Christ, the Scapegoat
Interesting read in "The Epistle of Barnabas" 7:6-11 (www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.vi.ii.vii.html). He clearly says that the scapegoat in Leviticus 16 is a type of Christ. That caught my eye because the Seventh-Day Adventists have a teaching that in Lev. 16 the goat on which the LORD's lot falls stands for Christ, and the "scapegoat" for Satan. They then have to backpedal and emphasize how they don't mean that Satan atones for our sin, and I take them at their word. I think they have tied themselves into a pretzel on this one, by thinking over-literally that the two goats have to stand for two different persons, rather than two things that the One Savior does for us. But I believe them when they say that they believe in Jesus alone as Savior and atonement for sin.
Our pastor in the Lutheran Brethren church we went to for awhile in Minnesota also gave a very good interpretation of Lev. 16 awhile back, saying that the two goats stood for two aspects of Christ's atonement for sin. He is also a Bible professor and a fine Christian man. May the LORD richly bless him.
I bring up this quote from "Barnabas" because it shows that as early as AD 70-135 (the range within which is believed to have been written), there was clearly a Christian interpretation of Lev. 16 which differed from today's Adventist view. One thing about the Early Church is that everybody wants a piece of it. Adventists, Lutherans, Orthodox, Baptists, Catholics, you name it, all claim the Early Church as an early form of themselves (of course, heretical cults such as the Jehovah's Witnesses do the same thing). So, who's right? On the one hand, the reading I've done so far of the Apostolic Fathers makes the Early Church look not exactly like any church body we have today. On the other hand, it's remarkable to me how, though the Trinity hadn't yet been officially defined, the faith of the early Christians was exactly the same religion that Trinitarian Christians follow today. It doesn't have an alien flavor, like the gnostic sources that Dan "DaVinci Code" Brown advocates (but doesn't really understand - they weren't the sexual "liberators" he thinks they are, but that's for a different post sometime). It's exactly the same faith I grew up with, exactly the same Savior. All Christians may see the core of their faith in Christ in the Early Church, but not our own denominational idiosyncrasies. So I'm not really picking on the Adventists any more than on my own church body, for example. We all have lots to learn.
In these Last Days, we need to learn more about what the Early Church really taught & believed. The sources are readily available in print and on the net. This is one of the main weaknesses in the Church that the Enemy is exploiting, that we don't know our own history, so people can shrug off Christ by saying, "Oh, it was all made up in a smoke-filled room."
Praise be to the LORD Jesus Christ, who carried our sins out into the wilderness for us (Lev. 16:21,22)! Praise to His Name!
Our pastor in the Lutheran Brethren church we went to for awhile in Minnesota also gave a very good interpretation of Lev. 16 awhile back, saying that the two goats stood for two aspects of Christ's atonement for sin. He is also a Bible professor and a fine Christian man. May the LORD richly bless him.
I bring up this quote from "Barnabas" because it shows that as early as AD 70-135 (the range within which is believed to have been written), there was clearly a Christian interpretation of Lev. 16 which differed from today's Adventist view. One thing about the Early Church is that everybody wants a piece of it. Adventists, Lutherans, Orthodox, Baptists, Catholics, you name it, all claim the Early Church as an early form of themselves (of course, heretical cults such as the Jehovah's Witnesses do the same thing). So, who's right? On the one hand, the reading I've done so far of the Apostolic Fathers makes the Early Church look not exactly like any church body we have today. On the other hand, it's remarkable to me how, though the Trinity hadn't yet been officially defined, the faith of the early Christians was exactly the same religion that Trinitarian Christians follow today. It doesn't have an alien flavor, like the gnostic sources that Dan "DaVinci Code" Brown advocates (but doesn't really understand - they weren't the sexual "liberators" he thinks they are, but that's for a different post sometime). It's exactly the same faith I grew up with, exactly the same Savior. All Christians may see the core of their faith in Christ in the Early Church, but not our own denominational idiosyncrasies. So I'm not really picking on the Adventists any more than on my own church body, for example. We all have lots to learn.
In these Last Days, we need to learn more about what the Early Church really taught & believed. The sources are readily available in print and on the net. This is one of the main weaknesses in the Church that the Enemy is exploiting, that we don't know our own history, so people can shrug off Christ by saying, "Oh, it was all made up in a smoke-filled room."
Praise be to the LORD Jesus Christ, who carried our sins out into the wilderness for us (Lev. 16:21,22)! Praise to His Name!
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