NO BLOOD ATONEMENT OR COVENANTS IN ISLAM, MEANS NO SALVATION
1). INTRODUCTION
A Muslim on another thread asked "what does Christianity offer that Islam doesn't have?"
I replied:
"We have assurance of salvation. There is no atonement in Islam. No atonement means no salvation. The New Covenant age of grace was sealed in Jesus blood. It supercedes all that came before it. Muslims haven't a clue what it signifies and Islam has nothing like it.
To personalise it we have Jesus and Islam doesn't. Unless you believe on His name you are dead in your sins.
We have the truth. And truth is personified in Jesus and enshrined in God's word. Anything else is a lie. Including anyone preaching "another Jesus" such as found in gnosticism and Islam.
We have the cross of redemption. Islam doesn't. Without the Cross there is only condemnation.
There is an empty grave that holds no body, for behold He is risen and is alive and seated at the right hand of the Father and He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. Any other religion including Islam has only graves of the dead holding corrupted flesh turned to dust.
A Christian worships the living God. Islam worships the dead which is idolatry. Necromancy is anathema to God.
Jesus always wins. He is the truth. And truth can never be overcome or defeated least of all by Islam's sword of tyranny.
Thats just for starters off the top of my head. Is it enough for you?"
I am not aware that he replied.
Let's examine two related aspects of what makes Christianity uniquely the path to life in more detail, - blood atonement and blood covenants.
2). BLOOD ATONEMENT
The very words are enough to make demons shudder. As the meme below is captioned "in the Bible you cannot escape it. But in the Quran you cannot find it, which is a fatal omission for all Muslims."
That's not to say the Quran makes no mention of slaughter, far from it. It wallows in shedding blood with all its gory references to cutting off heads, amputating hands and feet. It entreats every Muslim to fight and glorifies war; it has to be the most bloodthirsty compilation of exhortations to violence ever produced in the name of religion. Make no mistake the demon god of Islam is magnified and appeased by shedding other people's blood in his cause.
Surah 8:67: “It is not for any Prophet to have captives until he hath made slaughter in the land.” (Pickthall)
Ibn Ishaq, who was one of the earliest biographers of Muhammad, clarified the meaning behind the chilling words of Allah in the above Quran verse. Ibn Ishaq: 327:
"Allah said, “A prophet must slaughter before collecting captives. A slaughtered enemy is driven from the land. Muhammad, you craved the desires of this world, its goods and the ransom captives would bring. But Allah desires killing them to manifest the religion.”
“Allah desires killing to manifest the religion.” sums up what Islam is about.
Which makes the Quran's omission of blood atonement even more striking. It bears repeating: forgiveness is based upon atonement and there is no atonement in Islam.
If the Bible teaches us anything its that forgiveness is based upon atonement. The Bible’s central theme is Jesus Christ and His sacrifice for the redemption of mankind. The blood of Christ runs throughout the entire Bible, symbolically. It is seen in the animals killed in Eden to provide garments for Adam and Eve, the ram that took Isaac’s place on the altar of Moriah, the Passover lamb, the institution of the sacrificial system, the scarlet cord of Rahab, and the thousands of years of sacrifices performed at the tabernacle and temple. The scarlet thread runs all the way up to John the Baptist’s declaration, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29) and to the foot of the cross, where Jesus finally says, “It is finished” (John 19:30).
“Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” (Hebrews 9:22), and that’s why its impossible to overstate the significance or the symbolism of the scarlet thread in the Bible.
For more on the doctrine of atonement see these posts:
□ THE DOCTRINE OF SUBSTITUTIONARY ATONEMENT 12 December 2021
m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=313632027433140&id=100063590342443
□ THE BLOTTING OUT OF SINS 25 July 2021
www.facebook.com/100063590342443/posts/213656150764062/
3). NO ATONEMENT IN ISLAM
What about Islam? Well its no surprise to discover there is no atonement in Islam. As Craig Winn puts it:
"Just as the Septuagint and the Dead Sea Scrolls disprove Allah’s assertion that the Jews corrupted their scriptures, the clay tablets of Ur, Babylon, and Nineveh prove that Muhammad lied when he tried to reshape Abraham into a compatriot of Nimrod. And this lie is not without consequence. If Abraham was not as Allah claims, the Quran disintegrates. Abraham is the lone, thin string that connects Islam to the Bible. And without the Bible, all that is rational and religious in the Quran evaporates, and Islam with it.Abraham’s story is repeated thirty times in the Quran in fifteen different surahs.
