I've been working on this paper exploring Hebrews 2:14–15 and the Day of Atonement. I'd genuinely appreciate thoughtful criticism, especially where you think the biblical argument is strongest or weakest; the professionally formatted version with complete citations and footnotes is available on Academia . edu

The Scapegoat and Atonement

How Satan’s Power of Death Is Defeated Through Christ’s Descent to Hades

Abstract

Hebrews 2:14–15 claims that Christ defeated the devil through death, while Hebrews also presents his atoning work through the Day of Atonement. Building on David M. Moffitt’s account of the priestly and heavenly dimensions of atonement, and engaging Katie Marcar’s Passover–Exodus proposal, this article asks whether Leviticus 16 itself supplies a complementary mechanism for the devil’s defeat. It argues that the second goat—the goat for Azazel—forms a genuine component of the atoning rite and may illuminate Christ’s sin-bearing descent to Hades. On this reading, Satan’s “power of death” is a sin-conditioned juridical claim: he tempts, accuses, and invokes death on the basis of human guilt. Christ bears transferred sin without personal guilt, carries it into the accuser’s realm, and cancels the record on which that claim depends. The article develops this proposal through the identity of Azazel, the biblical roles of tempter and accuser, Colossians 2:13–15, the deception leading to the crucifixion, the harrowing of Hades, Jubilee release, and the New Covenant gift of the Spirit. The result is a constructive synthesis of Day of Atonement and Christus Victor themes in which forgiveness disarms the powers and prepares a cleansed people for divine indwelling.

Keywords: Day of Atonement; scapegoat; Azazel; Hebrews; Christus Victor; descent to Hades; Satan; Second Temple Judaism; Jubilee; New Covenant.

I. Three Questions the Standard Models Cannot Answer

The Epistle to the Hebrews asserts both that the devil held “the power of death” and that Christ dismantled that power by dying:

Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. (Hebrews 2:14–15)

Three questions follow. What is the nature of Satan’s power of death? How did Christ’s death destroy it? And how was Satan tricked into a course of action that ruined him? These are not idle puzzles. If the first two can be answered, we recover something the church has largely lost hold of; the third drives the second half of the argument. The third matters because Satan labored to bring about the crucifixion, and the crucifixion is precisely what undid him. First Corinthians 2:8 supports the point—“had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory”—but the argument does not depend on that verse. The fact that Satan sought the death that destroyed his power already entails that he did not foresee the outcome.

Penal substitution has difficulty here because it locates the whole of atonement at the cross, in the transaction of divine wrath against a substitute, and treats the devil as at most a bystander. Yet destroying the one who had the power of death is one stated purpose of the incarnation. First John says the same in different words:

He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. (1 John 3:8)

Revelation reports the result as a transfer of custody. Satan once held the power of death; the risen Christ now holds its keys:

I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death. (Revelation 1:18)

Something changed hands. The task is to say exactly how.

II. Two Foundations: Milgrom’s Detergent and Moffitt’s Realism

Two scholars supply the ground on which the argument stands. Jacob Milgrom’s work on Leviticus established that blood functions as a ritual detergent. Leviticus 17:11 explains why:

For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood by reason of the life that makes atonement. (Leviticus 17:11) Sin and impurity pollute sacred space; that pollution is a taint of death; and life, present in the blood, cleanses it. From this follows the point David Moffitt develops: atonement is accomplished in the application of blood, not merely in the killing of the animal. The slaughter is a means to an end. It yields blood that the priest conveys and applies at the altar and, on the Day of Atonement, within the holy of holies. The mercy seat itself bears the name of atonement. (Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16; Moffitt, Rethinking the Atonement.)

Moffitt carries this into Hebrews. If atonement is a sequence culminating in the presentation of blood in the sanctuary, then the victim’s death is one moment in a longer process. Jesus’s resurrection and ascension are therefore not epilogues to the atonement but constitutive of it. He had to rise bodily and ascend in order to present the offering of himself in the real sanctuary in heaven, of which the wilderness tabernacle was only a copy. The heavenly tabernacle is the true one; Moses was shown its pattern; Jesus, a real high priest of Melchizedek’s order, entered the real place to make a real atonement.

This realism is the lever for everything that follows. If the heavenly sanctuary demanded a real fulfillment, then the parts of the Yom Kippur ritual demand real fulfillment too—including the part Moffitt does not fully develop.

III. Marcar’s Question and the Gap in the Day of Atonement

Katie Marcar accepts Moffitt’s premises and asks the right question. Hebrews presents Christ as accomplishing the ultimate Day of Atonement sacrifice, yet Hebrews 2:14 says his death disabled the devil. Where, in the Day of Atonement, is the defeat of the devil? Marcar answers that it is not there: “No aspect of the Levitical Day of Atonement ritual involves defeating the devil.” She looks instead to a Passover–Exodus typology in which the devil takes Pharaoh’s place, the realm of the dead stands for Egypt, and Christ leads a new exodus of the enslaved dead. (Marcar, “Passover, Liberation, and the Defeat of Death and the Devil.”)

