Messiah In The Old Testament Episode 12
Sacrificial Systems
Welcome to Messiah In The Old Testament. Today we are discussing sacrificial systems and how these systems tie into our next Messianic prophecy which involves sacrifice. Now when I started to looking into sacrificial systems and preparing for this episode, I discovered that there was way too much material to cram into one episode. So, we decided to split this in to two separate episodes.
In the first episode we’ll discuss the sacrificial systems. In the second episode will present the actual prophecy and tie in all the sacrificial systems to that. So, let's start at the beginning.
If you remember, in our last episode Adam and Eve were standing in the garden, they were facing their Creator and their Creator was pronouncing judgments against them and punishment for the sin that they had committed. Now, if you remember Adam was created on day six of creation.
Remember God fashioned him from the afar min ha adamah, the dust of the earth, the fine particulate dust which turns into really-good clay. God fashioned man out of the clay and then he blew into his nostrils the nishmat hayim, the breath of life and then man became a living being. Man was placed in the Garden of Eden that was planted in the East, just for him. And Adam lived in the Garden and he was given tasks to do. He was to tend the garden. He was to name the animals. He had all kinds of things to do.
And Adam was living in paradise. So, God soon realized that all the other animals had helpers to help them with their tasks, but Adam did not have a helper. So, God put Adam into a deep sleep, and he took one of his ribs while he was sleeping and then fashioned the woman out of
his rib, covered the place up and then we had Adam and Eve the first man and the first woman. So, God then instructed them to be fruitful and multiply. He gave them everything they possibly would need. There were fruit trees as far as the eye could see. They were good for eating, pleasing to the eye.
There was unlimited amount of food in the Garden of Eden. There were various plants and vegetation, flowers and there were animals of all diverse varieties. There were birds and fish and creeping things and the tamed animals and the wild animals. And there were all living in the garden together. Now God gave Adam and Eve an instruction. There were two trees that were located in the middle of the garden.
And remember I envisioned them on grassy knoll. And these two trees stood there dominating the garden of Eden. One was the Tree of Life, the other was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. If you ate from the Tree of Life, you were granted eternal life. We also know that the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. It produced a crop every month. And there was just unending variety of fruit that was available to Adam and Eve. Now, the other tree was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. That tree bore forbidden fruit, the fruit that you could not eat. If you ate from that fruit, yes you would gain the knowledge of good and evil, but you would surely die as a result. Adam and Eve lived within these restrictions for an unknown period of time. It may have been days, years, millennia, eons we don't know how long Adam and Eve were living in the Garden before this dreadful event happened.
Along came this wise, crafty, prudent very smart snake. In fact, he was on the top of the all the animals as far as his wisdom and intelligence. He approached Eve, struck up a conversation and convinced her that this tree offered the forbidden fruit which was so good for gaining knowledge that it outweighed God's warning. And he said eeh God really didn't mean that you were going to die. He is just trying to keep you from eating that tree so you wouldn't become like him. Well Eve
saw that the tree was good for food and beneficial for gaining wisdom. So, she ate it and Adam was there with her and he ate it.
And once they ate it, they immediately recognized that they were naked, and they were covered with shame. So, they ran and hid in the bushes, hid in the trees. So, that when God came for his usual walk in the cool of the day and where they normally communed and walked and talked and had time together, they didn't show up for the walk. And God asked them where they were, and they said we’re hiding in the bushes because we realized that we were naked. Well, because of their nakedness and their shame, Adam went off and grabbed some fig leaves and weaved them together and created these articles of clothing made out of fig leaves. Which is kind of lame, I think, Adam and Eve dressed up in leaves. God recognized immediately what happened and everything was exposed, and their sin then was brought out into the open. And God then had Adam and Eve and the snake all there together. And this is where we ended up. God was pronouncing judgment. First, he pronounces judgment on the snake. And then he pronounced the judgment on Adam and then the judgment on Eve. And they were all facing all these punishments. Now I'm sure that God was willing to forgive them there on the spot. His heart was full of love and compassion. And it was this very compassion that compelled God to do the next thing that he did. And that was providing clothing for them. And we’ll get into this later on in our next session where we’re going to go over this in great detail. But right now, what I want you to do is to put yourself into our story and move away from the Garden of Eden and this very dark moment where Adam and Eve are facing judgment. There is fear. There is shame. There is punishment. This is not a pretty day in the Garden of Eden. Let's talk about systems of sacrifice.