And yet the purpose of sacrificing his son is left unexplained. Tabari II:84 “When Abraham was told to sacrifice Isaac, Satan said, ‘By Allah, if I cannot deceive the people with this, I shall never be able to do it.’” Satan not only swears by Allah, he says that the bogus connection between Abraham and Islam is his best way to fool mankind. He was right! It’s also interesting that the deception would be over sacrifice. Judaism, Christianity, and all rational civilizations use sacrifice as the means to promote justice and maintain spiritual or societal order. Commit a crime and you will be required to sacrifice your money, your freedom, or your life. If crime is without cost, anarchy reigns.
In Judaism, the sacrificial rite for the forgiveness of sin was rich in symbolism. It was based upon the “Mercy Seat” of the Arc of the Covenant. And it was connected prophetically to the blood of an unblemished lamb or dove. It’s all explained in the Torah. In Christianity, Christ became the perfect lamb and sacrificed himself on our behalf. But in Islam, there is no sacrifice. While the Sunnah perpetuates Qusayy ‘s senseless slaughter, it’s for appeasement, not atonement. There is no symbolism, no prophetic implication, no retribution, no justice and no moral reason, as forgiveness is capricious in Islam. And that’s why totalitarian governments use draconian measures to maintain order. Muhammad was an amoral thief empowered by situational scriptures, so he failed to appreciate the necessity of sacrifice and he never understood the Biblical concept of sacrificial atonement. It’s why the “ransom of great sacrifice” mentioned in the Quran is left unexplained." (Craig Winn- Prophet of Doom)
And this lack of explanation or provision for atonement is paralleled by the Quran's omission of blood covenants. Covenants in the Quran are only taken by Allah and they are not sealed in blood.
4). BLOOD COVENANTS
As another meme below comments "Muslims can't recognise the New Covenant until and unless they accept the crucifixion."
The New Covenant as with those made by God before it, was sealed in blood. In this case the precious blood of the Messiah "the Lamb of God" already noted.
When God called Abraham out of his hometown and away from all things familiar, He gave Abraham some promises. A covenant is a kind of promise, a contract, a binding agreement between two parties. Genesis 15 reiterates the covenant God had made with Abraham at his calling. Except this time, God graciously reassures His promise with a visual of His presence. He asks Abraham to find and kill a heifer, a ram, a goat, a dove, and a pigeon. Then, Abraham was to cut them in half (except the birds) and lay the pieces in two rows, leaving a path through the centre (Genesis 15:9-10).
In ancient Near Eastern royal land grant treaties, this type of ritual was done to “seal” the promises made. Through this blood covenant, God was confirming primarily three promises He had made to Abraham:
(i) The promise of heirs, (ii) The promise of land, and (iii) The promise of blessings (Genesis 12:2-3).
A blood covenant communicated a self-maledictory oath. The parties involved would walk the path between the slaughtered animals so to say, “May this be done to me if I do not keep my oath” (See Jeremiah 34:18-19).
However, there was an important difference in the blood oath that God made with Abraham in Genesis 15. When the evening came, God appeared in the form of a “smoking fire pot and flaming torch [that] passed between the pieces” (Genesis 15:17). But Abraham had fallen “into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him” (verse 12). Thus, God alone passed through the pieces of dead animals, and the covenant was sealed by God alone.
In the end, nothing depended on Abraham. Everything depended on God, who promised to be faithful to His covenant. “When God made his promise to Abraham, since there was no one greater for him to swear by, he swore by himself” (Hebrews 6:13-18). Abraham and his descendants could trust, count on, and believe in everything God promised. And this is how we know to this day the Bible and only the Bible can be trusted. It has God's covenant promises which cannot be broken never have and never will be broken
This specific blood covenant in Genesis is known as the Abrahamic Covenant. The blood involved in this covenant, as with any blood covenant, signifies the life from which the blood comes (Leviticus 17:11).
