THE DESIGN HYPOTHESIS STANDS

Today, I moderated a discussion on a debate between John Lennox and Peter Atkins (Atheist). Atkins and perhaps all of the atheists acknowledge that we are surrounded by the appearances of (intelligent) design. However, Atkins maintained that once we study the sciences, we find better explanations for design than ID.

However, what scientific facts are able to overthrow the design (ID) hypothesis? Evolution is generally cited, but even if macro-evolution happened, how does the atheist discount the possibility that God might have had a hand in directing evolution? They cannot!

This means that the ubiquitous appearances of design are still best explained by our senses, which acknowledge a Designer.

PROPAGANDA AND ORLANDO

Propaganda is the antithesis of balanced reporting. It only allows its “masses” to see a very limited perspective. A proven propagandist had therefore written:

·       The function of propaganda does not lie in the scientific training of the individual, but in calling the masses' attention to certain facts, processes, necessities, etc., whose significance is thus for the first time placed within their field of vision. (Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf)

Our present-day progressive media and government greedily embrace this “wisdom”:

·       The lengths to which the Obama Administration is willing to go to extricate Omar Mateen’s killing spree from the motives he proclaimed to the police during 911 calls and to the world on social media are staggering. Today, for example, the Department of Justice announced that it is “scrubbing references of radical Islamic beliefs from the transcript calls Orlando terrorist Omar Mateen made to police during his massacre.” Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who responded to the terrorist shootings in San Bernardino by promising to prosecute “anti-Muslim speech,” informed NBC that, “What we’re not going to do is further proclaim this man’s pledges of allegiance to terrorist groups, and further his propaganda. We are not going to hear him make his assertions of allegiance [to the Islamic State].” https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/christians-and-the-orlando-blood-libel

The Obama administration has devoted itself to propaganda, molding public opinion in accordance with its own agenda, emphasizing the human rights of the Muslim at the expense of the rights of the innocent who should be protected against the Muslim.

·       The function of propaganda is, for example, not to weigh and ponder the rights of different people, but exclusively to emphasize the one right which it has set out to argue for. Its task is not to make an objective study of the truth, in so far as it favors the enemy, and then set it before the masses with academic fairness; its task is to serve our own right, always and unflinchingly. (MK)

In accordance with this “wisdom,” the Obama administration has gone beyond simply a biased presentation of the facts. They are now rewriting the script. According to the new redacted script, which removed any references to Islam, Mateen proclaimed:

·       Praise be to God [not “Allah”], and prayers as well as peace be upon the prophet of…..

However, Mateen did not say “God” but “Allah.” Therefore, God is the problem and not Islamic Koranic-based faith. This is like going to a doctor who will only tell you that you have a virus and not Ebola. Had he stated “Ebola,” you could have been treated accordingly and probably successfully. However, if it is just labelled a “virus,” then treatment can take many different and inappropriate forms.

The Obama administration practice is clearly in harmony with Hitler:

·       The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan. As soon as you sacrifice this slogan and try to be many-sided, the effect will piddle away, for the crowd can neither digest nor retain the material offered. In this way the result is weakened and in the end entirely cancelled out. (MK)

Likewise, the Obama team will only tell us about the innocent Muslims, who should not be victimized because of the many brutal Muslim attacks. However, they fail to tell us anything about Islam – their intention to impose sharia law and a worldwide Caliphate, even using the tactics of Boko Haram and ISIS, if necessary. They also fail to tip us off about Islamic history and its teachings, for example:

IMMIGRATION JIHAD: He who emigrates (from his home) in the Cause of Allah [Jihad], will find on earth many dwelling places and plenty to live by. And whosoever leaves his home as an emigrant unto Allah and His Messenger, and death overtakes him, his reward is then surely incumbent upon Allah. And Allah is Ever Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful. And when you (Muslims) travel in the land, there is no sin on you if you shorten your Salat (prayer) if you fear that the disbelievers may attack you, verily, the disbelievers are ever unto you open enemies. (Koran 4:100-101) 

