The Daily Word of Righteousness

A Giant Step Forward, #20

Then have the trumpet sounded everywhere on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the Day of Atonement sound the trumpet throughout your land. Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you; each one of you is to return to his family property and each to his own clan. (Leviticus 25:9,10)

It is interesting to note that the Trumpet of the Jubilee is blown on the Day of Atonement. This means we shall be released from our sin by the judgment and deliverance that characterize the Day of Atonement.

Hebrews, and the Coming Salvation

The eighth through the tenth chapters of the Book of Hebrews explain the reasons why the new covenant is superior to the old covenant.

The first reason is that the eternal moral law of God is written in our mind and heart, instead of on stone in an abridged, covenantal form.

This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. (Hebrews 8:10)

The second reason is that the new covenant removes our sin whereas the old covenant merely forgave our sin and therefore the sacrifice had to keep on being renewed.

The current teaching is that sins were not actually forgiven under the Law of Moses, but now, under the new covenant, they truly are forgiven for eternity and that this is the reason why the new covenant is superior.

This is not scriptural. The Bible states in several verses that sins indeed were forgiven by means of the atonement made by the blood of animals.

He shall remove all the fat, just as the fat is removed from the fellowship offering, and the priest shall burn it on the altar as an aroma pleasing to the LORD. In this way the priest will make atonement for him, and he will be forgiven. (Leviticus 4:31)

"He will be forgiven." We may have heard that the only reason he was forgiven is that the animal sacrifice looked forward to Calvary. Whether this is true or not, I do not know of any passage of Scripture that states clearly animal sacrifices operated only in terms of the future crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

In the first place, the Israelite would have no comprehension of a future crucifixion of Jesus Christ. God said he was forgiven and so he would regard himself as being forgiven.

I think the idea of the animal sacrifice having no true immediate effect is misleading and dilutes the authority and power of the Word in Leviticus.

It is said today he was not really forgiven. The Bible states "he will be forgiven."

One reason why Christian teaching contains so many unscriptural traditions is that it employs deductive reasoning instead of holding firmly to the statements of the Scriptures.

To be continued.