Israel’s sacrifice of Red Heifer cow: A harbinger of the Day of Judgement?

Plans to sacrifice heifers by extremist Jews to pursue a third temple construction in Israel have raised global concerns. Could this prophecy be a sign of the end of the world?

In ancient Judaism, the ritual of animal sacrifices plays a central role. According to the Talmud, one of the fundamental texts of Judaism, the tenth slaughter of a red heifer will be the last.

Following the slaughter, the Jewish Messiah will appear, burn the animal on the Mount of Olives, mix the ashes with water, and purify the believers with this water. Then, the Messiah will take them to the Temple Mount to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem, which the Romans destroyed in 70 AD.

According to Jewish prophecy, the reconstruction of the Jerusalem temple would, therefore, inevitably require the destruction of the first-rate Muslim sanctuaries, including the Aqsa mosque, the third most important mosque in Islam and the Dome of the Rock, from which the Prophet Muhammad saws began his nightly journey to the sky. 

Some Jews are so eager for the sacrifice of this famous cow that calls have been made to genetically modify a cow that could meet the criteria of the Talmud.

Israel also established a religious organisation, the Temple Institute, whose objective is to find the tenth heifer necessary for fulfilling the prophecy. As a reminder, nine red heifers have been slaughtered since the destruction of the Temple in the first century.

For forty years, the Temple Institute has been preparing the details necessary for constructing a new Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and resuming worship and sacrifices. 

According to chapter 19 of the biblical book of Numbers, the heifer must be entirely red, aged two years and one month, and never have worked or been injured.

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Five “red Angus” heifers were thus imported from Texas through evangelical Christians in 2022. Since then, they have been growing up under close surveillance in the colony of Shiloh, a centre of Judaism before the first Temple.

In an interview with CBN News in March 2023, Rabbi Yitzhak Mamo, a Uvne Jerusalem movement supporter of the Third Temple, suggested that Passover 2024 would promise sacrifice.

Since then, Christian religious leaders have been on alert. Describing this sacrifice as “madness”, a declaration signed on 8 April by 36 religious figures from Jerusalem and around the world denounces an “invitation to regional, even global, war”, which “will transform the Israeli-Palestinian situation from a political conflict into a religious conflict with no earthly solution.”

However, the perfect cow hasn’t been seen in 2,000 years. Since the Romans destroyed the Second Jewish Temple in 70 AD, which would have been located at the top of the Temple Mount, the flawless red heifer has not been seen.

Hence why, some Jewish activists, as well as American evangelical Christians who believe that the construction of the Third Temple will enable the second coming of Jesus and Armageddon, have decided to raise their own heifers.

In January, Abu Obaida, spokesman for Hamas’s military wing, gave a speech marking 100 days since the group’s 7 October attack on Israel near the Gaza Strip.

In his speech, Obaida drew a direct link between Hamas’s decision to attack Israel and the importation of livestock by supporters of the Third Temple, which he called “an assault on the feelings of an entire nation.”