Hebrews 10:25

Not forsaking our own assembling together, as the custom of some is, but exhorting one another; and so much the more, as ye see the day drawing near.

CONCERNING THE ASSEMBLY

Our own assembling together is a reference to the Lord's day worship of the church, the regular Sunday services of congregations of believers, as set in motion by the apostles, honored by disciples in all ages, and fully recognized as a sacred obligation for all Christians by the author of Hebrews who penned this formal commandment regarding church attendance. The significance of this is that even prior to this epistle, faithful and regular church attendance was a distinctive characteristic of the faith in Christ. Pliny, a secular writer about 112 A.D., made a report to the emperor Trajan in which he unconsciously bore witness to certain vital aspects of Christianity. Of special interest was the witness he bore to the tenacity maintained by the Christians in regard to their assemblies. They attended the regular worship services in spite of every hindrance. Legal meetings on a publicly recognized day of rest, as in these days, were impossible. Christians met in the darkness of pre-dawn assemblies; and no impediment whatever was allowed to interfere. As Pliny said, "On an appointed day they had been accustomed to meet before daybreak."[30] He went ahead to relate that their services were nothing of a scandalous or improper kind, that they partook of a meal of the most harmless and ordinary variety, that each sang a hymn to Christ as God, and that they bound themselves with a promise not to commit fornication or theft or any other crime. This witness of Pliny reaches back to within a very few years of the apostles themselves and is a valuable independent testimony bearing upon the faith.

What was the scriptural foundation upon which attendance of public worship was so solidly grounded and perpetuated at such cost of personal inconvenience and even danger to the Christians? Evidently, Christ himself initiated the weekly meeting of the disciples on the first day of the week, actually attending them himself on successive Lord's days after he was risen from the dead. Thus he was present on a certain Lord's day, Thomas being absent, and again on the following first day of the week, Thomas being present (John 20:19-28). The establishment and beginning of the church on Pentecost occurred on just such a first day of the week when the disciples were gathered together. Such references as "Let every one of you lay by him in store on the first day of the week" (1 Corinthians 16:2), and "When the disciples came together on the first day of the week to break bread" (Acts 20:7), and "If there come into your assemblies a man with a gold ring, etc." (James 2:2-4) constitute the most positive and certain proof that regular assemblies were held by the church on the first day of the week; and the latter of these shows that the assemblies were of a public nature, open to the man with the gold ring, no less than to the poor. The second of the passages cited shows that the assembly was built around the Lord's Supper, the observance of which was the purpose of coming together. The apostle James' instructions to ushers, cited above, show that the assemblies were of divine origin. From all these, it is plain that the Christian assemblies on the first day of the week existed from the earliest Christian times, derived their authority from Christ and the apostles, and that it is no light thing to disregard them.

Perhaps there is nothing so much needed in current America as a return to the old-fashioned virtue of church attendance. Our beloved nation was founded by a generation of church-goers; and, although the Puritans and the settlers at Jamestown have been made to appear rather ridiculous in contemporary literature, being hailed as dull, hypocritical, and intolerant; it is nevertheless true that such a caricature is false. They were not dull or uninteresting. The eloquent literature of those far-off days denies the current slanders against that generation of spiritual giants who lived on the highest plane of religious conviction, whose emotions ebbed and flowed with the tides of eternity, and whose men of letters, such as Whittier, Hawthorne, and Longfellow, captured in their writings the immortal loveliness of that people. Moreover, as the noted radio preacher, Charles L. Goodell, said, "Wherever there is a town meeting house, a free school, a free church, or an open Bible, those forbears of ours might lay their hands upon them and say, `All these are our children'." Our greatest institutions are the fruits of their church-going; and when any generation shall forsake the house of prayer and worship, that generation is dangerously near to losing those institutions inherited through the piety of others.

As for the cliche that "mere church attendance" is without value, we do not speak of "mere" church attendance, but of wholehearted, sincere, devout, and faithful public worship of Almighty God through Christ; and as for the falsehood that people can worship God anywhere they are, it is refuted by the fact that they don't! When people do not attend worship, they do not give, nor pray, nor sing God's praise, nor observe the Lord's Supper, nor study the sacred scriptures, all of which things are related to the public worship and have practically no existence apart from it.