WORLDWIDE CALIPHATE:

• “Make war on them until idolatry is no more and Allah’s religion (Islam) reigns supreme.” (Koran 8:37)

• “When the Sacred Months are over, kill those who ascribe partners [like Jesus] to God wheresoever ye find them; seize them, encompass them, and ambush them; then if they repent and observe prayer and pay the alms, let them go their way’.” (Koran 4:5)

• “…kill the disbelievers wherever we find them” (Koran 2:191) and “murder them and treat them harshly” (Koran 9:123), and “Strike off the heads of the disbelievers” (Koran 8:12, cp. 8:60).

If this is what their faith is about - and history confirms it - then we should expect to see many more San Bernardino’s, 9/11s, and Orlandos “until idolatry is no more and Allah’s religion reigns supreme.”

However, the Obama administration has even gone beyond the recommendations of Mein Kampf to actually change the transcript to change the ideas of the “great masses” whose “receptivity…is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous.” They are banking on the fact that what had apparently been Islamic violence committed in honor of Allah will soon be forgotten and that anyone who does a search regarding Islamic terror will only see references to “insanity,” “homophobia,” and “workplace violence.”

Evidently, this administration believes that our minds belong to them to be molded into compliant puppets to carry out a discredited and destructive progressive vision of a new world. And our power-elites – the media and universities – will not hold them accountable, since they too are progressives. We should call this oppressive concentration of power “tyranny” and not “democracy.”

WHY ARE WOMAN INCREASINGLY THE OBJECTS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT ON CAMPUS?

According to the NYT, sexual assault seems to be a growing problem on college campuses. Esther Boykin, a marriage and family therapist and chief executive of Group Therapy Associates claims that:

* “About 75 percent of my female clients had traumatic experiences in college, almost always sexual assault."

What has caused this scourge? We need go no further than the ubiquitous social influences that impact the worldview of our youth:

- Values like honor, dignity, and courage have been replaced by moral relativism - whatever feels right for you.

- Life, therefore, is about fulfilling yourself to the max, which often means getting as much sex as you can.

- We are just accidents of a purposeless evolutionary process. This leaves little room to affirm the idea of treating women with all due respect. They are merely wet machines to be used.

- Our culture is life-denying. We abort our babies because they interfere with our lifestyles and pleasure. It is inescapable that once we degrade the life of the pre-born, we also degrade all human life.

- If females are no longer entitled to the privacy of female bathrooms and showers, why should they be spared from incursions to their very body.

- Women are convinced that men will think that they are prudish if they don't allow touching. However, this opens the door to unwanted intrusions.

- Society has objectified the woman with pornography and the acceptability of the hook-up culture. This has further served to remove taboos that had required men to honor the woman.

- The Christian influence has served to protect and honor the woman. However, as it fades, this protection will also fade.

Higher education has not led to a higher standard of morality. Why not?

POPULAR INSANITY AND MASS DELUSION: THE ORLANDO SHOOTING AND SEX-CHANGE

Blogger and “Christian,” Jen Hatmaker, believes that, somehow, Christians are complicit in the Orlando shooting. How could this be when the shooter swore allegiance to ISIS and not to Jesus? Does this mean that Christians are behind whatever ISIS does? It seems that Hatmaker is arguing that if Christians do not endorse all aspects of gay behavior, then they are “complicit” with whatever tragedy might befall the gays:

·       I’ve been listening to my gay friends and leaders the last two days… and this is what I am hearing: It is very difficult to accept the Christian lament for LGBTQ folks in their deaths when we’ve done such a brutal job of honoring them in their lives. Anti-LGBTQ sentiment has paved a long runway to hate crimes…. We are complicit. https://juicyecumenism.com/2016/06/16/sorry-jen-hatmaker-christians-arent-complicit-happened-orlando/

I don’t even endorse all aspects of my own behavior. Am I then guilty of whatever ill befalls me, even if someone kills me? Were the Jews somehow complicit with their own genocide because they didn’t approve of all aspects of Nazi behavior? Are the victims of rape complicit with the rapist because they do not endorse rape? This is just another way of blaming the victim for “hate” and “intolerance.”

