Ezekiel 11 and a heart of flesh

[mshingler]

I have been reading through the prophets recently and I'm in Ezekiel. Coming from a dispensational background, I am sort of "re-reading" the Old Testament prophets and trying to understand them more clearly without all the dispensational presuppositions. I'm still wrestling with a number of issues of prophecy/fulfillment and the whole Israel/church thing as well as "spiritual" fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies.
As I come to Ezek. 11:14-21, my question is this: Do you think these verses are primarily or even completely fulfilled in the return from exile? It seems like verses 14-18 clearly have reference to the Israelites who were living in exile at that time and describes their return to the land and the abhorence of idolatry following the return. However, verses 19 and 20 seem to describe conditions under the new covenant, which if fulfilled with the coming of Christ. Is there a sort of double fulfillment or double referent in verses 19-20? Also, if God gave the returned remnant a new heart to walk in His statutes and keep His ordinances, etc., why did most of them reject Christ about 500 years later?
Help me out with your thoughts.

 

[toddpedlar]

Also, if God gave the returned remnant a new heart to walk in His statutes and keep His ordinances, etc., why did most of them reject Christ about 500 years later?
Help me out with your thoughts.

I don't want to make this too simplistic, but 500 years is a LONG time for sin to develop and
take root again. Witness any faithful church that existed even 300 years ago, and look at it today.
What happened to the Puritans? What happened to faithful congregational and presbyterian churches
in New England's earliest days? All but gone. A few hundred years, a dozen or two generations is more
than enough time for the character of a society to utterly change - even one in which there is a
preponderance of truly reborn Christians.

Even at the family level this happens - some children of truly faithful believers, the direct
descendants of those whose hearts HAVE been changed, are not believers themselves.

So, I'm not at all surprised by the fact that most of the Jews rejected Christ, even if there was
at the point which you indicate, a faithful, believing, regenerate core.

 

[mshingler]

Does that mean, then, that you would see a double fulfillment here - one for Israel in the restoration and one for the church in the New Testament, under the new covenant? Or, do you think this text only relates to Israel's return from exile and nothing beyond that?