There is much speculation about the timing of finding the red heifer and the temple building in Jerusalem to begin Mosaic sacrifices again. Christians globally can get excited each time a pure red heifer has been bred in or brought to Israel, thinking this is an indication or sign of the times. Jesus said nothing of a red heifer, but He did tell us of signs to look for. Prophetically, we are still in the beginning of sorrows. Still, one thing is sure: the newly rebuilt temple will be polluted by the antichrist, and the system around it will be tied to Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots, and Abominations of the Earth!
And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows. -Matthew 24:4-8
The first warning Jesus gave the disciples in the Mount of Olives discourse was to beware of deception. He mentioned no sacrifices or cattle of any kind. The “red heifer” speculation may be a distraction meant to focus attention away from the
events preceding the Lord's coming. Why are we looking for a sign that Jesus spoke nothing about?
And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come. When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:) - Matthew 24:14-15
Nothing in Scripture states that a red heifer must be found and sacrificed prior to the building of the temple. Whether this animal is found or not, once the temple is built, it will not be for God’s glory, nor will it remain when the Lord returns. The abomination of desolation will be an image of the beast set up in the temple to defile it. God will not allow this temple to be used for His holy purpose!
Let’s examine the Word of God to see what we can glean about this temple and its system of worship.
The reference to the red heifer is found in Numbers 19:
Speak unto the children of Israel, that they bring thee a red heifer without spot, wherein is no blemish, and upon which never came yoke: - Numbers 19:2
Since this animal was used to begin the system of sacrifices under the Levitical priesthood, it is primarily believed that it must be found and offered again to reinitiate the law sacrifices. This is not Scripture, but rather, it comes from rabbinical tradition and teaching. I recommend reading all of Numbers 19, and if you’d like a summary overview of this red heifer teaching, you can go to
https://www.gotquestions.org/red-heifer.html to learn more. Many other articles on this subject can be found.
What many believers fail to understand is that Christ was the end of the law for righteousness to those who believe (Romans 10:4). God is not looking for even the most devout Orthodox Jews to begin offering sacrifices again; He is looking for their confession regarding the Messiah (Hosea 5:15). Sacrifices were only temporary until the Lamb of God would be offered up once for sins forever.
For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins. - Hebrews 10:1-4
No amount of blood sacrifice is going to atone for Israel’s rejection of Christ. They will have to turn from transgression and believe in Him (Isaiah 59:20). Only through His shed blood at Calvary will they receive the atonement. All the blood sacrifices through the ages only offered the bringer remission of sins, not the blotting out of sins. And those sins that were remitted awaited the perfect Sacrifice in Jesus Christ:
Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; - Romans 3:24-25
God forbade or tolerated the sins of the past that were remitted through animal sacrifices until the propitiation or perfect sacrifice in His Son was offered up. God is not looking to reinstate the Mosaic Law sacrifices in Israel; He is looking for His genuine people to acknowledge their offense and seek His face. This will come in their affliction, which includes persecution and oppression by the beast. During this time, unbelieving Israel will return to an apostate form of idolatry tied to the worship of the beast. There is a particular reason that a woman called the mother of harlots is riding the beast in the symbolism of Revelation 17: she represents idolatrous Jerusalem.
How is the faithful city become an harlot! it was full of judgment; righteousness lodged in it; but now murderers. - Isaiah 1:21
In Isaiah Chapter 1, God expresses His displeasure with all the blood sacrifices Israel offered Him. He was sick of it and said it was a stench in His nostrils. They worshipped Him with their lips, but their hearts were far from Him. Just as Jerusalem, the faithful city, had become a harlot through idolatry, so was Israel likened unto a wife of whoredoms. This symbolism ties into the mystery of
Babylon.
And the LORD said to Hosea, Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms: for the land hath committed great whoredom, departing from the LORD. - Hosea 1:2
Plead with your mother, plead: for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband: let her therefore put away her whoredoms out of her sight, and her adulteries from between her breasts; Lest I strip her naked, and set her as in the day that she was born, and make her as a wilderness, and set her like a dry land, and slay her with thirst. And I will not have mercy upon her children; for they be the children of whoredoms. For their mother hath played the harlot: she that conceived them hath done shamefully: for she said, I will go after my lovers, that give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, mine oil and my drink. - Hosea 2:2-5
Israel committed whoredom when she turned from serving the Lord to worshipping the fallen angels and the demonic spirits of the Nephilim hybrids. She made idols to her gods and bowed down to them. The terms whoredom and harlot are not used incidentally; they tie into the prophetic Mystery, Babylon, and all roads do not point to Rome!