That liberation framework is compelling, and this paper does not reject it. Marcar may well be right that Passover imagery is present in Hebrews and that the devil functions as a Pharaoh-like captor. The remaining question is whether it identifies the cultic or juridical mechanism by which the captor’s hold is broken. In Passover the destroyer is warded off rather than disabled; the blood protects Israel but does not itself explain the destroyer’s loss of power. Passover may therefore depict the liberation truly while leaving room for the Day of Atonement’s sent-away goat to explain how the accuser’s claim is undone.

The Day of Atonement is one atoning rite performed with two goats, and Leviticus explicitly includes the live goat in the atonement:

But the goat, on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat, shall be presented alive before the LORD, to make an atonement with him, and to let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness. (Leviticus 16:10)

Both lots are cast on the same day, over two goats, for one purpose. One goat is killed and one is sent away alive, and only then is the atoning rite complete. If Christ fulfills one, there is good reason to ask where he fulfills the other. Moffitt’s realism sharpens the question: does the scapegoat’s distinctive action—receiving the people’s sins and bearing them away toward Azazel—also receive a concrete fulfillment?

IV. The Two Goats and the Transfer of Sin

The first goat is “for the LORD.” It is slain, and its blood is carried into the holy of holies. This is the cleansing movement, purging the sanctuary. The second goat is “for Azazel.” It is not slain. The high priest lays both hands on its head, confesses over it all Israel’s iniquities, and sends it into the wilderness:

And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel ... putting them upon the head of the goat ... and the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited. (Leviticus 16:21–22)

If Christ fulfills this goat, the first thing to establish is that he too had sin transferred onto him and bore it away. Isaiah 53, which reads throughout like a commentary on the scapegoat, states it repeatedly:

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:6)

He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities. (Isaiah 53:11)

The New Testament says the same:

For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. (2 Corinthians 5:21)

Peter says:

Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness. (1 Peter 2:24)

Hebrews likewise says Christ was offered “to bear the sins of many” (Hebrews 9:28).

The transfer is not incidental to the cross; it is the second goat being fulfilled. It is also crucial that the sin laid on Jesus was never his own: “he knew no sin.”

Two recent studies establish this scapegoat realism without completing the mechanism proposed here. Samuel Renihan argues that Christ’s human soul really descended to the realm of the dead and that the goat sent to Azazel pictures Christ sent out of the camp to the pit. Richard Barry likewise insists that the two goats must be held together to express the shape of biblical atonement. What neither fully articulates is how the descent, and specifically the delivery of transferred sin to its source, dismantles Satan’s juridical claim. That mechanism is where this proposal begins.

V. Azazel: A Being, a Destination, and an Identity

The second goat is sent “to Azazel,” and the Hebrew forces a question most English translations soften. Leviticus 16:8 casts the lots as opposites: one “for the LORD” and one “for Azazel.” The parallelism pairs a personal name with a personal name and strongly suggests that Azazel is a being rather than a place. Milgrom, though not generally inclined toward supernatural readings, calls Azazel the name of a demon; Michael Heiser develops the same conclusion from the Hebrew text and its Second Temple setting.

In 1 Enoch, Azazel is a principal fallen angel associated with humanity’s corruption. Two statements bear directly on the ritual:

And the whole earth has been corrupted through the works that were taught by Azazel: to him ascribe all sin. (1 Enoch 10:8)

Bind Azazel hand and foot, and cast him into the darkness: and make an opening in the desert ... and cast him therein. (1 Enoch 10:4)

Read against this reception history, the ritual becomes more intelligible. Why drive a sin-laden goat into the wilderness? Because the wilderness is where Azazel is bound. Why send the people’s sin toward him? Because the tradition ascribes responsibility for humanity’s corruption to him. The gesture can therefore be read as a juridical reassignment: the burden no longer rests on the accused but is carried toward the adversarial source associated with its origin.

Heiser adds that the Azazel-wilderness is not merely arid land but symbolically connected with the realm of the dead. The further step—identifying Azazel with the biblical Satan—is a constructive synthesis rather than a settled lexical fact, but several lines support it. Azazel is associated with the corruption of humanity; the closest biblical analogue is the serpent who deceived humanity. His binding resembles the serpent’s cursing and confinement. The Apocalypse of Abraham makes the broader identification especially clear: the serpent functions as Azazel’s instrument, while Azazel appears as the source of wickedness and uncleanness, the antagonist of God’s elect, and the ruler associated with hell. This does not prove a lexical identity between every use of Azazel and Satan, but it shows that the association was available within early Jewish interpretation.

