Years ago, I remembered still reading Jesus-is-Savior. I felt that the accusations done against the Hyles-Anderson College (which was founded by the late Jack Hyles, who turned out to be a reprobate) were just “manufactured by the Jesuits under the order of the Jesuit General”. An article written by that pervert David J. Stewart himself have been a reason why I had some issues with MacArthur himself. The track record of Hyles and his successors has been anything but satisfactory. In fact, Stewart himself was actually charged with sexual misconduct. Sexual misconduct has unfortunately been creeping into Baptist churches today.
I guess there’s really always going to be crazy behavior, right? Granted, I decided to re-read Jesus-is-Savior a couple of times and remembered many crazy conspiracy theories. I almost lost enjoyment of life and started fearing I might’ve been toxic after reading the anti-vaxxer sites. Fortunately, some fundamentalists like David W. Cloud are beating out the anti-vaxxer stupidity. There’s been a lot of misconception and Stewart’s behavior does reflect Hyles. Did you know Hyles had a particular hatred also for MacArthur? Hyles’ doctrine of easy-believm has crept into Baptist churches today. If anything, Fundamentalists should be careful about creeping easy-believism instead of the perceived threat of (1) Calvinism, and (2) non-KJV-only preachers. Calvinism isn’t an issue. The real issue is the doctrine of regeneration if it it’s taught or not.
We need to understand that Jesus was both God and man. It was a hypostatic union. Jesus would have human blood in His incarnation. The blood He shed was literal human blood. However, the literal bleeding was never enough. The bleeding had to result also in dying.
I would like to share tidbits from MacArthur’s sermon “The Precious Blood, Part 1” to which could help clear up the issue:
Listen to Revelation 5:9 – Revelation 5:9. You remember the scene? Four living creatures, twenty-four elders fall down before the lamb. They each have a harp, golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. “They sang a new song” – and listen to this – “Worthy are Thou to take the book and break its seals; for Thou was slain, and did purchase for God with Thy blood” – you see it? Wasn’t God’s blood. You purchased for God with Your blood – “men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.” It is clearly not the blood of God. It’s not some supernatural fluid floating around, existing, and then sort of coming into Jesus.
I want to follow that up. Can I for a minute? You say, well where did Jesus’ blood come from? Well where does your blood come from? Where does His hair come from? Where’d His fingernails come from? Where’d His skin come from? Where did His internal organs come from? Where’d His bones come from? Where’d His eyes come from, His tongue, His teeth? He was as human as you are. Now let me give you a little bit of medical perspective. Blood is not inherited from your father. That’s one of the theories. It was floating around a number of years ago that M.R. DeHaan espoused. Blood is not inherited from your father. You produce your own blood. People misunderstood, I think, what he was saying, but you produce your own blood.
Let me give you a little description. The largest single portion of what is called whole blood – because blood is a composite of many things. But the largest single portion of whole blood is composed of erythrocytes, or we know them as red blood cells. They are derived from the liver initially. The liver produces them initially and then eventually from the bone marrow. A smaller component of whole blood is made up of white cells. White cells are manufactured in the lymphoid tissue. That’s why lymphoma or cancer of the lymph system is so serious, because that’s the white cell producing part of the blood, and of course when it’s cancerous it sends that everywhere, and it is also produced in the bone marrow. So the liver produces red cells, the lymphoid system produces white cells, the bone marrow produces both. The red cells sustain life and the white cells fight infection. There are many other portions of whole blood. There are platelets, clotting factors, immunoglobulins, albumin. Those are proteins that are made in the liver, the lymphoid tissue, and the bone marrow. And all of this is being generated inside that little fetus as it grows producing its own blood. It doesn’t have the blood of its father. It doesn’t have the blood of its mother. It produces its own blood supply. And while it is true that the blood of the mother passes through the fetus no blood is really directly derived from the mother. What is fascinating is that the blood of the fetus and the blood of the mother exchange oxygen, exchange nutrients, and exchange waste, but it’s the little life that produces its own blood.
Christ’s blood was Christ’s blood. He grew from being in His mother’s womb for nine months into a person who had His own blood supply. Hebrews 2:14 says of Him, “Since then the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself also partook of the same.” The same flesh and blood that people have. Wasn’t the blood of God. There isn’t any mixture in the human body of Jesus. It isn’t human flesh, human bones, and divine blood. That’s not a man. It is medically impossible to think of Christ’s blood as divine. It is theologically impossible to think of Christ’s blood as divine. It is scripturally impossible to think of Christ’s blood as divine. He would be less than man. His blood is human blood. And He was 100 percent man, and to be 100 percent man you have to have 100 percent human blood. This is an age-old issue that the councils in the early years of the church settled long ago, that Jesus was fully God and fully man. And to be fully God you can’t have blood, because God is a spirit. And to be fully man you must have blood, because man is human.
