Hebrews 10:25

25. Assembling of yourselves together This plainly refers to voluntary meetings of Christians for mutual Christian inspiration and encouragement. Assuming, as we here do, that Jerusalem is the city to whose Christian people this epistle was addressed, not long before the destruction by Titus, we catch a brief glimpse of the interior of city and Church. The Greek word here, επισυναγωγη , episynagogue, can hardly be other than a Christian synagogue, Note, James 2:2. The assemblies remind us of the early meetings of the pentecostal Church (Acts 2:42-47) “from house to house,” for mutual aid in Christian life. The warm, central heart of the Church, now as then, maintains its collective vitality by frequent assembling together. But outside that central living heart is a number of loose hangers-on, whose manner is that of forsaking, through lukewarmness, negligence, or fear of persecution, or dread of popular contempt. They were once converted; were once themselves a part of the central live heart; but they have gradually receded to the outskirts of the Church, and are probable candidates for apostasy.

Exhorting The efficient means in their assemblies for maintaining the Christian life. This expressive word blends the ideas of calling forth, admonishing, arousing, and consoling; and for each of these various strains there would be those in that day of trial whose case made demand.

The day These words are addressed to that Jerusalem whose destruction Jesus so fully predicted in Matthew 24:25, on which chapters see our notes. The word day is not here to be limited to a literal period of twenty-four hours.

Ye see… approaching Lunemann, who belongs to the class of interpreters who maintain that the apostles held the second advent to be about to occur in their own day, says, that both writer and reader “beheld the advent as approaching in the Jewish war, indicated by disturbances and commotions which had already commenced.” How the indications of the Jewish war should imply the second advent to be approaching, he does not explain. They did indicate, as Christ predicted, the downfall of Jerusalem; but the incorrectness of assuming that our Lord confounded the destruction of Jerusalem with his own second advent we trust we have shown in our notes on his great prediction. Eusebius informs us, that the Christians, rightly interpreting our Lord’s words not as predicting the end of the world but the destruction of the city, fled to Pella, and so escaped. They did flee, not to escape Christ’s second coming, but to escape the Roman armies.

See note on Matthew 24:16. Of the various signs by which these Jerusalem Christians could see the day approaching, see an enumeration in our notes upon Mark 13:7-9. But while this passage is properly applied, not to the second advent, but to the destruction of the city to which it is addressed, it is none the less absurd to apply passages addressed to localities far distant from Jerusalem to the same event. We hold it entirely inadmissible to apply 2 Thessalonians 1:7-10 to the destruction of Jerusalem. Thessalonica was in Europe, Jerusalem in Asia. That neither Christ nor his apostles taught that the second advent would be in their own day, see supplementary note at close of Matthew 25:0.