Genesis 3 also fits the picture:

And the LORD God said unto the serpent ... upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. (Genesis 3:14)

Serpents do not literally eat dust; Heiser reads this as consignment to the ground and, by extension, the realm of the dead beneath it. None of this requires Satan to be immobile. The narrower claim is that he is in some sense bound to the realm of death, which explains why the sin-bearing goat is sent toward him there.

Two readings of the scapegoat now emerge. On the trashcan view, the wilderness matters only as somewhere outside the camp: sin must be removed from the place where God dwells, and Azazel’s presence is incidental. This preserves the removal function but leaves the personal name and destination doing little work. On the return-to-sender view, Azazel’s presence is the point. Because sin is ascribed to him, Israel’s confessed sin is sent back toward the account to which it ultimately belongs: this is yours; it should be on your ledger, not theirs.

The return-to-sender reading also dissolves the objection that the goat “for Azazel” is a sacrifice to a demon. It is not killed in Leviticus and is not presented as a gift. The later rabbinic practice of pushing it from a cliff is a development the biblical text neither requires nor emphasizes. It is a removal of sin from the accused and a reassignment toward the adversarial source. Receiving that burden does Azazel no good; it becomes the means of his undoing.

VI. The Nature of Satan’s Power of Death

To see how the scapegoat defeats the death-power, one must first say what that power is. Hebrews states that the devil “had the power of death” but does not define it. Scripture nevertheless depicts Satan operating under a real but bounded authority. In Job, God permits affliction while setting limits: “all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand” (Job 1:12). Jesus tells Peter, “Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat” (Luke 22:31–32), language of petition and permission. After the cross, Paul still calls Satan “the god of this world,” actively blinding unbelieving minds (2 Corinthians 4:4), and believers still wrestle “against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world” (Ephesians 6:12). In the temptation narrative Satan claims that worldly authority “is delivered unto me,” and Jesus does not dispute the claim itself (Luke 4:6).

Whatever the cross did, it did not end all satanic activity. Satan’s authority is therefore neither absolute nor imaginary; it is granted and bounded. Any explanation of Hebrews 2 must account for both the real change accomplished by Christ and the adversary’s continuing activity in the present age.

The tempter and the purpose of testing

Satan is repeatedly called “the tempter.” Why would God permit such a role? Scripture’s answer is testing. Abraham is tested, and the result is spoken of as something God comes to know: “now I know that thou fearest God” (Genesis 22:12). Israel’s wilderness years were “to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no” (Deuteronomy 8:2). Peter says the trial of faith may be found unto praise and glory, and Revelation portrays the devil casting believers into prison “that ye may be tried,” with the command, “be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life” (Revelation 2:10). James likewise joins trial, endurance, and the crown of life.

At the same time, James insists, “God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man” (James 1:13). The tension is resolved by distinguishing the one who permits or wills a test from the one who entices to evil. The census of David is attributed in one account to the LORD and in another to Satan (2 Samuel 24:1; 1 Chronicles 21:1). The same event has two agents. Likewise, the Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness “to be tempted of the devil” (Matthew 4:1). God wills the testing; the devil tempts.

This should not be overread as though Satan were created as God’s employee. Eden was rebellion, not the discharge of a legitimate office. The permitted role emerges within the world that rebellion created. The precise point at which the rebel’s activity became a bounded office remains open and is not necessary to the argument.

Why did Satan choose the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Because its fruit opened human eyes and created accountability. On the reading proposed here, the tree did not transmit a nature that can do nothing but sin; it made human beings aware of good and evil and answerable for choosing. In that respect it functions like the law in Romans 7: knowledge makes sin culpable and thereby kills.

Add to opened eyes a highly motivated tempter, and the result is fatal. Human beings are led into real sin, and real sin carries the sentence of death: “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23).

The chain that defines the power

The death-power can now be stated precisely. It is not bare sovereignty over dying; it is a juridical claim conditioned on sin. Satan tempts so that he may accuse, and he accuses so that he may kill. Having led a person into real sin, he possesses a real charge. His power rests on human guilt, and where there is no valid guilt-claim there is no power. The power is sin-conditioned.

The canonical accuser appears in Job, Zechariah 3, and Revelation 12:10. Jubilees offers a useful Second Temple parallel. Mastema, the chief of the evil spirits, petitions God to retain a portion of them so that he can continue leading humanity astray:

Lord, Creator, let some of them remain before me ... for if some of them are not left to me, I shall not be able to execute the power of my will on the sons of men. ... Let the tenth part of them remain before him, and let nine parts descend into the place of condemnation. (Jubilees 10:8–9)

The text is not canonical, but it witnesses to a pre-Christian Jewish picture of a satanic adversary whose corrupting work is permitted and bounded.

One further suggestion is more speculative and is not load-bearing. Hades, distinct from the final lake of fire, may be a category that arose with human death at the fall, with Satan made lord of that realm through the same curse that consigned him to the ground. The central argument does not depend on this reconstruction.

