Photoshopping fun with Pat Robertson

Get your Red Heifer jerky now so Bro. Pat Robertson can help rebuild the temple.

For non-Americans, especially, not familiar with the backstory, millennialist fundamentalists believe that the ashes of a red heifer (used in certain purification rituals in the Old Testament), are needed to be offered once more, to start the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and thus lead to the messianic millennium.

Wikipedia starts with the biblical background:

According to Numbers 19:2: "Speak unto the children of Israel, that they bring thee a red heifer without spot, wherein is no blemish, and upon which never came yoke" — in other words, the animal must not have hairs of any other color, it must be in perfect health, and it must never have been used to perform work. The heifer is then slain (Numbers 19:3) and burned outside of the camp (Numbers 19:3–6). Cedar wood, hyssop, and scarlet are added to the fire, and the remaining ashes are placed in a vessel containing pure water (Numbers 19:9).

In order to purify a person who has become ritually contaminated by contact with a corpse, water from the vessel is sprinkled on him, using a bunch of hyssop, on the third and seventh day of the decontamination process (Numbers 19:18–19). The priest who have performed the ritual then become impure themselves. The priest who performs the ritual must then bathe himself and his clothes in water. He shall be deemed impure until evening.

From there, it became more detailed in the Jewish Mishna and connected with Messianic ideas.

For more on the origin of that idea, and its being taken over by Protestant fundamentalists, go here. The Temple Institute is an ardent pusher of rebuilding the temple.

Wiki concludes with some of this modern fundamentalist angle, even noting that Clyde Lott, a cattle rancher in the United States, is breeding red heifers, hoping to produce one that will be certified as unblemished, etc.

Finally, Justin Raimundo puts all of this into some modern geopolitical context.

Pat has put himself in the limelight enough, anyway, that the photoshopping idea popped into my head.

A heifer is a cow, and needs to be killed for its ashes to be burned. So, eat some red heifer jerky!