The Bloody Substitute

Why is there so much blood in the Bible? It's all over the place, like a Jackson Pollock painting. From Genesis to Revelation there's mention of blood: shed it, don't shed it, don't drink it, don't spill it, Jesus shed it. Blood, blood, blood.

But really. Why all the talk? And why did animals have to die? Why did people the world over sacrifice beasts, and even men?

Because "the life is in the blood". If you bleed too much, you die. Not enough blood equals death. Poisoned blood means death too. Blood is precious, both literally and figuratively. Life is precious to God. He made that clear when Noah got off the Ark. "If any man shed's another man's blood, by man must his blood be shed." (Death penalty)
Blood is important.

 Then, why sacrifice animals if blood is so precious? Why is it that people all over the globe from many different cultures felt the need to sacrifice to their gods?
Because they knew they offended them. They knew in their hearts that the gods were offended and wanted to offer up a substitute in their place. See, something has to die for our sin, for our offenses. So animals were used. And when the sin was grievous enough, humans were sacrificed, because a human is more valuable than a goat. This better sacrifice would placate the local god, for the good of the society.

Sacrificing did not originate in Babylon or Sumer, but in the Garden of Eden. Something died to cover up the first two real people. From then on, men sacrificed to Yawheh as a reminder that their sin offended Him. Sin is like an opposite of God: it's imperfect, unholy, perverse. Haven't you ever been utterly offended by some crime, or harmful words? Imagine that multiplied billions of times over and the understand how God feels...

Sin is awful, and something must die for it. The blood of an animal served as a reminder that we are sinners, and in ancient Israel, that shed blood covered over the sin of both the priest and the people. It didn't really remove sin, because the blood of an animal can't remove the sin from a human. Only the blood of a human can remove the sin from another human.
Who wants that job?

But a sinful man's blood can't take away the sin of another sinner. That's like paying bail with counterfeit money!

The only blood that can remove sin is the blood of a perfect man. And the only blood that can remove all sin for all time is the blood from a perfect, eternal man. The blood of a goat or bull could cover the sin temporarily, but the next time you sinned that blood became useless. Another sacrifice had to be made.
And another.

So an Eternal Man had to give up his life to set free an entire race. He would be the substitute for everyone who would believe. This was the Son of God Most High, the real God, the Creator of all, the one all those indigenous pagans had lost contact with after Babel. They tried to worship Him, but failed.

Sacrificing wasn't a step in evolution, it was people trying to reach God. But He reached down to us, and sent His Sacrifice so that we could be reunited again.

And so Jesus Christ, the one foretold of for millennia, came here and tore down that curtain that separates man from God. He paved the way, He bridged the gap. He fulfilled all Old Testament laws. His blood is the most important of all. He fulfilled all legal requirements. He beat the devil at the cross. He has no equal. He spoke the universe into existence. He died in our place to satisfy God's justice. He is our advocate, our guardian, our Lord, our King, and our Savior.

There is none like Him!

 

The Priest Who Does Not Die

Melchizedek. Say it with me. Mel-kee-zuh-dek.
Who?
Melchizedek, great  High Priest of God most High. A mysterious man who pops up in Genesis 14:18. He's in two verses and the disappears. He brought bread and wine to Abraham, blessed him, and received a tithe of all his plunder. In his bag were the severed heads of five Sodomites and a Gomorrahn's leg bone. He wielded a rusty scimitar and had ears-

Okay, maybe not. Wrong book. But he did show up to bless Abraham in the name of Yawheh, the God of gods and Creator of the universe (Jesus' father). This happened as The King of Sodom was about to reward Abraham for rescuing his people. Abe didn't take a thing, by the way. He didn't want anything to do with him, sicko that he was.

Melchizedek would later be seen as a 'type' of Christ in the book of Hebrews. He is "without father, without mother, having no genealogy, no beginning or ending".
Whoa!
That's like Supreme-Being-sounding!
Well, He wasn't divine. What the unnamed author's point was that Melchizedek had no record of parents, birth, or death. His priesthood had nothing to do with lineage or birthright.