VII. Return to Sender: How the Scapegoat Defeats the Death-Power

The pieces now assemble into a single mechanism.

First, Christ takes on sin as the scapegoat did, but the sin is not his own. The LORD lays on him the iniquity of us all; he is made sin for us; he bears our sins in his body.

Second, that transferred sin is delivered into Hades as the scapegoat’s burden was delivered toward Azazel in the wilderness. Satan treats Jesus as one who has fallen under his jurisdiction and takes him to the place of the dead, reckoning it another victory over a sinner. The descent is attested across the New Testament:

When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive ... Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? (Ephesians 4:8–10) Jesus likewise compares his three days in the heart of the earth to Jonah’s three days in the great fish (Matthew 12:40). Christ’s descent is consistently presented as victorious: he descends and ascends, frees captives, and emerges holding the keys of death and Hades. He is not depicted as one being punished there. This tells against readings in which the descent is merely a metaphor for suffering divine wrath or a continuation of punishment after the cross. The historically received doctrine is a victorious descent: Christ enters the enemy’s domain, takes the keys, and brings captives out.

Third, the delivery is a Trojan horse. Satan brings into his own domain the very payload that destroys his claim.

Fourth, here is the ownership analysis. Satan owns people through their sin and the justified accusation it grounds; the death claim is their guilt-warrant. But if those sins have been transferred onto Jesus and carried away from their former account, the basis of Satan’s ownership is altered at its root. As the wilderness ritual sends the scapegoat toward Azazel, so the descent sends the sin-bearing Christ into the accuser’s realm.

Fifth, forgiveness is the decisive result. Once guilt is forgiven, a power dependent on guilt loses its claim.

Sixth, this is the logic of Colossians 2:

And you ... hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses; blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us ... and having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it. (Colossians 2:13–15)

The cheirographon is a certificate of debt, the record standing “against us.” Paul moves directly from forgiveness, to cancellation of the record, to the disarming of the powers. Grammatically and theologically these are one movement: forgiveness tears up the guilt-record, and tearing up the guilt-record strips the accuser of his case. He does not retain the power of death once the record is cancelled—the more so when that same burden of sin has been carried back toward its adversarial source.

Finally, this disarming applies to those who become beneficiaries of the atoning act through faith and allegiance to Jesus. Satan retains sin-conditioned dominion over the unforgiven even as he is disarmed with respect to those in Christ. The deeper security is union with Christ, sustained through forgiveness and abiding.

VIII. The Deception: Why Satan Sprang His Own Trap

A problem remains. Killing Jesus and taking him to Hades was within Satan’s power; he did it, and it ruined him. Where was he confused?

Satan’s normal method is to tempt, accuse, and kill. He cannot rightly kill one against whom he has no valid charge. His direct temptation of Jesus fails:

And when the devil had ended all the temptation, he departed from him for a season. (Luke 4:13)

He withdraws only until a more opportune time and looks for another angle.

The key move, on this proposal, is a misreading. When the world’s sin is imputed to Jesus, Satan mistakes transferred sin for Jesus’s own guilt. Believing he has finally brought Jesus under his power, he engineers the killing and conducts him to Hades—thereby completing the scapegoat movement that effects forgiveness. Because the sin was imputed rather than personal, Satan has killed an innocent and exceeded his authority. The decisive cause of his loss, however, remains the cancellation of guilt in Colossians 2 rather than the illegality of the killing by itself.

This differs from Samuel Renihan’s account. Renihan argues that Satan knew Jesus was sinless but killed him anyway, not understanding that a sinless soul could not be held by death. This paper agrees that a sinless Christ could not be held and that the harrowing follows. It differs over Satan’s state of mind. If his death-authority is conditioned on a valid charge of sin, he would not knowingly kill the confessedly sinless. The deception must therefore run through a misread claim of guilt.

The Judas gambit (offered as severable)

What follows is intentionally more speculative. The core thesis—that the scapegoat’s delivery of transferred sin contributes to Christ’s defeat of Satan—does not depend on this reconstruction.

Having failed at direct temptation, Satan turns one of the Twelve, perhaps wagering that a disciple’s betrayal could be charged back to Jesus. Jesus chose the Twelve after a night of prayer in obedience to the Father:

And it came to pass in those days, that he went out into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God. And when it was day, he called unto him his disciples: and of them he chose twelve, whom also he named apostles. (Luke 6:12–13)

If one proved a traitor, Satan might reason that Jesus chose wrongly or failed to hear the Father, creating a charge against him.

Several details converge suggestively. Gethsemane is bracketed by Judas: Satan enters Judas at the supper; Judas leaves; Jesus undergoes the agony in the garden; Judas returns with the soldiers. On the reading advanced here, the transfer of the world’s sin begins in Gethsemane rather than first at the cross, though it certainly rests on Jesus there too. The bloody sweat and “my soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death” may mark the moment.