Let’s take a look at the second thing that they bring up, and probably we won’t get past this one. They say that it was eternal blood and thus incorruptible. Let’s look at our text, 1 Peter. First Peter 1:18, “Knowing that you are not redeemed with perishable things like silver and gold …” verse 19, “but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.” Now listen, the parallel here is not between perishable silver and gold and imperishable blood. That’s what was told to me in a very interesting conversation I had with a man who was calling me a heretic. He said, “Well it says right there that you weren’t redeemed with perishable things like silver and gold and so what He’s implying is you were redeemed with imperishable blood.” No, it doesn’t say that. His contrast is between perishable silver and gold and precious blood. He says it. Don’t put words in His mouth. There’s nothing in there that says the blood of Jesus is eternal. There’s nothing that says it is incorruptible. He is emphasizing the value, not the eternality of it. Silver and gold, because it’s perishable, has no value. The blood of Christ has eternal value. It isn’t the blood that is eternal it’s the value of what He did that’s eternal. The work of Christ is eternal; the blood is not. There’s absolutely no place in the Bible that says every drop of Christ’s blood was drained out of His body. Just doesn’t say that.
So we see the hypostatic union of the blood. Jesus’ blood was all part of the human nature He had in full obedience to His Father. We must understand that the precious blood is all about the bleeding, the dying, and Jesus paying the full penalty of our sins.
From “The Precious Blood, Part 2“, we can also read what MacArthur wanted to clarify with bizarre notions on the human blood that Jesus shed:
I pointed out last time that basically what these people are teaching goes like this. First of all they are saying that the blood of Christ was not human blood. It was supernatural blood, the blood of God. Secondly, they are saving since it was supernatural blood and not the blood of man but the blood of God, it is therefore eternal and incorruptible. Thirdly, they are saying, in its eternal and incorruptible condition and state, it was taken to heaven at the time of the ascension of Christ, some of them say. It was taken to heaven where it remains forever in heaven contained in some vessel. Fourthly, they say it is perpetually and continually being poured out on some heavenly mercy seat for the forgiveness of sins. And then the fifth and most significant part of this, as far as understanding the New Testament is concerned, they say references to the blood of Christ then in the New Testament are not symbols for His atoning work; they are not symbols for His sacrificial death; they refer specifically to His blood.
Now what makes this particular teaching so threatening is that it is held by people who claim to be and are fundamentalists, orthodox. It is held by people who are so adamant about it that they are saying anyone who doesn’t believe this view is a heretic. To personalize it a little bit they have called me heretic on many, many occasions, both on tape, in public, to my face, and in print. The dictionary says a heretic is a professed believer who, in truth, denies the truth – professed believer who denies the truth. So they are saying that if you do not believe that the blood of Christ is the blood of God not the blood of a man, not even the God-Man; if you do not believe that it is eternal, incorruptible, preserved forever in heaven; if you do not believe that it is being perpetually poured out on a heavenly mercy seat washing away sins even now; if you do not believe that the references to the blood, in the epistles particularly, are not direct references to the blood but are symbols of His death and atoning work, then you’re a heretic. You are a professed believer who in reality is denying the truth.
I was also reminded of what the late Jack T. Chick’s video Light of the World said in the crucifixion portion. The narrator said that it wasn’t human blood but God’s blood that was shed. There’s even this idea that there’s a Heavenly Mercy Seat somewhere in Heaven where the blood of Jesus is perpetually poured out. I used to believe that notion because of the mention of washing their robes in Revelation 7:14 which says that the saints washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Should we really take it literally that they used literal blood to wash the robes white? If we say that salvation is found in the blood of Jesus, are we only referring to the literal bloodshed or the whole person of Christ, His sacrificial death, and that this blood is inseparable. Today, we have people getting saved but no one is literally getting washed in the blood of the Lamb. The songs “Are You Washed in the Blood?” and “Nothing But the Blood” all refer to Jesus’ finished work, in which all His human blood was shed.
An explanation of Hebrews 12 from “The Precious Blood, Part 2” also gets a better explanation than what I used to believe:
We also looked at the third point that they make that it – we at least introduced it and I want to go back to it tonight and pick it up there. They say that the blood of Christ is perpetually in heaven being poured out on the heavenly mercy seat. That blood being eternal and incorruptible was taken to heaven where it is perpetually being poured out on the mercy seat. I want to just take you to Hebrews chapter 12 at this particular point. Hebrews chapter 12, and this is the verse that they use to support this idea that it is perpetually being poured out. Now before we look at this point on perpetual pouring, the third issue that they bring up is that it is preserved forever in heaven. And if they’re going to have it preserved forever in heaven, I guess they feel that something needs to be done with it so it’s not just sitting there.
