Therefore it was necessary that the copies of the things in the heavens should be purified with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ has not entered the holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us; not that He should offer Himself often, as the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood of another-- He then would have had to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now, once at the end of the ages, He has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. (Hebrews 09:23-26, NKJV).
Evolutionists and Old-Earth advocates divide earthly history into epochs, ages, and eras.
So does Scripture, except the stratigraphic criteria is vastly different. The former focus on the physical, attempting to interpret geographic and radiometric data according to preconceived notions of how things "really are".
The latter does so based on infallible revelation provided by the Manufacturer, whose focus is on the spiritual, and who has the distinct advantage of being eternal and transcendent, outside of both time and space, from where He is the indisputable cause of both.
From that divine perspective, the division of history is both simultaneously simpler, and infinitely more profound. It boils down to four eons, from Creation to Christ's First Coming, from His Ascension to His Visible Return, Christ's Millennial Kingdom, followed by Eternity, also called "The Age to Come".
As you can see, the demarcation lines are all Christo-centric, eminently fitting since He is the agent of Creation, the Redeemer of the Fall, the King of Kings, and the Son of God. To believe this is to believe the gospel in its deepest and most satisfying form.
Deep because it takes all the treasures of God's Word for what it purports to be, revealed Truth, and satisfying, because it answers the most ancient cry of the bereaved human heart: How long O Lord?
Everything in Hebrews is meant as encouragement to understand the superiority of Christ - He is superior to angels, to Moses, to Joshua, to the ancient priesthood of Israel, and especially to the temporary atoning animal sacrifices established by the Law to foreshadow that one, ultimate cleansing sacrifice of the Son of God.
His death, much more than His birth, is the single most significant event in time and space. By coming to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself, He purged our sins once, for all, and made available the undoing of the devastation of our specie's rebellion against the Creator.
This occurred in what the Bible terms the fullness of time, and here as the end of the ages. And its efficacy was such that it need never be repeated. In fact, any attempt on our part to add to the atoning power of that single unique act is, at bottom, a declaration of unbelief.
Make no mistake, until His death on the Cross, the ongoing and repeated Temple sacrifices were necessary to comply with God's decrees. Without them, the nation of Israel would have suffered severe temporal judgment, a result clearly understood by the people and the religious authorities for all their long history prior to Jesus' Incarnation as the Suffering Servant.
But after His death, these same foreshadowing rituals were fulfilled and rendered redemptively obsolete for all time. Christ once at the end of the ages… appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.
What does that mean for those of us who have been born since that fateful day in Judea?
It means that there is only one approach to God, and that is through complete dependence on His Son's terrible, yet glorious, work on the Cross.
We can not save ourselves. Nor can we add to His righteousness by our own works.
Indeed, if there is any act that humans can undertake besides complete faith in His singular sacrifice, than Christ's death would have been unnecessary.
To even contemplate this is utter blasphemy.
We are either made clean by trusting in His sacrifice alone, or we are still dead in our trespasses and sins.
Nothing else - nothing else - will suffice.
This does not mean that we are not to do good and to share, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased. Nor does it mean that we are to avoid those good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
No, it signifies something far more difficult than either of those alternatives: humble, sincere, loving service to God, rather than easily disguised self-service.
Sometimes this service requires us to forgo earthly pleasure, or even earthly life itself.
Always it requires casting aside all the hypocrisy of self-righteousness, and outward, superficial obedience, and surrendering to His rightful sovereignty over each moment we live and breath we take.
But it starts with simple faith in Him, and finishes with faith in Him. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith.” (Romans 1:17, NKJV).
And it is by His empowerment that we do this, not our own prideful striving, for it is ‘Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ Says the LORD of hosts.
In short, it all begins and ends in Him, who, at the precise preordained moment in time, in grace, mercy, love and filial obedience to the Father, went to the Cross to put away sin, once, for all.