Let me just anticipate the insane backlash that will be used to discredit me:

·       You are a bigoted homophobe to compare gay sex with rape.

But I’m not. Instead, I am using extreme examples to highlight the flaws in Hatmaker’s logic – that disapproval of a behavior equates with disapproval of the person and therefore guilt for whatever happens. Actually, this is hate speech – unjustly indicting and demeaning an innocent person or group of people.

At least, Hatmaker shows a thin ray of hope for Christians – that mass murder might provoke some compassion in them:

·       It seems like the only harm toward the LGBTQ community that will overcome Christian disapproval is a mass murder.

It doesn’t matter to Hatmaker how much compassion has already been shown to the gay community by Christians. It will never be enough! Why not? Because of our refusal to totally embrace and endorse gay sex makes us haters and guilty of all kinds of evil.

But let’s try to follow Hatmaker’s logic! We also don’t approve of adultery. Does this make us complicit when the adulterer’s family falls apart? We don’t approve of pornography. Are we to be held to account when the pornographer destroys their relationships? We also do not approve of incest. Are we therefore complicit, when the abused son kills his abusing father?

Is society complicit in a murder whenever society refuses to sanction murder? Of course, this is insanity, but insanity reigns supreme in our government, schools, universities, and the media, and it’s getting worse all. It is so persistent that it has become the norm. Its “logic” is now accepted without question.

Modern insanity is sticky fly-paper. An entire society is held in its grip as it proclaims that it has the truth – the truth the all the feeble-minded who had come before the progressives had failed to grasp.

Rather than a society, it is the entire West that has fallen asleep and made their bed on the fly paper, which will not allow them to reason their way out of the insanity. They are opening their doors to people who want to kill the innocent, simply because they are not Muslim. It doesn’t matter to our secular elites what their Koran and Hadiths say about Jihad and world conquest. It doesn’t matter to our Brights that over 60% of Muslims report that they want a worldwide Caliphate. It doesn’t matter that, already, they have claimed their host nations and have set up their no-go-zones. It doesn’t seem to matter to our Freethinkers that rape is skyrocketing, Muslim Jihad camps are growing, or that the canary-in-the-Western-cages – the Jews - are fleeing in droves from the Jihadists. Nor do our elites consider that non-Muslims live as second-class citizens in all Muslim nations. Instead, they are convinced that they have the answers, and everyone who opposes them is a bigot.

Western insanity defies any attempt to catalogue it. The flies are immune to reason and even to the facts. Now, they have imposed transgenderism, and no one is allowed to speak against it. Any opposing voices are silenced. However, there are some who still haven’t been silenced.

Dr. Joseph Burger has warned that sex changes are no answer for the gender-confused:

·       “They should be getting psychotherapy…These children are unhappy for a variety of reasons. They should be treated for their unhappiness. Cutting off penises and breasts is not the treatment for unhappiness.” (SALVOMAG.COM, Summer 2016, 9)

Now that sex change has become an “in” thing, even celebrated by our elites, in the UK, the number of children who are receiving treatment for “gender dysphoria” has jumped 1000% from 2010 to 2015. Of course, fly-paper reasoning can produce many “studies” that can convincingly demonstrate that this insanity is grounded in the facts, or can they?

The American College of Pediatricians has released a paper entitled, “Gender Ideology Harms Children,” in which they have concluded:

·       “According to the DSM-V, as many as 98% of gender confused boys and 88% of gender confused girls eventually accept their biological sex after naturally passing through puberty.

