[COLLEEN TINKER]
It’s fascinating to me that one of the most stubbornly-defended Adventist doctrines—besides the obvious doctrine of the Sabbath and the slightly-less-obvious doctrine of “soul sleep”—is their almost-unseen doctrine of the scapegoat. Adventists, by the authority of Ellen White, identify the scapegoat of Leviticus 16 as Satan—in spite of the fact that Leviticus 16 establishes conditions that prohibit Satan from being the scapegoat.
This week I received a question from a former Adventist who had been having a conversation with an Adventist about this very subject. Here was the question:
Can you explain to me how is it that the scapegoat that was sent out to the wilderness (azazel) atoned for our sins when, according to Hebrews 9:22, Scripture says there is no remission of sin without the shedding of blood? I’m discussing this with an Adventist. Could you please help me with this?
This is not an isolated question, and its significance reveals the core of Adventist soteriology: at the end of the investigative judgment, Jesus is said to place the confessed sins of the saved on Satan who will bear them into the lake of fire where he will be punished for them.
Adventists are quick to argue that Satan does not really bear the sins of the saved—rather, he is punished for causing them, as he should be.
Adventists are quick to argue that Satan does not really bear the sins of the saved—rather, he is punished for causing them, as he should be. After all, humans are guilty because Satan tempted them and deceived them into sin.
Yet this argument—that Satan doesn’t really bear the sins of the saved and does not receive the punishment for them—is not Adventist doctrine. Adventist doctrine, as per Ellen White, says that Satan is punished for our sins and that his bearing them away actually cleanses the heavenly sanctuary.
The layers of heresy implicit in this doctrine are horrifying. The investigative judgment says that when a person “accepts Jesus”, his or her sins are transferred by Jesus’ blood from that person to the books in heaven. Jesus then writes “pardoned” next to the person’s name in the heavenly record, but that sin remains on the record, recorded there by the blood of Jesus, and it is NOT REMOVED from the heavenly record until Jesus completes the investigative judgment. In the meantime, the professed believer is not yet forgiven but is on probation.
At the end of the investigative judgment, Jesus places those confessed sins on Satan the scapegoat who carries them out of heaven—thus cleansing it—and receives the punishment they deserve in the lake of fire. When the sins are fully confessed and overcome and carried out of heaven by Satan, Jesus then writes “forgiven” by the person’s name, and they are then ready to be saved.
Most Christians—and many Adventists— are not aware that Adventist soteriology says that when a person accepts Jesus, they are placed on probation and are “merely” pardoned but are not fully forgiven until much later when Satan finally takes away those sins.
When Adventists try to support their belief that Satan is the scapegoat, they often argue that Satan does NOT receive the punishment due for those sins. They insist he’s just getting what he deserves because he is responsible for causing humans to sin.
Yet they are wrong on both counts.
Who Is Responsible for Sin?
First, Satan is not responsible for human sin. He did not cause Eve and Adam to doubt God’s word and to eat that fruit. He tempted them, but Scripture clearly says that sin entered the human race through Adam. Paul says this in Romans 5:12–14:
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come (Romans 5:12–14).
And in 1 Corinthians Paul says this:
But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive (1 Corinthians 15:20–22).
Thus the first argument, that Satan made us do it, is disproven by the word of God. Humans are responsible for human sin. (In fact, this reality is why Jesus HAD to be human in order to atone for our sin. He had to shed sinless human blood in order to be the propitiation for human sin.)
Second, Adventist doctrine DOES teach that Satan receives the punishment for the sins of the saved. Look, for example, at these quotations from Ellen White (and these are by no means exhaustive):
Since Satan is the originator of sin, the direct instigator of all the sins that caused the death of the Son of God, justice demands that Satan shall suffer the final punishment. Christ’s work for the redemption of men and the purification of the universe from sin, will be closed by the removal of sin from the heavenly sanctuary and the placing of these sins upon Satan, who will bear the final penalty (Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 358).
