Objection 97: Seventh-day Adventists reject the atonement of Christ. They make it of no effect, because they believe that His atonement for sin was not completed on Calvary.
Adventists do believe that the death of Christ provided a sacrifice sufficient to atone for the sins of the whole world. (1 John 2:2). We believe, further, that when we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9).
Although Jesus’s substitutionary death on Calvary is the heart of the atonement, the Bible teaches that there is more to the atonement than Christ’s death. In the heavenly sanctuary, Jesus Christ applies the benefits of His death to those who trust in Him; He is our high priest/mediator/intercessor in heaven, a fact well attested in Hebrews and elsewhere. (Heb. 4:14-16; Heb. 7:20-28;1 Tim. 2:5; Heb. 8:1-6; Heb. 9; 1 John 2:1)
We believe that the Day of Atonement, the ritual that the Hebrew priesthood performed once a year (Leviticus 16) points forward to real events. These real events are an investigative judgment in heaven, during which the case of everyone who ever claimed salvation through Christ, either in prospect through the sacrificial system that pointed forward to Christ, or in retrospect, by faith in Christ’s death and resurrection, will be examined. This event will be finished before Christ’s second coming, because Jesus “brings His reward with Him” at His second coming. (Rev. 22:12)
Christ’s death on the cross, his heavenly ministry as our priestly mediator, the investigative judgment, the Second Coming, and the death of Satan in the lake of fire are all prefigured in the ritual of the “Day of Atonement” described in Leviticus 16. In other words, the final disposition of sins, the punishment of the lost for their sins, and the punishment of Satan for his sins and the sins he caused the saved to commit, are all included within the events typified in the Day of Atonement.
And it is God who has labeled this, “the Day of Atonement,” not the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
We do not deny the atonement; we differ with some other Christian groups as to what is included under the rubric of “atonement.” We believe unqualifiedly that our sins are forgiven and will be wholly blotted out, solely by virtue of the atoning blood of Jesus Christ shed on Calvary. But according to God’s word, there is more involved in atonement than this. Certain acts of Christ subsequent to Calvary are also necessary in the plan of salvation from sin, including the resurrection (1 Cor. 15:17), Christ’s intercessory ministry for us in heaven (Heb. 7:25), and the investigative judgment (Heb. 9:27-28) which is given to the Lord Jesus Christ to conduct (John 5:22; Rom. 2:16; 2 Cor. 5:10; Acts 17:31)
If complete and final atonement was made on the cross for all sins, and Christ died for the sins of the whole world (1 John 2:2; Heb. 2:9), then why won’t all be saved? Are we to understand the objector as being a Universalist? “No,” replies the objector, “not all men will be saved.” Then obviously there is more to atonement than merely the death of Christ which, again, had the potential to atone for the entire world.
Adventists are free from the dilemma such questions create. We believe that Christ on the cross made provision for the salvation of all sinners; hence, all who are willing may be saved. But the subject of the atonement covers much more than the death of Christ, it covers who is entitled to be saved by the death of Christ, as well as the final accounting for sin, the final punishment for sin, and the final blotting out of sin from the universe.
Objection 98: Seventh-day Adventists make Satan their savior, sin bearer, and vicarious substitute.
This objection relates to the Adventist view that the ritual “scapegoat” of Leviticus 16 is Satan. On the Day of Atonement, Aaron (as were all high priests following Aaron) was to cast lots over two goats, “one lot for the Lord and the other lot for the scapegoat.” The one who by random chance fell to the Lord’s lot was slain as a sin offering. The other, the scapegoat, was presented “to make atonement upon it, and to let it go . . . into the wilderness.” (Lev. 16:7-10).
After atonement was made with the blood of the slain goat, the high priest brought in the live goat, laid his hands upon its head, and “confess[ed] over it all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions, concerning all their sins.” The live goat or scapegoat, which was never slain, was then led into the wilderness by “a fit man”; and “shall bear on itself all their iniquities to an uninhabited land; and he shall release the goat in the wilderness.” (Lev. 16:20-22).
