PERDITION

18

OR

`Pray for us: for we trust we have a good conscience, in all things willing to live honestly' (Heb. 13:18).

And this feature is not found in Peter, James, Jude or John.

Another point needs to be made. The stress in Romans on Abraham and Sarah's physical incapacity to have a

son and heir in their old age, and the quickening power of resurrection is seen also in Hebrews:

`... Abraham; who is the father of us all, (As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations,) before Him

Whom he believed, even God, Who quickeneth the dead ... and being not weak in faith, he considered not his

own body now dead ... neither yet the deadness of Sarah's womb' (Rom. 4:16-19).

`Through faith also Sara herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was

past age ... Therefore sprang there even of one, and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of the sky in

multitude ...' (Heb. 11:11,12).

This power operated too in the willingness to sacrifice Isaac, the child of promise (Heb. 11:17-19). No other

New Testament writer treats of this matter.

One of the ways the enemy of truth was seeking to hinder the progress of the Gospel was by circulating spurious

epistles purporting to come from the apostle:

`Now we beseech you, brethren, ... that ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by

word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ (the Lord, revised text) is at hand' (2 Thess. 2:1,2.

In order to guard against this, Paul decided to end all his letters in one special way, in his own handwriting:

`The salutation of Paul with mine own hand, which is the token in every epistle: so I write' (2 Thess. 3:17),

and then follows a reference to the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, this, so fitting, coming from one who was

predominantly the apostle of grace. This is the way that all the thirteen epistles associated with his name ends. Not

one of the other epistles concludes in such a way, and it must surely be obvious that if anyone else used the same

formula, its use as a guarantee of genuineness would have been null and void. But the epistle to the Hebrews ends

with it and this is another definite link with the apostle Paul and his writings.

Not only this, but there are remarkable doctrinal parallels between Philippians and Hebrews, as Charles H.

Welch has shown in his Alphabetical Analysis, Part Two, page 108. These cannot be ignored by anyone who is

studying this subject with an unbiased mind. We now exhibit them: (see next page).

From all the foregoing facts, it surely is clear that behind the epistle to the Hebrews is the mind of Paul, if not his

actual pen.

How expositors can deny this passes our comprehension. Some may ask: does it really matter who the human

author was? From one standpoint we answer `no', for, whoever he was, God the Holy Spirit overruled what he

wrote, so that it could become part of inspired Scripture, and He is the real Author. From another point of view the

answer is `yes', for if Hebrews cannot be included in the Pauline collection of epistles, then the perfect arrangement

and balance is upset.

There are 21 epistles in the New Testament, and with Hebrews included in Paul's writings there is a perfect

balance of sevens:

(1) Galatians

(1) Ephesians

(1) 1 Peter

(2) 1 Thessalonians

(2) Colossians

(2) 2 Peter

(3) 2 Thessalonians

(3) Philippians

(3) James

(4) 1 Corinthians

(4) 1 Timothy

(4) 1 John

(5) 2 Corinthians

(5) Titus

(5) 2 John