Now, I had the great, great privilege of living in Papua New Guinea when my wife and I were first married. We had opportunity to visit New Guinea and we were there. And we had opportunity to sit down and talk to many, many people, some of which were elders in the tribe.
Now we were with the Huli people. The Huli people were a very fierce tribe back in the day, now not so much. We found Huli to be very welcoming, very warm, very generous people. But back in the day there were fierce warriors. In fact, they had a reputation for being the absolute fiercest warriors in the whole region. Everybody was afraid of the Huli.
And the Huli were famous of course for the wigs that they make out of mud and hair and feathers and other stuff. And they wear these wigs and they’re called the Wig Men. The Hulis are very, very colorful when they dress up for special occasions. Now, most of the tribes in the Western Highlands where we were, were only discovered back in the 30s and 40s. I mean that's quite amazing to think of. It was during World War II when there was a huge influx of soldiers and people from all over the world. And the anthropologists followed, and they started documenting all of these tribes and their customs. I was able to sit down with people and discuss in their native language.
Not their native local language, but the native language of the you know the trade language called Neo-Melanesian Pidgin English. That’s the national language for Papua New Guinea. And I was able to discuss with them the old customs. These were people who were there during the tribal wars. They participated in cannibalism, and they participated in all their old rites for sacrifice and appeasement of the spirits. So, I had an opportunity to talk to them about that.
There were two ceremonies in Huli culture where the animal sacrifice was involved. The first ceremony was a ceremony called the SingSing. It gets its name from the singing all the dancing and all of the partying that went on when they conducted a SingSing. The SingSing is where you get either all or part of the tribe together for a giant celebration. Everybody brings food. They bring squash. They bring all kinds of vegetables, sweet potatoes, pit pit which is immature sugarcane, all kinds of vegetables, they bring them. They bring pigs and they bring tons and tons of pigs for this giant celebration. 4
So, during the SingSing all kinds of things are going on. One of the most interesting customs I was told about was the custom of the Head Turning. Now, whenever the young eligible men of the village and the young eligible women of the village were brought together during, we’ll call it ‘mating season’ during the SingSing, the young maidens were prepared. In fact, they built these structures called longhouses where the women stayed in one longhouse the men stayed in the other longhouse. And they were separated during their sleeping and all the stuff that they did. They came together of course during the celebration. So, the women, the young maidens were all set one by one on a log. And they sat there blindfolded, they could not see who was approaching them. And the men would come in from behind. All the suitors, the young men would come in. And they would come up and they would rub shoulders with the fair young maidens. And the rubbing of the shoulder, that particular part of the body is considered in Huli culture to be the most sensitive, sensuous, erotic part of the body. So, they are actually doing something that would be stimulating. So, the men would rub the shoulders and if the woman wanted that suitor, she would turn her head towards him. And she didn't want him and rejected him, then she would turn her head away from him, hence the name Head Turning. So, one by one the suitors would come up and finally if she accepted one than they would go off and then they would consummate their wedding. Then the next would be put on the log and so and so. Now that was tradition. The tradition has fallen away over time and now it's a more Western type of tradition. The men and women get together beforehand, and they become betrothed and the head turning is just purely ceremonial now.
Now another part of their ceremony is the part I really want to talk about. I get excited about stories from New Guinea as you can tell. The next part was the killing of the pigs. the ceremonial preparation of the pigs and then the serving of the pigs to the entire body that was gathered. Now as we said, there were literally dozens, hundreds, even in some cases thousands of pigs that were involved in these ceremonies. And the length of your SinSing based purely upon how many pigs there were to sacrifice. So, they would bring the pig. This would be generally a very
large pig. Sometimes a boar, sometimes a sow but more commonly a boar. Because the sows needed to take care of the piglets and create more pigs. So, they most commonly take boars.
