The Red Heifers have arrived in Israel! So says the May 22, 2023, article “Prophetic Anticipation Builds: Unblemished Red Heifers for Temple Ceremony Soon Come of Age.” The claim is, based on Numbers 19, the heifers need to be at least 3 years old for priestly purification purposes. For that you need priests, animal sacrifices, and a physical temple, all of which passed away when the temple was destroyed by the Romans in AD 70. None of this has anything to do with Bible prophecy as I pointed out in a previous article.
Anyone making anything of this is going back to the rituals of the Old Covenant that Jesus fulfilled. When Jesus said, “It’s finished,” He meant it. I can understand why some religious Jews believe that heifers are important but not Christians, and yet many Christians get excited about red heifers and calls to rebuild the temple as if it has anything to do with Bible prophecy. Read the book of Hebrews.
But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things having come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made by hands, that is, not of this creation; and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all time, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled, sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? (9:11-14)
Jesus is the endpoint of its fulfillment. End of story. But it seems it’s never the end.
Did you know that AI, Artificial Intelligence is found in the Bible? No? Neither did I. But there it is, big as day. The city of Ai. That’s right! It’s been there all the time. Here’s how it goes:
[M]ight there be a biblical connection to AI? The answer is yes, according to a popular author known for illuminating Scriptures. “Ai is actually mentioned in the Bible,” says Joe Kovacs, author of the best-selling “Reaching God Speed: Unlocking the Secret Broadcast Revealing the Mystery of Everything.”
“No, it’s not an abbreviation for artificial intelligence. It’s a single word spelled A-i, and can be pronounced like each of its letters, as in ‘a’ and ‘i.’
“It’s the name of an ancient Canaanite city, and it packs an incredible significance for today when we examine Ai on the spirit or metaphor level. “This was a real, historical place, but it carries an additional parable meaning as well, since Jesus only spoke to people in parables, and ‘did not say anything to them without using a parable’ (Matthew 13:34). He, of course, is still speaking to everyone through every word in the Bible.”
Kovacs explains the first key to unlocking the mystery is to understand the meaning of the word ‘Ai,’ which can be translated as ‘Ruin’ or ‘a heap of ruins.’ “That’s big hint No. 1, the fact that Ai actually means ruin or a heap of ruins, coming from a Hebrew verb meaning to bend, twist, pervert and distort, all leading to ruin,” Kovacs explains.
“God says He’s ‘declaring the end from the beginning’ (Isaiah 46:10), so right from the start of something, He’s broadcasting the end result, its future conclusion.” Interestingly, the author notes, the ancient town of Ai happened to be located “beside Bethaven, on the east side of Bethel.” (Joshua 7:2)
“When we learn the meanings of these places, it provides even more clues,” says Kovacs. “Bethel means ‘house of God’ and Bethaven means ‘house of vanity (nothingness)’ or ‘house of plenty of trouble.’
“So Ai, the place of ruin, was closely associated with the house of vanity, nothingness, and plenty of trouble. That sounds a whole lot like our world today.
The article goes on to make “metaphorical” associations to what’s happening today and ends with, “God may be using this ancient event as a divine hint, a physical example of what today’s AI may bring if artificial intelligence twists, distorts and perverts the truth.”
There’s nothing wrong with comparing events in Scripture to what’s taking place in our day but linking the city of Ai to Artificial Intelligence in anyway is Scripture Twisting like the way the Hebrew word rosh in Ezekiel 38-39 is said to refer to modern-day Russia. There are no linguistic, etymological, or historical correlations. It’s fulfilled prophecy. See My book The Gog and Magog End-Time Alliance.
These types of associations remind me of how bar codes were said to be the mark of the beast. More than 30 years ago, Gary H. Kah thought so when he wrote the following in his book En Route to Global Occupation: “It will only be a matter of time before humans are tattooed with a similar mark to the codes in the supermarket.” Then there was Mary Stewart Relfe’s 1982 book The New Money System: 666. Supposedly the familiar bar code, the Universal Product Code (UPC) symbol, has three longer lines that each represents the number six, thus, 6-6-6.
One problem is that the biblical number is six hundred (600), sixty (60), and six (6). (Some manuscripts have 616).
Some Greek manuscripts a single Greek letter to represent the number since in Greek, like in Hebrew, letters were used for numbers: χ = 600 ξ = 60 ς = 6. For a comprehensive study of this topic, see Chapter 19 in my book Last Days Madness. The Romans used a similar system of letters representing numbers.
The number and mark of the Beast have been misidentified over the centuries as the sign of the cross, ordination of bishops, labels on products made by trade unions, and the red star of Communist nations. In our day, Social Security numbers, worshiping on Sunday instead of Saturday, and the World Wide Web have been singled out as the mark of the Beast. The WWW in Hebrew would be VVV. The V (vav) is the number for six.
Once again, three 6s is not the same as six hundred and sixty, and six.
Then there’s Monster Energy Drinks.
Let’s not forget this from Hal Lindsey’s 1973 book There’s a New World Coming:
I have a Christian friend who was a Green Beret in Viet Nam. When he first read this chapter he said, “I know what those are. I’ve seen hundreds of them in Viet Nam. They’re Cobra helicopters! That may be conjecture, but it does give you something to think about! A Cobra helicopter does fit the sound of “many chariots.” My friend believes that the means of torment will be a kind of nerve gas sprayed from its tail. (138-139).
I suspect that over the centuries Bible commentators interpreted much of what we read in Revelation in terms of the news of their own time. See my free booklet Doomsday Déjà Vu.
When will the craziness stop? Not until Christians interpret the Bible in terms of its own literature (the true definition of literal), the timing of prophetic events (near, soon, ready, quickly, this generation), audience relevance (e.g., the use of the second person plural in many prophetic passages), and covenant importance related to the physical nature of the Old Covenant and the spiritual nature of the New Covenant (Gal. 4:21-30; Heb. 12:18-29).
Everything else is nonsense and dangerous.