·       Conditioning children into believing a lifetime of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex is normal and healthy is child abuse.” (Salve, 6)

Does sex-change ever help? Walt Heyer, in his 2006 book “Trading my Sorrows,” writes about his troubled experiences as a transsexual. The following was culled from his interview with LifeSiteNews.com:

·       Heyer was a little boy growing up in California in the mid 1940s, interested in cowboys, cars and steel guitars when one day, his grandmother fancied that he wanted to be a girl. She naively made for him a purple chiffon evening dress that he would wear when he visited her. According to Walt, donning that purple chiffon dress triggered something that put him on a 35 year long path that led through a dark valley of “torment, disillusionment, regret, and sorrow.” His gender identity confusion led him into alcoholism, drug addiction, and attempted suicide…

Is Heyer’s experience representative of many others’? Evidently! A long-term follow-up study of transsexual persons undergoing sex reassignment surgery in Sweden found: 

• Persons with transsexualism, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population. Our findings suggest that sex reassignment, although alleviating gender dysphoria, may not suffice as treatment for transsexualism, and should inspire improved psychiatric and somatic care after sex reassignment for this patient group.

Madeline Wyndzen, a transgendered psychology professor, writes:

• "50% of transgenders could be struggling with suicide attempts, regret, anger and unhappiness living in a transgender sub-culture rather than being part of the larger world.” 

A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey says:

• A staggering 41% of transgenders surveyed report they have attempted suicide and that those who have medically transitioned and surgically transitioned have higher rates of attempted suicide than the general population. Transgenders have higher rate of HIV infections. They are more prone to heavy drinking and the use of drugs. They have high rates of homelessness, unemployment and extreme poverty, even more so in the more difficult economic times of the last 5 years.

However, our Freethinkers have proved that ideology will always trump the facts. But according to them, transgenderism is something to celebrate, and if you refuse to do so, watch out.

How then do we define insanity? The easiest way is to say, “Just look at what has happened to the West!” However, we should be able to say more than this. If we can understand insanity, perhaps we can do something about it. Perhaps we can define insanity as “A comfort with willful blindness.” However, this suggests that as long as comfort remains, even the comfort of the fly-paper, so too will the willful, ideological blindness.

WAS THE SHEDDING OF BLOOD NECESSARY FOR FORGIVENESS?

Is the Bible internally consistent? More specifically, does the New Testament line up with the Old, or does it misrepresent the Hebrew Scriptures as the rabbis have often charged? If the rabbis’ indictment is correct, then the NT cannot be considered God’s words. However, if the uneducated NT writers have a more accurate understanding of the Hebrew Scriptures than do the rabbis, this would suggest that they had been divinely inspired.

This chapter will examine just one example where the NT and the rabbis differ. According to the New Testament, forgiveness requires the sacrifice of a substitute: “The law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” (Hebrews 9:22). However, since the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, Orthodox Judaism has tended to regard the Old Testament sacrifices as unnecessary. In favor of this point of view, Rabbi David Rosen writes:

·       “Judaism does not accept the idea of vicarious [substitutionary] atonement. We can only atone for our own sins and are responsible for our own actions.”[1]

If animal sacrifice is necessary, and the Temple no longer exists, then the Christian claim that Messiah has fulfilled and replaced them becomes embarrassingly compelling. This represents a threat to Judaism. Well, if animal sacrifice wasn’t necessary, why then had God commanded it? For its symbolic value! Rosen writes:

·       Our ancient sages affirm that… “sincere repentance and works of lovingkindness (charity) are the real intercessors before God’s throne” (TB Shabbat 32A) and that “sincere repentance is the equivalent to the rebuilding of the Temple, the restoration of the altar and the offering of all the sacrifices” (TB Sanhedrin 43B). In terms of Jewish understanding of the sacrificial rites in the temple, while the blood of the sacrifice did indeed represent life, it was seen precisely in a representational role symbolizing “the complete yielding up of the worshipper’s life to God” (Hertz, Pentateuch and Haftorahs)…[2]

The New Testament also understands the sacrificial system as symbolic (but also mandatory), a foreshadowing of the once-and-for-all substitutionary offering of God’s Son. Instead, much of Rabbinic Judaism maintains that it represents the yielded life.[3] The Orthodox Jewish columnist, David Klinghoffer, also argues in favor of divine forgiveness without blood:

