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If you are a Christian this is the most important piece of information you will have ever read. I behoove you to read the whole article if you want to understand the death of Yeshua as God intended. The facts presented speak for themselves. I pray you will quietly and prayerfully speak to the Father as you read this most enlightening articles. My prayers and blessings to you.
As a Christian you have been told your whole life that two great objectives were accomplished by Jesus in his mission to this world.
Both of these were essential to salvation as taught by Gentile Christianity. Christianity teaches that the work of Christ in reconciling God and men is called "the" Atonement; and this doctrine lies at the very heart of the Christian system. Sadly few understand correctly this very important doctrine, the origin of Christianity's claims, nor can the Biblical teaching on Atonement be understood correctly without a proper understanding of the Hebraic roots from which it came.
We are altogether dependent on Old Testament Scripture and Jewish writings for our knowledge concerning the doctrine of the Atonement and can know only what God has seen fit to reveal concerning it.
What most don't know is that when one encounters teachings on Atonement in the New Testament, which was collected and altered repeatedly by the Gentile Church, one is reading the "Gentile pagan accounts of Atonements from mystery religions" and and not "fulfillments" of Old Testament Scripture!
Our present purpose in this series of articles is to give a systematized account of what the Jewish Scriptures, the Bible Yeshua used. the Palestinian Masoretic Text, the Tanakh, teach concerning Atonement, and to show that this fits in perfectly with the longings and aspirations of an enlightened spiritual nature.
First of all you have to have the correct text. The Christian’s Old Testament is different from the Jewish Masoretic text in over 2000 places. This should concern you immensely! If you want the facts check out: http://geocities.com/faithofyeshua. You should demand a translation and not a free creationism as doctored by non-Jews, who over the centuries, conformed the faith and writings of the Jews to suit their pagan backgrounds. Enough said. If you have been reading our materials we have made this most plain over the years. Now to the purpose at hand.
In one of Paul's most condensed and fundamental statements of Christian teaching we read: "For I delivered unto you first of all that which also I received: that Christ (Messiah) died for our sins according to the Scriptures; and that He was buried; and that He hath been raised on the third day according to the Scriptures," I Cor. 15:3.
Answer for yourself: Even in the corrupt Old Testaments in the Christian Bibles, can you find where the Old Testament prophecies that Yeshua was to die for sin and that he was to be buried and raised on the 3rd day?
What? You cannot? No wonder; it is not there anywhere! And please don't read into Isa. 53 the concept of an "individual" when the author from chapter 40 on through chapter 66 deals with a "corporate, collective, and national" Suffering Servant and never one individual. If you do so, then understand that you invalidate completely what Isaiah intended we learn from the passage. Such is reading into the text your pre-formed theology. Let us not do that. We are supposed to believe what we can draw out of the text. The text must determine our beliefs. Such is exegesis. I recommend exegesis as you can see and because of my Christian background I must fight daily to limit my eisegesis as much as possible because so much error is yet burned into my subconscious. We must struggle and fight for the truth. Such makes one Israel.
First of all understand that the word “Christ” means Messiah in Hebrew. So according to Paul, in the New Testament, his "gospel" is saying that the Messiah died for our sins.
Answer for yourself: Does the Old Testament and Jewish Scriptures teach and prepare Israel to prepare for and accept a Messiah who comes to die for their sins? No it does not in fact; it teaches just the opposite and this is where the problem lies.
You might not be able to answer with Old Testament Scripture the above question but you will be able soon enough if you continue to study our articles. The Gospel of John in the New Testament states that the “Word became flesh,” meaning by most accounts that Jesus, the Messiah, came from Heaven in the form of flesh. Christianity answers the above dilemma two ways: one, there was a time the flesh was “not the Word” and a time when the "Word became flesh" in the Virgin Birth. Without going into detail, the idea which was understood and believed by the first Jewish followers concerning Yeshua; that of him "becoming" Messiah at his immersion is just another proof that the Virgin Birth teaching is incorrect. If you would like to have the detailed teachings exposing the errors in the Virgin Birth teaching request them from Bet Emet Ministries and we will be glad to see you get them. So, important for your understanding as we study atonement is that Jesus became “the” Messiah (Messiah means anointed and we have record of his anointing “without measure” when he was 30 years old at the Jordan). You and I dear one are anointed with measure, but Yeshua was anointed “without measure”. You would expect one to fulfill the Messianic hope of Israel to be so equipped. Incidentally, this is exactly what the earliest Jewish followers of Yeshua/Jesus believed; namely that Jesus is the Messiah, and became the Messiah from anointing without measure at the Jordan. Such were called the Ebionites and their writings are available today as well as the records of the early Church historians which reveal to us what the earliest beliefs were concerning Jesus before being changed by the Roman Church in the fourth century and following. It is not my intention to explain in this article why the prophecies of the Jewish Scriptures were not fulfilled in Yeshua nor deal with the fictional creations of “false-fulfilled” passages in the New Testament in this article. We have that information available to those who would desire it at: http://www.faithofyeshua.faithweb.com.