Then let people heed the commandment in this verse that they should not forsake the assembly of the church; and the fact that some do, as was the case then, is no permission for the faithful to follow an unfaithful example. Reasons why people forsake the assembly are rationally explained, ardently advocated by them that wish to defect, and established with all kinds of charges, excuses, allegations, and insinuations against the church; but the only true reason for disobeying this basic commandment is simply unbelief, or the carelessness and sin which lead to unbelief.

But exhorting one another again brings into view the esprit de corps so vital to spiritual growth and attainment. Through this epistle (Hebrews 3:6,13, etc.), the necessity for constant encouragement and exhortation of the believing community is emphasized. Mutual exhortation is the divine means of counteracting the host of evil influences and distractions which are the perpetual enemies of faith.

And so much the more, as ye see the day drawing nigh has been variously interpreted as the Lord's day, or first day of the week, the day of death, the day of judgment, or the day of destruction of Jerusalem. Basing his argument upon the usual import of the Greek word here translated "day," Westcott was sure that the reference is to the day of judgment,[31] a position rejected by Milligan who was equally certain it referred to the approaching fall of Jerusalem.[32] A harmony of these two learned opinions, both of which were supported by able argument, may be achieved by understanding the "day" as a reference to the final judgment as TYPIFIED by the fall of Jerusalem, the latter indeed being very near at hand and easily seen by all as "approaching" in the political developments of that period when Hebrews was written. In Matthew 24, by answering three questions with one set of answers, Jesus mingled the prophecies of the fall of Jerusalem and the temple with those of the final judgment in such manner that they would appear to be simultaneous events. That the interpretation of those events to be simultaneous was indeed an error, we know; but it would have been far too much to have expected the generation that first received Hebrews to have known this; because, as Barmby noted,

The blending together of the discourses in Matthew 24 and Mark 13, of the times of the fall of Jerusalem and of the final day, would naturally lead Christians to regard the signs of the first event as denoting the other also.[33]

Any imputation of error on the part of the apostles and prophets of the New Testament, to the effect that they regarded the final judgment to be near at hand in their day, is not correct. There are very definite and concise teachings in the scriptures which represent the final judgment as an event far removed from that generation. Jesus plainly indicated that a very long period would intervene before his second coming (Matthew 24:48; 25:19); Paul warned that before the judgment, "the falling away must come first" (2 Thessalonians 2:3); and yet there was surely a conscious ambiguity in the words of the Holy Spirit in all references to the final judgment, the apparent reason for this being, according to Trench, that

It is a necessary element of the doctrine of the second coming of Christ, that it should be POSSIBLE at any time, that no generation should consider it improbable in theirs.[34]

Thus, any allegation that the holy writers were untaught or ignorant with regard to the coming of that final day is, as Lenski said,

Groundless, as is every fear that the New Testament writers were mistaken as to the day of judgment. Jesus told the apostles that no man is to know even "times or periods" (Acts 1:7), to say nothing of the exact day; that he himself (in his humiliation) did not know the day; but that we must ever see the signs of its approach, ever ready for its arrival, in constant expectation of it. All the New Testament writers speak accordingly; we do the same today.[35]

The conclusion, therefore, seems safe that the "day approaching" of this verse refers to the fall of the Holy City when Christ would "take away the first" that he might establish the new covenant; and the Holy Spirit influenced the writer of Hebrews in the choice of words that certainly included the destruction of Jerusalem, no less than the greater final event it typified.

[30] Henry Bettenson, Documents of the Christian Church (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1947), p. 6.

[31] Brooke Foss Westcott, op. cit., p. 326.

[32] R. Milligan, op. cit., p. 284.

[33] J. Barmby, op. cit., p. 267.

[34] Richard C. Trench, Miracles (Westwood, New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1953), p. 256.

[35] R. C. H. Lenski, op. cit., p. 355.