And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters: With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication. - Revelation 17:1-2
Many are familiar with Alexander Hislop’s book The Two Babylons. In it, he lays out the case for Mystery, Babylon being the Roman Catholic Church. I do not doubt that the Roman system of worship is in mystery form today, as is the entire Roman Empire. This is the fourth beast of Daniel, and it will be the iron mixed with miry clay from Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. But those who postulate that Mystery, Babylon is the city of Rome itself, fail to see the accurate prophetic picture. They claim that only Rome sits on seven hills, but they are missing the symbolism of the mountains, not the hills.
And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth. And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space. And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition. - Revelation 17:9-11
Yes, the woman sits on seven mountains, but they do not represent geographical locations; they represent kings or kingdoms. More importantly, they represent fallen angel kings, principalities, and powers in high places.
Behold, I am against thee, O destroying mountain, saith the LORD, which destroyest all the earth: and I will stretch out mine hand upon thee, and roll thee down from the rocks, and will make thee a burnt mountain. - Jeremiah 51:25
God pronounces judgment on Babylon in Jeremiah Chapters 50 and 51. He calls the king of Babylon a destroying mountain. While historically, this king was Nebuchadnezzar, he was also a type of the antichrist or the Assyrian oppressor of Israel. Ryan Pitterson lays out in his book The Final Nephilim that the entity in several human beings that have been antichrist types was the spirit of a fallen angel bound in the abyss. This tells us that fallen angels and perhaps their Nephilim offspring were referred to as mountains and even trees, as we shall see.
When the Lord Jesus Christ returns to this earth, He will bring His army of angels and saints to fight against the antichrist and his hybrid human/angel armies in Jerusalem:
For the day of the LORD of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up; and he shall be brought low: And upon all the cedars of Lebanon, that are high and lifted up, and upon all the oaks of Bashan, And upon all the high mountains, and upon all the hills that are lifted up, - Isaiah 2:12-14
The proud and lofty fallen angels and their hybrid leader, the beast, will be destroyed with the brightness of the Lord’s coming. They will have caused utter destruction among the nations and polluted the city of Jerusalem with their idolatrous teaching. Israel and the world will worship them and the beast using
the system he sets up in the temple, which originates in Babylon. From the time of the tower of Babel, rebellious humanity sought occult wisdom from the fallen angels to establish a satanic system of worship that found its way into the Talmudic teachings of apostate Israel. Jerusalem will become the center of this worship when the temple is rebuilt, regardless of the sincere motives of
those who seek to rebuild it.
For those who need more convincing, consider this:
So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit
upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication: And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. - Revelation 17:3-5
The woman (city) is rich. And the merchants of the earth will mourn her destruction:
And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more: The merchandise of gold, and silver,
and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and
scarlet, and all thyine wood, and all manner vessels of ivory, and all manner vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble,
And cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots,
and slaves, and souls of men. - Revelation 18:11-13
The “merchandise” that made the harlot rich are the items that make up the temple and its worship! Included in this list is “the souls of men.” There is something sinister about this system of worship.
And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration. - Revelation 17:6
Notice the blood of saints and martyrs in this city. True, Rome persecuted Christianity at some point, but Jerusalem started the persecution. The Scriptures record Israel’s affliction of the believers in Jesus, not Rome’s. And, to be clear, Jesus pointed out who is responsible for the blood of the saints and the prophets:
Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city: That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. - Matthew 23:34-39
Jerusalem is responsible for all the righteous blood shed on the earth. This is clear. She turned to idolatry time and again, following the system of Babylon. She will do so again. This takes place when she makes a covenant with the antichrist.
And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate. - Daniel 9:27
The man of sin, or antichrist, will be instrumental in allowing the temple to be rebuilt. He will confirm a covenant with Israel to allow this, all the while knowing he plans to pollute the temple when he declares himself to be God. Jesus warned the disciples of this, too:
And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come. When ye therefore shall see the
abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:) - Matthew 24:14-15
The abomination of desolation is an image of the beast that will be placed in the Holy of Holies in the temple. The world and two-thirds of Israel will then worship the beast and take his mark at the instigation of the false prophet:
And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the
image of the beast should be killed. - Rev. 13:15
Paul called this the falling away, the time when the world will abandon God to worship the beast.
Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. - 2 Thessalonians 2:3-4
Over and over again, the Word of God states, “Don’t be deceived!” God wants us to understand. Mystery, Babylon will be apostate Jerusalem, and the beast will seek to place his throne there. Satan wants to be God, and he wants God’s holy mountain to be his seat. He will defile the temple they build in Jerusalem and use it to force the world to worship him. Don’t be happy about this temple! It will not stand. If you want to see the true temple of God that He will build in the 1,000 year reign of Christ, study Ezekiel Chapters 40 through 48.
Speculation about the red heifer distracts from the truth, and believers should not waste time seeking this sign. Instead, let us seek to proclaim the gospel to as many as we can until the rapture occurs. There is not much time left!
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