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St Francis Magazine Vol 8, No 2 | April 2012 the “mid-­‐point of history.” The words of the Swiss theologian Oscar Cullman bear repeating: “In the central event of Christ the Incarnate One, an event that constitutes the mid-­‐point of that line [i.e. the entire time line of all of history], not only is all that goes before fulfilled but also all that is future is decided.” 93 As the One who determines all of history, then, Christ, as James Dennison has observed, can rightly be called the Eschatological or last Pilgrim (Heb 12:2). Of Abraham, Jesus said to his contemporary Jewish audience “Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.” (John 8:56). That is to say, through the eyes of faith, Abraham was able to see what was unseen to his physical eyes at the time of his life. Through the provision of a sacrifice in the place of Isaac, he could, for instance, see the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ. Abraham not only saw Christ as a sacrifice, he saw him as the exemplar of what it meant to be a pilgrim. 3.1 From a heavenly home to an earthly home: Christ left the glories of His heavenly home and came in humility and “took the form of a servant” (Phil 2:7). If we must, we will use sociological language to describe this descent: the ultimate status-­‐degradation. More than anyone else He exemplified the “the situation of being in between two or more worlds” and most ironically, they were worlds in which He was the Sovereign. He came via the instrumentality of Holy Spirit conception in a teenage girl, was born in a manure-­‐smelling limestone grotto outside of Bethlehem and lived in a marginalized area called Galilee in a country occupied by the Roman foreign power. In a word: “He was in the world, and though the world came into 93 Anthony A. Hoekema, The Bible and the Future. (Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans, 1994), p. 301 quoting Oscar Cullmann, Christ and Time, (Philadelphia, Westminster, 1950), p. 72. 231