He had been appointed by God Himself.
Much like Jesus, who was appointed as Great High Priest because of His indestructible life. Him being from the wrong tribe didn't matter. Since He fulfilled the old Law, he was no longer bound by it after He ascended to heaven.

Which means that since He is the High Priest, we as Christians can go straight to Him without the rituals of confessing to a priest. It isn't necessary to do that. Where once it was the rule to take your sacrifice to the priest so he could offer it up for you, we can now take our sin directly to the Priest, who has already made a one-time sacrifice for us all.

There is no middle man!

 

WOLVES

There are wolves in our midst. They're on TV, in the bookstores, and on the radio. They are pretty, and well admired. They claim to be shepherds of the people.
But are they good shepherds?

Sure, they make you feel good. Focus on the positive! Turn that frown upside down! And while that's fine if you're a motivational speaker, it's not fine if you're a Bible teacher or a pastor.

Pastors are supposed to feed the flock, feed them real food, not Fruit Loops. Joel here doesn't tell people that their sin separates them from God, feeling that most folk already feel beat up. So he skirts the whole issue and instead wants to make you feel good. That's okay for a self-help guru, but not if you're a pastor!

I think Joel's problem is he's too nice. He can't say what needs to be said. Is that a carefully coordinated plan? A plan to make a big happy church and get rich from selling millions of books? Or is he really just a nice guy who doesn't want to ruffle any fathers?

Be careful, Mr. Osteen. God knows why you do the things you do!

Now here's a wolf! The beloved Joyce Meyer. Looking like an angry Joker these days, she is a Bible teacher and conference speaker. Why anyone would bother to listen to her after she spent $23,000 on a toilet is beyond me. You go to her conference, pay good money to learn about the Bible and it's life application, and she buys a gold toilet with the money.
Something wrong there.
Anyway, aside from her spending habits, she tells people this:

"There is no hope of anyone going to Heaven unless they believe this truth I am presenting. You cannot go to Heaven unless you believe with all your heart that Jesus took your place in Hell."

Say what? Where's that in the Bible? She just altered the gospel, folks. She changed Jesus. She's presenting a subtly different Christ to her listeners.

In other words, she's a wolf. A false teacher. You can't change the fundamental work of Christ without becoming a heretic! Jesus died on the cross and made atonement for our sins there. He did not suffer in Hell! Joyce made it up. When Jesus said 'It is finished', that meant His sacrifice was accomplished. Joyce teaches that He then went to Hell and was tormented by demons there, until God said 'that's enough'. And she teaches that you have to believe that in order to go to Heaven.

But Jesus said to believe in Him. He's the answer, not Joyce's fiction.
So much for being a Bible teacher...

People love Joel and Joyce for their practical help. And like I said, that's great if they were motivational speakers. But they are not. Anything that changes what Jesus did or who He was is heresy. It says Jesus lied. Jesus is the Son of God, He died on the cross to remove the eternal penalty for our sin, and He rose again. That's it. And if you believe and follow Him, you will be saved.

T.D. Jakes used to teach a heretical doctrine called "modalism", which says that God was the Father, then became the Son, then became The Holy Spirit. One person, three manifestations. The gospels, however, say the opposite. When Jesus was baptized, the Father spoke from heaven and the Spirit descended on Jesus.
That ends the modalism discussion as far as I'm concerned. And apparently it was good enough for Jakes, who has a more Trinitarian belief now.

As far as his other teachings, that's another story...

These days, people want their ears tickled. They want "Christian" teachers who will tell them what they want to hear. They don't want to be told how to live or what to believe. So they go to the nice guys, and the prosperity teachers. Thus, they have huge churches and a wide reach.
And the lies continue, leading to a false Jesus and a lot of doomed souls.

"Therefore we must give all the more careful attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away."

Watch out for the wolves.