From terror to welcome

Run with endurance · Hebrews 12

Story guide: Sinai and Zion form the letter’s contrast. The welcoming city is explicitly a visual metaphor for the heavenly assembly, not a documented view of heaven.

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18For you have not come to what can be touched, and to a blazing fire, and to darkness and gloom and storm,

19and to the sound of a trumpet and to a voice of words, whose hearers begged that no further word be spoken to them.

20For they could not endure what was being commanded: “If even an animal touches the mountain, it will be stoned.”

21And so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, “I am fearful and trembling.”

22But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels in festal gathering,

23and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in the heavens, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of righteous people made perfect,

24and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks better than Abel.

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