F. Christ could not have fulfilled the analogies of the Old Testament by taking His blood into Heaven.

Hebrews 9:8, 9

The Holy Ghost this signifying, that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest, while as the first tabernacle was yet standing: {9} Which <was> a figure for the time then present, in which were offered both gifts and sacrifices, that could not make him that did the service perfect, as pertaining to the conscience;

Dr. Jack Hyles:

Jesus is our passover, and in order for Him to be our passover, the blood must be applied! He's our atonement, and in order for Him to be our atonement, the blood must be applied by the high priest on the mercy seat. He is our Lord's Supper, not only His death in the broken body, but His resurrection in the blood. He is the One Who cleanses our sins as a leper is cleansed, and even in the cleansing of the leper, there are two birds, not one. One bird won't do. One bird must die, and another bird must take the blood into the sky, representing Jesus going to the presence of the Father and sprinkling His blood on the heavenly mercy seat.

One of the Blood Doctrine's strongest arguments for the location of Christ's blood is that the Old Testament types (analogies) required Christ, as the great High Priest, to carry His blood to the Mercy Seat in Heaven. It is not disputed that the Old Testament ceremonies were types or analogies showing the plan of Salvation, and man's need of Salvation. The dispute is, what, particularly, did each element of the analogies signify, and what must Christ have done to fulfill the analogies? That last question, "What must Christ have done to fulfill the analogies?" is most important. The Blood Indoctrinators insist that whatever else Christ must have done, He must have taken His blood into Heaven. Remember, they need to prove that.

At this point, the author has found that he can make the entire matter of what happened to Christ's blood very easy for the Blood Indoctrinators. They insist that Christ's blood had to be taken to Heaven for the analogy of the Old Testament sin-offerings to be fulfilled by Christ. Christ was our lamb, and the blood of The Lamb had to be applied to the Mercy Seat for our sins to be forgiven. If this were the only paragraph in this section, if all these other pages were blank, this next statement should be enough for the Blood Indoctrinators to abandon their crusade: THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB NEVER WENT INTO THE HOLY OF HOLIES. The blood that was sprinkled on the mercy seat was that of a bull (for the sin of the priest) and a goat (for the sin of the people). How many times have the Blood Indoctrinators compared Christ's blood to that of the sacrificial bull? Are they not guilty of blasphemy?

The reader may search the 188 occurrences of the word "lamb," or the 97 occurrences of the word "ram," that are in the Bible. The closest that the lamb's blood got to the mercy seat was when all of it was sprinkled at the foot of the altar outside the tabernacle. The same can be said of the ram. Could there be some symbolism in the Old Testament priest's sprinkling of ALL the lamb's blood at the foot of the altar that was outside the tabernacle? If so, might it not be that this signified that Christ shed and left all His blood at the foot of the cross, taking none of it to Heaven? Revelation 7:14 is often given as a proof that Christ took His blood to Heaven, but wait a minute! That verse says that the saints washed their robes white in the blood of the Lamb, and all of the blood of the lamb was always left at the altar where the lamb was slain.

To be consistent, the Blood Indoctrinator must now concede defeat. Christ was not our bull, and He certainly was not our goat (an animal that represented stubbornness). He was however, a scapegoat for us, but the scapegoat's blood never entered the holies, either. The Blood Indoctrinators don't make a distinction between the blood of these different animals, although it was clearly quite important to the ceremonies. All that they care about is that blood arrived inside the holies. Imagine how different we would be if we said, "Christ our Bull," instead of "Christ our Lamb!" What a different world it would be if we said that Christ was the "Goat of God," instead of the "Lamb of God."

Of course the ever-imaginative and stubborn Blood Indoctrinator will produce something to excuse his clinging to his belief. Pastor Singletary of Manzano Baptist Church in Albuquerque, New Mexico, claims that the argument of the Lamb's blood is not of concern to him, since Moses also lifted a serpent on a post to symbolize Christ. He does not say why the Old Testament priest, who had the blood of the lamb right there, begging to be used in an analogy, still poured all of the lamb's blood at the foot of the altar outside the tabernacle. He doesn't explain how the blood of The Lamb entered the Holy of Holies when the blood of the lamb could not even enter the tabernacle.

Not only do we not need to believe that Christ had to take His blood to Heaven to fulfill the Old Testament types, but we must believe that He could not be keeping the types if He had. It would have broken the Old Testament analogy for the Lamb of God to have taken His blood into the Holies in Heaven. If an Old Testament priest had taken lamb's blood instead of bull's blood, he would have been in violation of God's command. The Blood Indoctrinator's don't care about that; they need blood, no matter how little or from what animal, to take into the holies. To a reasonable person, their argument is dead. It does not even matter that, contrary to the Blood Doctrine, the sin offering did not have to be bloody (Leviticus 5:11). The Blood Indoctrinator's argument is finished, even without that last fact.