And the traditional way of killing the boar, in the sacrificial ceremony was to take a wooden club. And in fact, we were in a village in Huli land, and the chief was having a celebration for us, like a SingSing. There wasn’t a large SingSing. It was more of a local SingSing. And there was all the usual stuff that went along with the SingSing and we were at the part where we were ceremonially killing the pig. So, the chief nodded to his eldest son who is this big 6’6”, muscular. I mean he was ripped. He took this club in his hand, which looked like a baseball bat. And this baseball bat was then used to club the pig. So, in front of all the village, everybody was assembled. It was it was a very high thing, because we were Europeans, and they were not used to seeing the white skinned Europeans. So, it is a huge celebration. So, this honored firstborn son, took the club and he hit this pig between the eyes as hard as he could. Well, of course, he just dazed the pig. The pig just kind of looked at him and went (squealed). So, the crowd then goes wild. Everybody is laughing and hooting. And the chief now is getting somewhat embarrassed because his son was unable to do the deed. So, he nods to his son a second time. So, the son takes this club, and he puts everything into it. He brings the club down on a pig's head as hard as he could. In fact, his feet came off the ground, he hit this pig as hard as he could. And again, the pig just looked at him and started squealing. Well now everybody's laughing uproariously. The chief has now reached the point of absolute embarrassment. He nods to this second born son. The second born son goes into the hut, brings out his dad's revolver, and his dad then shoots the pig.
Now after the pig is dead, they build this huge fire, they roll the pig around in the in the flames of the fire. And they used these big things to look like tongs. And once the pig is adequately roasted, then they scrape all the singed hair and the peeling of skin off. And then we start the dissection process. So, I was the guest of honor, so they gave me the
honor of dissecting the pig. Now this was before I become a surgeon, now it would have been actually quite fascinating to do that. Back then I was little bit intimidated.
They handed me a piece of green bamboo and I’m like, what do I do this piece of bamboo? They put the bamboo in my hand and then they said what you do is you grab the fiber, the most superficial fiber, between your teeth and you pull that fiber off. And once you pull that off then the edge of the bamboo is razor-sharp. And they showed me, you could cut through the flesh, and you could dissect a pig. So, I took this bamboo knife, and I started cutting and I would pull a strand off and cut and pull another strand off and cut and so it went. Obviously, we needed a fixed blade knife to be able to cut the cartilage and the bones and to separate the quarters and all that stuff. So, we removed all the internal organs, all the intestines and we gave them to the women. The women prepared intestines by putting water down the esophagus and blowing all the water through.
And they prepared everything. And we gathered together all the squash, the pit pit which is the sugarcane and ferns. They had these things that looked like Boston Ferns. And they put all of these things together inside a big bundle of palm leaves. And they put the vegetables on the bottom and then they put the meat and on the very top they put all the pig fat. The pig fat was on top so that as this cooked all the juices would then percolate and everything would be soaked in the pig grease. So, they wrapped this up.
They built a huge, they dug a hole and built a huge fire. And they had all these hot stones in the fire. And they used their big tongs take stones out and put the big, huge bunch of food in there, put stones on top and bury it under the ground. Just like you would a luau. They actually call this a muum or a muu muu. And then we let it bake all day. And then they got it back up and then we had a great celebration eating all of our greased ferns and vegetables etc. The chief explained to me that the purpose of the ceremonial killing of the pig and the cutting up of the pig and the
preparation of the pig in exactly that fashion was to bring honor to the gods to appease the gods. So, then the gods, the ancestral spirits, everybody would look very favorably on the tribe and then the tribe would enjoy a period of prosperity and of freedom from tribal warfare and health. And that was the purpose behind their sacrifices.
The second ceremony that was described to me was the ceremony of killing of the pigs at the time of a person's death. And it served basically the same purpose, to feed the people who were there at the funeral dinner. But they sacrificed the pig in exactly the same fashion. And the purpose of the killing of the pig in that situation was to appease the familial spirits, the ancestral spirits. So, the New Guineans practiced animal sacrifice. There were times, during tribal warfare, where they actually did more of a human sacrifice kind of thing. But it was always in the name of killing your enemies because of some offense. They would take their enemies and they would remove their enemy’s brains and slather brains all over them. And this was actually how the slow virus Kuru was discovered from smearing brains all over them. They would take their bodies. They would eat parts of the bodies. And it’s sort like, you’ve probably seen movies where somebody is sacrificed, they cut their heart out and eat part of the heart to show their dominance over that person that you just defeated. Same sort of idea. So, there was some degree of sacrifice involved. Now think of it these people have been isolated for centuries, for millennia, from all the rest of civilization. They lived in these tribal societies, unaffected by the outside world. They didn't go through the Industrial Revolution. They didn’t go through any of that stuff. And they had these systems of animal sacrifice. So, where did that come from? Let's look at some other sacrificial systems from around the world. Let's go over, remember those cultures that we looked at for our creation stories? So, let's go through those. The Native Americans, we talked about the Cherokee nation because their story is best. But there are other nations in the Southwest. There is a lot of Aztec influence, and we find in some of those southwestern tribes that there are actually ceremonies of human sacrifice.
