JehovahsWitness wrote:
Elijah John wrote:
John 10.10
Thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
Is everything connected to the ransom sacrifice of Jesus?
Yes, absolutely EVERYTHING!
It is the reason Jesus came to earth.
It is the basis for the kingdom.
And the kingdom is the meaning by which Jehovah’s name will be vindicated
Jesus himself said the law and the prophets were about him. The temple was about him. Every promise in the bible is about him and not one could be fulfilled without the ransom. The ransom the single most important event in human history and there will be no everlasting life for anyone that does not recognise this (see John 17:3; John 10:10).
I totally agree with JW on this. Christianity is totally dependent on Christ being a "ransom" that supposedly paid the wages of sin for mankind.
I am in total agreement that this is indeed the crux of Christianity. And this is precisely why I reject this entire religion. Well, also because the entire dogma from the beginning of Genesis is also extremely self-contradictory.
But just to focus on this whole "ransom" idea.
Here's my understanding of this:
In the beginning the wages of sin is proclaimed to be "death".
However, there has always been a way to atone for sins and thus avoid having to pay this penalty of death. In the Old Testament this could be done by sacrificing unblemished animals as a sacrificial offering to God.
I have always rejected this Old Testament idea from the very beginning, because I felt that the very idea of atoning sins by killing an animal is already absurd. I would expect an intelligent God to demand restitution rather than giving amnesty if an mere animal is sacrificed on behalf of the sinner. A rich man can atone a whale of a lot of sin by just having a sacrificial feast of his livestock ever so often.
A poor many who doesn't own an unblemished animal would need to die for his sins.
It already doesn't add up.
So I reject this notion from the get go in the Old Testament before we even get to the New Testament.
In the Christian New Testament the idea is that Jesus is given by God to humanity to be the ultimate sacrificial lamb to pay for the sins of all men. But this is already based on the previous idea that killing an unblemished sacrificial lamb can atone sins.
Jesus is supposed to be this "
unblemished sacrificial lamb". He is
unblemished in the sense that he is supposedly sin free. Something that no mortal man can offer. Thus making Jesus absolutely necessary.
I fully understand this religious paradigm. I simply reject it as being utterly absurd. Not to mention the myriad of self-contradiction these doctrines contain from cover to cover.
The idea of Jesus being the sacrificial lamb of God who was "sacrificed" to pay for the sin of man is truly nonsense. It doesn't make any sense. Yet this is the very foundation of what Christianity stands upon. This utterly nonsensical notion that Jesus is the Sacrificial Lamb of God who was sacrificed to atone the sins of mankind.
Jesus didn't even stay dead. Therefore Jesus cannot be said to have pay the wages of sin which is permanent spiritual death.
Jesus was supposedly resurrected and was given the gift of eternal life in heaven. Precisely the reward of saints, not the wages of sin.
So this religion is extremely flawed and self-contradictory.
It's not that I don't understand it. To the contrary I understand it perfectly. I simply recognize that it cannot possibly be true.