·       …the idea that penitence was not enough would have come as a surprise to the large majority of first-century Jews, who lived in the Diaspora and therefore had no regular access to the Temple rites. In not availing themselves of these rites at all times, they were relying on scripture, which taught that forgiveness could be secured without sacrifice.[4]

Klinghoffer supports this claim by citing Solomon’s prayer at the consecration of the Temple as proof:

·       …and when they return to You with all their heart and with all their soul in the land of their enemies who led them away captive, and pray to You toward their land which You gave to their fathers, the city which You have chosen and the temple which I have built for Your name: then hear in heaven Your dwelling place their prayer and their supplication, and maintain their cause, and forgive Your people who have sinned against You, and all their transgressions which they have transgressed against You; and grant them compassion before those who took them captive, that they may have compassion on them (1 Kings 8:48-50).

For Klinghoffer, this constitutes proof that a sacrificial offering isn’t necessary. This is odd. How could Solomon, on the one hand, bless the inauguration of his costly, God-ordained Temple, while, at the same time, preach that the Temple wasn’t necessary? Instead, there are other ways to explain the fact that God would forgive the Israelites without an immediate Temple sacrifice. Simply because blood wasn’t required at that time doesn’t mean it wasn’t required! A bank will grant a loan, if repayment is guaranteed. The loan doesn’t represent a free-ride, but a postponement of payment. Similarly, God could postpone payment of the debt in view of the Messianic guarantor (Gen. 15:8-21, Heb. 9:26), even for the sins that had formerly been committed during the first covenant (Heb. 9:15).[5]

Even though the sacrificial system was symbolic, the shedding of blood was also a requirement (Lev. 16:34) through which God passed over Israel’s sins (Rom. 3:25). Thus, it couldn’t simply be set aside or loose its potency, but had to be fulfilled by a once-and-for-all bloody atonement (Heb. 10:14), through which God Himself would make atonement (Deut. 32:43).

An Unnecessary System is a Wasteful System

The expenditures underlying the Temple system were tremendous. Add to this the cost of maintaining the priesthood and the lives of multitudes of animals. It seems unreasonable that this was merely as a symbol of Israel’s duty to live in submission to God.

It was a Requirement

The sacrificial system had been so central to God’s workings with Israel that Moses and Aaron informed Pharaoh,

·       The God of the Hebrews has met with us. Please, let us go three days' journey into the desert and sacrifice to the Lord our God, lest He fall upon us with pestilence or with the sword. (Exo 5:3)

Either Israel would sacrifice animals or they would be sacrificed. Christian apologist, Michael Brown, correctly concludes, “The very reason God gave for calling his people out of Egypt was to offer sacrifices to him.”[6] He adds:

·       A careful study of the Five Books of Moses indicates that more chapters are devoted to the subject of sacrifices and offerings than to the subjects of Sabbath observance, high holy days, idolatry, adultery, murder, and theft combined.[7]

Indeed, Moses explicitly states that the blood offering was necessary to cover or atone for sins (Lev. 17:11). Sacrifice was never optional. When the Angel of Death destroyed the firstborn from the land of Egypt, he passed over and spared those Israelite homes that had the blood of the offering upon them (Exo. 12:23). Any firstborn without the blood on his doorposts would have been killed. Blood was also required to cover all the sins of Israel (Lev. 16:21-22) in accordance with the New Testament (Heb. 9:22).

Anti-Christian-Missionary, Rabbi Tovia Singer, also asserts that animal sacrifice was unnecessary: “The prophets loudly declared to the Jewish people that the contrite prayer of the penitent sinner replaces the sacrificial system…”[8] He assumes that since Israel no longer had its Temple, prayer and repentance would now suffice. He cites Hosea 14:2-3 to prove that the sacrificial system had been replaced by “words”:

·       Take words with you, and return to the Lord. Say to Him, "Take away all iniquity; Receive us graciously, for we will offer the sacrifices (‘bulls’ in Hebrew) of our lips.”

