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“According to all that I am going to show you, as the pattern1 of the tabernacle and the pattern of all its furniture, just so you shall construct it.”
Exodus 25:9 NASB 1995
“For the Law, since it has only a shadow2 of the good things to come and not the very form of things, can never, by the same sacrifices which they offer continually year by year, make perfect those who draw near.”
Hebrews 10:1 NASB 1995, italic words supplied by the translators
““For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands and bring you into your own land. “Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. “Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” (Ezekiel 36:24–26 NAS95)
Ezekiel 36 is the second witness of the New Covenant, with Jeremiah 31 as the first witness, and it’s not a coincidence that Ezekiel 36 is tied thematically to the Red Heifer, which is a key component of the water of purification. The promises of the new covenant come with the ashes of the red heifer.
There has been a lot of talk in the past several months regarding the red heifer. The Temple Institute has been working for decades to make and find the implements necessary for the resumption of the Temple.
The Temple Institute has brought four Parah Adumah (Red Heifer) candidates to Israel from Texas for possible offering before Pesakh in 2024. The goal is to make the waters of purification that are necessary to cleanse the items and the people in preparation for the establishment of the 3rd Temple.
There are two camps in Judaism today: One side says that only the Messiah can make the Red Heifer offering. The other camp says that the Messiah has to be there to officiate it, even if he doesn’t actually offer it himself.
The Red Heifer is always offered outside the Temple, not within it. It’s the only sacrifice that is slaughtered outside the Temple, but it’s the sacrifice that makes all the other sacrifices possible.
The truth is that the Messiah was/is the Red Heifer. He was the one sacrificed outside the camp because He is the one who conquered death, and His death sanctified those who accepted Him.
The dilemma the Temple Institute have is that although they have Cohanim, they have to screen them to determine if they have ever had any contact with a dead body, a grave, or a cemetery. With so many unmarked graves in the world, it’s impossible for a Cohen to know if he has ever had contact with the dead or not.
Many Jews understand that only the Messiah is pure enough to make the offerings necessary to get the Temple in operation. Let’s pray that the Jews realize that the Messiah has already come and that He is coming again, and when He comes again, He will be the sinless, ritually pure one who can do what would be necessary to establish the Temple, just as Moses, the friend of God, was the one who could offer that first Red Heifer.
Another problem with offering the Red Heifer is that the red heifer was sacrificed on the Mount of Olives, but there are many, many graves on the Mount of Olives. Since Cohens can’t be in a graveyard or near dead bodies, this is a serious complication.
When the Muslims took over Jerusalem, they did a couple of things. Number one, they sealed up the east gate because they knew the tradition that said the Messiah would come through the east gate at His second coming, so they sealed it up thinking that would prevent the Messiah from coming through it. The other thing they did was establish the Mount of Olives as a graveyard. And there are graves on that hill that are 1000 years old. And even to this day, there are still people being buried on the Mount of Olives.
When Yeshua the Messiah returns, He will set foot on the Mount of Olives, split it in half, and open all the graves so the Mount of Olives will no longer have any graves or the contamination of death on it. This is why it’s only the Messiah who can truly reinstate an authentic and valid Temple service.
Heaven is the one who offered the Messiah for us. The Jews didn’t offer, the Romans didn’t offer Him. He offered Himself.
The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil ended up being a Tree of Death for Adam, Eve, and all their descendants. But a major message of the Bible is that death is out of place in the order God created. Corruption and contact with it cannot approach the Presence. But Heaven can provide protection against threats to get us to the goal Heaven has for us.
We are the ones who are symbolically going up in smoke with the sacrifices, and that smell is not a pleasant smell as it’s consumed. God destroys and forgets what we were before.
This is why during Pesach, we do not eat any leavened, fermented bread. We eat only pure bread, which is uncorrupt. This represents that only things that are pure and incorruptible can abide with God in His holiness. Heaven plans to reverse the reign of death, making life reign eternally.
The Red Heifer was to be unblemished, perfect, and fully intact. It was to be slaughtered and then burned up along with cedar and hyssop, both of which are red and both are known for keeping items from being infested by bugs, larvae, and germs.
“For the soul of the flesh is in the blood, and I have therefore given it to you [to be placed] upon the altar, to atone for your souls. For it is the blood that atones for the soul.” (Leviticus 17:11 Judaica Press Complete Tanach)
It was only through the application of the ashes of the red heifer that anyone who had contact with death could ever enter the Temple and approach God with any confidence whatsoever.
We have this thanks to the Messiah Yeshua, who was God in the flesh. His once and for all sacrifice makes it possible for us to boldly approach God, and it’s because of Him that all nations will be a part of the Kingdom of God. This is only because Yeshua was completely divine yet completely human that His atonement on the cross was accepted.
God never asks for human sacrifices in the Tanakh. The only time He ever asked for one was when He asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, and that was only to test Abraham’s faith. There is no human sacrifice that God ever finds acceptable. As a matter of fact, God tells the Israelites that one of the reasons He wants them to clear out all the Canaanites from the Promised Land is because they often sacrificed their children to their gods, which God found abhorrent. Unfortunately, the Israelites did not completely clear the land of the Canaanites, and they later adopted the practice themselves. The Valley of Hinnom was infamous as a venue for child sacrifice, forcing their children to pass through the fire to Molech. The only human sacrifice God smiles down upon is our living sacrifice.
We live in a culture of death, where people conspire to kill the unborn in the womb, to kill the elderly and terminally ill with “euthanasia.” We live in a culture of death that celebrates suicide.
Our culture also applauds and praises those who are the most malicious, making those with the harshest tongues famous as they slander and gossip about people who are better than them, presuming that if they direct attention to other people’s sins that it will take eyes off their own sins. People also take pride in assaulting and committing acts of violence against their neighbors, even filming and posting these things on social media.
But God calls us to choose life.
“‘I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants.’” (Deuteronomy 30:19 NASB 1995)
“Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.’” (John 14:6 NASB 1995)
Summary: Tammy
- Pattern: תַּבְנִית tabnı̂t: pattern, plan. (Waltke, Bruce K. Harris, R. Laird, Gleason L. Archer, and Bruce K. Waltke, eds. Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament. Accordance electronic edition, version 2.8. Chicago: Moody Press, 1980.) ↩︎
- Shadow: σκιά skia. Form: εἰκών eikōn. “The Platonic distinction between shadowy image and real form, which is ultimately equivalent to that between appearance and reality, plays an important part in Philo’s religious philosophy. He describes God’s works of creation as skia, so that we can draw conclusions from the visible world about the invisible God. The Logos, which has in addition a mediating function, can also be called eikōn and skia. Philo makes a conscious distinction between the exceptional, mediatorial role of Moses, and that of the prophets, attributing to Moses a knowledge of God en eidei, in form, while the prophets know him only en skia, in a shadow.” (Verbrugge, Verlyn D. New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (Abridged). Accordance electronic edition, version 1.6. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000.) ↩︎