No offense to christians, but I'm kind of confused.?

Question

Really good video.

One thing that doesn't make sense though. In the old testament, g-d said that human sacrifice never came into his mind.

Jeremiah 19:4-5

Because they have (A)forsaken Me and have (B)made this an alien place and have burned sacrifices in it to (C)other gods, that neither they nor their forefathers nor the kings of Judah had ever known, and because they have filled this place with the (D)blood of the innocent

5and have built the (E)high places of Baal to burn their (F)sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, a thing which I never commanded or spoke of, nor did it ever enter My mind;

Ezekiel 16:20 Moreover thou hast taken thy sons and thy daughters, whom thou hast borne unto me, and these hast thou sacrificed unto them to be devoured. [Is this] of thy whoredoms a small matter.

It also says that no one can die for another mans sin. Deuteronomy 24:16, "Every man shall be put to death for his own sins."

Christians believe that jesus was a sacrifice "for their sins". If g-d forbade human sacrifices, and say that no one but you dies for your sins, what makes the "sacrifice" of jesus any different?

Yes, I am jewish, and wanted to understand all religions and have an open mind.

to sirromo4u, believe it or not, i am jewish.

Answer 1

actually god commanded abraham to sacrifice his son isaac. however before abraham did it, god stopped him, all a test of faith. so the thought has come to him apparently..

"In the old testament, g-d said that human sacrifice never came into his mind."

Answer 2

Ignore everyone that didnt answer your question. Because that really is a valid question. And the answer is rather lengthy. First of all, in the new testament Jesus is found to have said something along the lines as use the old testament as nothing more than a history lesson..basicaly. Because he came around and challeneged everything that the old testament said. This is one reason why he was persecuted by the pharisees and the jews. They felt what he had to say was blasphemy. There are a lot of things in the old testament that were changed after jesus came along. Although it says in the OT that human sacrifices where never used they certainly used animal ones to offer to God. After Jesus that wasnt necessary because he became the last sacrifice to god....for us..apparently...

and although jesus was "god incarnate" he was 100% human...that was the point..if he wasnt he would have felt no pain on the cross...

i hope i didnt confuse you more. i dont necessarily believe in all that stuff but grew up in it and well versed...

Answer 3

I see your confusion, and understand but God, the Bible says is not the author of confusion. If you are confused is because your mind is not understanding the whole story. It is very much like putting together the pieces of a puzzle. God did intentionally keep many things a mystery so he could idenify his own people in each age of history. Ever person has a knowledge of right and wrong, moral and immoral, you are born and a soul is created when the spirit of life comes into a fleshly body that had life inside of it without the soul. Life is a series of leaning is there a God and am I part of his plan. We find answers to these questions by asking our family, our friends, and our God.
God does hate people sacrificing babies to false Gods that do not exist, so you break two commandments by doing this, One god is one and the other is thou shall not kill. this is like a double curse upon yourself. But because misisters do not teach the truth we are all left to our own understanding, or you do not go to church to get any understanding.
People may say we do not live by the Old Testamnet anyways but right or wrong is built into the hearts of all men. Many today are good at ignoring their instincts and emotions and this is called in the Bible the hardness of your heart. Your heart is the soil God is looking to plant the words of truth to save you not a church or a minister; it is just YOU and God NO ONE ELSE! If you want a Church to be saved in or a Nation become a Jew because the days of the Gentiles is over almost.

Answer 4

I thought you were going to refer to Abraham and Isaac. In that case, God made it bvery clear that he was not into human sacrifices.
The idea of men offering human sacrifices never came to God's mind. First, because a human wsacrifice would not be good enough, and would never cancel anybody's sins.
Second, because we do not have a right to offer up another man's life.
So why did God offer and accept Jesus as a "human sacrifice"?
First, God offered Him, and not men. Jesus came with that very purpose.
Second, because Jesus was man, and also God. It was God himself offereing himself for us. The judge taking the place of the criminal.
Also, Jesus was perfectly sinless.
Now the question is, was Jesus God Himself? If he was not, then his sacrifice was worthless to save us.
If Jesus was just a perfect sinless man (he had to be sinless for his sacrifice to be any good at all), then his sacrifice was only good to save one other man.
If Jesus was just a perfect, sinless man, how could his death and burial for three days save anyone from an eternity of punishment?
Here is the answer:
Jesus, being God, is eternal. So His moment of death on the cross was worth an eternity for us.
Jesus, being God, is infinite. So His death alone, was worth an infinte number of sinners being saved.

