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“An altar of earth you shall make for Me, and you shall sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your oxen. In every place where I record My name I will come to you, and I will bless you.” (Exodus 20:24)

“Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year: you shall take it out from the sheep, or from the goats.” (Exodus 12:5)

The impression these texts give is that God wants people to kill animals in sacrifice to Him and that when they do this He will  bless them. Christianity.com states: “In order for the Israelites to gain forgiveness, something had to die.” Another online article on Gotquestions.org explains: “Animal sacrifice is an important theme found throughout Scripture because ‘without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness’ (Hebrews 9:22).”

But did God really require these sacrifices in order to forgive us? Does His love and justice demand that His wrath be appeased with a sacrifice like the pagan gods of the other nations? Peter teaches the truth that we were redeemed “with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1 Peter 1:19). Does this mean that animal sacrifices were merely an appetizer until God had the blood of a human sacrifice? In this booklet we’ll discuss the folly of such claims and discover who really led Christ as a lamb to the slaughter (Isaiah 53:7).