It is indeed impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins (Hebrews 10:4), but no one said anything about the blood of heifers, and that’s super important.
No one says it outright, but it’s practically implied by our dispensational brethren every couple of years when a supposedly pure red heifer may or may not be discovered by a rabbi, or something.
That happened recently when a Christian rancher in Texas got hooked up with some Jewish rabbis, and he flew out five red female cows to Israel, and one was selected to be the sacrifice to help purify an impending Third Temple, thus ushering in the rapture, tribulation, rebuilding of the temple, and so on.
Heifer Hype
This eschatological belief is supposedly rooted in Numbers 19:1-10, which reads as follows:
Then the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, “This is the statute of the law which the Lord has commanded, saying, ‘Speak to the sons of Israel that they bring you an unblemished red heifer in which is no defect and on which a yoke has never been placed. You shall give it to Eleazar the priest, and it shall be brought outside the camp and be slaughtered in his presence. Next Eleazar the priest shall take some of its blood with his finger and sprinkle some of its blood toward the front of the tent of meeting seven times. Then the heifer shall be burned in his sight; its hide and its flesh and its blood, with its refuse, shall be burned. The priest shall take cedar wood and hyssop and scarlet material and cast it into the midst of the burning heifer. The priest shall then wash his clothes and bathe his body in water, and afterward come into the camp, but the priest shall be unclean until evening. The one who burns it shall also wash his clothes in water and bathe his body in water, and shall be unclean until evening. Now a man who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer and deposit them outside the camp in a clean place, and the congregation of the sons of Israel shall keep it as water to remove impurity; it is purification from sin. The one who gathers the ashes of the heifer shall wash his clothes and be unclean until evening; and it shall be a perpetual statute to the sons of Israel and to the alien who sojourns among them. - Numbers 19:1-10
The thinking is that for the temple to be rebuilt, the red heifer has to be sacrificed to cleanse the people and the property, just like they did in Bible times.
But for people who claim to read the Bible literally, I just have to be blunt: they’re not even reading.
Where, oh where, is the temple referenced in Numbers 19? It is not, because this was a one-time command for the Tabernacle, not Solomon’s temple. With this being a one-time command, it specifically mentions Eleazar, and he died a long, long time ago (Joshua 24:33).
In fact, the only time the term “red heifer” is used in all of Scripture is right there in verse 2. There is simply no instruction nor prophecy regarding a red heifer in all of Scripture, and the Third Temple is the Church anyway (1 Corinthians 3:16-17).
Even worse, the belief that a red heifer will be sacrificed at a new temple to usher in the Messiah not only doesn’t come from the Bible, it comes from the Mishnah, otherwise known as the tradition of the Pharisees/elders (Mark 7:5; Matthew 15:2). Therefore, this is a prophecy of those who deny the Son, meaning they also deny the Father (1 John 2:23), ultimately meaning they fail the test of a true prophet, because this is a different god altogether (Deuteronomy 18:20).
Hermeneutics Over Hype
As I mentioned in my last eschatological blog on Ezekiel 38-39, the issue here is one of basic hermeneutics. The method of interpreting Scripture that results in the glorious doctrines of the Trinity, salvation by grace alone, and creation ex nihilo is ultimately a simple one, and to say that a red heifer has to be sacrificed in order to build a new temple so that Jesus can rapture the Church and deal with Israel so that two-thirds of them can die in a new holocaust and then He comes back to rule for a literal thousand years while some of the world has been resurrected while others are still living and dying, has more in common with the dreams you had the last time you were laid up with the flu than with allowing Scripture to speak for itself.
Allow me to prove that with a quote from the aforementioned rancher.
“I just think the world needs to know,” he wrote on Facebook. “The ceremony went perfect. With a perfect priest. In a place outside of the camp. And, in the opinion of those I respect, we used a perfect red heifer.”
Perfect? A perfect priest? Outside the camp? Do you not hear yourself?
This is simply blasphemy of the highest order, a denial of the blood of the perfect High Priest in the order of Melchizedek (Hebrews 9:12-13). This doesn’t just fly in the face of properly interpreting the Bible, it throws two middle fingers at the entire book of Hebrews, which directly quotes from Numbers 19 and how it applies to Jesus Christ (Hebrews 13).
The Epistle of Barnabas, dated as early as the first century AD, gets this right. The red heifer, the temple, all of it pointed to Christ and His Church (Luke 24:27, 44).
Needless Carnage
Sadly for the cow but hilariously in the eschatological sense, the supposedly pure red heifer was disqualified anyway because they found two black hairs on it, meaning it couldn’t be used for the ceremony anyway.
So what did they do? They killed it in a practice run.
Yes, we’re talking about practice, and one of God’s creatures died needlessly for it. Pagan religion, which modern Judaism is, is wickedly cruel.
And why is it cruel? Because they deny the One who made them (2 Peter 2:1). They deny that Isaiah 53 was fulfilled on Calvary, and they deny that salvation is by faith alone in Jesus Christ alone.
And what do some Christians do? They decide to aid and abet them in their false religion.
When Polycarp met the heretic Marcion, the latter asked him if he recognized him, to which Polycarp responded, “Yes, I know you to be the firstborn of Satan.” Modern audiences cringe at that level of boldness because we don’t want anyone to feel excluded, but these rabbis, aided by someone who claims the name of Christ, spat in our Lord’s face by rejecting what Jesus ended 2,000 years ago, substituting a practice run for the Atonement.
So where’s the beef? Not in Israel, not in a rancher’s export program, and not in a prophecy conference PowerPoint. The real meat of Scripture shows us that the fulfillment of all of that was on Calvary two thousand years ago, nailed to a Roman cross, buried in a borrowed tomb, and raised on the third day. To long for another heifer, another temple, or another sacrifice is to say, “It is not finished.” But the gospel declares the opposite: it is finished. Christians don’t need to look for livestock in Israel. We look to the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
You can hear this podcast on the Westminster Effects Doxology Podcast feed on Apple and Spotify.
Nice post and very interesting.