“Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door. I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.” (Matthew 24:33-34)
I am not a student of prophecy. Frankly, I don’t worry about whether we are living in the “last days” that the Apostle Paul described in 2 Timothy 3:1. We have been given the Great Commission and our charge as Christians is to help the Lord to bring as many others to Christ as we can. After all, Peter told us, “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief.” (2 Peter 3:10)
My spin on the importance of prophecy makes a lot of sense until you examine the Bible. The fact is prophecy is very important to God. 17 of the 66 books that comprise God’s Word are known as books of prophecy. That’s right. From Isaiah to Malachi, God speaks to his children through prophets. Jesus even prophesied about the end of time, encouraged us to recognize its signs, and reminded us, “but he who stands firm to the end will be saved.” (Matthew 24:13) God expects us to understand and pay attention to prophesy.
There are many that now claim the birth of red heifer in Israel is a sign from God that work can soon begin on building the Third Temple, an event reserved for end times. According to Jewish sources, no flawless red heifer has been born in Israel since the Roman emperor, Titus, destroyed Herod’s Temple in AD 70. Only nine were recorded in the Jewish Talmud and the strain has long been thought to be extinct, thus making it impossible to even consider a return to Temple ritual.
Jewish activists who want to rebuild the temple and prepare the way for the Messiah’s entry into Jerusalem are hailing the birth of the animal to a black-and-white mother and a dun-colored bull as a miracle. “We have been waiting 2000 years for a sign from God,” one of them said, “and now he has provided us with a red heifer.”
“It is written that it is the 10the heifer that the Messiah will discover and here we have the 10th heifer. This is a clear sign that the Messiah is near,” said Rabbi Ido Weber Erlich, of Jerusalem, in an interview on Israel Radio.
In the days of the Temple, all who entered it had to be made spiritually clean by being sprinkled with a substance of which the main ingredient came from the ashes of a red heifer burned in its third year. Jews believe the fourth book of their Torah, the book of Numbers in our Bible, requires the sacrifice of a red heifer, unblemished, without defect, and never having worn a yoke, for the purification of those who wish to rebuild the temple. (Numbers 19:5-13)
A dozen rabbis have examined the calf and said she is the long-awaited ritual heifer, meeting, so far, all the criteria prescribed by God in Numbers 19:2. If the calf lives unblemished for another 18 months, she can theoretically be put to use.
When I first read this account, I dismissed it as nothing more than a plot by Jewish extremists to regain control of holy ground. You see history records that Mount Zion has been occupied by Muslims for the last 1300 years and is the location for the third holiest shrine in Islam, the Dome of the Rock. Muslims believe the Prophet Mohammed ascended to heaven from Zion, so they, too, revere the site as holy.
It sounded extreme until I read an account of the Lord’s return as told to us through the Prophet Micah: “In that day,” declares the Lord, “I will gather the lame; I will assemble the exiles and those I have brought to grief. I will make the lame a remnant, those driven away a strong nation. The Lord will rule over them in Mount Zion from that day and forever.” (Micah 4:6-7)
You may not think or care if we are living in end times, but listen to the word of the our Lord: “Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.” (Matthew 24:44)
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