There are more proofs that the Blood Indoctrinators are wrong, and some interesting facts associated with that. Perhaps the first point that should be made now is that a person can easily become pedantic in his interpretation of an analogy. Because they were analogies, one would expect that the reality bears some relationship to the figure, although not necessarily a perfect likeness in every point. The central point of an analogy is the only one that is certainly expressed in the true. No one, whether Blood Indoctrinator or Jew, knows what all the ceremonies particularly signified, or even why one object was fashioned in one way and not in another. Those who dogmatically pretend to know such minutia are vain.

It is not even certain why there were seven of some things, or forty of another; we claim that numerology (which is witchcraft) is significant in Christianity, but it is only a guess. The author does not know of anyone whose life or attitude has been changed for the better once they knew a reason for God's instructions in those small points. Indeed, most of the analogies seem to bear little importance beyond the time that they were used. Their inclusion seems more to have been of the necessities of a human fulfilling the rest of the analogies, rather than being analogously-significant, themselves. They have become trivia questions, knowledge held by the post-initiate for no purpose other than to signify that one is a post-initiate. No one knows if their interpretation of all those rituals and paraphernalia is correct, and, if it is, what it means to us.

Despite the use of the Old Testament analogies by the Blood Indoctrinators, there are many ceremonies about which little is said. This could be because it is hard to find a specific meaning for all the ceremonies. The Blood Indoctrinators have assigned a meaning for a few of the ceremonies, when it is convenient for their explanations. There are probably more unexplained ceremonies than explained. Certainly the Blood Indoctrinators are not the only people to have produced an explanation for the ceremonies, and those explanations don't necessarily agree at all with the explanations of the Blood Indoctrinators.

It does not benefit our understanding of Scripture to point to an Old Testament type and claim that it must mean this or that, and then defend the explanation by saying, "What else could it mean?" Only in the interpretation of prophecy do we again find such arrogant chaos in our churches. The reason for the boasting on both accounts is the same; it is the glory of God to hide a matter, but the honor of kings to search them out (Proverbs 25:10). As He did with gold, God has well-hid His meaning, and men want the power and prestige given them by knowing the answer. Some preachers are selling deeds to ores of iron pyrite.

Two important questions, which are critical links in the debate of the fate of Christ's blood, are "What blood did Christ take to Heaven?" and "When did He take that blood?" The Blood Doctrine should satisfactorily answer these two questions before they assume that they have the correct interpretations of the Old Testament analogies. Otherwise, their interpretation should be considered questionable. There are many other critical links in the Blood Doctrine, but it is sufficient to ask these two questions when initially testing the Blood Doctrine's claims.

The matter of when Christ took His blood to Heaven was addressed in the discussion of John 20:12. As was proven there, the Blood Indoctrinators do not have Scriptural support for a time when Christ took His blood to Heaven. They may guess and claim, but if they claim that Scripture proves their guess, they are deceiving their people, if not themselves.

The best guess found by the author came from Matthew Poole. He believed that as soon as Jesus breathed out His spirit, He appeared before God with His blood. He was correct, in that the Old Testament priest did not wait three days, or even three minutes, before he took the sacrificial blood into the holies. Even that claim, though, is not proven, but deduced. Jesus may have appeared immediately before the Father, but the Scripture never says that He took any of His shed blood with Him. Surely, had some of His blood disappeared at that moment, someone would have been startled enough to write about it. Surely, such an important event would have been ratified by the witness of the Holy Ghost. Matthew Poole, incidentally, was not at all a Baptist. The author would be grateful to anyone who could tell him about Matthew Poole, beyond the commentary that he wrote.

When the Old Testament high priest performed the annual ritual of the sin offering, he killed a sacrificial animal on an altar that was located outside the tabernacle. The priest collected the blood of that animal as the blood flowed from a slit in the animal's neck. Almost all the blood was then poured at the foot of the altar (Leviticus 4:34), except for a little bit that the priest would carry inside the tabernacle. After the priest had washed his flesh, and put on linen garments, he took that little bit of sacrificial blood into the tabernacle. He sprinkled the blood on another, smaller altar that was located inside the holies. He then went inside the holy of holies, and sprinkled the blood seven times on the mercy seat, and seven times in front of the mercy seat. Notice that only a little blood ever entered the Holies. The blood was not collected in a bucket and hauled into the temple and left, contrary to the Blood Indoctrinator's claim. They want to believe that every drop of His blood is on the Mercy Seat in Heaven, perhaps in a "golden chalice." That's un-Scriptural. There was just a little blood sprinkled in the Holies.