The Skidi Pawnee is the most famous one, where they had what was called the Morning Star ceremony where they would get a war party together. They would go to of an enemy village. They would lay siege to that village until they found a maiden of just the right age and the right beauty and all that stuff. And they brought this beautiful maiden back to their village and they wined her, and they dined her and had this elaborate five-day ceremony. And at the end of the ceremony, they tied her up on a frame and they sacrificed her to the Morning Star. Very much like you something an Aztec, Mayan or one of the South American tribes would do. Not so much something a Cherokee would do. The Cherokee were more of the order of, when I was out hunting and I killed the deer, I would take part of that deer and sacrifice it and burn it in the fire to appease the gods because I killed the deer. Most commonly was the tongue or one of the internal organs. Now let's go to China.
In China they’ve done excavations of the ancient civilizations and there was one specific dynasty called the Shang Dynasty. That dynasty lasted from about 1600 BC to 1050 BC. Let's put that in perspective. That's about the same time that the Children of Israel were leaving Egypt and going out in the desert and establishing the promised land and the time of the judges and the Kings and the establishment of the Kings. That was all going on at the same time as the Shang Dynasty. Now excavations from that time period show that there were sacrifices of animals and there were sacrifices of humans presumably to the Chinese gods.
Now, let's move over to Babylon and we know from our Old Testament stories of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and Daniel, they were taken from the land of Israel to the land of Babylon. They refused to eat food from the Kings table. Why do you think that was. Well, it’s probably because the food was sacrificed to Marduk. Now remember Marduk from her creation story. There were many documented sacrifices to Marduk. bandicoot rats, bats, all kinds of animals, sheep and goats. These all were sacrificed to Marduk. And then they were eaten at the king’s table.
Now move over to Greek culture. The Greek culture, let’s think about it, the Olympic Games. If you know anything about the Olympic Games, the Olympic Games was not initially a sporting event. Yes, there were some sporting contests involved in the in the games. But this was mainly a celebration of Zeus and all the Olympians. And sacrifices were made all these gods.
In fact, every athlete would have to make sacrifices at altars to their specific gods, so then they would be in the best position to win their event. Now a major celebration which included a giant processional was the sacrifice of bulls to their god Zeus. Zeus is represented by a bull and the bull is the preferred sacrifice that you make to Zeus. They would bring 100 balls and sacrifice these bulls one by one by one during the Olympic celebration.
Then also another famous part of the Greek lore, mythology, is the Oracles. The Oracle that was at Delphi for example. And there's a legend of pythia. The reality was that it wasn't the same person, the same pythia. It was little, young virgins who were brought by the Ephos into the Oracle. And one by one they were used as these prophets.
So, as part of your divination process at the Oracle of Delphi, you would have to bring some sort of animal. Usually, it was a sheep or goat and you would sacrifice it. And then they would look at the entrails, they would look at the bile, they would look at the liver and they would make predictions based on that. And then in a drug trance, the pythia, the young maiden then would prophesy over whatever it is you wanted to know, the event that was going to happen in the future.
Moving over to Egypt, Herodotus was very good at documenting the culture. And in Egypt at the time, the Greek culture included the worship of Isis and of Osiris. It was then transferred into Roman culture and there were temples to Isis in Rome.
There were temples to Osiris in Rome. And they worshipped and sacrificed animals at those temples. In fact, Isis worship continued through the centuries and even into today. There are still temples to Isis and there's still the worship of Isis.
I think what people find intriguing about Isis is that it’s one of those religions that has secret ceremonies. So, there’s this initiation rite and you’re taught all these like secret handshakes or whatever you know like what a secret society does. But in order to get in you have to go through this initiation period. That makes the religion very mysterious and mystical. So, the Egyptians for sure practiced sacrifice. So, now we’ve gone through all those civilizations and shown that each and every one had a system of animal sacrifice. The New Guineans had animal sacrifice. All over the world, every culture you go to, do some research and you'll find that their basic beginnings, there was animal sacrifice or even human sacrifice or both. So, let's try to go back to the beginning. Where did all that start?
