Israel Now Has Red Heifers : Needed Before the Temple

 Nadene Goldfoot                                            

Israel has tried and tried to find a red heifer, but usually some little white patch has appeared on it's body as it aged, making it unusable. A heifer is a young female cow who has not yet had a calf.  

The Red Heifer was important in ancient days because it played an important part in making a sacrifice, a congregational sacrifice.  The ashes of a red heifer had to be mixed with water, and it was used to remove any impurity created by contact with the dead. Cohens were not allowed to touch the dead and not allowed to do so even today.  

The ashes had to be from an all red heifer, quite a rare find today and most likely then as well,  had to be unblemished and never yoked (used in the fields).  The burning of its body had to take place outside the camp at Jerusalem, on the Mt of Olives.  Even those that handled all this also required purification (Num 19).  

Update: A recent delivery of five red heifers from Texas to Israel is causing quite a stir. Talk is growing that their arrival is prophetic, and a prerequisite to the return of the Messiah.  Some rabbis believe the ashes of a red heifer are necessary for purifying priests to serve in a future Temple. The heifers were discovered and brought to Israel with the help of the Boneh Israel – “Building Israel” – organization and its team leader, Byron Stinson. 

From the time of Moses (1391BCE-1271BCE)  to the time of the 2nd Temple-the return of Jews from Babylon that were allowed to leave and rebuild their Temple  (538 BCE), only 9 red heifers had ever been used in such a sacrifice. Many people have tried to raise a perfect red heifer, but all have failed until now.     

All this information is found in the Mishna, a legal book containing the core of the Oral Law of Moses, compiled by Rabbi Judah Ha-Nasi on the basis of previous collections and arranged logically, divided into 6 groups (sedarim).  It deals with religious laws pertaining to  agriculture, seasons, Sabbath and festivals, women, marriage and divorce, damages of civil and criminal legislation,, holy things like ritual slaughter, sacrifices, purities. It's an encyclopedia of all the 613 laws we follow.  

The very 1st red heifer was processed by Moses.  The 2nd red heifer was done by the prophet Ezra during 1st Temple days.  The 2nd Temple lasted until till 70 CE (538 + 70=608 years.  During those 608 years, only 7 more heifers were used for the ashes it produced, enough to provide for the nation of Israel and then just Judah to purify people and things for all those years.

The high priest at that period had to prepare those 7 heifers.  They were 1. Shimon the Just and 2. Yochanan.  Each had 2 heifers to prepare.  3. El'yhoeini ben Hakof;  4. Chanameil HaMitzri;  and 5. Yishmael ben Pi'avi processed one heifer each.  

Since the beginning with Moses till 70 CE, purifying ashes have been produced by the hands of these high priests, and 9 heifers have been involved.  

Actually, the act has not been repeated since then since the Jewish people were almost completely destroyed by the Romans who took survivors of the burning of Jerusalem and the Temple as slaves, while others managed to escape and find refuge.  We have so much history of this event written by Josephus.  https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2022/09/the-history-and-genealogy-of-flavius.html  When reading Josephus, you have to realize he was their prisoner, and he was writing for a Roman audience, so he would be very careful to flatter them, not to insult them.                                         

We have Israel once again.  When King Solomon died in 920 BCE, his son, Jeroboam was the heir, but he continued the heavy taxation of his father for the Temple, and the people saw Solomon's death as a time for change to get rid of the taxation, and chose to have a Civil War and new king.  They ceded from the Union of the 12 tribes, leaving Solomon's son's state of Judah which had already taken in most of Simeon and Benjamin. The Ten Tribes ceded, only to become the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel which we are now finding again as some have already made their way back home.  The Ethiopians, not of the 10 but created according to the history of the Queen of Sheba visiting Solomon and her leaving pregnant, have just had their last group return to Israel, being the newest immigrants.                               

The provisional government was created. David Ben-Gurion, leader of Mapai and head of the Jewish Agency, became Israel's first Prime Minister on May 14, 1948.

          David Ben Gurion, Prime Minister of Israel on Time by 16 August 1948.  

May 14, 1948 was the birth of the new nation of Israel.  The Temple is not yet rebuilt, but they have the ability to make all the ashes they will need now for a long time to come.  Since before 1980, the Temple Institute, of which Stanley Goldfoot was a member, had been preparing for the day the Temple would again be built. Stanley had been the Chief of Intelligence for the Stern Group. 

Ezekiel of the 6th century BCE had had  vision of the Temple.  He was also a priest of the family of Zadok and may have served in the Temple before its destruction in 586 BCE.  Ezekiel was among those exiled before that date to Tel Abib on the river Kebar in Babylonia where he prophecied over a period of at least 22 years.   

In ancient days, the 2nd Temple had been built over the 1st Temple that was built by Solomon from 538 to 515 BCE during the period of Simon the Just, the high priest. and  Judah the Maccabee, Simon the Hasmonean, and Herod.  The Herodian Wall (Western Wall, Wailing Wall, Kotel) that surrounded the Temple hill measured 913 x 1,515 x 1,586 x 1,050 feet.  The area enclosed had to be leveled and filled between the Tyropoeion and Kidron valleys.  One entered by the many gates and approached by 4 bridges.  

The Temple itself was divided into the hall, the shrine and the holy of holies which was empty and entered only by the High Priest on the Day of Atonement or Yom Kippur.  The holy of holies is sacred, the reason why many rabbis discourage their followers from visiting the Temple Mount.  They are afraid they will be walking over this area.  After its destruction, the Romans were still there, and built themselves a Roman Temple over the remains.  After that when Mohammad had died in 632 CE, a mosque, the Mosque of Omar, was built over the Roman Temple.    

We have plenty of people who are descendants of the Levite priests, as found by DNA bearing the Y haplogroup of J1.  Israel does not have a high priest.  The Chief Rabbis are elected for 10-year terms. The present Sephardi Chief Rabbi is Yitzhak Yosef, and the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi is David Lau, both of whom began their terms in 2013. The Rabbinate has jurisdiction over many aspects of Jewish life in Israel. The 10 years are almost up, as 2023 is not far off.  

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://templeinstitute.org/red-heifer-the-tenth-red-heifer/

https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/israel/2022/september/texas-red-heifers-arrival-stirs-prophetic-excitement