ATONEMENT OF BLOOD PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Peter Tremayne | 368 pages | 27 Feb 2014 | Headline Publishing Group | 9780755377541 | English | London, United Kingdom Sacrifice and atonement in the Bible | BibleProject™ He gave a substitionary atonement. The life of an innocent animal paid for the sins of guilty Adam and Eve. Only the Giver of Physical Life has the right to take life. Innocent blood would pay for the guilt and stain of sin. Abraham was instructed by God to offer Isaac as a sacrifice on Mt. Abraham built an altar, laid wood, bound Isaac and laid Isaac upon the wood Genesis God then provided a ram. It was not Abraham who found the animal to offer. It was God who provided the animal. This pointed to a future time when another Father God would offer up His Son Jesus to make atonement for the sins of all mankind. This time the sacrifice would not be stopped by God the Father. The practice of animal sacrifice was more clearly defined by God and practiced by the people of Israel beginning with the wilderness wanderings. God instructed the Jews to build a Tabernacle in which He would meet with His people. The book of Leviticus describes the sacrificial system and tells that animal sacrifice the shedding of blood was required for the atonement of their sins. So why did God send His Son to die for us? A sinless life had to be sacrificed for sinful life. Only a sinless human life would suffice. Animals do not sin. They live under the curse of sin, but it is man who is born with a sin nature and lives a sinful life. Jesus came to earth and took on a human body, with flesh, bone and blood! When He offered His life on the cross, He gave His sinless life for the sinful life of mankind. The atonement for sin could not have been done in any other way. They did not think of going to the Father who said he would provide everything they need. Instead, they attempted self- atonement. At first, they probably figured their fig leaf underpants would hold up under His scrutiny. Self- atonement never works. Sin is not conquered in the darkness of hiding—it grows. And because sin aims at destroying creation and dethroning the Creator it inevitably leads to brokenness. Nothing we craft can fix our sin problem. That solution to our sin problem is what the Bible calls atonement. Adam and Eve sewed for themselves loin-cloths out of figs to try to cover their nakedness. But what does work are the animal skins which God crafted into a covering for them. This is a picture of atonement. God makes a sacrifice to cover the sin and shame of humanity. Jon Akin says it well:. Though there is nothing explicitly stated in the text, this is an early indicator of what will take place in the sacrificial system. Animals will be sacrificed and their blood shed in the place of sinful man, culminating with the blood of the Messiah — the Lamb of God. From here. What is present in the sacrificial system is present in seed form in Genesis 3. These innocent animals served as substitutes. A substitute paid a price by blood which is accepted by God to restore the broken relationship. That is what we see all throughout the Old Testament in the sacrificial system. This can all seem a little barbaric to us. It sounds a bit like something we would read of the angry and tyrannical Roman gods who required sacrifices in order to appease whatever whim they had that day. Why does God require a goat to die in order for a person to live? Is the God of the Bible no different than the pagan gods we read about? I appreciate the way The Bible Project has answered this question:. The problem is, when we come to read about animal sacrifice in the Bible, we unfortunately assume that the same gods are at work. The result is a tragic irony. Our version goes like this:. God is holy and perfect. You are not. Therefore, God is angry at you, hates you even, and so he has to kill you. Our sin really has made a fraction between us and God. We have broken fellowship with God. The blood oaths in the ceremony were intended to protect the ritual's secrecy. In keeping with the idea that grievous crimes must be answered with bloodshed and that blood atonement should be voluntary, participants made an oath that rather than ever revealing the secret gestures of the ceremony, they would rather have "my throat The gory wording was removed early in the 20th century and changed to a less explicit reference to "different ways in which life may be taken. Joseph Smith , the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement , was a strong proponent of capital punishment, and favored execution methods that involved the shedding of blood as retribution for crimes of bloodshed. In , he or his scribe commented that the common execution method in Christian nations was hanging, "instead of blood for blood according to the law of heaven. Smith , who argued against capital punishment, [29] Joseph Smith said that if he ever had the opportunity to enact a death penalty law, he "was opposed to hanging" the convict; rather, he would "shoot him, or cut off his head, spill his blood on the ground, and let the smoke thereof ascend up to God. On January 27, , he spoke approvingly of Smith's toleration of "corrupt men" in Nauvoo who were guilty of murder and robbery, on the chance that they might repent and be baptized. In the Salt Lake valley, Young acted as the executive authority while the Council of Fifty acted as a legislature. One of his main concerns in the early Mormon settlement was theft, and he swore that "a theif [sic] should not live in the Valley, for he would cut off their heads or be the means of having it done as the Lord lived. However, if a sealed and anointed person broke their covenants to any extent short of the unpardonable sin, they could possibly still gain their exaltation and become gods and goddesses aka, joint-heirs with Christ who inherits The Father has in the afterlife, conditional upon the utmost efforts possible being given to repentance, up to and possibly including forsaking one's life for forgiveness. The revelation did not, however, specify the mechanism by which such people would be "destroyed in the flesh," and it did not indicate whether that "redemption" would be the result of the sinner's own blood or the result of the atonement of Jesus. As far as scholars can tell, the author of the blood atonement doctrine was LDS Church president Brigham Young , who first taught the doctrine after the death of Joseph Smith. Grant of the First Presidency. Public talk of blood atonement diminished substantially by the end of the Mormon Reformation in when Young was replaced as territorial governor by Alfred Cumming. The subject of blood atonement remained largely dormant until the s, when the issue was revived by the national media during the John D. Lee trials for his role in the Mountain Meadows massacre. When Brigham Young led the Saints from Nauvoo, Illinois to the Salt Lake valley beginning in the mids, he and his followers intended to establish a theocracy independent of the United States , where there would be no distinction between church and state. For Mormon theocratic political theory, see Theodemocracy. Brigham Young's first recorded teachings on the blood atonement doctrine were in , when Young had stepped into the shoes of Joseph Smith, the previous theocratic leader who had been killed in That year, he was said to have approved of a Mormon being killed by an unknown assailant in Nauvoo, Illinois , an act he characterized as "a deed of charity" because "he might now possibly be redeemed in the eternal world" Smith In the Salt Lake valley, Young maintained a Council of Fifty composed of religious leaders as a kind of legislature, but this body's power was limited Quinn , pp. In , as Young and the Council of Fifty were drafting a plan for a proposed State of Deseret , Young spoke to the Council about what to do with thieves, murderers, and adulterers, and said, "I want their cursed heads to be cut off that they may atone for their crimes". Two weeks later, Young recommended decapitation for the man and a fellow prisoner, but the Council decided to let them live. In a speech before the Utah Territory 's legislature on February 5, , Young appeared to advocate the passage of a law that required decapitation for whites who were "condemned by the Law" for miscegenation with black people Young He said that if a white Mormon "in an unguarded moment should commit such a transgression", decapitation "would do a great deal towards atoning for the sin He said, "It is the greatest blessing that could come to some men to shed their blood on the ground, and let it come up before the Lord as an atonement" Young During the Mormon Reformation , church leaders began to criss-cross Mormon communities in a dramatic call for greater orthodoxy and religious purity. Brigham Young , who was then a theocratic leader, began preparing church members for what they thought was the quickly-approaching Second Coming , and a time of "Celestial law" in the Utah Territory. According to Young: "The time is coming when justice will be laid to the line and righteousness to the plummet; when we shall take the old broadsword and ask, Are you for God? And if you are not heartily on the Lord's side, you will be hewn down.