Answer 5

It is only of value if Jesus was truly the son of God and not merely a man. If he was only a man, then there is no value whatsoever in his sacrifice, for precisely the reasons you've stated.

The focus then becomes to determine if Jesus is truly who He claimed to be. I think He is, and therefore I gratefully accept His sacrifice, 'cause I KNOW I can't pay for my sins...

P.S. To all you other answerers...Jewish people do not write the vowels in "Jehovah" as a sign of respect. It is possible that the asker of this question is Jewish and is doing the same to "God", i.e. "g-d".

Answer 6

The reason why God forbid the sacrifices of OTHERS sons and daughters was because he was already putting the steps in motion to sacrifice his OWN son. Since only one was needed, there was no reason to sacrifice others. Plus in order for it to do any good, it had to be a person who was perfect - had never sinned. And Jesus was the only one who meet that requirement.

Answer 7

Hi
Well to start with Man was already separated from God from the Garden of Eden.Then came the flood with only one family recognised by God as having a chance of being with God. I believe that other races survived the flood but in Gods eyes they were already dead and He didn't care about them as all were lost. The Jewish people were never a people but a wondering tribe with no home land and God decided to start a relationship with them staring with Jacob.

The natural person it is written is an enemy when God appeared on the mountian to give mosses the ten commandments God told moses to Build a fence and any person who pasted "We would kill" thats because God is our ememy and is against us as we are born wrong.

It took many thousands of years for even the Jewish people to be ready to recieve Jesus who was Gods only son and even then he was hated and forsaken by all and murdered as a criminal.
It is exactly the same today if Jesus was to appear again and be Born the system and world we live in would not recognise him and would proberbly put him in a mental hospital and who knows make up some crime for the electric chair.

Anyway the sacrifce is this;

Jesus said that he is the mana (food) which has come down from heaven and we must eat and drink of him his bood must come through our body and his flesh must be our food to drink.
(I am not talking about that fake stuff given out in a man made church or by humans.)

When Jesus said these things in the bible everybody gave up on him accept the disciples they eventually ran away at the end.

The Sacrifice is Jesus in giving himself to us so that we can be changed and become pleasing to God.

God gave early instructions to sacrifice animals as a way or method to atone for sins this was to help us today understand that God needs something to satisfy his eternal anger toward mankind as even the smallest sin is unacceptable in Gods kingdom.

Only through Jesus Christ have we a hope to inherit eternal life not in his name or pretending to be with him but He the living Jesus must live and breath within our body and viens.

Without this we are condemed and lost and no amount of animal sacrifice will ever satisfy Gods anger towards his failed creation brought upon mankind through the workings of Satan.

Answer 8

The fact of the matter is, that Christians did not sacrifice Jesus, it was the Romans that did. During the time when Christ existed, the Roman Empire ruled over Israel. They believed in many gods and it scared them that one person was trying to spread a new religion of only one God.
Because the Roman Emperor was seen as a god himself ( or at least a earthly version of one (just like the Egyptians)), the Romans felt that they could lose control of their people. The Roman emperor at the time ( I can't remember who) told the Roman Provincial of Israel to put Jesus to death because of his beliefs.
This is why Christians believe that Jesus was sacrificed for their sins. It was not them that did the sacrificing, but the Romans. Jesus died for others beliefs( which was considered a Sin by the Roman Laws) and for his own.
It was only 400 years later that Christianity became the national religion of the Roman Empire. At this time, the empire was beginning to fall and had to be separated into to areas. This is how Christianity was spread throughout Europe and much of the middle east and northern Africa.
So the Bible is right as are Christians, they did not sacrifice Jesus.

