The Old Testament prophet
In the land of the exiles Jehovah needed a prophet to carry on the work of Jeremiah and his associates in Jerusalem. The young priest Ezekiel was the man chosen for the performance of this arduous task. His book preserves for us the record of his great work.
After being taken captive, Ezekiel settled with other Jews in a place called Tel Abib on the Chebar River (see Ezekiel 1:1–3; Bible Dictionary, “Ezekiel”). It was there that Ezekiel recorded that the heavens were opened to him and he saw the visions of God (see Ezekiel 1:1).
Sacred Scripture teaches that Enoch and Elijah were assumed into heaven while still alive and not experiencing physical death.
According to a tradition that is preserved in extrabiblical sources, he was stoned to death by his exasperated fellow countrymen in Egypt.
Known as “The Weeping Prophet,” Jeremiah was also a very important one, husbanding Israel and Judah through their long enslavement in Babylon and writing two of the Old Testament's key books, Lamentations and the one carrying his name.
Jeremiah had a very difficult calling from God—to preach to a rebellious people and urge them to turn back to God and repent of their stubborn, corrupt ways. “I am ridiculed all day long; everyone mocks me,” Jeremiah complained (20:7). But he could not stop preaching God's words, no matter how difficult it was for him.
God is the One who decides who does or does not enter heaven. There's no place in the Bible that says they were saved. But there is no place in the Bible that indicates the couple was lost, either.
No one could be resurrected until Christ came forth from the tomb. So Elijah, in order to perform his special mission, needed to be translated. Translation means to be changed in a way that your body is no longer subject to sickness, death, or physical pain. Translation is not resurrection.
One possible reason for Jewish rejection of the book might be the textual nature of several early sections of the book that make use of material from the Torah; for example, 1 En 1 is a midrash of Deuteronomy 33.
The faith of Ezekiel in the ultimate establishment of a new covenant between God and the people of Israel has had profound influence on the postexilic reconstruction and reorganization of Judaism. Ezekiel's ministry was conducted in Jerusalem and Babylon in the first three decades of the 6th century bc.
I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you.
The Old Testament prophet Ezekiel, having preached God's command neither to weep nor mourn for the dead, had to follow his own teachings when he discovered that his wife had died. The grief-stricken gestures of the mourners are in sharp contrast to Ezekiel's stoic attitude.
Ezekiel also appears to suffer from hallucinations, thought disorders and paranoid delusions. All of these are strongly suggestive of Schizophrenia.
Ezekiel 28:22
Thus says the Lord God: “Behold, I am against you, O Sidon, and I will manifest my glory in your midst. And they shall know that I am the Lord when I execute judgments in her and manifest my holiness in her.” The manifestation of God's holiness can also have something to do with execution of judgment.
Ezekiel had a remarkable vision; I read you part of it. And from the midst of the amazing thing he saw, he heard the voice of God. He fell on his face, and the voice of God said to him, “Mortal, stand up! I have something to say to you.” And that was the beginning of his troubles.
While on Patmos, God gave John a vision of the final days of earth, and a peak at heaven. In the vision, John saw the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down from heaven to the new earth, for the old earth had been destroyed.
Elijah was a mighty prophet during a turbulent time in Israel's history. The nation had turned away from the Lord to worship Baal, and King Ahab had formed an alliance with Sidon by marrying their princess, Jezebel. Elijah was sent to show Israel the evil of their ways and encourage them to return to the Lord.
In the second heaven, Enoch finds darkness: a prison where rebel angels are tortured. In the third heaven, he sees both paradise represented as the Garden of Eden which is also guarded by angels (similar to 2 Corinthians 12:2) and hell where bad men are tortured.
The Adamic language, according to Jewish tradition (as recorded in the midrashim) and some Christians, is the language spoken by Adam (and possibly Eve) in the Garden of Eden.
Many Christians rely on Matthew 22:30, in which Jesus tells a group of questioners, "At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.”
God passes judgment, first upon the serpent, condemned to go on his belly, then the woman, condemned to pain in childbirth and subordination to her husband, and finally Adam, who is condemned to labour on the earth for his food and to return to it on his death.
Adam, Eve, Abraham, Sarah, Moses, David, Elijah, John the Baptist, and the list goes on. They all were doubters.
In the Quran
The Quran describes Job as a righteous servant of God, who was afflicted by suffering for a lengthy period of time.
So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, "May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them." while he himself went a day's journey into the desert. He came to a broom tree, sat down under it and prayed that he might die.