Also, there was an improvement in the outward appearance of the valley. After Ezekiel's sermon, the valley didn't look as desolate as it did before. Instead of dislocated bones, there were first skeletons, and then, we read, "and on the bones there came flesh, and over the flesh, there came skin." Do you see what Ezekiel's sermon had done? It had made them look a great deal more respectable. Yes, preaching can do all that, apart from the power of the Holy Ghost. There may be a very great deal of moral improvement, and yet there is need to add the sentence, "but, there was no breath in them." They were better looking, but they were just as dead. Their nakedness had been covered, but they were still corpses. They were just as when their scattered bones lay bleaching in the sun. The preacher creates a stir and makes a noise and brings the bones together, but all the eloquence of Ezekiel never could have put any life in them.

Notice the preacher's last resort. It must have been a grand and glorious sight. He had been preaching, and thus far, he had been gazing at the bones. He had seen a marvelous change. Now do you see the man of God? He doesn't look at his "valley" any longer. He has nothing more to do with it. He has finished his preaching. He turns to praying. I see him lift up his eyes to heaven, surrounded as he was with corpses, and he cries, "Come, O Breath of God, come and breathe upon these slain." He has reached his limitation. He has done all he could. He preached, as he was commanded; now, he leaves the results with the Spirit of God. The true preacher's sermon will be but a text for long continued prayer. He will be crying to God continually to bless the Word.

With what wonderful faith, he prayed! It was simply, "Come, O Breath of God." He has no doubt but that it will come. Why? Because he had a "Thus saith the Lord." The Lord had told him to call upon the wind, and therefore, he knew it would come. Do you see the glorious faith he had in the power of the Spirit: "Come, Breath, and breathe upon these slain, and they shall live." We're almost ready to exclaim, "What! Ezekiel, do you think it will be as easy for the Spirit of God to raise up all the corpses as it is to breathe?" "Yes," he would have answered, "I may preach, and I may cry, and I may wear myself out. I can accomplish nothing. But all the Holy Ghost has to do is just to breathe." Oh, the glorious ease expressed in the sentence, "Breathe upon these slain!"

One kiss of the breath of God did more than all Ezekiel's preaching could accomplish. We may have our mighty sermons and our mighty preachers, but, at the end, we must go from preaching to prayer, crying, "O Breath, come and breathe upon these slain." Mere preaching may make a noise; it may create a sensation; it may even gather the hundreds and the thousands together. It may produce reformation: dry bones may be clothed with flesh and sinew, but spiritual life can alone be imparted by the Holy Ghost. The work of the Spirit in regeneration is a divine miracle, which is the result of His forth-putting of supernatural power. It's the spiritual quickening of a corpse; it's the bringing of a dead soul to life. This miracle of grace is spoken of in Scripture as, "the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe, according to the working of His mighty power which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead" (Eph. 1:19-20).

Nothing short of divine power can meet the emergency. Mr. Spurgeon cried to his own people in London in the Metropolitan Tabernacle: "Oh, brethren, think nothing of us who preach to you. If ever you do, our power will be gone. If you begin to suppose that such and such a minister, having been blessed of God to so many thousands, will necessarily be the means of the conversion of your friend, you are imputing to a son of man what belongs only to the Son of God; and you will assuredly do that pastor or that minister serious mischief by tolerating in your heart so idolatrous a thought. We are nothing. You are nothing. 'Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts' is a message that should make us lie in the dust before God."

Son of man, can these bones live? Yes, my brother, with God, all things are possible.

This is copyrighted material from James Stewart's book Come O Breath, available from Revival Literature, PO Box 6068, Asheville, NC 28816.