For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect.--Hebrews 10:1

It is customary for the March-April issue of THE HERALD to deal with material that is appropriate as meditations for the annual Memorial of the Lord's death which, this year, will be celebrated on March 30. It is with the desire that this season be spiritually rich for all of our readers as they show their appreciation for the death of Jesus and their desire to be a part of his body, that we put forth the articles in this issue on "Shadows of the Cross."

Jesus' death on Calvary is the hub around which all of the Bible revolves. The entire New Testament is based on this single event. The four gospels give the history of the three and a half year ministry that led to this death. The book of Acts and the epistles show the impact that death had on the nascent Christian church.

Not only the New Testament, but the Old Testament as well, is centered on this climactic event in the history of the world. Jesus said to the Pharisees, "For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me" (John 5:46). Again, on the road to Emmaus, we read that "beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself" (Luke 24:27). In a similar vein, the apostle Peter said, "Yea, and all the prophets from Samuel and those that follow after, as many as have spoken, have likewise foretold of these days" (Acts 3:24).

While many of the prophecies of the Old Testament, when speaking of the redemption of Israel, refer indirectly to the work of Christ, there were other pictures that foreshadowed the death of Christ directly. It is these pictures of the crucifixion of Jesus that form the theme for this issue of  THE HERALD.

The first article Messiah's Two Roles gives an overview of the illustrations of Christ and the redemptive process used in the Old Testament. It is excerpted from a new book by Paul Mali entitled The Bible as a Rising Civilization.

One of the earliest indications of the death of a redeemer is shown at the time of the first recorded death in the Bible--that of Abel at the hands of his brother Cain. In The Offering of Abel the author looks at the origin of animal sacrifices and how these point forward to the sacrifice of Jesus for the whole world of mankind.

From time to time, one or another of our editors will disagree with a given point in an article. In this issue we are introducing a new feature in THE HERALD to deal with this type of situation. You will find a box in the above article under the title of On the Other Hand which gives that editor's alternative view. You will be noticing such boxes in future issues as well. We hope these will encourage the spirit of dialog on points of interpretation which may be open to more than one viewpoint.

Perhaps the most prominent indication of a redemptive sacrifice is shown in the well-known Bible story of The Sacrifice of Isaac. The sheer pathos of this narrative touches the hearts of all true Christians in its demonstration of the cost of redemption to both the Father and the Son.

A more obscure picture, also found in the book of Genesis, is the subject investigated in The Butler and the Baker. This article looks at the potential typical significance of the Egyptian prison experiences of the patriarch Joseph.

The same need of atonement was shown many times during Israel's wandering in the wilderness prior to their entrance into the promised land of Canaan. Three of our articles deal with this time period. The Silver Sockets show how the concept of a ransom was built into the very structure of Israel's tabernacle. It was in that structure that the priests of Israel offered those typical sacrifices year by year which are explained to us in the book of Hebrews. The most solemn of these annual sacrifices is examined in the article The Sacrifice of Christ as Shown on the Day of Atonement.

During these same forty years, Israel sorely tested the patience of Jehovah, their God. One of these tests resulted in a plague of serpents which decimated their numbers. It was only stayed with the erection of a brazen serpent on a pole which, when gazed upon, brought relief from the plague. The Brazen Serpent treats this event in the light of Jesus' application of it to himself (John 3:14).

Our "Echoes from the Past" feature in this issue duplicates the notes of a discourse given by Bro. F. A. Acheson at a Seattle convention in 1909. Entitled Three Days and Three Nights it suggests an interpretation of the "Sign of Jonah" given by Jesus as the only sign he would give to "an evil and adulterous generation" (Matthew 12:39).

The final article is our regular verse by verse study in one chapter of the Bible. It also concerns an Old Testament reference to the death of Christ. The chapter is Job 33 and the article is entitled I Have Found a Ransom.