The Everlasting Covenant

What the Levitical Sacrifices Indicated

Of course this sacrificial system could not save them any more than could the broken law of works out of which it grew. Any man who had understanding enough to know the nature of sin and the necessity for atonement, had sense enough to know that pardon and righteousness could never be obtained by the ceremonies connected with the tabernacle. The very offering of a sacrifice indicated that death is the wages and fruit of sin. But anyone could see that the life of a lamb, a goat, or a bullock, was not worth as much as a man’s own life. Therefore none of those animals, nor all of them together, could answer for the life of a single man. Thousands of rams, or even a human sacrifice, could not atone for a single sin. ¹ EVCO 347.1

The faithful among the people understood this well. David said, after he had committed a great sin, “Thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it: Thou delightest not in burnt offering.” ² And God, through the prophets, taught the people: “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me?” “I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats.” ³ “Your burnt offerings are not acceptable, nor your sacrifices sweet unto Me.” ⁵ There was no virtue in them, for the law had only “a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things,” and could “never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect.” EVCO 347.2