As we interpret this ritual, the Lord’s goat, which was slain, represents Christ, who makes atonement for those who trust in him and are saved by his substitutionary death. The scapegoat, which is never slain, represents Satan. Why does the scapegoat represent Satan? We know the scapegoat does not represent Christ because it is never slain. Christ is the lamb of God (John 1:29) slain from the foundation of the world. (1 Peter 1:19-20; Rev. 13:8)
What is signified by the sins being confessed over the scapegoat? The Day of Atonement was the annual cleansing of the sanctuary. Each day as penitents brought their sacrifices to the sanctuary, they confessed their sins on the head of the sacrifice before it was slain; the sins were thus transferred in type from the sinner to the sanctuary. Those sins built up in the sanctuary over the course of the year. On the annual Day of Atonement, those sins were transferred onto the scapegoat, and it was taken outside the camp, into the wilderness, by a “a fit man.”
This symbolizes the fact that the sins for which Christ atoned by his death are building up in the heavenly sanctuary. During the investigative judgment in heaven, the sins that were committed by those whom, it is determined, Christ has saved are put back onto Satan. The unsaved are punished for their own sins in the lake of fire, and Satan is punished for his sins. But Satan is also punished for the sins he caused the saved to commit. Hence, Satan is burned in the lake of fire far longer than anyone else.
The wicked receive their recompense in the earth. Proverbs 11:31. They “shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts.” Malachi 4:1. Some are destroyed as in a moment, while others suffer many days. All are punished “according to their deeds.” The sins of the righteous having been transferred to Satan, he is made to suffer not only for his own rebellion, but for all the sins which he has caused God’s people to commit. His punishment is to be far greater than that of those whom he has deceived. After all have perished who fell by his deceptions, he is still to live and suffer on. In the cleansing flames the wicked are at last destroyed, root and branch—Satan the root, his followers the branches. The full penalty of the law has been visited; the demands of justice have been met; and heaven and earth, beholding, declare the righteousness of Jehovah. The Great Controversy, p. 673.1
This teaching is the basis for the charge that Adventists make Satan their savior, sin bearer, and vicarious substitute.
Adventists, along with all evangelical Protestants, believe that there is no other name given under heaven whereby we must be saved than the name of Jesus Christ. We qualify this in no way.
The plan of salvation is a very great mystery, one that C.S. Lewis, in his allegorical fantasy, “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” called the “deep magic.” We do not now know and understand everything about the moral and spiritual laws of the universe that guide the plan of salvation, and make it possible for Christ’s death to bring eternal life to us sinners. This will be our study throughout the ceaseless ages of eternity. But Scripture tells us that Christ’s death does save us, if we repent and accept by faith His salvation.
It appears that these moral and spiritual laws of the universe require that every sin be punished, and the sins that Satan caused the redeemed to commit go back upon Satan himself. Our belief as to the relationship of Satan to our sins might perhaps be illustrated by this parable:
A group of men have been arrested, tried, and convicted of certain crimes. A fine and a sentence of imprisonment is imposed upon each of them. Their appeals are exhausted and they have no hope of getting their convictions reversed. But their hopelessness is changed to joy when the governor pardons them. They accept the pardon, and are freed.
But an ongoing investigation has discovered that these men were acting at the direction of a criminal mastermind, who has seduced, suborned, and manipulated them into their course of criminal wrongdoing. When this criminal mastermind is finally arrested, tried, and convicted, he is fined many times more, and imprisoned for many years longer, than the men who were low-level cogs in his criminal machine.
Everyone who examines the case concludes that both the sentencing court and the pardoning governor did justly under the circumstances. No one would think for a moment that the sentencing, and subsequent pardoning, of the low-level minions should end the case against the criminal mastermind. It is totally appropriate that he be punished for the crimes of the pardoned minions. He was responsible for those crimes in a real sense; had he not set in motion the criminal enterprise, those crimes would never even have been committed.
This, in vague outline and with the handicaps of metaphor, illustrates our view of the connection of Satan to our sins. Christ, through his own substitutionary death, set us free, not with the stroke of a pen, but with His own precious blood. But Satan was the real instigator of all sin, beginning from when he lured our first mother, Eve, into eating the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. In the investigative judgment in heaven, Satan is indicted, convicted, and will be punished, not only for his own sins, but also for the sins of those who have been redeemed by the blood of Christ.
Thus, far from viewing Satan as in any sense our savior from sin, the Adventist doctrine makes most vivid the fact that he is the author of sin. Satan is certainly not the perfect, sinless sacrifice, but the primary instigator of all sin, and God will punish him accordingly.