p. 4 | The Bible Year

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 2, 1916

The Bible Year

Assignment for November 5 to 11

November 5: Hebrews 5 to 7. November 6: Hebrews 8 to 10. November 7: Hebrews 11 to 13. November 8: Luke 1, 2. November 9: Luke 3, 4. November 10: Luke 5, 6. November 11: Luke 7, 8.

Hebrews

This epistle is supposed to have been written to the Hebrew Christians in Palestine. They were evidently “in danger of apostasy, but no particular church to which they belonged is mentioned. The peril in which they stood arose from several sources: (1) A tendency to unbelief in Christ (3:12) and to doubt his claims; (2) the influence of the elaborate ritual of the temple services; the worship of the Christian churches was very simple; (3) the taunts of the Jews that they were renegades and traitors to the law; they would be asked how they could turn their backs upon a law given by prophets and angels and a sanctuary ministered to by priests called of God; (4) they were subject to persecution.

“The whole carefully sustained argument in the epistle is to meet all these objections, fairly and respectfully, and to show, once for all, the supremacy of Christ over prophets, angels, Moses, and the old covenant; in fact, the superiority of Christianity to Judaism in every particular. ‘The law is shown to be the divinely appointed preparation for the gospel; the law made nothing perfect, it was the shadow and symbol, of which the reality is Christ. In the eleventh and

twelfth chapters there is a magnificent showing of the faith of the Old Testament worthies, who believed in God, and who walked by faith and not by sight. The Jewish Christians are earnestly exhorted to an imitation of this faith in their trials. Christ, who has passed into the heavens, is their high priest, above all high priests, the Son of God, the Heir of all things, and ready to save them with an everlasting salvation.”