Pedro Melendez

Most evangelical Christians today maintain that the anonymous Letter to the Hebrews could not have been written by the apostle Paul.  For example, the monumental Dictionary of Paul and His Letters (published 1993 by Inter-Varsity Press Academic, edited by Gerald F. Hawthorne, Ralph P. Martin and Daniel G. Reid) does not include the Letter to the Hebrews among those written by Paul. Some commentaries and books on the New Testament suggest that Apollos or Barnabas, instead, could have written this letter. Others also suggest Priscilla.

One Bible commentary has even judged that, because of the lack of a clear identity of the author of this letter, it would be presumptuous for anyone to suggest any possible author.

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Hardly can we find a person today who does not want peace.  Yes, there are always those who are for war.  There have always been such people from the beginning of human history.  But, as bloody wars and violence have alarmingly proliferated and escalated just in the last decade, many people feel they have had it, and their cries for “Peace, peace!” haven’t been louder, especially at this time of year!  Yet, amidst all this clamor for the much pursued “peace on earth, goodwill towards men” — peace between and among nations — that global peace has remained elusive.  Why?

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One of the various charges God gave to the Old Testament priesthood of Israel (descendants of Aaron) was this:  “Do not drink wine or intoxicating drink, you, nor your sons with you, when you go into the tabernacle of meeting [with the LORD] , lest you die.  It shall be a statute throughout your generations” (Leviticus 10:9).

Why did God give this charge to the priests?  He told them:  so “…that you may distinguish between holy and unholy, and between unclean and clean, and that you may teach the children of Israel all the statutes which the LORD has spoken to them by the hand of Moses” (Verses 10-11).

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It seems evident that there is, in almost every person, a sense of “Something” or “Someone” that’s beyond what our five natural senses can comprehend. [See: A Law-abiding Universe — But Man!]  And this sense of “mystery” has driven mankind to worship that “great unknown” — whether some impersonal “Force” or some “Person” somewhere out there in the unseen world or universe.  That worship has taken many forms, has engendered many often conflicting ideas or concepts, many different rituals and rubrics.  Thus we have today’s major “world religions” — Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism — not to mention the smaller but often aggressive religions.

In the midst of all this bewildering religious smorgasbord, one is left with the question: which of these religions is true?  And which one offers and practices true worship?

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The prophet Malachi declares some amazing prophecies about our end times, just before Jesus Christ returns in victory to rule this dying world.

One such prophecy — which many Bible students have failed to appreciate or have chosen to misunderstand or ignore — is found in Malachi 4.

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Many sincere Christians — clerics and laymen alike — look at our world with its hordes of “unsaved” or “unchurched” people numbering in the multiple millions.  And, with great urgency and compassion, these Christians long with all their hearts to reach out to these people with the gospel of salvation in Christ.

Indeed, as Jesus Himself said, He came “to seek and save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10).  Jesus was referring here to the Jewish tax collector Zacchaeus and other human beings like him (including you and me!) who are all sinners and are “lost” on their way to salvation and eternal life.  “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one, to his own way” (Isaiah 53:6).

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Exercising what they consider their “freedom in Christ,” many — if not most — who profess faith in Christ eat flesh of all animals, regardless of some animals being labeled by the Old Testament as “unclean”  (Leviticus 11; Deuteronomy 14; etc.).  There are even some who go as far an extreme as to say that “Pork is Christian food!”

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Even much, much earlier than the word “science” was coined, humans must have wondered about the world in which they lived, and have observed that certain things, certain events happened regularly and predictably.

Since dim antiquity, we humans have known that sunsets would be followed by nights, and then sunrise and daylight.  We have known that (for those living in areas with four seasons) spring comes after winter, and summer before fall.  We have known when to plant and when to harvest.  We have known that when we sow corn seed, we will harvest corn and not rice or barley or wheat.  We have known how long it takes for a woman to conceive and bear a child.  We have known enough about how things work to be able to build houses, make clothes, make boats, carts, cars, trains, planes and other means to take us to places — and many, many other things to make our lives easier and more comfortable (or more complicated?!).

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“He surely has gone to heaven; he was such a good man!”  We hear such talk at funeral wakes.  We hear it as people pay tribute to a loved one who had done a lot of good and is now lying cold in a casket.  “He must be looking from up there over us his surviving loved ones, pleased with the honor we are giving him right now.”

Does a dead person still somehow see and hear and feel or otherwise sense what’s going on in the world he has left behind at death?  What about stories about the “ghost” of a dead person visiting the living who survive him?  Are these stories for real?  When a “bad” man dies, does he — or his soul — go down at once to some fiery place called “hell?”

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For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height — to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with the fullness of God.  (Ephesians 3:14-19, NKJV.)

Almost everywhere we hear people talking and preaching about “the love of Jesus.”  Mass media preachers and door-to-door evangelists assure their audiences or “prospects” for “salvation” that “Jesus loves you.”  Invariably they would break out into a spiel about how Jesus died for sinners, how His shed blood cleanses us from our guilty past and evil consciences — about how God’s grace and mercy through Christ covers all our sins, and we are freed from the consequence of sin: death in the “lake of fire.”  We are assured of everlasting life.

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