Now I'm presenting this as part of our next prophecy and the prophecy involves God killing animals to get their skins to clothe Adam and Eve.
And God obviously started the whole sacrificial system. But we know from the story of Noah, in fact I’ve got the verse for you it’s Genesis 8:20. It says:
Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it.
So, Noah specific animals on the ark that were clean. So, there was the knowledge of a dirty animal and a clean animal. So, he brought these clean animals specifically so that he could sacrifice them.
And then in the book of Job we know that Job sacrificed for the sins of his children in case somebody did something that that they didn't realize.
And so, he was covering the sins of all their children. So, he would have this ritual of sacrificing for his children.
And then Abraham practiced sacrifices and Isaac and Jacob and on down this was transferred father to son, father to son. So, if you believe in the worldwide flood like I do, and there's a lot of evidence for a worldwide flood. And some of the evidence is all these oral traditions that we've been talking about, all the creation stories which are similar and now all these systems of sacrifice which are remarkably similar.
So, I believe Noah started the whole practice of sacrificing he taught it to his sons they spread out into all the world, taught it to their sons to their sons to their sons. And therefore, we have these echoes of animal sacrifice in every single culture around the world. From Noah, the patriarchs, then to Moses and Aaron.
And Elohim on Mount Sinai gave to Moses the law. He gave to Moses the Torah. He gave to Moses oral interpretation of the law, the mitzvot. So, now we have put in place a system of sacrifice which is now codified. A system of sacrifice which is now involving a system of the priesthood and of temple and of all the Levitical stuff which were going to go through.
So, let's read Exodus 29:10-21. The Scripture says:
“Bring the bull to the front of the Tent of Meeting, and Aaron and his sons shall lay their hands on its head.
Now they were instructed to bring three animals to the temple so that they could be sacrificed.
One was a bull; another one was a sacrificial ram and the third one was an additional sacrificial ram. And these were the three animals and we’re to go through this in the Scripture. So, prepare Aaron and his sons, they took their mikveh, their cleansing ritual bath, cleanse themselves. Then
they put on their priestly garments, the robes and Aaron the High Priest would've put on the ephod, the breastplate, the turban, the diadem, the sash, all the things that the chief priest would wear.
And then they brought this bull and they put their hand on the head of the bull. This is very important. In every instance of animal sacrifice in the Levitical system those that were seeking God's forgiveness, those that were seeking atonement for their sins, those who were seeking relief from guilt had to lay their hand on the animal. And they actually were the ones that slit that animal's throat, slaughtered that animal. And they had their hand on the head and they felt the life go out of that animal. It was an integral part of the sacrificial system in the book of Exodus and Leviticus. The animal died literally in your arms and you felt the life go out of the animal.
The blood was collected in a basin and then the basin was taken in and the stuff in the temple would happen. Now slaughter the bull
Slaughter it in the LORD’S presence at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. Take some of the bull’s blood and put it on the horns of the altar with your finger,
There were four horns, and they would use their finger, dipped in the blood and they wiped it on the four horns. And then they were to
pour out the rest of it at the base of the altar. Then take all the fat around the inner parts, the covering of the liver, and both kidneys with the fat on them, and burn them on the altar. But burn the bull’s flesh and its hide and its offal outside the camp. It is a sin offering.
“Take one of the rams, and Aaron and his sons shall lay their hands on its head.
Again, feeling the life go out of the first sacrificial ram.
Slaughter it and take the blood and sprinkle it against the altar on all sides. Cut the ram into pieces and wash the inner parts and the legs, putting them with the head and the other pieces. Then burn the entire ram on the altar. It is a burnt offering to the LORD, a pleasing aroma, an offering made to the LORD by fire.
So, this first sacrificial ram was given completely to God in a burnt offering. “Take the other ram, the second sacrificial ram.
“Take the other ram, and Aaron and his sons shall lay their hands on its head. Slaughter it, take some of its blood and put it on the lobes of the right ears of Aaron and his sons, on the thumbs of their right hands, and on the big toes of their right feet. Then sprinkle blood against the altar on all sides. And take some of the blood on the altar and some of the anointing oil and sprinkle it on Aaron and his garments and on his sons and their garments. Then he and his sons and their garments will be consecrated.
