Men and women of faith - What Hebrews 11 tells us about the return of Christ to the earth

Faith. 

It's a small little word with very big implications as shown in Hebrews 11. 

Hebrews 11 is sometimes described as the "Faith Chapter" as Paul (supposed to be the writer of the letter to the Hebrews) runs through a list of faithful men and women throughout the ages.   

Faith, it is proclaimed in the chapter at hand, is the essence of things hoped for and the firm assurance of things not seen. Each person mentioned in the chapter had faith and because of that faith, they did something. 

"By faith, Abel offered unto God", 

"By faith, Abraham... obeyed and went out"

"By faith, they (Israel) passed through the Red Sea" etc.  

The word faith occurs 31 times in this chapter. What might be less easy to spot is that there's another word repeated oft in this text and it's the word "promise". The word promise occurs 7 times in this chapter, with most being in the form of "the promise" or "the land of promise" etc etc. 

What is this promise that is so intimately connected with the topic of faith?   

We get a clue when we look at the person with whom the word is first associated, being Abraham. Abraham was told to go and sojourn in the land of promise, with Isaac and Jacob who were also heirs of the same promise.  We'll come back to Abraham later for he deserves a fuller discussion. For now, let's focus on two particular references to the "promises" in Hebrews 11 to show why we are zeroing in on this topic.   

v 13 These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.  vv 39, 40 And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise: God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.  

From these two references, we can glean the following points:

  • The faithful all knew of a particular promise made by God that was to come in a time far distant to their own
  • Their faith helped them do things in their lives which meant that they obtained a "good report", that is, they were judged to be righteous by their faith working in action
  • They all died without having received this promise (see the earlier discussion regarding death and the immortality of the soul)
  • The receipt of the promise was to happen to all of them at the same time that it happens to us

So what are these promises, when were they made, when will they be fulfilled and what is it that all faithful will receive at once? We will expand upon these points in the next few posts. It is important to understand who are heirs to the Christian hope and why faith is so important to that hope. 

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