If you’ll back into chapter 9 before you look at chapter 12, I’ll kind of set this up a little bit. In Hebrews chapter 9 and verse 11 it says, “But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation; and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.” Now that is a very key passage. That is describing Christ having completed His work on earth of redemption, ascending to heaven, appearing as the high priest of good things to come. Verse 11, “He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation.” In other words He went in His glorified body into the presence of God in a greater and more perfect tabernacle. He had a greater and a more perfect body than even He had here. Not human, not made with hands, not the product of a woman’s womb, not of this creation. “And he entered in,” verse 12, “not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place.” In other words God gave Him access back to heaven into His holy presence because through His blood He had obtained eternal redemption.
Now would you please notice that these people say that this is teaching us that He entered with His blood, and they take the very clear preposition through and substitute for it the word with. But it is not so in the Greek. It is not with it is through. That is by virtue of his death, not with His blood in hand, He entered into the true and immediate presence of God when He offered Himself on the cross and He accomplished once and for all the perfect redemption. And therefore, through His resurrection was granted a new and more perfect tabernacle in which He entered the presence of God and was accepted into the holy place through or by virtue of His perfect work on the cross. Because of the merits of His death, by His ascension, He entered the presence of God having satisfied God’s requirement for salvation. The reference to blood is not to His carrying in His blood. It isn’t with His blood, it is through His blood. That must be carefully understood.
So therefore, there is no reason to assume, based on those two verses which they are using, that His blood is in heaven at all. There is no reason to assume that it was some kind of supernatural blood that would have to exist forever. There is no reason to assume it was taken into heaven, certainly not on the basis of this particular text. And yet they insist that it was the blood of God, that it was eternal, incorruptible, that it is presently in heaven taken there by Christ. And in order to come to that view I think they have to do an injustice to the text.
Now that it is in heaven, we come to the fourth thought in their little scheme. Hebrews chapter 12 verse 22 is a place to start. And here the writer of Hebrews is referring to heaven, and he’s referring to those who enter into the presence of God through faith and Christ. He is contrasting salvation by grace with the Law of God and the trembling and fear that went along with the Law. He says, you’re not coming to Mount Sinai. You true believers aren’t coming to God through Law. “You are coming to Mount Zion and to the city of the living of God, to the heavenly Jerusalem, to myriads of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of righteous men made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks better than the blood of Abel.”
Now the writer of Hebrews is saying when you come to God by faith and faith has been the subject for two chapters now. It started in chapter 11 verse 1 when he introduced faith as the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. And then chronicled in chapter 11 all the heroes of faith and then in chapter 12 said let us run the race of faith with endurance. And now he is saying when you come to God by faith you don’t come to Sanai, you don’t come to a mountain of law, a mountain of judgment. You come to Zion and you come to the living God and you come to the heavenly Jerusalem, and there you find myriads of angels and the general assembly and church of the firstborn. And you come to God, who is the judge of all, and you come to the spirits of righteous men who have been made perfect in His presence. And you will come to Jesus and to the sprinkled blood. And so they conclude that when you get to heaven, the sprinkled blood must be there. The blood must be there being sprinkled – being sprinkled.
Even so, the great Reformed Baptist preacher, Charles H. Spurgeon, admired by both Calvinist Christians and non-Calvinist Christians alike also said:
Jesus Christ has made a will, and he has left to his people large legacies by that will. Now, wills do not have to be sprinkled with blood, but wills do need that the testator should be dead, otherwise they are not of force. As it was not possible that Christ should die other than a violent death, seeing that he must die as a sacrifice, the term “blood” becomes in this case tantamount to “death”. . And so, first of all, the blood of Jesus Christ on Calvary is the blood of the testament, because it is A PROOF THAT HE IS DEAD [emphasis Spurgeon’s], and therefore the testament is in force (MTP, vol. 26, p. 632).
What is this “blood of sprinkling”? In a few words, “the blood of sprinkling” represents the pains, the sufferings, the humiliation, and the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, which he endured on the behalf of guilty man. When we speak of the blood, we wish not to be understood as referring solely or mainly to the literal material blood which flowed from the wounds of Jesus. We believe in the literal fact of his shedding his blood; but when we speak of his cross and blood we mean those sufferings and that death of our Lord Jesus Christ by which he magnified the law of God; we mean what Isaiah intended when he said, “He shall make his soul an offering for sin”; we mean all the griefs which Jesus vicariously endured on our behalf at Gethsemane, and Gabbatha, and Golgotha, and specially his yielding up his life upon the tree of scorn and doom. “The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed.” “Without the shedding of blood there is no remission”; and the shedding of blood intended is the death of Jesus, the Son of God,” (MTP, vol. 32, p. 123).
