This Hope We Have

"Seeing then that we have a great High Priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus Christ the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession." (Heb.4:14)

What is probably the most significant event of the First Advent occurred when the risen Lord ascended visibly in his disciples’ presence on the Mount of Olives until a cloud received him out of their sight. On the cross Jesus was temporarily overcome by the powers of evil; He yielded up his spirit to God and died, the just for the unjust. His ascension forty days later was, on the contrary, an outward manifestation of his triumph over the powers of evil. Death now no more had dominion over him. (Rom.6:9). Momentous as was the happening when at the first He emptied himself of his heavenly glory and took a bondman’s form for the suffering of death (Phil.2:7‑8) of even greater moment was his return to that heavenly glory having all power in heaven and earth for the elimination of evil and the establishment of everlasting righteousness.

This is the vision which inspired the writer to the Hebrews when he spoke of the solid foundation upon which the Christian faith is established "The hope set before us" he calls it "which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which entereth into that within the veil; whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made an high priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec." (Heb.6:18‑20) This reference to Melchisedec is full of meaning. It speaks, not of sacrifice and death, but of Divine blessing and life. Melchisedec was a priest and a king, combining both offices in his one person in those far‑off‑days when Abraham was a sojourner in Canaan. He comes on the scene only very briefly, at the time the invaders of Canaan had taken Abraham’s brother‑in‑law Lot captive with all his possessions, and Abraham went after them with his followers to rescue the prisoners. It was as Abraham returned in triumph that as recounted in the narrative in Gen.14, Melchisedec King of Salem brought forth bread and wine and blessed Abraham, and, says the chronicler, "He was the priest of the Most High God." (v.18) No more is said about him or of the mysterious order of priesthood of which he was the then head or of the equally mysterious people over whom he ruled. It was left to the writer of Hebrews two millenniums later to take hold of this incident and weave it into the fabric of his argument. "Consider how great this man was" he invites "unto whom even the patriarch Abraham gave the tenth of the spoils." (Heb.7:4) The great point about Melchisedec is that he "abideth a priest continually." (v.3) The fact that neither his birth nor his death, his predecessors or successors, are recorded in Scripture enabled the later writer to make him a type or illustration of the eternal priesthood of Christ after his ascension. There was no sacrifice, no making atonement for sin, associated with the priestly office of Melchisedec; only the dispensing of gifts and blessings, the exercise of a royal benevolence. In this it differed from the order of Aaron, which existed only for the making satisfaction for sin. In another respect it differed also. The Aaronic priesthood was a dying priesthood; the High Priest in any one generation must needs give place to another in the course of time. "They truly were many priests, because they were not suffered to continue by reason of death: but this man, because he continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood." (Heb.7:23‑24) The High Priest Aaron, and his successors, each in his own day, in the execution of their duties, pictured Jesus in his earthly life, a life of sacrifice, making atonement for the sins of the world. The word atonement means to cover, to obliterate, and when the High Priest sprinkled the blood of the sacrifice on the Propitiatory in the Most Holy place of the Tabernacle or the Temple, he was in symbol blotting out the peoples’ sins in the sight of God. But there was a further element in the ritual before the people were free from the weight of their sins. After the offering of the blood the High Priest must emerge again and take his place in full view of all the people, raise his hands and invoke the Divine blessing upon them. Only when that point was reached could it be said that the offering had done its work. Only then could each man of Israel feel that he stood in a cleansed position before God.

So it is in the reality. Speaking of this very ritual of the high priest entering into the holy place every year with the blood of the offerings, he goes on to say "and as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment" (Heb.9:27) (the "men" here are the successive High Priests who died symbolically in the ceremony, for the slain beast was a substitution and in symbol it was the Priest who offered himself to God, and it was after this offering that the judgment of God in the acceptance of the offering was manifested in the re‑appearance of the Priest to bless the people) "so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and to them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation." (Heb.9:28) Here is an exact correspondence. Christ offered himself to death just as did the Priest in the old ritual; Christ must re‑appear, this time without sin (the word means sin‑offering, for Christ does not offer himself a second time for sin) but definitely for the blessing of those for whom the offering has been made—the whole world of man. This is where the order of Melchisedec comes in. The priesthood of Aaron pictures the work of Christ at his First Advent and until his resurrection; that of Melchisedec pictures his position and work after his resurrection and ascension and at his Second Advent. "Unto them that look for him." (v.28) That is the age‑old hope of the Church, waiting for the promised return of the Lord Jesus Christ to complete the war against evil and fulfil the whole purpose of God.

