Jesus is the "Unidentified" Prince of Ezekiel 40-48: Verse by Verse Support

Jesus is the Prince of Ezekiel 40-48

^{Ezekiel 34:10-31 10} Thus says the Lord God, Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will require my sheep at their hand and put a stop to their feeding the sheep. No longer shall the shepherds feed themselves. I will rescue my sheep from their mouths, that they may not be food for them. ¹¹ “For thus says the Lord God: Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out. ¹² As a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among his sheep that have been scattered, so will I seek out my sheep, and I will rescue them from all places where they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. ¹³ And I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land. And I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the ravines, and in all the inhabited places of the country. ¹⁴ I will feed them with good pasture, and on the mountain heights of Israel shall be their grazing land. There they shall lie down in good grazing land, and on rich pasture they shall feed on the mountains of Israel. ¹⁵ I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord God. ¹⁶ I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them in justice. ¹⁷ “As for you, my flock, thus says the Lord God: Behold, I judge between sheep and sheep, between rams and male goats. ¹⁸ Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture, that you must tread down with your feet the rest of your pasture; and to drink of clear water, that you must muddy the rest of the water with your feet? ¹⁹ And must my sheep eat what you have trodden with your feet, and drink what you have muddied with your feet? ²⁰ “Therefore, thus says the Lord God to them: Behold, I, I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep. ²¹ Because you push with side and shoulder, and thrust at all the weak with your horns, till you have scattered them abroad, ²² I will rescue my flock; they shall no longer be a prey. And I will judge between sheep and sheep. ²³ And I will set up over them ONE shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd. ²⁴ And I, the Lord, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them. I am the Lord; I have spoken. ²⁵ “I will make with them a covenant of peace and banish wild beasts from the land, so that they may dwell securely in the wilderness and sleep in the woods. ²⁶ And I will make them and the places all around my hill a blessing, and I will send down the showers in their season; they shall be showers of blessing. ²⁷ And the trees of the field shall yield their fruit, and the earth shall yield its increase, and they shall be secure in their land. And they shall know that I am the Lord, when I break the bars of their yoke, and deliver them from the hand of those who enslaved them. ²⁸ They shall no more be a prey to the nations, nor shall the beasts of the land devour them. They shall dwell securely, and none shall make them afraid. ²⁹ And I will provide for them renowned plantations so that they shall no more be consumed with hunger in the land, and no longer suffer the reproach of the nations. ³⁰ And they shall know that I am the Lord their God with them, and that they, the house of Israel, are my people, declares the Lord God. ³¹ And you are my sheep, human sheep of my pasture, and I am your God, declares the Lord God.”

Ezekiel 37:22-25 ²² And I will make them ONE nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel. And ONE king shall be king over them all, and they shall be no longer two nations, and no longer divided into two kingdoms. ²³ They shall not defile themselves anymore with their idols and their detestable things, or with any of their transgressions. But I will save them from all the backslidings in which they have sinned, and will cleanse them; and they shall be my people, and I will be their God. ²⁴ “My servant David shall be KING over them, and they shall all have ONE shepherd. They shall walk in my rules and be careful to obey my statutes.²⁵ They shall dwell in the land that I gave to my servant Jacob, where your fathers lived. They and their children and their children's children shall dwell there forever, and David my servant shall be their prince forever. 

Isaiah 9:6 ⁶ For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Isaiah 55:3-4 ³ Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live; and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David. ⁴ Behold, I made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples.

Zechariah 12:7-9 ⁷ “And the Lord will give salvation to the tents of Judah first, that the glory of the house of David and the glory of the inhabitants of Jerusalem may not surpass that of Judah. ⁸ On that day the Lord will protect the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the feeblest among them on that day shall be like David, and the house of David shall be like God, like the angel of the Lord, going before them. ⁹ And on that day I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.

Jeremiah 30:21 ²¹ Their prince shall be one of themselves; their ruler shall come out from their midst; I will make him draw near, and he shall approach me, for who would dare of himself to approach me? declares the Lord. NOTE: Fulfilled in Ezekiel 44:1-3 and 46:1-18.