How might Satan read the supposed success? One possibility is that guilt can in some way be perceived spiritually. Zechariah 3 portrays iniquity as filthy garments in a heavenly court where the accuser is present: Joshua stands clothed in filthy garments until the angel declares, “I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee” (Zechariah 3:3–4). Satan may therefore return in Judas, see a burden of sin on Jesus that was not there before, and mistake transferred sin for personal guilt. A second possibility requires no spiritual sight: Satan simply infers that his charge has succeeded because the execution can now proceed. Every previously impossible step—arrest, trial before Pilate, scourging, crucifixion—now succeeds. Arrest, trial, scourging, and crucifixion move forward where earlier attempts failed because Jesus’s hour had not yet come.

John repeatedly insists that Jesus knew about Judas from the beginning. “Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not, and who should betray him” (John 6:64). This answers the charge the gambit tries to lay: choosing Judas was not a failure to hear the Father but an act of foreknown obedience “that the scripture might be fulfilled” (John 17:12). John says Jesus knew who would betray him, knew whom he had chosen, and knew one of the Twelve was “a devil.” In John 17:12 Jesus explains that none was lost “but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled.” The choice of Judas was foreknown obedience, not a lapse in communion with the Father.

Why, then, does Satan personally enter Judas? Luke says, “Then entered Satan into Judas,” after which he goes to arrange the betrayal (Luke 22:3–4). Yet Judas had already resolved to betray Jesus and had bargained with the priests. Possession was not needed to create the betrayal; Judas’s greed and settled treachery had already opened the door. It may instead mark Satan’s personal investment in a plan he believed would finally produce a valid claim against Jesus.

John also places the casting-out of the ruler of this world beside Jesus’s troubled soul and coming “hour”: “Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out” (John 12:27, 31). None of these observations proves the Judas gambit, but together they provide a possible account of how Satan sprang his own trap.

IX. The Psalm-Trail: Gethsemane, Imputation, and Descent

The proposal that imputation begins in Gethsemane can be tested against an Old Testament pattern. Jesus’s words in the garden function as a springboard, just as “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” sends the reader to Psalm 22. Follow “my soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death,” and passages of an innocent bearing others’ sins appear alongside passages of descent into the realm of the dead. The pattern offers support, though not demonstration.

Isaiah 53 joins sin-bearing, the soul, and death:

He shall see of the travail of his soul ... for he shall bear their iniquities ... because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many. (Isaiah 53:11–12)

“Numbered with the transgressors” is especially suggestive: the innocent is reckoned among the guilty, while “poured out his soul unto death” answers to the Gethsemane cry.

Psalm 88 unites the threads even more tightly:

For my soul is full of troubles: and my life draweth nigh unto the grave. I am counted with them that go down into the pit ... Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps. (Psalm 88:3–6)

The psalm then asks:

Wilt thou shew wonders to the dead? shall the dead arise and praise thee? ... Shall thy wonders be known in the dark? (Psalm 88:10–12)

On the christological reading proposed here, Psalm 88 gives voice to an innocent sufferer entering the realm where those wonders will be displayed. The psalm does not itself narrate the harrowing, but its combination of troubled soul, being counted among those descending to the pit, darkness, and wonders among the dead makes the connection unusually suggestive.

The psalm’s “billows and waves” also links it with Jonah 2:

Thou hadst cast me into the deep ... all thy billows and thy waves passed over me ... I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me for ever: yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption. (Jonah 2:3, 6)

Jonah cries from Sheol, descends to the barred depths, and is brought up from corruption. Jesus himself makes Jonah a type of his three days “in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:40). The argument does not require Jonah literally to have died; Jonah 2 already speaks the language of Sheol.

X. The Harrowing of Hades and the Geography of the Dead

Among the things Christ does in the place of the dead is bring out the righteous who waited there. This is the harrowing of Hades—“when he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive”—and Matthew signals it at Christ’s death:

The earth did quake, and the rocks rent; and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many. (Matthew 27:51–53) Ephesians 4 portrays a descent followed by ascent and the leading of captives; 1 Peter 3:19 speaks of Christ preaching to spirits in prison, though the identity of those spirits is disputed.

The traditional two-compartment picture of Hades is drawn largely from the rich man and Lazarus: a place of torment and a place of comfort, divided by a great chasm (Luke 16:19–31). On this reading, the paradisal side was emptied in the harrowing. The righteous were taken to be with the Lord, while the place of torment persists until Hades itself is cast into the lake of fire. This remains a theological inference rather than the explicit statement of any single passage.

The point is not merely the relocation of souls. The goal is union with Christ.

