The Atheist Church

"And it came to pass, when he was in a certain city, behold a man full of leprosy: who seeing Jesus fell on his face, and besought him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And he put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will: be thou clean. And immediately the leprosy departed from him. And he charged him to tell no man: but go, and show yourself to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing, according as Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them. But so much the more went there a fame abroad of him: and great multitudes came together to hear, and to be healed by him of their infirmities. And he withdrew himself into the wilderness, and prayed" (Luke 4:12-16).

Most skeptics haven't a clue that the Bible is filled with "types." They don't know that the story of Moses is a type of the Christian’s deliverance from death. God opens the Red Sea and delivers His people from the Egypt (the world) so that He can bring them into the Promised Land (Heaven). Like the army of pharaoh that died as they tried to follow the Hebrews, the world cannot enter Heaven. The story of a faultless Joseph is a type of Jesus being betrayed by his brothers (Israel), but then being exalted to the highest place of authority to rule the world. They read it without the “eyes” of their "understanding being enlightened." The same goes with Noah, Samson, etc. To the skeptic, they are just "silly" Bible stories.

Leprosy in Scripture is a type of sin. The disease causes the sufferer to lose the sense of pain. If you lie down for too long without moving, you feel uncomfortable and instinctively shift the position of your body. You do this unconsciously multiple times in your sleep. This allows your blood to flow. The Bible says "the life of the flesh is in the blood," and without the blood flowing through your flesh, your skin will lose its life. It will rot. A leper doesn’t feel any sensation in his flesh, doesn’t move, and it rots on his body.

The sense for sin is your conscience. When you lose the ability to feel any sense of guilt (that uncomfortable feeling) when you lie, steal, lust, fornicate, etc., your soul (the real you) begins to rot and die. You become unclean in the eyes of God.

When a sinner comes to Jesus, the authenticity of his cleansing is that he will satisfy the demands of Moses. "Moses" is a type of the moral Law of God. Multitudes of professed converts will never make it to Heaven because they had no regard to the moral Law. They professed to be cleansed, but they continued to lie, steal, lust, etc., and will be thrust from Heaven into Hell on the Day of Judgment (see Mathew 7:21-24). How do you do when examined by the Law? To satisfy its holy demands, you must first go to Jesus for cleansing.