Today we're going to start in the Book of Hebrews. It was 6 years ago that we started teaching Paul's letters? We've been totally in Paul's epistles now for a long time, and in the last lesson we finished up with Timothy and Titus. Now I think Hebrews also is an epistle of Paul, although it is not directed to the Gentiles or the Church, but rather it's directed to Jewish believers. There has always been a lot of controversy over this letter as to its authorship, and as to its time of writing and so forth. And again I'm not a theologian, so I don't have to get hung up on any of these big heavyweight arguments. I just tell you what I think it is, and I believe the Apostle Paul is definitely the author of the Book of Hebrews, and I'll show you in a few moments why I'm quite adamant about that. Secondly, I've always felt that it was one of his earlier letters, if not the earliest. I read something this past week confirming that, and that is in some of the earliest or ancient manuscripts of our New Testament, the Book of Hebrews followed I and II Thessalonians. Now everyone is pretty much agreed that the Thessalonian letters were the first of Paul's writings, and so if Hebrews in the ancient manuscripts followed Thessalonians, then that falls right in line with what I've always thought, that it is one of his earliest letters. Another thing I think we have to realize now as we get into Hebrews, is that there is absolutely nothing of Church language. In other words, you won't find a Roman road to Salvation in Hebrews. There is not a Hebrews road to Salvation, so, "What's the theme of the Book?" The theme of the Book of Hebrews is two fold. 1. We're showing a constant comparison of how this economy now under Grace is so much better than anything that went before. And we'll be looking for that over and over throughout this Book. We'll see this is better! Yes, the law was good, but this is so much better. 2. More preeminent in importance is that Hebrews is going to point out Who Jesus Christ really is. He is God the Son, and we'll emphasize that as well as we go through this letter. So those are some of the things that we want to use as an introduction to this tremendous letter to the Hebrews, that it is not a book of Church doctrine, as you won't find a single word in here about Salvation based on Christ's death, burial and resurrection, or any reference to the Body of Christ, or any reference to faith + nothing as we see so often in Romans. Nor is it a Book of corrections and admonitions like the Book of Galatians is. So it's just totally different. In fact, I'm going to compare this letter to the Hebrews with the Old Testament, and that's the way I'm going to treat it.