The Author

When he was five years old, he heard his preacher say that we must ask Jesus for His gift of Salvation if we were ever to enter Heaven. The preacher said that sin is like a disease, and Christ is the inoculation against sin. His mother told him that an inoculation is a shot, and that scared him from getting saved. Imagine that! He could have died and gone to Hell just because he was afraid that he had to get a shot to be saved. You never know what's going through a child's mind.

For three weeks, he battled his fear. Then, a visiting preacher said that some members of the audience needed to come forward to ask Jesus for His gift of Salvation, and the author-to-be decided that if he had to get a shot to be saved, he was going to get that shot! They took him into a side room and carefully questioned him (he was looking all around for that needle). He still remembers the concerned look on the face of the man who dealt with him. The church worker asked the young man to repeat a prayer with him (the author didn't know why), and when the worker finished, he told the boy that if he had meant that prayer, then he was saved. The author was surprised and relieved!

The prayer may not have meant much to the author, but he came by faith to ask Jesus for His gift of Salvation. The author's trust has been in nothing other than Christ's power to save him from sin and Hell, shot or no shot (Acts 16:31). Today he understands that it was Christ's substitution of Himself in God's judgement that gave the author the right to Salvation, and the author's faith in His ability and will to save the author that gave him Salvation. Repentance from sin was inherent in his understanding. He knew that God was holy, and he knew what holy meant. It would be a strange faith that would bring the repentant into rebellion with his Saviour.

The author believes that Jesus is the Creator of the Universe (John 1:1-3), that He is by nature (rather than by office or mission) uniquely the Son of God (Mark 8:38; John 10:30, 11:25-27; Hebrews 1:5-8; 1 John 1:3, 2:22-24) and that He is the One and only One through whom all mankind must pass to meet the Father (1 Timothy 2:5). He took flesh by a miracle of the Holy Ghost, who caused Christ's body to form in the womb of a virgin (Matthew 1:20, 23; Luke 1:35; Hebrews 10:5). His birth by a woman who was a virgin was a sign, and only a sign, given to the Jews to show that Jesus was the Promised One and that Israel would not permanently be destroyed (Isaiah 7:3-16, Matthew 1:22, 23). By the dictates of the Law, Christ had to be our near kinsman (Leviticus 25:47-49; Numbers 5:6-8; Ruth 3:9-13, 4:1-10), meaning that He had to be a blood relative of the human race (e.g., Deuteronomy 25:5--through the male, no less--Hebrews 2:16) which was promised (Genesis 21:12, Galatians 3:16). He also had to be free from transgression of the Law of God (Exodus 12:5).

Salvation is a miraculous work brought about by the Holy Spirit. The sinner is granted the faith necessary to trust in Jesus' right and will to save us. The penalty for sin required the life of the payer (2 Chronicles 25:4; Romans 6:23), and is symbolized by the sustaining substance of life, which is blood (Leviticus 17:11). Christ's blood is the symbol showing that Christ died in our place (Hebrews 12:24). As the author of the Old Testament, it was His right to die in our place (Hebrews 8:6-13, 9:15-22). The miracle of Salvation is symbolized by the Old Testament rituals of animal sacrifices. Christ fulfilled in reality what had been done figuratively by the Old Testament priests (Hebrews 10:1).

The Blood Indoctrinators agree with many of those things. There is no controversy that Salvation is by Grace, through faith in Jesus Christ. It is not refuted by Fundamentalists that the Old Testament Jewish practice of the right to redeem property foreshadowed the right of redemption that belonged to Jesus. Some Fundamentalists have even claimed that humans are "save-able" because Christ could be born as one of them. The angels, who are sexless, cannot be redeemed, because Christ cannot become their near-kinsman.⁽¹⁾ Finally, the Resurrection is agreed, by all those involved in this debate, to have been literal and essential to our Salvation. There is, therefore, a lot of material about which members on both sides of the Blood Doctrine agree. In fact, it is possible to attend many church services over several years, given by several Blood Indoctrinators, without ever hearing any of their odd teachings about the blood. This was the case of the author.

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