Jeremiah 30:8-9 ⁸ “And it shall come to pass IN THAT DAY, declares the Lord of hosts, that I will break his yoke from off your neck, and I will burst your bonds, and foreigners shall no more make a servant of him. ⁹ But they shall serve the Lord their God and David their king, whom I will raise up for them

Jeremiah 33:22 ²² As the host of heaven cannot be numbered and the sands of the sea cannot be measured, so I will multiply the offspring of David my servant, and the Levitical priests who minister to me.”

Hosea 3:5 ⁵ Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God, and David their king, and they shall come in fear to the Lord and to his goodness in the latter days.

Zechariah 9:9 ⁹ Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

Zechariah 14:9 ⁹ And the Lord will be king over all the earth. On that day the Lord will be one and his name one.

Zechariah 14:16 ¹⁶ Then everyone who survives of all the nations that have come against Jerusalem shall go up year after year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the Feast of Booths.

Malachi 1:14 ¹⁴ Cursed be the cheat who has a male in his flock, and vows it, and yet sacrifices to the Lord what is blemished. For I am a great King, says the Lord of hosts, and my name will be feared among the nations.

Psalm 47:7 ⁷ For God is the King of all the earth; sing praises with a psalm!

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•        The Prince is the Son of the King, but also the King next in line. This explains the Trinity and the divinity of God the son, Jesus.
•          Princes and Kings are interchangeable terms-See 1 Chronicles 29:22 and 2 Samuel 5:2 for support.
•         The descendants of King David were also called David too. See 1 Kings 12:16-17 and Mark 12:35-37 for support.
• ·         Some people believe that God will be resurrecting King David or raise up an Israeli Ambassador to reign during an Earthly Millennial Kingdom. However, that is not correct.

Genesis 22:8 ⁸ Abraham said, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So they went both of them together.

Ezekiel 45:22 ²² On that day the prince shall provide for himself and all the people of the land a young bull for a sin offering.

NOTE: The “himself” can also be translated on his behalf for the people. It doesn’t mean that Christ is paying for “his own sins” and the sins of the nation. Christ identifies with his people and becomes sin. See Isaiah 53:12, 2 Corinthians 5:21, Romans 8:3, Galatians 3:13, and Hebrews 4:15 for support.

• Another argument that the skeptics claim that the Prince is not Jesus is that the Prince has sons.  Jesus doesn’t have any sons. Again, that is a flawed argument.

In Isaiah 53:10, it is acknowledged in fact that Jesus does have sons (spiritual sons/daughters), but they ignore the same truth for the Book of Ezekiel. See below.

·         Isaiah 53:10 ¹⁰ Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him (Jesus); he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.

·         Ezekiel 46:16-18 ¹⁶ “Thus says the Lord God: If the prince makes a gift to any of his sons as his inheritance, it shall belong to his sons. It is their property by inheritance. ¹⁷ But if he makes a gift out of his inheritance to one of his servants, it shall be his to the year of liberty. Then it shall revert to the prince; surely it is his inheritance—it shall belong to his sons. ¹⁸ The prince shall not take any of the inheritance of the people, thrusting them out of their property. He shall give his sons their inheritance out of his own property, so that none of my people shall be scattered from his property.”

If you read every part of the Bible with a strict literalism then you may miss out on some great revelations. For example, read literally, Jesus never received the honor to be a King and inaugurate a Temple like Solomon in the Bible. However, Jesus did receive this honor and inaugurated the ultimate Temple (The Church). Has anyone ever wondered why Solomon sacrificed 142,000 in 1 Kings and how it relates to Jesus in some way?

Solomon's Temple Inauguration Ceremony parallels with Jesus' Temple Inauguration Ceremony (aka the Cross) in Ezekiel 45-46 (Read 2 Chronicles 29:20-31 to see the connection to Ezekiel 45-46). In 1 Kings 8:63, Solomon sacrificed 142,000 for the Temple ceremony while Jesus sacrificed himself for the 144,000(the symbolic number for his Church). Jesus' Death on the cross is the inauguration ceremony of his Spiritual Temple (see Zechariah 6:12-15). The number 200 in the Bible symbolically represents insufficiency/atonement and when you multiply it by 1,000, you intensify the concept of it. Christ received a better and higher honor than Solomon. Christ did not miss out on this.

 Read the Bible according to its genre, not with a strict literalism hermeneutic