The Central Point in the History of the World

Anglo-Catholic Bible scholar of two generation ago, A. G. Hebert:

The Old Testament is confessedly incomplete, since it looks forward to a future Event; we shall define the object of the Messianic Hope as the completion of the Purpose which God took in hand when He called Israel to be His People.

And the New Testament, in its turn, is unintelligible without the Old, which it presupposes everywhere as its background.

And if we believe that the Lord God, to whom the universe belongs, was indeed revealing Himself to man and redeeming him, it follows that the preparatory action of the Old Testament is just as much His action as is the Fulfillment in Jesus the Messiah; and further, that this Fulfillment must bear the marks of finality. This thought of finality receives a notable expression in a verse in the Epistle to the Hebrews, which may be freely translated: 'As it is, once for all, at the central point in the history of the world the Messiah has appeared, to put an end to the power of sin by the sacrifice of Himself' (Heb. ix.26)--'at the central point of history'--literally, 'at the consummation or summing up of the ages', at the point where the meaning of the whole is gathered up, totum simul, all in one instant.

It happened at Jerusalem, at the passover festival of one of the years when Pontius Pilate was procurator of Judea.

--A. G. Hebert, The Throne of David: A Study of the Fulfillment of the Old Testament in Jesus Christ and His Church (New York: Morehouse-Gorham, 1948), 19