That was not the only sin offering ritual, however. The sin offering was made as often as necessary, and there were different rituals for different groups of people. One ritual was for the kings, another for the common people, another for the priests and another for the nation. The only time that anyone went into the holy of holies, however, was once a year, when the high priest took in the blood of the bull, to sprinkle it on and before the mercy seat. At all times, most of the blood was sprinkled at the foot of the altar outside. Sometimes all of the sin offering blood was poured there, such as when the sacrificial animal was a lamb.

Now comes the question of "What blood did Christ take to Heaven?" The Blood Indoctrinators believe that Christ collected all of the blood that He shed on the cross, and, after His resurrection, took it into the Holy of Holies that is in Heaven. He put His blood on the Mercy Seat in Heaven, perhaps in a bowl or a cup, where it remains today. Even today, it is pleading, perhaps with an audible voice, for the salvation of those who trust in its power to save them from sin. As was previously mentioned, that scenario contradicts the Old Testament record of events. This account by the Blood Indoctrinators is mostly imagination, and in contradiction with the Old Testament record of the priest's duties.

One problem with the Blood Indoctrinators present scheme is that it required Christ's blood to lay on the ground for three days before it was presented in Heaven. Never did a priest take the blood, once it fell to the earth, and carry it into the holy of holies. The idea that he would is absurd, and completely out of the nature of the requirements of sanctity given for the sacrifice. Yet, the Blood Indoctrinators say that when Christ picked up His blood from the ground where it lay, He was fulfilling a type of the Old Testament priest. If Christ did not take to Heaven the blood that He shed (and left) on Calvary when He died, what blood did He take? In the Old Testament, the priest collected the blood as it was shed; the Scriptural account makes it sound unlikely that someone did this as Christ was dying.

Another problem is that the Blood Indoctrinators are very close to producing another member of the godhead. It is no longer Christ who saves us; it is His blood. The difference may seem slight, but it is not. Would we think a woman normal who ignored her wounded child in favor of the blood that he left on a sidewalk? The blood is an extension of the individual; by itself, it does not have any significance. It is only in connection with the person from whom the blood came that it has any significance.

As mentioned earlier, the author neither defends nor refutes John MacArthur's claims for the blood of Christ, mostly because the author does not care what Dr. MacArthur said about Christ's blood. However, when Dr. Hyles was attacking Dr. MacArthur's claim, one method that he used is very interesting. Doctor Hyles said,

Do you know what that doctrine is that we're saved by His death only? It is nothing but Roman Catholic doctrine. It is crucifix stuff.⁽⁸⁷⁾

Doctor Hyles, did you know that the idea that Christ's blood should be venerated, or worshiped, is thoroughly Catholic? It also has an interesting pagan equivalent. According to The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology,

The allusions of Christ at the Last Supper to the blood of the New Covenant and to the Paschal Lamb, added to the fact that the apostles associate the blood with the passion and death of Christ, gave rise to the idea that the precious blood is a part of the sacred humanity and is hypostatically [i.e., essentially] united with the second Person of the Trinity. It is argued that this view goes back to Ignatius of Antioch. This idea grew in the Middle Ages into a cult of veneration.⁽⁸⁸⁾

and, according to the New Catholic Encyclopedia,

Relics of the Precious Blood (not hypostatically united) were venerated at Mantria as early as 553, at Weingarten since 1090, and at Bruges since 1158...

The greatest epoch in the history of the special devotion began early in the 19th century, which witnessed the remarkable missionary activity of St. Gasper del Bufalo in the Papal States and the founding of the Society of the Precious Blood...

The devotion received its most explicit and official approval from John XXIII (called "Pope of the Precious Blood") in 1960.⁽⁸⁹⁾

That phrase, "hypostatically united," means, "The blood that was an essential part of Christ's being." The Catholics claim to have some of His blood on a spear, in a bottle and in various other places. All the rest of His blood He took into Heaven. It is not a secret, to those who live in a Roman Catholic community, that the Roman Catholics venerate objects, especially those supposed to be from Christ's body. Thus, they pray to the "sacred heart of Jesus," instead of praying directly to Jesus. There are Blood Indoctrinators who believe that we should pray to the blood of Christ, that it will enable the Holy Spirit to work in our lives.

The idea that the wound of a divine body gives rise to another divine body that is independently worthy of worship is found in Greek mythology. The chiefest of the Greek gods, Zeus, was said to have had a headache one day. Hephaestus, according to Pindar, struck Zeus' head with an axe, and Hesiod wrote that Athena stepped into existence from there. This is not so different from claiming that the wounds of Christ produced talking blood, to which we should now pray or give reverence.

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