Now let me ask you a question that goes to the very foundation of the core of our beliefs about salvation.
Answer for yourself: Should we not rather try to understand Paul to say that “Christ died because of our sins” instead of “for our sins?”
Critical for our understanding is if Christ’s death:
Before we get to the very heart of the issue we must come to a better understanding of the sacrificial system in order to correctly consider if Jesus’ death can be understood as a proper sacrifice within the Law and the dynamics within it that affects the forgiveness of sin.
The terminology used with regard to the patriarchal age is that of the Torah as a whole; it is unlikely that the same words in Genesis mean something different in the other Books of Moses. Thus, Cain and Abel each brought a "gift" (minhah; Gen. 4:4f.), which was usually of a cereal nature as brought by Cain (Lev. 2). Notice this is not a sin offering! Noah offered up a burnt offering (“olah”; Gen. 8:20ff.) and the pleasing odor of the sacrifice is stressed. Job is also depicted as making burnt offerings periodically (Job 1:5) and for specific purposes (Job 42:7–9). The burnt offerings, signifying complete surrender to God, were by far the most frequent sacrifices at the Israelite sanctuary. Again these offerings by Noah and Job were not "sin" offerings and only showed the complete devotion and surrender of the "offerer's" heart to God as he demonstrated and testified to his relationship with God through such "gifts".
I need to repeat the last statement as it will have major significance as you continue to read.
These burnt offerings [olahs] as seen in Cain, Able, Noah, and Job only showed the complete devotion and surrender of the "offerer's" heart to God as he demonstrated and testified to his relationship with God through such "gifts".
The Patriarchs normally are said to have "called on the name of the Lord," e.g., Abraham (Gen. 12:8, 13–4; 21:33) and Isaac (Gen. 26:25). The association of this phrase with the building of an altar shows that it refers to the approach to God through sacrifice. With Jacob the naming of the specific altar is stressed (Gen. 33:20; 35:7). Once Abraham is said to have offered an “olah” (Gen. 22:13) but Jacob (Gen. 31:54; 46:1) offered “zevahim”. Again these were NOT "sin" offerings NOR were they intended for Atonement.
Now let us look at "offerings" and "sacrifices" from Moses to Samuel. The covenant sacrifice inaugurating the relationship between the Lord and His people (Ex. 24:3–8) is not paralleled by specific rituals in the Mosaic liturgy. Burnt and peace offerings were first offered and then the blood from them (not from a sin offering) was thrown half against the altar and half upon the people. In the land of Canaan the Israelites made sacrifices at various places, e.g., at Bochim (Judg. 2:1–5) and Ophrah (Judg. 6:24–26). The human sacrifice of Jephthah's daughter (Judg. 11:30–40) was hardly normative; instead it is pointed out as evidence of Israel's sad spiritual state at that time. The main center for sacrificial ritual was at Shiloh (I Sam 1:3ff.), where faithful Israelites came for an annual festive offering. That the ritual there was highly developed and detailed is proven by the explicit description of malpractice on the part of Eli's sons (I Sam 2:13–17) in taking their portion of the meat before the entrails were burned. However, Shiloh was not the only legitimate place of sacrifice; others included Beth-Shemesh (I Sam 6:14–15), Mizpah (I Sam 7:9), Ramah (I Sam. 7:17; 9:11–24), and Gilgal (I Sam. 10:8; 11:15; 13:9). Family and clan sacrifices were commonplace (I Sam. 16:2–5).
Common to all these instances was "sacrifice" for other reasons than "sin offerings"! This is so very important. What you need to know is that in the Old Testament the first mention of animal sacrifices for "sin offerings" was AFTER the Golden Calf and the sin of idolatry by a people already possessing relational knowledge of the True God
Answer for yourself: Then how did mankind obtain forgiveness of sin up until the Golden Calf and the idolatry associated with it? Surely man sinned and must have been given a way of obtaining atonement prior to the Exodus. Well stay tuned!