When the ministration in the holy of holies had been completed, and the sins of Israel had been removed from the sanctuary by virtue of the blood of the sin-offering, then the scapegoat was presented alive before the Lord; and in presence of the congregation the high priest confessed over him ‘all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat’ (Lev. 16:21). In like manner, when the work of atonement in the heavenly sanctuary has been completed, then in the presence of God and heavenly angels, and the host of the redeemed, the sins of God’s people will be placed upon Satan; he will be declared guilty of all the evil he has caused them to commit. And as the scapegoat was sent away into a land not inhabited, so Satan will be banished to a desolate earth, an uninhabited and dreary wilderness (The Great Controversy p. 658).
In this doctrine Ellen White blasphemes the Lord Jesus and His completed atonement. Jesus, not Satan, is the one who bears the FULL penalty for human sin. Jesus is the One whose death removed our sins as far as east is from the west:
For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us (Psalm 103:11–12).
Furthermore, Jesus Himself took our imputed sin and bore the full wrath of God for that sin:
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21).
Then there is this powerful, beautiful declaration of Jesus’ work of propitiation recorded in Romans 3:21–26:
But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus (Romans 3:21–26).
In other words, Ellen White’s scapegoat doctrine hidden at the heart of the investigative judgment reveals the true nature of Adventist soteriology: Jesus did not complete the atonement at the cross; people who “accept Jesus” are on probation until the end of the investigative judgment, and when Jesus has finally recorded that a person’s sins are fully confessed and that person has kept the law, then their sins are placed on SATAN who receives the punishment for them.
Satan, not Jesus, is actually Adventism’s sin-bearer.
Satan, not Jesus, is actually Adventism’s sin-bearer. Jesus’ blood, in EGW’s scenario, is the means by which heaven is defiled in the first place: it transfers the person’s sin from the person to heaven where the sins remain on the books of record until the end of the judgment. Then they are placed on Satan, and they are removed from heaven. The universe is finally cleansed.
The horror of this little-understood but extant doctrine of atonement IS Adventism. Satan, not Jesus, is the final sin-bearer, and sinners are finally free from the record of their sin when Satan bears it away.
Why Two Goats?
A metaphor, a shadow, or a type, cannot be comprehensive enough to encompass the full person and work of Jesus in one single symbol. In fact, every single aspect of the tabernacle services in Israel was a shadow of Jesus: even the Adventists know that the sacrifices were shadows of His death. Yet we did not learn as Adventists that every function and even every piece of furniture in the sanctuary was a shadow of Jesus.
For example, in Matthew 12:6 Jesus said to the Pharisees, when they accused Him of breaking the Sabbath by allowing His disciples to pick grain and eat it, that “something greater than the temple is here.” In the context of that whole conversation, Jesus was saying that EVERYTHING about the temple was superseded by HIM.
The candlesticks symbolized Him: the light of the world. The shewbread symbolized Him: the bread of life. The mercy seat over the ark symbolized Him; the law itself, the covenant God made with Israel, was fulfilled by Jesus. Even the fourth commandment inside the ark was fulfilled by the Lord Jesus!
In other words, Jesus was telling them that HE HIMSELF was the fulfillment of every physical shadow of the entire sanctuary service.
When God gave Israel the commands for the Day of Atonement offering, He included the commands for choosing the lamb for sacrifice and the lamb for the scapegoat. Those details in Leviticus 16:7–10 tell us enough to disqualify Satan as the goat that took Israel’s sins into the wilderness:
Then he shall take the two goats and set them before the LORD at the entrance of the tent of meeting. And Aaron shall cast lots over the two goats, one lot for the LORD and the other lot for Azazel. And Aaron shall present the goat on which the lot fell for the LORD and use it as a sin offering, but the goat on which the lot fell for Azazel shall be presented alive before the LORD to make atonement over it, that it may be sent away into the wilderness to Azazel (Leviticus 16:7–10).