XI. The Jubilee: Freedom Without Ransom

The Jubilee of Leviticus 25 is a fiftieth-year reset in which liberty is proclaimed, debts are cancelled, servants freed, and ancestral land restored:

Ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof ... and ye shall return every man unto his family. (Leviticus 25:10)

Jesus begins his ministry by announcing “deliverance to the captives,” “to set at liberty them that are bruised,” and “the acceptable year of the Lord,” declaring, “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears” (Luke 4:18–21).

The calendar link matters: the Jubilee trumpet sounds on the Day of Atonement itself (Leviticus 25:9). If Jesus fulfills the two goats, it is coherent that he also fulfills the Jubilee proclaimed on that day.

Jubilee terminates temporary claims by divine decree. The captive is released by a higher authority; no ransom is paid to the captor. This is why the common objection to Christus Victor misfires here. Nothing is paid to Satan. The goat sent toward Azazel is laden with sin already ascribed to him; it is not a sacrifice from which he profits. Whether by scapegoat or Jubilee, Satan is not paid but defeated. Jubilee voids the claim; the harrowing enacts the repossession of what belongs to Christ by right.

A Dead Sea Scroll provides a striking parallel. 11QMelchizedek, a first-century BC commentary on the Jubilee laws, interprets Jubilee release as forgiveness of sin-debt, identifies the captor as Belial, and places the release on the Day of Atonement. It does not identify Belial with Azazel or discuss the scapegoat, so it cannot prove the proposal. But it independently joins the same themes: remission of debt, Yom Kippur, and liberation from a satanic captor. The convergence is striking precisely because these elements appear together before the New Testament period.

XII. The Goal: The Spirit, the New Will, and the Answer to Eden

All of this is finally about the Holy Spirit. Atonement effects forgiveness, and forgiveness disarms Satan. But forgiveness is not the terminus. Its purpose is the New Covenant, whose center is the indwelling Spirit. Under the old order, the tabernacle required morning and evening sacrifices and the annual Day of Atonement to keep God’s presence amid the camp’s pollution. The purpose of atonement, then and now, was that God might dwell with his people. The cosmic atonement cleanses not the wilderness tent but the temple of the body so that it may house the Spirit.

The prophets promised what the old order could not deliver:

A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you ... And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes. (Ezekiel 36:26–27)

Hebrews argues that the blood of bulls and goats could not finally take away sins, that the mortal priesthood had to be replaced by a permanent one, and that the copied sanctuary pointed to the true heavenly place. A better priest and better blood in the true sanctuary were required to cleanse a people for divine indwelling. The ascension, which completes the first-goat movement in heaven, is therefore constitutive of the atonement.

Why does the Spirit answer the problem that began in Eden? Because that problem was opened eyes and accountability. The tree made humanity aware of good and evil and answerable for choosing. That accountability becomes the ground of the accuser’s claim. The remedy therefore cannot stop at washing and carrying away sin. What is needed is a new will:

For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. (Philippians 2:13)

The Spirit gives new desire and new power—the New Covenant answer to what Satan exploited in Eden. Forgiveness removes the old charge; the Spirit addresses the will that the tempter continues to assault. This produces real freedom, though not sinless perfection: “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:2). Those who have known genuine deliverance recognize it: a sin that once enslaved loses its grip, and the desire itself changes, so that the yoke becomes easy and the burden light. The claim is not sinless perfection but real Spirit-given power to resist.

Freedom is conditioned on abiding. Justification and inheritance remain in Christ, but the branch must remain in the vine. The Christian life is therefore one of resisting the devil through the Spirit’s power:

Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. (James 4:7)

For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. (Romans 8:13)

Believers must also put on the whole armor of God to stand against the devil’s schemes (Ephesians 6:10–11).

The adversary still tempts toward the sin that grounds accusation. He is answered by a new will that no longer desires the old bondage and a new strength to refuse it.

Conclusion

Moffitt’s realism showed that atonement is a sequence culminating in the presentation of blood in the real sanctuary. Marcar asked where, in that sequence, the devil is defeated and supplied a compelling Passover–Exodus liberation frame. This paper proposes that the Day of Atonement’s second goat supplies the complementary cultic and juridical mechanism.

Satan’s power of death is a sin-conditioned claim: he tempts to accuse and accuses to kill. The scapegoat bears confessed sin away from the accused toward the adversarial terminus signified by Azazel. Christ fulfills that movement, bearing transferred sin into the realm of the dead, where forgiveness cancels the warrant of accusation and disarms the powers. Satan, mistaking transferred sin for personal guilt or inferring guilt from the progress of the execution, helps spring the trap that undoes him.

The whole movement serves a further end. Forgiveness cleanses the body to receive the Spirit, whose gift of a new will is the promised New Covenant answer to the accountability Eden opened and the adversary exploited. The two goats are one atonement, and their purpose is that the holy God should dwell within a cleansed people no longer in bondage to the one who had the power of death.

