as well as in our Jerusalem.

Ezekiel 3 and 33: The Watchman on the Wall

In chapters 3 and 33, God gives Ezekiel his commission using the image of a watchman — a guard stationed on the city walls to warn of approaching danger. The metaphor is both simple and shattering in its implications:

Ezekiel 33:7–8

“So thou, O son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the house of Israel; therefore thou shalt hear the word at my mouth, and warn them from me. When I say unto the wicked, O wicked man, thou shalt surely die; if thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand.”

The watchman is not responsible for whether the people heed the warning. If someone is warned and ignores it, they bear the consequence. But if the watchman fails to warn — if he sees the sword coming and stays silent — the blood is on his hands. This is the theological grounding of prophetic responsibility: you cannot be neutral about truth when people’s eternal welfare is at stake.

Chapter 33 also contains one of the most clear declarations of individual moral responsibility in the entire Old Testament. God explicitly rejects the idea of generational guilt: “the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son” (33:20). Each person stands before God on their own choices. Equally, each person has the right to turn: “if the wicked turn from his wickedness, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall live thereby” (33:19). No one is beyond the reach of repentance.

The watchman motif is applied in LDS theology to holders of the Melchizedek Priesthood and especially to ordained leaders, teachers, and missionaries. The responsibility to warn one’s neighbor — enshrined in D&C 88:81 (“it becometh every man who hath been warned to warn his neighbor”) — is a direct echo of Ezekiel’s watchman commission.

Ezekiel 34: The False Shepherds and the Good Shepherd

Chapter 34 is one of the most devastating indictments of religious leadership in the entire Old Testament — and one of the most tender promises of divine pastoral care. God confronts the shepherds of Israel who have fed themselves rather than the flock:

Ezekiel 34:2–4

“Woe be to the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves! should not the shepherds feed the flocks? Ye eat the fat, and ye clothe you with the wool, ye kill them that are fed: but ye feed not the flock. The diseased have ye not strengthened, neither have ye healed that which was sick, neither have ye bound up that which was broken, neither have ye brought again that which was driven away, neither have ye sought that which was lost.”

This is not merely a complaint about ancient Israelite priests. It is a permanent standard against which all religious leadership is measured. The marks of true shepherding are specific: strengthen the diseased, heal the sick, bind up the broken, bring back the driven away, seek the lost. The false shepherd does none of these. He uses the flock for his own benefit.

God’s response is not merely to condemn the bad shepherds. He declares that He Himself will become the Shepherd: “I will search for my sheep, and will deliver them out of all places where they have been scattered” (34:12). “I will seek that which was lost, and bring again that which was driven away, and will bind up that which was broken, and will strengthen that which was sick” (34:16).

Jesus quotes this chapter explicitly in John 10 when He calls Himself the Good Shepherd. The parable of the lost sheep in Luke 15 draws on exactly this imagery. When Jesus says “I am the good shepherd” (John 10:11), every Jewish listener who knew Ezekiel 34 would hear the unmistakable claim: Jesus is the LORD who promised to search for the scattered sheep. He is doing in person what God promised through the prophet.

New Testament Fulfillment in Christ

• John 10:11–14 — “I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep”
• Luke 15:4–7 — Parable of the lost sheep — God actively seeks the one that is lost
• 1 Peter 2:25 — “ye were as sheep going astray; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls”

Ezekiel 37: Can These Bones Live?

No vision in the entire Old Testament is more frequently referenced in Latter-day Saint teaching than Ezekiel 37 — and rightly so. The valley of dry bones is simultaneously one of the most vivid prophetic visions, a powerful type of resurrection, a promise of national restoration, and — in LDS interpretation — a prophecy about the coming forth of the Book of Mormon.

God sets Ezekiel down in the middle of a valley full of bones — very dry bones, the text emphasizes, not recently dead but long dead, picked clean by time. Then God asks the question that may be the pivot of the entire book: “Son of man, can these bones live?” Ezekiel’s answer is perfect: “O Lord GOD, thou knowest.” He does not say yes; he does not say no. He returns the question to the One who holds the answer.

