The Scapegoat Became Satan
The paper denies that Christ is the antitype of the scapegoat and hands the role to the devil. Isaiah 53:6, however, says that the Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
By Rodrigo Custódio ·
The moment
On Thursday, July 8, 1880, issue number 26 of the sixth volume of the Signs of the Times, the weekly founded by James White and printed in Oakland, reached the hands of California readers. It was a paper of dense pages, published in the very era of tent evangelistic campaigns, when each edition functioned as a paper pulpit for spreading the doctrine of the sanctuary.
On page 307, the paper carried yet another installment of the article "The Purification of the Sanctuary," a series of studies on the Day of Atonement described in Leviticus 16. The text closes, on the following page, with the signature "U. S.": Uriah Smith, the movement's leading theologian at the time. In that passage, Smith undertakes to answer a seemingly technical question: who is the antitype of the scapegoat, the goat "for Azazel" that the high priest sent alive into the wilderness?
Two goats in a desert oasis: in the ritual of Leviticus 16, two goats were presented before the Lord — one sacrificed, the other sent alive into the wilderness.
The answer that any Christian would give at once — Christ, the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world — is exactly the answer the paper rejects. Smith presents a list of "very strong reasons," numbered 1 to 4, to argue that the scapegoat cannot represent the Savior. And, in place of Christ, he enthrones another candidate.
The absurdity
After setting out his objections, Smith formulates the thesis of the article in so many words, without evasion and without disguise. It is the summary paragraph of the entire argument — and it is also the most revealing paragraph of the edition:
"From these considerations, we think it must be evident to all that Christ cannot be the antitype of the Levitical scapegoat. Who then can it be? We answer: the devil"
Source: Signs of the Times, vol. 6, no. 26, July 8, 1880 — p. 307.
The original passage highlighted on page 307 of the July 8, 1880 edition, with the sentence in which the paper hands the role of the scapegoat to the devil.
Read it again, slowly: the paper denies that Christ is the antitype of the scapegoat and declares, in answer to its own question — "who then can it be?" — that the goat represents the devil. This is not a stray sentence nor a slip of editing. It is the deliberate conclusion of a four-point argument, published as doctrine, in an article signed by the movement's leading theologian.
Why this is serious
The scapegoat of Leviticus 16 symbolically carried the iniquities of the people outside the camp, to "a land not inhabited." By declaring that this goat is the devil, the paper makes Satan the final bearer of sins — and, with that, shifts to the enemy of God a function that belongs exclusively to the Lamb. It is a complete inversion of the economy of salvation: the one who carries the sin, in the reader's imagination, takes the place of the substitute.
Worse still: the ritual itself refutes the thesis. In Leviticus 16 there were two goats, and only one of them was sacrificed "to the Lord" as a sin offering. The scapegoat was never an expiatory offering — it merely carried far away, already forgiven, the guilt that the blood of the first goat had covered. Smith confuses the two functions and, in order to "protect" Christ from an alleged indignity of the symbol, ends up handing to the devil a redemptive role that the Bible never gave him.
Period engraving of a nineteenth-century religious camp, with tents arranged around the central pavilion — the setting of the campaigns in which this doctrine was preached.
And there is a more subtle poison in this doctrine. If the devil is the one who ultimately carries the sins, then the cross remains incomplete: Christ dies, but the sins only truly "disappear" when Satan takes them into the wilderness at the end. Christ's work becomes a first stage, and the devil becomes the executor of the final stage. That is how, drop by drop, the sufficiency of Calvary is emptied — without denying it aloud, merely sharing with the adversary what belongs to the Savior alone.
For the ordinary reader of 1880, the effect was even more corrosive: instead of looking to Christ as the one who bore his sins, he was taught to look to Satan as their final destination. The repentant sinner learned to fear sin less — after all, when all was said and done, the one who would pay the bill was the devil.
The verdict of the Scriptures
The Bible leaves no room for this exchange of roles. Isaiah prophesied with surgical clarity: "the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all" (Isaiah 53:6). Not on the devil — on Him, the suffering Servant. The previous verse had already said: "he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed" (Isaiah 53:5).
John the Baptist presented Jesus to the world with these words: "Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29). Peter confirms: "who himself bore our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness" (1 Peter 2:24). And the author of Hebrews settles the question: Christ "was offered once to bear the sins of many" (Hebrews 9:28) — once, not in two stages; by Christ, not by the devil.
Paul sums up the gospel in a sentence that admits no partners in the atonement: "For he has 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). God made Christ sin for us. He did not make Satan carry anything. To attribute to the devil any part in the removal of sins is to rob Christ of the exclusive glory of Savior and divide it with the accuser — exactly the kind of inversion that the Scriptures condemn from the first book to the last.
The scapegoat, rightly understood, points to Christ precisely in what the paper tried to deny: it carried the iniquities far away, to a land not inhabited, as a figure of the one on whom God laid all our guilt and who removed it forever. "As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us" (Psalm 103:12). The one who removed them was the Lord, through the Lamb — never through the devil.