- Written in the mid-AD 60’s of 1st century to Jews turned Christian.
- Opens with “in these last days” & says about his audience, “we who have fled for refuge” (Jerusalem) & says they had instead come to spiritual “Zion,” the heavenly Jerusalem that could not be “touched.”
- Calls his audience the “firstborn enrolled in heaven.” He tells them to endure to “the end.”
- Of the old covenant, he says, “what is becoming obsolete & growing old is ready to vanish away.”
- Says the way into the true holy places was not open as long as the then-present age lasted. (the age that Jesus had said would end with the destruction of Herod’s temple)
- Says that Jewish law practices would end at the “time of reformation.”
- Says the “day” was drawing near. Says the Lord would judge “his people.”
- Says the faithful Jewish fathers desired a “better country, that is, a heavenly one,” but did not yet attain the promise because it was to happen at the same time his audience would be declared perfect. (7th trumpet, last trumpet, included in Revelation’s things that were “at hand” and “shortly to come to pass” in the AD 60’s).
- Says his audience was receiving a kingdom at the same time that the things that could be shaken (physical temple, old covenant) would be destroyed in consuming fire, in favor of things that cannot be shaken (spiritual temple, new covenant).
- He closes with a summary regarding the destruction of the physical city Jerusalem (“no lasting city”), which he says was about to happen, in favor of the New Jerusalem (the church as God’s forever people, Jew and Gentile alike – the bride of Christ).
- The “end” was quite obviously the end of the Old Covenant Mosaic age. Moses, Daniel, Isaiah, Joel, Peter, James, John, Andrew, Jesus, & Paul all thought the same. Should we think differently?