This is why the Apostle Paul exhorted his pupil Titus to "live soberly, righteously and godly, in this present world (age); looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ." (Titus 2:12‑13) The duty of the Christian is to administer the obligations of the Christian faith both in inward sanctification and outward witness during this intervening time between the First and Second Advents in continual expectation of the promised Return, not looking for that Return as the end of all things for humankind, but rather as an occasion for a new effusion of blessing upon mankind. If the Second Advent brought nothing but the catastrophic ending of all save the "elect" it could hardly be appropriately described as a "blessed hope" and a "glorious appearing." In point of fact that aspect of the Lord’s return which has to do with judgment passed upon evil things is referred to a fewer number of times than that which depicts it as an occasion of blessing and rejoicing, of light and life. No philosophy of the work of the Second Advent is complete which does not include a place for the evangelisation of the world, for multitudes to come to the feet of the Saviour, for the opportunity of salvation to "whosoever will" (Rev.22:17) untrammelled by the deceptions of Satan and the hampering effects of abounding evil. The Messianic kingdom must run its course, and the nations walk in its light—even those of old time like the men of Tyre and Sidon, and Sodom and Gomorrah, who are to find the retributive judgments of that Kingdom "more tolerable" than will the Pharisees of our Lord’s own day. (Matt.11:22; Mark 6:11)—before the Last Assize (judgment) is held. Nothing less is demanded by the selection of Melchisedec as a type of Christ in his work of glory—a dispenser of Divine favour and a king ruling in righteousness.

This present world is but a stage in man’s progress, a stage in which sin and the results of sin mar the Divine image in man and hamper his attainment of the Divine purposes. But the image will be restored and the purpose served. It may well be that the exercise of the free will which God has implanted in man and without which he would not be man, may lead some at the end to refuse their intended place in God’s creation, to refuse the gift of life upon the only terms on which God can bestow it. It must be, nevertheless that at least the vast majority of earth’s millions will, as the Divine purpose works itself out through one age after another, attain at last a heart appreciation of the goodness of God, and in wholehearted submission to the Lord Jesus Christ come, as Isaiah of old said the ransomed of the Lord would come, to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads, while sorrow and sighing shall flee away. (Isa.35:10)

Of course the story does not stop even there. Through all the infinite ages, ages without end, development and progress will go on. Heaven is not a static condition and there is no finality in the things said and done in that place. There will always be some new thing to learn, always some greater thing to do, always some higher pinnacle of achievement to surmount. "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit." (1. Cor.2:9‑10) Spiritually, by faith, we know that these things are so although we cannot visualise them and for the present with that we must be content.

So the angel’s words to those few disciples standing on the Mount of Olives after their Lord had ascended before their very eyes were words of confidence and assurance. "This same Jesus,…shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven." (Acts 1:11) The English expression "in like manner" fails by far to express the real force of the heavenly message. It was not that He was to return in similar clothing with similar appearance, descending in bodily form to stand on the solid earth just as He had ascended from it. The expression is derived from a word denoting the regular and consistent course of the sun round the earth within a fixed channel or pathway in which it must certainly appear at its due time. It is as though the angels had said "as surely as you have seen him go into heaven so surely will He follow his fixed course and come again." "As surely as the sun sets in the west tonight, so surely will it rise in the east tomorrow." It was that expression of certitude which sent the disciples back to Jerusalem with great joy and instilled into their minds and hearts a faith and fortitude which remained with them all their days. The Lord whom they served had finished with sacrifice and offering; He had passed into the heavens to receive a new and supremely exalted office, and one day He would certainly return to take his own to himself and bring the sons of men all those blessings which an infinitely wise and supremely loving God had prepared for them. Small wonder that the brightest hope of the Christian Church lies in the future, that discouragements and disappointments and failures of the present are as nothing compared to the glorious triumphs of the time when, at last, "at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow…and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." (Phil.2:10‑11)