The Mosaic Covenant was also a blood covenant: "Moses took the blood, sprinkled it on the people, and said, “This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you concerning all these words.” (Exodus 24:8)
It required blood to be sprinkled on the tabernacle, “the scroll and all the people” (Hebrews 9:19-21). “In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” (Hebrews 9:22). In the Mosaic Covenant, the blood of animals served as a covering, or atonement, for the sins of the people. The animal’s life was given in place of the sinner’s life. In the Abrahamic Covenant, God, in essence, was declaring He would give His life if His promises were broken. There could be no greater encouragement to believers, since God is eternal and can no more break an oath than He can die.
5). WHY A BETTER COVENANT WAS NEEDED
In the Old Testament, God had in His great forbearance "passed over sins" (as in the Passover), just as He had previously overlooked ignorance. But under the New Covanant, sin would be dealt with once and for all. Note how God changed His commands accordingly:
“Therefore, having overlooked the times of ignorance, God now commands all people everywhere to repent" (Acts 17:30).
"[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" (Romans 3:25).
Because Israel’s sins were merely “passed over,” Jesus’ atonement had to work retroactively to cleanse the sins of the OT saints:
"For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant" (Hebrews 9:13-15).
It is only through Christ that our sins are cleansed and purified so that we can confidently enter into the presence of God (Hebrews 10:19-22). By contrast, OT forgiveness was only a matter of God passing over sins, not purifying them:
"Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered" (Psalm 32:1).
"Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance?" (Micah 7:18).
The OT saints would only experience a “passing over transgression,” but they were also promised a New Covenant through which God would “remember their sins no more” (Jeremiah 31:34).
All of these things were only “copies,” or “shadows,” of the better covenant to come (Hebrews 9:23). The lives of animals could never remove sin; the life of an animal is not a sufficient substitute for a human life (Hebrews 10:4). The blood of bulls and goats was a temporary appeasement until the final, ultimate blood covenant was made by Jesus Christ Himself – the God Man (Hebrews 9:24-28). The New Covenant was in His blood (Luke 22:20).
The Old Testament shadows and antitypes became realities in Christ, who fulfilled all of the Old Testament blood covenants with His own blood. Christians can uniquely be confident that the gift of eternal life that God gives through Jesus is the true promise to people of faith. As the apostle Paul explains, the covenant was established with Abraham and his “Seed”—singular. Paul interprets this as the singular person of Christ (Galatians 3:15-16). Therefore, all who are “in Christ” are spiritual heirs of the promises made to Abraham (Galatians 3:29).
How do we know we can trust Christ's promises? Because He sealed them in His blood. To put it simply, a blood covenant is a promise made by God that He will choose a people for Himself and bless them. The covenant was originally for Abraham’s physical descendants but was later extended, spiritually, to all those who, like Abraham, believe God (Galatians 3:7; cf. Genesis 15:6). God’s promise of eternal blessing is given only on the basis of faith in the saving blood of His Son, Jesus Christ (Hebrews 9:12).
For more on how Covenants prove the Bible as God's word and expose the Quran which is not, see this post:
□ DIVINE COVENANTS PROVE THE BIBLE AND EXPOSE THE QURAN 27 Aug 2021
www.facebook.com/100063590342443/posts/237362678393409/
6). CONCLUSIONS
So when a Muslim asks what Christainity offers that Islam doesn't have, basically it's everything that God ever provided for our needs to overcome our inherited sinful nature, which we are incapable of doing for ourselves.
God first shed the blood of animals to provide a better covering for Adam and Eve's nakedness (Genesis 3:7 & 3:21).
God performed the rites of the Abrahamic Covenant while Abraham was in "a deep sleep" (Genesis 15:12).
And when it came to the New Covenant, Jesus freely and unconditionally shed His blood upon the cross that once and for all freed us from the penalty and the curse of sin. He didn't even wait for us to admit our need for His forgiveness:
"But God proves His own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us!" Romans 5:8).
But while Jesus sacrifice is all sufficient, it has to be accepted, He has to be allowed to cleanse justify and transform us.
This is the bottom line: The Cross removes the curse of sin and death that has reigned since the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden. What it doesn’t do is remove the penalty of sin which is death to those who reject the crucifixion and resurrection. If you reject Christ, you will die in your sins. And Islam can NEVER substitute this cold fact of reality.
Make no mistake: Islam guarantees hell to its followers. Only Jesus can guarantee eternal life