<p>10:25 <em>Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the habit of some is; but rather encouraging one another, and so much the more, as you see the day drawing near</em>- The Hebrew Christians in Jerusalem initially 'assembled together' in the temple courts, but with growing opposition from the temple system it seems they stopped doing this and instead returned to the temple system. This explains the need to assemble because the day is drawing near, and in the AD70 context this referred to the destruction of the entire temple system. The individual believers were the new temple, and they should therefore assemble themselves, rather than within the physical temple.</p><p>The connection between the last day, both of AD70 and the second coming, and assembling together is brought out by the allusion to the Passover. Gathered around the slain lamb, the memorial of their salvation, in their various homes, the command was clear:&nbsp;&quot;None of you shall go out at the door of his house until the morning&quot; (Ex. 12:22). This is surely an eloquent picture of the ecclesia of the last days, highlighting the urgent need to remain within the ecclesia, and to centre our fellowship around our Passover Lamb.&nbsp;</p><p>Not assembling ourselves together is of course not a good thing. If we love our brethren, we will seek to be physically with them. There can be no doubt that we must struggle with our natural selfishness, our desire to go it alone. But is this actually what Heb. 10:25 is talking about? A glance at the context shows that forsaking the assembly is paralleled with the wilful sin which shall exclude us from God&rsquo;s salvation, a treading under foot the Son of God and reviling the blood of the covenant- what had to be done by Christians who &lsquo;repented&rsquo; of their conversion and returned to the synagogue, the sort of blasphemy that Saul was making Christian converts commit.</p><p>This is not really appropriate to someone who fervently believes in the Lord Jesus, but for whatever reason, doesn&rsquo;t &lsquo;make it out to meeting&rsquo; on Sundays? The context seems to speak about a wilful rejection of the Lord Jesus. And this of course is the very background against which Hebrews was written. It was a letter to Hebrew Christians who were beginning to bow to Jewish pressure and renounce their faith in Christ, and return to Judaism. &ldquo;The assembling of ourselves together&quot; can actually be read as a noun- not a verb. Those who &lsquo;forsook&rsquo; &lsquo;the assembly together of us&rsquo; would then refer to those who totally rejected Christianity. The same word &ldquo;forsaking&quot; occurs in 2 Pet. 2:15, also in a Jewish context, about those who &ldquo;forsake the right way&quot;. So I suggest that forsaking the assembly refers more to turning away from Christ and returning to apostasy, than to simply not turning up at church as often as we might. The writer laments that &ldquo;some&quot; were indeed forsaking the assembly (Heb. 10:25). But that Greek word translated &ldquo;some&quot; recurs in Hebrews to describe those &ldquo;some&quot; who had forsaken the ecclesia and turned back to Judaism: &ldquo;Take heed&hellip; lest there be in <em>some</em> AV &ldquo;any&quot; of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God&quot; (and returning to Judaism- Heb. 3:12)&hellip; lest <em>some</em> AV &ldquo;any&quot; of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin (Heb. 3:13)&hellip; for <em>some</em>, when they had heard, did provoke referring to the earlier Hebrews in the wilderness who turned away from the hope of the Kingdom- Heb. 3:16&hellip; <em>some</em> of you should seem to fail like the condemned Hebrews in the wilderness- Heb. 4:1&hellip; lest <em>some</em> fall after the same example of unbelief&quot; (Heb. 4:11). In fact, right after the reference to the &ldquo;some&quot; who forsake the assembly, Heb. 10:28 speaks of &ldquo;<em>some</em> AV &ldquo;he&quot;- but the same Greek word in all these places for &ldquo;some&quot; that despised Moses&rsquo; law&quot;. Clearly, those Hebrews in the wilderness who turned away from the spirit of Christ in Moses and the hope of the Kingdom, are being held up as warnings to that same &ldquo;some&quot; in the first century Hebrew ecclesia who were turning back from the Hope of the Kingdom. I&rsquo;m not in any way saying that we needn&rsquo;t bother about our ecclesial attendance. Far from it But I also feel it&rsquo;s not right to insist that if someone doesn&rsquo;t attend an ecclesia, for whatever reason, they are therefore guilty of the wilful sin and certain fiery condemnation of which Hebrews 10 speaks for those who forsake the assembly. In fact, the passage has almost been abused like that- as if to say: &lsquo;If you don&rsquo;t turn up on Sunday, if you quit meeting with us, then, you&rsquo;ve quit on God and His Son&rsquo;. This simply isn&rsquo;t the case.</p>