This is what was called the ordination ceremony. Ordination was where new priests were installed for temple worship. Obviously, at the very beginning Aaron and his sons were installed and that's the Scripture we just read. But later on, as new priests would come up through the ranks and become a priest in the temple, they would have to go through their own ordination ceremony. During the ordination ceremony, a bull and two rams were killed. And the blood was spilled from each and every animal. Remember that without the spilling of blood there is no remission of sins, there is no remission of guilt, there is no atonement, there is no forgiveness. It is only through the spilling of the blood.
The blood was splattered all over the altar. The blood splattered all over their garments and probably even on the curtains in the temple. So, by doing that, by sprinkling all his blood, by spilling all his blood they then became consecrated, set apart for their temple worship.
They became pure and clean and holy in the eyes of God. They had to maintain their holiness. There were very strict rules for the priests to maintain their holiness because they were God's representatives to all the people. So, their consecration relieved them of guilt, relieved them of sin and put them into a holy position where they were holy before God. Now there's a whole another ceremony involved in the remitting of sins for you and me. Now, on Mount Sinai God gave to Moses a series of commandments. There were 613 to be exact. And of those 248 were positive commandments, things that you must do and then there were 365 that were negative commandments, things you are not supposed to do. Positive commandments. Negative commandments. So, you are supposed to keep every one of those commandments. Do the things you're supposed to, not do things you are not supposed to. And then you would remain in a holy state before God. If you transgress one of those laws, then you fell from that holy state and you were separated from God. So, of those 613 commandments, there were 39 of them that were bit more egregious than the rest. Now obviously do not murder all those what we call the 10 commands, the Big Ten. Obviously if you committed some of those you would end up being killed yourself. If you commit murder, then the punishment was you being killed.
But there were these specific commandments which are called the Karet Commandments. Karet it is a word that means to be cut off, to be separated. So, it could mean being separated from your people, to be separated from God, to die a premature death. But if you committed one of these sins, then you were separated. And the only way for you to get rejoined with your people, to be rejoined to your God, was to go through a guilt offering or sin offering, specifically. So, these 39 Karet Commandments are things like sexual immorality, where you were told you shouldn't have sex with your neighbor’s wife. You shouldn't have sex with her father's sister. You shouldn't have sex with etc. etc. etc. All the commandments involving sexual conduct were in this category. Things like, you're not supposed to eat leavened bread during Passover. So, it is forbidden to eat chametz during Passover. And if you did you are guilty of this Karet Sin, and you’d be cut off from your community.
Not being circumcised, for example, was one of these commands. So, if I broke one of these commands. Let's say I ate leavened bread during Passover instead the unleavened bread and I feel guilty about it. I confess my sins. I want to be restored. And I want to find my way back to the good graces of my community and my God. So, I would bring a sin offering.
Now the whole part of the process involved my voluntary bringing an animal to the temple for sacrifice. That implied that I acknowledged my sin. I was not forced to do it. I did it willingly. I brought my ram to the temple, so that I could sacrifice the ram and then be relieved of my guilt. So, I would pick the best ram out of my flock.
I would bring him to the temple. I would take this ram outside the temple, and I would lay my hand on the head of the ram. And I would publicly confess my sin. That then met the requirements for repentance. I was repenting in and confessing my sin before the community.
Then I slit the throat of the ram. I felt his life go out of him, the ram died in my arms and then the blood was collected in the basin. That blood then would be taken inside the temple.
And the priest would take the blood and the priest would sprinkle the blood on the altar and then dump out the remainder of the blood at the base of the altar. That ram then would have to be prepared for the sacrifice.
So, the first thing was that the ram would be skinned. And the hooves and the legs would be cut off during the skinning process. And then the belly would be opened, and I assume they just did a midline incision right through the chest and the belly, opened everything up. They would remove the organs.
They would remove the kidneys, the liver and then remove the entire diaphragm. These were then taken, added with some salt and then that
was burned on the altar. They would also remove all the fat from the inside of the animal’s skin. And they would burn that on the altar. So, that was the aroma pleasing to God that went up for your sacrificial lamb.
Then they would take the carcass, they would wash out the inside of the carcass and they would take the meat off of it, take the four quarters off of it. The spinal cord and the chest and the head that would all then be removed and taken outside the camp and burned outside the camp. But these choice sections of meat then would be brought before the priest.
