Animal Sacrifice Planned for April 6?

Jerusalem and the Dome of the Rock

The following news item was of interest:

Mock Passover Sacrifice Slammed by Pro-Animal Group

Israel National News – April 2, 2008

Animal rights group “Tnoo Lachayot Lichyot” (“Let the Animals Live”) is threatening to take legal action to prevent the Jewish Temple movement from carrying out an educational demonstration of the Pesach (Passover) sacrifice next week.

The group’s chairman, Attorney Reuven Ladiansky, sent a letter to Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski and to Temple Institute Director Yehuda Glick, urging them to cancel the planned event or face legal action. The group sees the planned sacrifice as an act of illegal cruelty to an animal.

The demonstration of the Paschal sacrifice is part of a study day scheduled to take place on Sunday, the First of Nissan (April 6), at the Kotel Yeshiva in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City. The study day is a joint project of the Temple Institute, the Sanhedrin and the King David Museum. It was originally planned to take place one week later, but the organizers decided to dedicate it to the memory of the eight yeshiva boys murdered in Jerusalem recently, and to hold it on the 30th day after their death.

The study day is to include a public sacrifice which is being termed a “general rehearsal” for the actual Pesach sacrifice on the Temple Mount, a ritual prescribed by the Torah but currently forbidden by the Israel government and courts.

Public sacrifices are allowed

Glick told Ynet Monday that according to Jewish law, abstaining from performing the sacrifice is an extremely serious offense, comparable in its severity to avoiding a brit (circumcision ceremony) for one’s newborn boy. He explained that although Jewish law forbids Jews in an impure state (which all Jews are in as long as the Temple rites are not renewed) from entering the Temple area, an exception is made for public sacrifices like the Pesach sacrifice.

The Temple movement recently sent a formal request to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Minister of Public Security Avi Dichter, to allow them to conduct the sacrifice on the Temple Mount. “Making the Paschal sacrifice is part of the religious freedom which is a basic human right and a cornerstone of democracy,” they wrote.Glick said, however, that the organizers “have no intention of trying to ascend to the Mount without permission from the police.” …

The Temple movement has conducted several Paschal sacrifices in recent years. The ceremonies took place in front of the Temple Mount, on a hill which is called the Hill of Hananyah, and on the Mount of Olives. These sacrifices, however, bore a symbolic nature and were seen as memorials to the real Pesach sacrifice, because Biblical law stipulates that the Pesach sacrifice can only be performed on the Temple Mount.

Court cited ‘Special feelings’

In Biblical times, pilgrims came to Jerusalem from all parts of the Land of Israel, each family bringing with it a lamb, which was sacrificed in the Temple. The family then took the lamb and roasted it according to the Bible’s instructions, making sure it did not touch the oven or the ground during the roasting. Then each family sat together and ate the sacrifice.

In 2007, the Temple Mount Faithful and the Sanhedrin rabbis purchased a herd of sheep and petitioned the Supreme Court to allow a Pesach sacrifice to be offered on the Temple Mount. However, the government and legal advisors to the police asked the Supreme Court to reject the plea. The act of bringing a sacrifice could threaten the general public’s safety, they said, citing the Muslim public’s “special feelings” for the Temple Mount and the possibility of a violent outbreak.

Besides the planned Pesach sacrifice demonstration, next week’s study day will include discussions regarding the possibility of using an electrical oven or a ceramic skewer for roasting the Pesach sacrifice. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/125769

And while it is true that God’s calendar year begins on April 6, 2008 (see Holy Day Calendar) and Christians do not need to sacrifice animals as a sin offering (see Hebrews 9:19-26), it is also true that some type of sacrifices must start, before they can be stopped.

Last year an attempt to perform an animal sacrifice by certain Jews near the Dome of the Rock was stopped by Israeli authorities, and I suspect that they will not allow them to be started this year. But sometime, relatively soon, this will change.

Because Israel has a parliamentary system of governance and is normally governed by a coalition of parties, I believe that at some point in time a coalition party that insists on animal sacrifices will become part of the top governance and the sacrifices will then begin–though they may last only a very short period of time–but long enough for the King of the North to stop them per Daniel 11:31.

And since animal sacrifices have not yet started, it should be obvious to any one who will look into their Bibles that the 1290 days of Daniel 12:11 did not begin on March 18, 2008 as CGPFK’s Ronald Weinland stated it did as the daily sacrifices were not taken away as they have never started.

However, Bible prophecy does show that these sacrifices will be stopped and the “abomination of desolation set up” (Daniel 9:29; 11:31; Matthew 24), so the fact that some in Israel keep trying to have some type of sacrifice shows that this one aspect of prophecy is on the way of being fulfilled.

And since the Pope is opposed to it, he and his supporters will most likely be involved with stopping those sacrifices and setting up their own religious “abomination” as prophecy indicates.

Two articles of possibly related interest may include:

Europa, the Beast, and Revelation Where did Europe get its name? What might Europe have to do with the Book of Revelation? What about “the Beast”?
Who is the King of the North? Is there one? Do biblical and Roman Catholic prophecies point to the same leader? Should he be followed? Who will be the King of the North discussed in Daniel 11? Is a nuclear attack prophesied to happen to the English-speaking peoples of the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand? When do the 1335 days, 1290 days, and 1260 days (the time, times, and half a time) of Daniel 12 begin?