Remission of sin by Jesus' death makes it very easy for sinners and saints alike. He IS the atonement, so they never have to do it for themselves. By "believing" that Jesus died for our sins, we are supposedly saved. This means that whatever we do from that point on, we are going to heaven regardless. In real life, however, atonement and everyday repentance are not the same, just as ritual purification and baptism are not the same. (This is covered in more depth in another section as well.)

To be fair, there are some denominations that do not subscribe to this doctrine of "once saved, always saved." They believe that even if you are saved once, you can fall back into sin and require another saving. Why don't we just call a card a card and agree that salvation takes a lifetime (and if you believe in reincarnation, more than one round)? The bottom line, according to Church doctrine, is that if we do not confess with our mouths at some point that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and rose again, we are condemned to everlasting hellfire no matter how good we are. This one thing has been the dividing line (and whether or not Jesus was divine, which is in the same package because only a deity can rise from the dead) for the past two thousand years in determining who is getting into heaven and who is not.

This is where we come to a crossroads as to whom to believe: Paul or Jesus. Jesus himself said, "But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy and not sacrifice.' For I did not come to call the righteous, but the sinners, to repentance." (Matthew 9:13) He also said, "No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and the tear is made worse. Nor do they put new wine into old wineskins, or else the wineskins break, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined. But they put new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved." (Matthew 9:17) Moral of the story: there is no easy way out, no shortcut to being reborn nor to salvation.

It is, therefore, very unfortunate that what we have come to know as the Church in all its forms is based primarily on the teachings of the self-proclaimed Apostle Paul, formerly Saul, persecutor and murderer of the believers in Christ. It is only Pauline Christianity which states that Jesus was crucified for to make atonement for the sins of mankind. To review, where did this mentality come from? Why was it so widely accepted?

Traditional Judaism states that God instituted the sacrificial system in the Old Testament, but I find this not only ludicrous, but disgusting. This is not the real face of God to ask for man to kill an innocent animal to make atonement for man's sins, nor to ask Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, in order to prove his faithfulness to God. It makes no difference to me that God supposedly stayed Abraham's hand and commanded him to kill a goat or a sheep instead of his own flesh and blood because he had passed some kind of sick test. I tell you that if this episode really happened, Abraham wasn't listening to the Lord. I realize that there are several places in the Old Testament where God supposedly gave instructions for these rituals, but I challenge you to think beyond that and ask yourselves why God would deal in death. God is life-giving. Satan is death-giving. This is the same mentality of those progeny of Satan who declare holy war and kill one another in the name of God, which I will cover in another section.

Click here for more on sacrifices.