Singer is correct in pointing out that Hosea foresees “words” replacing the offering of “bulls.” However, this change is associated with the Cross and God’s declaration that "I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely, for My anger has turned away from him” (Hos. 14:4). Therefore, it wasn’t a matter of blood sacrifices being unnecessary, but rather fulfilled by the Messianic atonement!

No Indication that Sacrificial Offerings were ever Set Aside under the Mosaic Covenant

There is nothing in Moses’ Law that suggests that sacrifices were optional or that they would be abrogated apart from the Messianic atonement of Jesus.[9] However, there are a number of verses that communicate God’s displeasure with the offerings (Psalm 50:8-15; Prov. 15:8; 21:3; Isa. 1:11-17; Jer. 7:23; Amos 5:21-27; Hos. 6:6). However, these in no way indicate that God was doing away with offerings, leaving no substitutionary blood offering in their place. Instead, these verses can be explained in either of two other ways. First, God’s displeasure didn’t reflect a disdain for the offerings themselves but for the hypocrisy of the offerers. Psalm 51:16-19 illustrates this:

·       For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it; You do not delight in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart--these, O God, You will not despise…Then You shall be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offering and whole burnt offering; then they shall offer bulls on Your altar.

God was “pleased…with burnt offerings” when they were offered with a broken and repentant heart. However, when offered hypocritically, God refused to hear even the prayers of Israel (Isa. 1:15). In this regard, the highly regarded Jewish thinker, Abraham Joshua Heschel, wrote,

·       Of course, the prophets did not condemn the practice of sacrifice in itself; otherwise we should have to conclude that Isaiah intended to discourage the practice of prayer…Men may not drown out the cries of the oppressed with the noise of hymns, nor buy off the Lord with increased offerings. The prophets disparaged the cult [of animal sacrifice] when it became a substitute for righteousness.[10]

Second, the other verses that assert that God didn’t desire the blood of animals (even though He commanded it) are explained by recognizing that animal blood was merely a symbol of the ultimate Messianic offering. Israel had a dim understanding that something had to take the place of the Mosaic system and that the repeated offering of the same sacrifices only gave Israel a temporary reprieve (Heb. 10.1-4). They had also been graphically instructed by the Temple and offerings that intimacy with God was not yet a reality. They could not enter into God’s presence (nor did they dare to!), and yet, they had been promised betrothal to their God (Hos. 2:18-19). Furthermore, they had been promised a “New Covenant” through which their sins would truly and permanently be forgiven (Jer. 31:31-34). Consistent with this understanding, Psalm 40:6-8 declares that Israel’s God was preparing a sacrifice that would put an end to all other sacrifices:

·       Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body You have prepared for Me. In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You had no pleasure. Then I said, “Behold, I have come--in the volume of the book it is written of Me--to do Your will, O God” (Hebrews 10:5-7 quoting Psalm 40:6-8).[11]

After the two times where Psalm 40 dismisses animal sacrifice, it then presents a human body, suggesting that the latter sacrifice will take the place of the former. This shouldn’t have been foreign to Israelite ears. They had often been promised, starting with Moses (Deut. 32:43), that God Himself would ultimately atone for Israel’s sins.

Never a Matter of Either Blood Sacrifice or Repentance

Although Job had never been short on animal sacrifices, Elihu counseled him that a special ransom was required in addition to repentance (Job 33:24-28). However, Tovia Singer claims that there are three types of atonement (sacrifice, repentance, alms), and that any one will suffice! However, this is contradicted by the fact that any one of them was incapable of bringing forgiveness:

Speak to the children of Israel: “When a man or woman commits any sin that men commit in unfaithfulness against the Lord, and that person is guilty, then he shall (1) confess the sin which he has committed. He shall (2) make restitution for his trespass in full…in addition to the (3) ram of the atonement with which atonement is made for him. (Numbers 5:6-8; Lev. 5:5-6).

