Article August 3, 2009 Issue

EZEKIEL: A PROPHET WHO LIVED IN THE PRESENT

BY MICHAEL HAMILTON

INFINITY AND ETERNITY—God everywhere, and here, God forever, and now — point to the allness of God, and to man and the universe as His reflection, everywhere and forever, here and now. The Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament include the records of men and women captured by the immediacy of God.

The book of the prophet Ezekiel is an extended record of the visions and convictions of one of the preeminent Hebrew spokesmen for God. Ezekiel's words redeem the past and re-vision the future as he abides in the living presence of God.

Ezekiel is one of the three "major prophets" of the Old Testament, along with Isaiah and Jeremiah. He may have been a younger contemporary of Jeremiah's. He writes from the perspective of exile in Babylonia.