Bulletin Q&A Article; Published 4-14-24:
What are your thoughts about the Red Heifer and the Mount of Olives?
Questions come to me from a variety of avenues. This question came to me from a young man as I stood in the aisle of Harbor Freight trying to select a router bit to purchase. I had been at Mt. Loretto Cemetery that afternoon for a committal service, and took advantage of the opportunity to stop at Harbor Freight while I was in town. Since I was coming from the committal service, I was wearing a clerical shirt with the Roman collar. The young man timidly approached me wanting to know if I was a Catholic. I explained that I was a Catholic deacon and we started up a conversation. He claimed to be new to following Christ and had a lot of questions about Catholicism. But the key reason he stopped me was to ask what I thought about the Red Heifer movement. I was a little blindsided and admitted to him that it wasn’t even on my radar. He showed me a news article on his phone which made me curious. And so, I decided to dig into the subject when I got home and share some information with you.
It turns out that there is a small but powerful group of Orthodox Jews who are intent on building a 3rd Temple. The first Temple was built by Solomon and was completed in 957 BC. But it was destroyed by the Babylonians in 587 BC. The Temple was rebuilt under the decree of Cyrus. Construction began in 536 BC with completion in 515 BC. This is referred to as the 2nd Temple. It stood until the Roman siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD.
While we await Jesus’ Second Coming, the Jews are still awaiting the Messiah to come the first time. There is a belief among some of the Jews that the Messiah will not come until a 3rd Temple is built. Tied to this belief is the need for the sacrifice of a red heifer based on Chapter 19 of the Book of Numbers from the Old Testament. (It is interesting that some Christians see the red heifer as a prefigurement of Jesus based on verse 3: “You will give it to Eleazar the priest, and it will be led outside the camp and slaughtered in his presence.”) Following the prescription set out in Numbers 19, the ashes of the burnt red heifer would be used to purify those who would work on, and in, the Temple. And so, to them the appearance of red heifers would be considered a sign that the Messianic age is imminent.
There is a big problem, however, with rebuilding the Temple on its original site—it is now the location of Islam’s holiest site, the Al-Aqsa Mosque. This sets up a potentially violent conflict between the proponent of the 3rd Temple and Muslims. Adding to the drama, red heifers have only recently reappeared in Israel after a 2000 year absence. A red heifer is actually reddish-brown, described as an earthy color. Heifers are female cattle that have never been pregnant and milked. The red heifer prescribed for sacrifice must have never been yoked and must be without flaw or blemish. More than one non-red hair is considered a flaw. They must be 3-4 years old when sacrificed. So where did these rare red heifers for potential sacrifice come from? They were originally bred in Texas and five were shipped to Israel in 2022.
The current conflict in the Middle East between Israel and Hamas has brought the red heifer movement into new focus. A Hamas spokesperson mentioned Jews “bringing red cows’ to the Holy Land as one of the motivations for their October 7th massacre because it is a sign that the Jews want to tear down the Mosque to build the new Temple. The owner of the red heifers also owns a plot of land in the Mount of Olives which is the proposed site of sacrifice. It overlooks the Mosque, the proposed Temple building site. The heifers are now the correct age for sacrifice and there is speculation that it could occur this year, possibly to coincide with the Jewish feast of Passover on April 22. The potential for conflict grows. Stay tuned.
To answer the question that I was not able to answer in Harbor Freight, we believe that Jesus’ death on the cross put an end to animal sacrifice. Animal sacrifice as a requirement for His Second Coming, therefore, discredits any movements that claim that sacrificing a red heifer portends the end of the world.