Certain Bible verses demand to be quoted in the King James Version, and Hebrews 10:25 is one of them. Following calls to “hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering” (v. 23) and provoke one another “unto love and to good works” (v. 24) is an exhortation even more direct: Christians should not be “forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is.”
This is indeed the manner of some—today in ways the epistle’s unknown writer could not have anticipated. Human foibles are the same as ever, but 21st-century Christians have excuses for forsaking the assembly that first-century Christians could not muster: You can always just listen to a sermon podcast. You can pick up that extra shift or sleep a little longer or take your kid to the travel soccer tournament and make it up to God when the next episode drops. Well, you can do these things in the sense that this technology is available and no one will keep you from using it. But you can’t replace Sunday morning with a recording and presume that you’ve been to church.
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