Answer 9

I believe that Jesus established a new covenant which replaced the old. A theologian could tell you.

In fact, the deity in the old testament seems like a different personality that the one in the new testament, which has led me to wonder how much writings were influenced by the men who wrote them, in other words how much the actual meaning might have been bent by the prism of each author's own individual perceptions, intellect, opinions and personality. In addition, there is the confusion that some of the stories in the old testament reflect similar tales in many other cultures. (the great flood, for example)

To add further questions, who decided which books would be included in the book and which ones would be left out?

Sorry my answer isn't more helpful. You just got me to thinking.

Answer 10

I'm not entirely sure I understand what it is you're questioning. So, I'll address the issues I think you are questioning.

Deuteronomy 24:16 -- It does not say, one CANNOT die for another man's sins; it is saying that no one else will be condemned for another's sins. It is said again in Ezekiel:
"Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die.... 20 The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him." (Ezekiel 18:4, 20)

Jesus was not condemned for our sins, he sacrificed himself for our sakes -- he took upon himself, voluntarily, the condemnation that is upon us. It was HIS sacrifice, not ours. We did not sacrifice a human being to God; God sacrificed himself for us.

Answer 11

Jer 19:4-5
The people , through their idolatry, had prevented the once holy city of Jerusalem from being the place where God chose His name to dwell. The city had become a place of alien gods and goddess.

The blood of the innocents refer to the murderous act of child sacrifice ( 7:31 ). This abominable practice, performed in the name of religious worship was explicitly forbidden in the covenant ( See Det 12:31 ).

Ezekiel 16:20
16:16-20, these verses list the specific acts of idolatry engaged in by the spiritually unfaithful in Jerusalem and Judah. Mesopotamian and Canaanite pagan rituals are featured.

The people's unfaithfulness to God consisted of
1) Building altars to idols and decorating the high places with their garments ( 1 Kin. 11:7, 8 )
2) Fashioning male images ( phallic or sexually perverse statues ) from gold and silver that God provided
3) Giving what belonged to the true God to these false gods
4) Practicing human sacrifice to appease these gods ( 2 kin. 16:1-4 )

The Israelites did not remember how much God had done to them since rescuing them from a dirty, destitute, and dying condition.

Deut 24:16 Let me tell you what is this about. If you take passages out of their context,you can make the Bible say a lot of things that it realy does not say.

This passage in Deuteronomy is a precept laid down by which the legal sustem of Israel would function once they were established in the land. It wasnot the right of the human courts to exact capitl punishment from the children of guilty parents if the children werenotpersonally guilty of the crime. However, that which restricts the power of human courts doe not restrict the right or authority of God.

The Scripture does not indicate that David'schild was being punished for David'ssin. Rather, the Bible indicates that the death of the child was David's punishment ( 2 Sam 12:14 ). If it is thought that allowing the child die was an unjust way to punish David, it must be remembered that David trusted in the righteousness of God when he daid in faith: " I shall go to him , but he shall not return to me " ( 2 Sam 12:23 ) . David trusted that God had taken his child to heaven and that he would be with the child when he died. God always acts according to His righteousness, and the restrictions of such precepts as this are designed to prevent from perverting justice.

God said that the wages of the sin was death. The sin needed to be punished. Jesus was the very center of God's will when He died on the cross. He did not have to die, He gave His life so that we can live in eternity. He did not die for selfish purposes. He died so that you can be with Him in eternity if you chose to be with Him. God's commandments to us does not apply to Him. He gives us our life He can take it away too. God is God no matter what you think of Him. I team up with Him. I know I am in the winning team.

When God tells me that Jesus is the way. I will choose that way. I do not follow religion. I follow Jesus. I follow Jesus because He takes me to the place I want to go.