Gerald Sigal erroneously writes, “It is clear from the Scriptures that sin is removed through genuine remorse and sincere repentance.” In support, he cites Micah 6:8, stating that the Lord requires justice and mercy.[12] However, this also falls short of proving that sacrifice isn’t part of the equation.

Blood atonement, without confession and repentance, never accomplished anything (Amos 5:21-24). Nevertheless, it was still mandatory. There is no Biblical evidence that it was or could be simply set aside apart from the Messiah’s coming. After surveying the rabbinic literature, Michael Brown concludes:

·       It was only after the Temple was destroyed [in 70 AD] that the Talmudic rabbis came up with the concept that God had provided other forms of atonement aside from blood.[13]

Prophecy: A Ransom and Redeemer

There had to be the payment of a ransom. Even in the midst of God’s earliest response to humankind’s sin, a ransom was cryptically provided when He replaced the first couple’s inadequate fig leaves with animal skins (Gen. 3:21), foreshadowing His Messianic endgame (Isa. 61:10).

A ransom is inseparably and necessarily connected to Israel’s return to God (Isa. 35:10; 51:10-11; 48:20):

·       …“He who scattered Israel will gather him, and keep him as a shepherd does his flock.” For the Lord has redeemed Jacob, and ransomed him from the hand of one stronger than he (Jer. 31:10-11).

God Himself would have to pay the ransom. The Israelite couldn’t afford it (Psalm 49:7-9)! So God Himself would pay the price (49:15):

·       I have blotted out, like a thick cloud, your transgressions, and like a cloud, your sins. Return to Me, for I have redeemed you. (Isa. 44:22)

Without God’s ransom, Israel couldn’t return to God (Psalm 65:3-5; 78:38; 130:7-8; Deut. 32:43; Isa 54:5-8; Hosea 13:12-14). Although repentance is necessary, it isn’t sufficient (Isaiah 59:16-20). Psalm 24 offers a graphic, if perhaps cryptic demonstration of this principle. It asks the question, “Who may stand in His holy place!” The answer is discouraging—only the perfect (Psalm 15)! Because of this dismal response, even the gates are hanging their heads in despair, until the mysterious appearance of the “King of Glory” entering through the Temple gate into God’s presence to make intercession!

Messiah would pay with His own blood. Singer asserts, “…nor does Scripture ever tell us that an innocent man can die as an atonement for the sins of the wicked.”[14] However, according to the Zohar, the most-esteemed Jewish mystical book:

·       The children of the world are members of one another, and when the Holy One desires to give healing to the world, He smites one just man amongst them, and for his sake heals all the rest [according to Isa. 53:5—Zohar].[15]

Israel’s salvation depended upon Messiah’s substitutionary atoning death and not upon the Israelites sufficiently yielding themselves:

·       Break forth into joy, sing together…For the Lord has comforted His people, He has redeemed Jerusalem. The Lord has made bare His holy arm…(Isa. 52:9-10; 59:16; 63:5).

His “holy arm,” the Son (53:1), will pay the price:

·       But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:5-7; Psalm 40:6-8; Dan 9:24-27; Zech 12:10-13:1, 7; Psalm 22, 69)

Singer maintains that God’s provision of a ram in the place of Isaac (Gen. 22) proved that He would never accept a human sacrifice:

·       When Abraham was ready to sacrifice Isaac, the Almighty admonished him that He did not want the human sacrifice…The Almighty’s directive—that He only wanted animal sacrifices rather than human sacrifices—was immediately understood. This teaching has never departed from the mind and soul of the faithful children of Israel.[16]

This, however, wasn’t the lesson that Israel learned, but rather the opposite - that God would provide: “And Abraham called the name of the place, The-Lord-Will-Provide; as it is said to this day, ‘In the Mount of The Lord it shall be provided’” (Gen. 22:14). However, it was more than just a matter of God’s faithfulness. It was also prophetic, Gospel-centered! The mountain wasn’t named “The Lord-has-provided,” but that He will provide! Nor would God provide in general! Instead, God would provide a greater offering (overshadowing what He had already provided), “in the mount of the Lord,” a phrase that “referred to the Temple mount in Jerusalem”[17]! This became the very place that God did provide on the Cross at Calvary.

