Bible Project’s Tim Mackie believes Penal Substitutionary Atonement stems from pagan sacrifice ...

“Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee” (1 Timothy:4:16Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee.
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Concerns about Bible Project and its co-founder Tim Mackie continue to grow. The recent discovery of Mackie’s advocacy of anti-biblical meditative practices has been stunning. Bible Project has produced numerous videos on biblical subjects, some of them quite good. These can be found on YouTube and the videos are used by many churches, particularly in youth ministries. Tim Mackie has many sermons on YouTube as well. It can be stated that Mackie and Bible Project have millions of followers. As a number of these videos attest, Mackie promotes some errant, even heretical, theology. While one of his teachings makes clear his contempt for the Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA), that same “sermon” reveals his view of the PSA as a belief based on ancient pagan sacrifices to the gods. Watch the following video from 34:42 to 38:08. Mackie has been explaining the Old Testament sacrificial system. 

35:40 Oh yeah blood, animal dies, okay, we connect it to ancient pagan notions of like Zeus or Apollo[s]* or Dionysus …

36:10 [These] gods hate you and they’re going to kill you or send plague on your flocks or something like that, and so what you need to do is kill this animal so that it can die instead of the gods killing you.

36:30 And once the god has their pound of flesh then they’ll leave you alone and be happy with you. And what we do is read that story onto the story of what’s happening here, and then we bring Jesus into it and what we end up with is a story that says, God’s perfect he’s holy and he’s perfect, you’re not so God has to kill you, he has to kill you. He needs His pound of flesh to, in the name of His justice, and so he’s gonna kill you because he’s angry at you.

37:05 But instead he’s gonna kill Jesus and he takes out his anger on Jesus and then he allows you after you die to go to the good place and not the bad place, you can sing forever the praises of the God who didn’t kill you. How you guys doing? Now some of you, I’m creating a caricature, but for some of us, you might think like, yeah, isn’t that the story of Christianity, isn’t that what Christians believe?

Such a twisted understanding of the Scriptures.

In his denial of the Penal Substitutionary Atonement, Tim Mackie is following in the footsteps of The Shack author William Paul Young, and many others.

As a Bible believer recently noted online: PSA is the one “theory of the atonement” that makes the others make sense. It is the key to all the others, which don’t work unless Jesus substituted for us in taking the Father’s wrath against sin on himself, and gave us his righteousness in place of our unrighteousness. Because the Lord loves us, Christ willingly took our place of punishment by dying on the cross. He received the wrath that we deserve.

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans:5:8But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
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So what was Mackie’s audience thinking as he linked Penal Substitutionary Atonement to “pagan notions of like Zeus or Apollo[s]* or Dionysus”? Were there any questions or objections?

Here is another question: Is it perhaps time to ask Christians, particularly pastors and youth pastors, to examine some of Mackie’s troubling teachings? 

https://thewordlikefire.wordpress.com/2023/03/16/bible-projects-tim-mackie-believes-penal-substitutionary-atonement-stems-from-pagan-sacrifice-rituals/