Ezekiel 37:9–10

“Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live. So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army.”

The Hebrew word ruach means simultaneously wind, breath, and spirit — the same layering present in Genesis 1:2 where the Spirit moves over the face of the waters at creation. In Ezekiel 37, the Spirit is again the agent of creation — this time the creation of new life from death. This is a vision of national resurrection: the house of Israel, which says “our bones are dried, and our hope is lost” (v. 11), will live again.

But the early Christian community also read this as a type of literal resurrection. The bones rising, flesh coming upon them, breath entering them — this is exactly what happened on Easter morning. Christ was the first-fruits of the great rising Ezekiel foresaw. The “exceeding great army” that stands is the company of the redeemed.

Ezekiel 37:15–19: The Two Sticks

Immediately following the valley of dry bones, God commands Ezekiel to take two sticks — one for Judah, one for Joseph (also called Ephraim) — and join them together in his hand so they become one stick. The joining represents the reunification of the divided kingdoms of Israel, separated since the death of Solomon.

Latter-day Saints interpret this prophecy as a direct reference to the Bible and the Book of Mormon: the stick of Judah (the Jewish scriptures) and the stick of Joseph (the record of a branch of Joseph’s descendants, i.e., the Book of Mormon) coming together as one witness of Jesus Christ. This interpretation, taught from the founding generation of the Church by Joseph Smith, gives the vision a remarkable resonance with the entire Restoration.

LDS Scripture Connections

• 2 Nephi 3:12 — The writings of Judah and Joseph shall grow together — direct prophecy of the two records joining
• D&C 27:5 — The record of John (another stick) — more records yet to come
• Title Page, Book of Mormon — “to the convincing of the Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Christ” — the purpose of the joined sticks

Ezekiel 47: The Healing River

The book of Ezekiel ends with a vision of a new temple and, flowing from beneath its threshold, a river. Ezekiel’s guide leads him into the water: first to his ankles, then his knees, then his waist, then deep enough that it “was a river that I could not pass over; for the waters were risen, waters to swim in” (47:5). Wherever the river flows, it brings life. Trees grow on both banks. The salt waters of the Dead Sea are healed. The fish become numerous.

Ezekiel 47:9

“And it shall come to pass, that every thing that liveth, which moveth, whithersoever the rivers shall come, shall live: and there shall be a very great multitude of fish, because these waters shall come thither: for they shall be healed; and every thing shall live whither the river cometh.”

This image of life-giving water flowing from the temple has deep resonances throughout scripture. The River of Life in Revelation 22 flows from the throne of God and the Lamb, with the tree of life on its banks — a direct echo of Ezekiel. Jesus’ conversation with the woman at the well about “living water” (John 4), His cry in the temple at Sukkot (“If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink,” John 7:37), and Lehi’s vision of the tree of life in 1 Nephi 8 all participate in this tradition of water as the symbol of divine life flowing into the world.

The deepening of the water — from ankle to knee to waist to swimming depth — is a beautiful image of discipleship. Gospel living can begin shallow and manageable, but the invitation is always toward greater depth. The promise is that the deeper you go into the life of the covenant, the more life flows from it. The river heals; it does not drown. And “every thing shall live whither the river cometh.”

Conclusion: The God Who Will Not Abandon

Every vision in Ezekiel’s assigned chapters answers the same question the exiles were silently asking: Has God abandoned us? The chariot-throne vision answers: No — His glory is here in Babylon too. The watchman passage answers: No — He still speaks, and He still calls you to turn. The Good Shepherd answers: No — He is actively searching for every scattered sheep. The valley of dry bones answers: No — even death is not the end of what He can do. The healing river answers: No — life flows wherever He goes, and it is flowing toward you.

Ezekiel is a prophet for people who feel as though everything is gone. His message is not “you deserved this” only (though he does not shy from accountability). His message is also, ultimately, “God will find a way.” Dry bones live. Scattered sheep are gathered. Sick waters are healed. Dead kingdoms rise. And the glory of the LORD, riding on wheels that need not turn, follows His people wherever they go.