Leviticus 16:20

"And when he hath made an end of atoning for the holy place, and the tent of meeting, and the altar, he shall present the live goat: 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, and all their transgressions, even all their sins; and he shall put them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a man that is in readiness into the wilderness: and the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a solitary land: and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness."

"He shall present the live goat ..." To whom was this goat presented? To some wilderness demon, or to the Devil himself?. Who could believe it? The preposterous suggestion of Micklem that, "The goat for Azazel may therefore represent a concession to popular demands"[24] is simply incompatible, in our opinion, with a CHRISTIAN view of this passage. It would require us to believe that some of the most vital and typical representations of Jesus Christ in these Day of Atonement rituals were due to the superstitious and rebellious demands of the Jews for Moses to recognize their fool notions about demons in the ordering of these sacred ceremonies! That cannot be the way in which these regulations were made.

Another common error in understanding the nature of atonement provided by these rites is seen in such declarations as this:

"All the sins that had not been dealt with through the regular and occasional sacrifices throughout the year, were confessed and atoned for on the Day of Atonement, so that a right relationship with God might be maintained by the people of Israel."[25]

However, it was not merely the sins committed since their last sacrifice that required atonement - it was all of their sins. There is a triple reference in Leviticus 16:16 to all, even ALL the sins of Israel which Aaron confessed on the head of the goat, and again in Leviticus 16:21, the same triple emphasis on ALL Israel's sins is repeated. This is what the N.T. referred to in the statement that, "There is a remembrance made of sins year by year" (Hebrews 10:3), and the reason for this was emphatically stated in the very next clause. Why? "It is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sin." There was, of course, a type of forgiveness here, but it was actually a "passing over" of the sins done aforetime (Romans 3:25). No sin was ever finally disposed of and forgiven until the death of CHRIST on Calvary. There was even on this very Day of Atonement a proof that sins were NOT terminally forgiven. After the blood had been sprinkled upon the mercy-seat in the supreme act of the atonement itself, Aaron promptly came out and confessed upon the goat's head all of the sins that were the object of the atonement just made. People who find free and total forgiveness of sins in the O.T. are simply finding something that is not there. Yes, there are some marvelous statements that seem to say the opposite, but all of them are directed to what God would still accomplish IN THE FUTURE, and not to something ALREADY achieved. If true forgiveness for mankind had been possible under Moses' law, Christ would not have been needed at all! (See Galatians 3:21-25). It was what the law "could not do" that Christ came to do.