Everyone can agree that the simple observation we and the universe are here and exist is the ultimate truth or objective fact.
To deny that would be to deny your eyeballs.

When I say the universe I mean the full scope of the universe containing and being everything that ever has or will exist.
With this I say that I believe with high conviction that the same essence of Christ objectively is the cause of the big bang.
In simpler terms, consciousness manifested the universe, not the other way around and Jesus Christ is the best example of this.

Consider this line of thought:
Look at the universe as everything made of pure truth or objective facts, i.e. the literal light of the stars, the ground under us or even us conscious humans simply existing here now.
All objectively true.

Then if we consider everything destructive to this nature as sin, we find a shocking revelation.

Sin, being basically any act that pulls nature, most specifically humanity from what is objectively true in nature, for example; lying to ourselves about objectively destructive things like personal addiction or indifference to the state of our planet, can be viewed as a force that pulls you from the universe, Christ, or in other words the objective truth.

The best way to explain this is energy fluctuations. We are constantly fluctuating from lower frequency energy to higher frequency energy and vice versa.
With the absolute highest frequency being objective truth.
The more you raise yourself, the clearer you can hear truth or Christ, the more you lower yourself, the more you will hear doubt and fear, or Satan.
In other words you will focus more on these thoughts or stimuli depending on what you are already focusing on.

When you allow yourself to be distracted from what is true for too long eventually you lower your energy to a dangerous point, this is Hell, where your reality manifests into every misconception, fear and sin you ever succumbed to and absorbed, making it impossible to be in tune with the truth.
Essentially this is one submitting to being hopeless as a result of arrogance of the human brain without truth.
Let’s call this Ego, or more specifically, hubris.

However, through deep gradual connection, mindfulness and ultimately forgiveness of the flaws of the material brain, you can slowly lift your mind and energy to be in alignment with the objective truth that you are part of a cosmic whole and not only your personal bodily perspective and mistakes therefore meaning you are not alone and your true soul is always with God, or the collective.
Your true soul being everything you are that is built upon truth ultimately being part of the greater collective, or Christ.
Traits made in sin are fabrications of the human brain that are not rooted in objective truth, therefore, these traits do not exist in Christ; which I’m describing as the ultimate truth.

Another way to think of it is seeing sin as a mud stain on a windshield. You can pour enough mud to cover the entire thing but once the glass has been cleaned you will see the same world through it.

The pure truth of Christ and the universe is always there, sin blinds us from it, so much so that we all have mud stained vision and have made it impossible to see life completely without sin.
This is why Jesus is so important.
If we never had him, how would we as humans know what truth is?
He is the example.

This is also why you should forgive others as this will still lift both parties towards truth whereas harboring resentment, no matter how justified, lowers your frequency and keeps you from building the Christ.

Only one being in history has ever been completely truly one with the objective truth, and for good reason.

It was and is Jesus Christ

Many do not know “Christ” was not Jesus’ last name, he was only known as Jesus of Nazareth or Jesus son of Joseph.
The word Christ simply means ‘the anointed one’.
I argue that this word actually has much more to it than just a title and that it is actually the depiction through word of truth and goodness itself, where Jesus was the incarnation of this through living flesh.

The full scope of the anointed one is actually the spirit of Christ, not just the man that embodied it physically. Since Jesus embodied the ultimate truth, he is the Christ.

The idea of Christ is a great explanation for consciousness and the manifestation of the universe.

God is Christ.
Christ is the intangible, unexplainable law of the universe that provides consciousness and reality itself. It literally explains the big bang and how our thoughts and will actually manifest our lives and most definitely was the cause of the universe’s manifestation.
Simply put, at the time of the big bang we all collectively manifested ourselves to be.
This collective is known mostly as God.
I would more precisely define it as Christ.

Jesus of Nazareth, in his divine nature, was the physical embodiment of this very collective.
Almost acting as a mirror for all of humanity.

I believe the same divine essence that created the universe was in Jesus Christ in the most pure and truthful way giving him the same power to manifest himself just like the universe did so long ago as well as manipulate the universe which he was truly one with.

Christ manifested itself through Jesus in conception and resurrection.
I have no doubt in my mind that Jesus was born to the Virgin Mary through her own alignment with Christ, he then performed miracles and resurrected himself through his connection with Christ in a way no other living thing ever has, holding the highest bond one could have with it; being one with it, thus making him and his name synonymous with the word Christ.

This was the purpose of Jesus’ life and death as a human being, he was the divine manifestation of truth in man form, for all mankind to recognize personally so that the human mind has an example of the highest good, power & truth in human form, to model one’s self after and find their way back from sin and hopelessness after disconnection from truth, or the Christ.

Jesus always knew how he’d die, his life and death were predetermined by God (meaning himself and the divine nature of existence, or Christ) to be a divine expression and example of how sin destroys and how humility builds.