One of the pieces would then be burnt on the altar as a sacrifice to God, a pleasing aroma to gain forgiveness for your sins and then the rest the meat would be given to the priest. So, then having gone through this ceremony. Having gone through all of this then, I would be free of my guilt. I would be free of this sin, and I would be accepted back into the community. I could fellowship in the temple; I could engage in the celebration and ceremony with all my friends. And if I committed another sin and I would have to do that all over again. If I committed another sin, again and again and again. So, obviously this sacrificial system which satisfied the guilt, satisfied the sin, covered up the sin, was only a temporary fix. It was not a permanent fix. There was nothing permanent about the sacrificial system, about any sacrificial system. It has to be repeated over and over and over and over again. It's a neverending parade of animals and blood and slaughter and sacrifice. And it was a system that I am quite confident I would not want to have to live in that system. And I'm very glad we moved beyond that system and live in a system where we seek direct forgiveness from God rather than going through a temple priest. Now, we’re going to call it quits at this point. And next episode we’re going to pick up our story. We’re going to pick up Adam and Eve back in the garden and we’re going to tie-in all this bloody sacrifice. So, remember, in summary, God initiated the first sacrifice in the garden and then through the generations it reached Noah. Noah sacrificed after the flood and then he taught this to his children and children's children and children's children. And it went generation to
generation, through Job, through the patriarchs, through Isaac and Jacob and Abraham and on down to Aaron and his sons to Moses. So, we’re going to pick it up and find out how this system of sacrifice then ties into our messianic prophecy. And the name of the episode is called Messiah’s Sacrifice. So, you can imagine we’re going to tie it into Messiah as the final sacrifice for us. So, join us the next time where we pick up the story. I'll see you then.
Thank you for watching our show today. We hope that you enjoyed watching it as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. Now, after watching this episode you might be saying to yourself, “Who is this Messiah that Dr. Smith is talking about?
Is he talking about the Christian Messiah? Is he talking about Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was born of the Virgin Mary. And then lived a blameless and holy life on the earth, And then was tortured and crucified. And after he died he then was resurrected from the dead after three days. Then after people witnessed this, he was then taken up bodily by Elohim into heaven from the Mount of Olives.
Or is Dr. Smith talking about the Muslim prophet Isa. Isa Ibn Maryam, the messenger, who was sent by Allah to bring a message to the people. The Quran says he that lived a holy and blameless life, was born of the virgin Mary. He fulfilled all the Jewish prophecies in exact accordance. But one difference, instead of being crucified, he then was taken up by Allah into heaven before the Romans laid hands on him. And he awaits there now in the fourth heaven where at the end of days at the day of judgment he will be revealed to all.
Or is Dr. Smith talking about the Jewish Messiah? The Messiah who has not yet been revealed, that the entire Jewish world is waiting for his revelation. Now, the beautiful thing is that you can hold to any of these beliefs. And we can all still learn together about Messiah. We can learn about our Christian Messiah. We can learn about our Jewish Messiah. We can learn about our Muslim prophet Isa who will be revealed. It
doesn’t matter what you believe. You can even be an atheist or agnostic and still learn from this program about Messiah. Now, I have to admit I am a Christian so I approach things, obviously, from a Christian point of view. And I promise you, as we reveal these prophecies, which I believe have all been fulfilled through Jesus Christ. Or will be fulfilled when he comes back, returning in the clouds in the same way he was taken up. I believe that all of this is true, but I promise you I will do my very best to present these prophecies from a neutral point of view. And try to keep my Christian bias to a minimum. Obviously, it will pop up from time to time but I will try to stay only in the Tanakh and try not to get into the New Testament very often. Now, if you want more information about Messiah, we have resources for you.
We have a website which is findingmessiah.org. Now, on that website you are going to find several resources. You will find links to all the videos, all the episodes that we have created so far. You will find links to download the transcripts of any of these episodes. And then you will find a section where you can get more information about Messiah through frequently asked questions. And then there is a section for donation. If you want to come alongside our ministry at Finding Messiah.
Now, there’s going to come a time in this series where you are going to be confronted with the question: What are you going to do with Messiah? Who do you believe Messiah is? Which of these Messiahs do you believe Dr. Smith is talking about? And Messiah will become real to you if you look at all the information presented and come to your conclusions. So, join us as we continue our journey through the Old Testament Scriptures looking for all the Messianic Prophecies. And join us next time as we reveal those to you.