The scapegoat was chosen by lot from between two spotless goats or lambs (Lev. 16:7–10). That fact alone is important; either one of those goats could have been the sacrifice, and either could have been the scapegoat. They both qualified for the atonement offering. Within the Adventist paradigm, the idea that either one could have been the sacrifice and either could have been the scapegoat fits EGWs great controversy paradigm that says Lucifer was jealous that Jesus was exalted to the position of Son—that he felt the honor should have gone to him. But they were not “equal”. Lucifer was a creation; Jesus was his Creator.
The scapegoat and the sacrificial lamb were both spotless, perfect, and qualified to be the Day of Atonement sacrifice.
That being said, the atonement had two functions: it provided the blood sacrifice required to atone for sin, and that atonement removed the sins from the camp of Israel and put them as far as east is from the west. The scapegoat represented the function of removing the sins far from the people of God.
This symbolic act of placing the sins of Israel on the scapegoat and sending it into the wilderness was part of the atonement for sin. Leviticus 16:10 says the scapegoat was presented “alive before the Lord, to make atonement upon it, to send it into the wilderness as the scapegoat.” This two-pronged function of atonement required two goats, because the slain goat could not be released into the wilderness, and the live goat could not both symbolically carry the sins away from the camp and also die as a blood sacrifice. It required two goats to demonstrate the enormity of the function of the Day of Atonement offering.
What Jesus did on Calvary was bigger than any shadows of lambs or bulls could encompass. God gave Israel multiple commands for multiple forms of sacrifice in order to foreshadow the all-encompassing work of Jesus. The Day of Atonement sacrifice required two lambs (or goats), but Jesus accomplished everything foreshadowed in HIMSELF.
We who know and trust Jesus hear a call today to leave behind the rituals and idols of our old religion. We are asked to leave the community where we thought we had all truth, where we thought we were the only ones who really kept the “whole Bible”.
As Adventists we thought we had “the truth”, the religion “closest to the truth”, and the culture where we were the healthiest people with the most to offer. Yet we were wrong.
As Adventists we thought we had “the truth”, the religion “closest to the truth”, and the culture where we were the healthiest people with the most to offer. Yet we were wrong. We had all the shadows and symbols determined by EGW’s great controversy worldview, and we completely missed JESUS.
Today we hear the same call that the author of Hebrews made to the first-century believing Jews who were being called out of the trappings of temple Judaism. The real Jesus came and completely dealt with our sin, and our one command is to leave behind all that we thought we knew and to follow Him alone. Here is how Hebrews gives this call:
Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings, for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, which have not benefited those devoted to them. We have an altar from which those who serve the tent have no right to eat. For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy places by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp. So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come. Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God (Hebrews 13:9–16).
We have been reconciled to God by Jesus, our Sacrifice and Scapegoat. We are safe in Him alone. †
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Hi!
You are a blessing!
My Adventist husband and I were studying Leviticus 16 tonight. We both know all this points to Jesus. My husband is not really familar with EGW writings (I know, crazy) but was questioning how the goat being kept alive points to Jesus. This is a great article, but what is the easiest way to explain this to him.
Thank you so much for your help
In a nutshell, Leviticus 16 says that the priest confessed Israel’s sins over the goat FOR ATONEMENT. Satan is never involved in atonement.
The work of Jesus was too extensive for one symbol to sum up all of it. He was the Sacrifice and Substitute for our sins, and He also bore our sins OUTSIDE the camp, as far as the east is from the west. He removed our sins from us. That is the symbolism of the scapegoat.
The scapegoat was cursed by being the sin-bearer and was put out of the fellowship of the nation. That is the effect of Jesus’ becoming sin for us (2 Cor 5:21) so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. And then in Hebrews 13, the writer tells the believing Jews to whom he is writing that they need to follow Jesus outside the camp. They have to leave the beautiful symbolism and shadows of Judaism and follow Jesus where they live by faith, minus the physical shadows of Jesus and His ministry.
The scapegoat demonstrated that Jesus’ atonement was sufficient to cleanse ALL His people, and the sacrifice provided the blood necessary to cleanse the people from sin. So the sacrifice provided the cleansing blood, and the scapegoat demonstrated that Jesus’ sacrifice was sufficient to put their sins far, far away from them to be remembered no more.