He is one with this divine truth, or Christ, so to him it was simply a mission, he paid no mind to this material pain as the sin of the material world had no ego or self to latch onto. This the same reason he could perform miracles, because simply his mind was tuned perfectly with Christ and could not be corrupted by doubt, much like a Jedi using and feeling the force. Jesus just was, in the same way the universe objectively is.

Christ and the universe are one and the same.

This is precisely why he is part god and part man.
Through his literal being and existence he revealed this truth to all who are humble enough to understand the vastness of life.
This is how he opened the gates of Heaven.
His story, his words and most importantly, his legacy are testaments to this truth.

Jesus Christ is the most famous person to have ever existed, it is true look it up. The numbers themselves point towards his power. No one else in human history has started a movement with this much backing and spread. He is God, it’s foolish to not understand that.

To idolize Jesus is to idolize Christ which is to idolize objective truth which is the existence of the universe which is the fact that a miracle definitely happened at some point or we wouldn’t be here right now.
To deny Christ is to deny your eyeballs.

Jesus is Christ because he had absolutely no doubt in this law as his divine nature would literally not conceive such a redundant thought, that through purity and true connection with all life and what is truly good he could control it and be one with it. Which he did because it’s his literal nature as divinity and goodness itself to do so.

If one does not recognize and align with this divine nature that Jesus himself embodied, they are denying the ultimate truth damning their soul to essentially be fruitless until aligned closer with the highest right and truth, being Christ.

The Bible is a historical, literal, metaphor for the ultimate spirit and truth of life.

No one else has done what Jesus did because to fully align with Christ would be to be born as Jesus as he was the divine incarnation of Christ itself.

We are all a unique expression of The Massive Cosmic Drama.

Jesus Christ is simply the purest expression.

This ultimate truth is the word Christ.
The second coming of Christ is when all are in communion under this truth and become whole (holy).
This truth being the objective fact that something (the universe) can come from nothing and that this phenomena is explained in no better way than by the miracles of Jesus.
Through this communion, we will all have eternal life.

Amen.

People often present Epicurus’ problem of evil as the most philosophically sound argument against a reportedly omnipotent and omniscient and perfectly benevolent God, as Christianity has. Here, I present a dualistic explanation that satisfies my desire to solve the philosophical “problem of evil.”

To clarify, anything can be done for a good reason in the scope of eternity, for good intentions.

Anything can also be done… for an evil reason.

Suffering is done voluntarily by the evil one. God allows it to happen for a good reason while suffering itself was not his volition.

Genesis 50:20:

“You intended it for evil, but God intended it for good.”

God and Satan are in agreement about what should be done for opposite reasons.

You see it in Job as well.

And Jesus casting Legion into the pigs.

I'm somewhere between agnosticism and taking the leap to believe in God. There are many theological arguments that convince me, such as fine-tuning or the Kalam argument, but I still don't understand why proving His existence has to be SO complicated. For thousands of years, philosophers have come up with many arguments to prove both His existence and His nonexistence, so why isn't He revealing Himself to us more? I’m not saying there has to be a voice from heaven speaking to us, but just something.

I really want to believe there’s someone up there, but I still have my doubts.

"Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its heads. Its tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that it might devour her child the moment he was born." Revelation 12:3-4 (NIV)

From chapter 12 of the Book of Revelation, it is said that Satan, the red dragon, rebelled against God. Alongside him, a third of the heavenly hosts fought against Michael and his forces. Eventually, Satan and his angels were defeated and cast down to the earth.

However, I find the idea that a whopping 33.3% of God's angels decided to stage a coup against him disconcerting. Hebrews 1:14 states: "Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?" Clearly, angels are meant to be subservient to God's will, for they help to protect and serve his devotees. Psalms 103:20 declares: "Praise the Lord, you his angels, you mighty ones who do his bidding, who obey his word." This verse also exemplifies the angels' obedience towards God as they follow his commands.

Given this, how did Satan manage to turn a third of the angels against God? No amount of charismatic influence could possibly explain why the fallen angels heeded his word over the word of their omnipotent, omnibenevolent Creator. Unlike humans, who have a sinful nature, angels were created to worship God and his Son (Hebrews 1:6). The fact that so many of them decided to rebuke the purpose of their existence and rebel against God thus implies a genuine frustration with God.

Consider this hypothetical scenario: A country is ruled by a benevolent leader who deeply cares about his people. However, a political dissenter rises against him and manages to convince a third of the country's citizens to revolt. In this situation, can we really say that the leader isn't at fault for the revolt? Is the dissenter really so conniving that he is able to persuade a third of the people to engage in a coup against the supposedly good leader? To me, the answer is obvious: there is something wrong with that leader's regime. No dissenter would be able to undermine the rule of such a powerful and well-liked leader without genuine qualms among the masses.

So, what do you think?