Rather than symbolizing our yielded lives, the animal sacrifices symbolized the very opposite—our un-yielded, condemnation-worthy lives. That’s why every Israelite had to confess his sins upon the head of the sacrificial animal, which paid the price for his un-yieldedness. In this way, the Israelite was taught that his hope couldn’t be in his own righteousness or virtue (Deut. 27:26), but in a perfect substitution. 

The Secular Form of this Challenge

“If God is truly omnipotent, why couldn’t He have simply forgiven without the bloody murder of His Son? That’s child abuse! Why couldn’t He have merely said, ‘You’re forgiven?’”

This challenge is based on a misconception about the “omnipotence of God.” While it is true that God can accomplish anything that He so desires, He can’t accomplish it through any means. Jesus prayed that, if possible, He wouldn’t have to endure the Cross (Mat 26:39, 42). However, if He was to redeem humankind, the Cross wasn’t optional!

“But why was forgiveness, apart from the Cross, not possible for God?” I could explain that the Cross was psychologically necessary for humanity (Heb. 9:14-15). I could also explain that God had to demonstrate that He is dead serious about sin and that His righteous nature required propitiation (Rom. 3:25). However, whatever I’d answer, the skeptic would always be able to question, “Why couldn’t your God have accomplished this in a less costly way?”

This unanswered challenge doesn’t reflect a defect in our Biblical conception of God but rather our human inability to answer such questions comprehensively. A quick survey of these why-questions can illustrate this. We can’t answer why God made the sky blue or the grass green. Oh yes, we can say that green was necessary for photosynthesis, but we’d never be able to eliminate the question, “Couldn’t He have done it with red?”

Instead, it must suffice us to conclude that His holy nature requires an adequate payment for sin. The buck must stop with God.

I have tried to point out how the rabbis missed the message of their Bible in many regards, while the uneducated writers of the New Testament understood it, but how? Simply this - they had been inspired by the Holy Spirit.

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[1] R.T. Kendall and David Rosen, The Christian and the Pharisee (New York, Faith Words, 2006), 109-110.

[2] Ibid, 109.

[3] However, this latter view is hard to maintain in light of Mosaic revelation. Unblemished animals, representing sinlessness, were substituted for Israel’s sins. That’s why the Israelite had to place his hands upon the sacrificial offering (Lev. 1:4; 4:4, 15, 29, 33), confessing and conferring his sins upon it (Lev. 16:21).

[4] David Klinghoffer, Why the Jews Rejected Jesus (New York, Doubleday, 2005), 111.

[5] This same reasoning can also reconcile other verses that seem to suggest that a covering (“kipper”) could be obtained by means other than blood. In any event, these verses can’t be used to overturn the many explicit verses requiring blood sacrifice.

[6] Michael Brown, Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus, vol. Two (Grand Rapids, Baker Books, 2007), 73. Contains a very extensive rebuttal of Rabbinic arguments.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Tovia Singer, www.outreachjudaism.org/jesusdeath.html.

[9] Although the poor could offer grain as a sin offering, this was only because this offering was laid alongside a blood offering (Lev. 5:12).

[10] Brown, 86.

[11] Hebrews quotes the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament. In this instance, this text differs from its competitor, the Masoretic text. Although the Masoretic doesn’t read, “A body you have prepared for me,” both texts read, “Behold, I have come to do thy will!” However, this “coming” alone seems to suggest a replacement of the sacrificial system.

[12] Gerald Sigal, The Jew and the Christian Missionary (New York, KTAV Publishing House, Inc., 1981), 16.

[13]Brown, 111.

[14] Singer.

[15] Brown, 157.

[16] Singer.

[17] The NIV Study Bible (Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 1985), 38.