But what does “the blood” mean in Scripture? It means not merely suffering, which might be well typified by blood, but it means suffering unto death, it means the taking of a life. To put it very briefly, a sin against God deserves death as its punishment, and what God said by the mouth of the prophet Ezekiel still standeth true, “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” The only way by which God could fulfill his threatening sentence, and yet forgive guilty men, was that Jesus Christ, his Son, came into the world, and offered his life instead of ours (MTP, vol. 40, p. 325).
I may have some differing views from MacArthur. I still don’t buy what he taught that demon-possessed men married women during the Days of Noah. I still believe that the sons of God are actually believers marrying the unbelieving descendants of Cain. What MacArthur is actually saying is simply that we’re not to have some bizarre notion of the human blood shed by Jesus during His sacrifice being in some basin or fountain. If you’re all looking for it, we must understand what Jesus did after He ascended to the Father. Jesus sat down at the right hand of the Father.
In “The Blood of Christ”, I find this an interesting topic as my country is also mentioned:
The Old Testament priests on the Day of Atonement would take the blood and he would go through three areas. He would go through the door into the outer court, through the door into the Holy Place, through the veil into the Holy of Holies. He passed through into the third place, and he only did it once on the Day of Atonement, and he sprinkled blood on the mercy seat.
The record of that is indicated to us in Leviticus chapter 16, verses 2 to 19, and also later on in the chapter. It tells all about it, you can read it in detail. But let me tell you something interesting: before the high priest could ever go in there, before he could ever go in to sprinkle the blood of the people, he had to do the whole thing for himself first because he was a sinner too. He had to go through the whole rigmarole for himself, atone for his own sins by putting the blood there, then he could go back and take care of the people; and once he got in there, he had to do his job and get out of there. If he stayed there past the time of the Day of Atonement he would die, for he was a sinner and he had no right in the presence of God, except by the graciousness of God once a year could he enter the Holy of Holies where the shekinah glory of God dwelt.
But Jesus, our great High Priest, who passed not through the temple or through the tabernacle but through the heavens also went through three things. The Bible says that there is a third heaven, right? The first heaven is the atmospheric heaven – the Bible says the clouds of heaven, the birds of heaven. The second heaven is the stellar heaven – the Bible talks about the stars of heaven. And the third heaven is the abode of God, 1 Corinthians – pardon me, 2 Corinthians 12:2. Second Corinthians 12:2 speaks of the third heaven where God is.
And so, Jesus Christ passed through heaven number one, heaven number two, and entered into heaven number three, and God didn’t tell him, “Look, you’ve got twenty-four hours to get this over with and get out.” When He got there, what did He do? He sat down. It was done. It was accomplished. He made a perfect atonement for all sins for all time, and all other sacrifices before that were but pictures of that perfect sacrifice. The ascended, resurrected Christ carried Himself past the two outer heavens into the abode of God, and when He got there He sprinkled His blood on that divine, eternal, heavenly mercy seat. And you know what? God said, “I am satisfied forever.”
In Hebrews 12, I love this, verse 24, “and to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better things than that of Abel.” Jesus Christ sprinkled blood in a far better way than any man, even the wonderful sacrifice of Abel, which pleased God. How much more was God pleased with what Jesus did, how much more was God satisfied.
And I love 1 Peter 1:2 which says, “Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit,” – listen – “unto obedience and sprinkling of blood of Jesus Christ.” Can’t you imagine what a reunion it was in heaven when Jesus Christ had accomplished perfect atonement, entered into God’s heaven, and God said, “I am satisfied; and never another sacrifice needs to be made, never.”
Remember the man a few weeks ago I told you about in the Philippines who crucifies himself every year to make atonement for his own sins? No, don’t need to do that; God is satisfied. Jesus sat down, the work was done. And so, Jesus Christ is our Great High Priest who accomplished a perfect priesthood.
In the book of Hebrews the perfections of our priest are exalted. Let me just show you what it says about Him, about His priesthood. In 7:25 – don’t try to follow me, I’ll just jump through some of these – 7:25 says, “Wherefore He is able also to save them to the uttermost that come to God by Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them. For such an high priest was fitting for us,” – listen to our High Priest – “who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens.” That’s a great high priest.
It takes proper understanding and context. If we’re looking for the blood of Jesus, it’s in the body of the risen Lord. The blood today is still relevant, it still saves, but it’s not literally washed or literally sprinkled. It’s all about accepting Jesus’ finished work on the cross for sin.
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