Meanwhile, on another forum, a member asks this question in his own inimitable, if ungrammatical style:
Ok im not understanding about this red cow prophecy only thing that i am understanding is its something that ppl in israel wanna sacrifice for the third temple on a mount but what is gonna happen is this suppose to bring the second coming of Christ or is this another one of those failed doomsday theories?
Well yes, it's a real shame that I must constantly remind myself that these ppl who get so excited over the birth of a red cow in Israel (and sometimes even in the US itself) actually profess to be Bible-believing Christians.
They seem to be so keen to restore the religion of the OT that you start to wonder if they ever understood the significance of Jesus Messiah's sacrifice on the cross. At best, that understanding is only partial, if it exists at all, and as far as any understanding of the relationship between the two covenants is concerned, you can forget it. There's one member on this forum who is actually waiting for the ark of the covenant to be found so that construction of the 3rd temple can begin!! I kid you not. Chapter 9 of the letter to the Hebrews must be completely foreign territory to him, nevermind the rest of the book and several other major sections of the NT.
But none of this should come as a surprise to anybody who has grasped the underlying reason for these and other egregious errors that have become articles of faith for large sections of the American evangelical scene. So for the benefit of those who are unfamiliar with the background story, here is my answer to our OP:
It's slightly complicated, so 'short' answer (relatively speaking) only for now.
The red cow garbage, like all the puerile nonsense that surrounds it (the 3rd temple, the faux prophetic significance attached to Israel's restored nationhood in 1948, Trump's alleged fulfilment of prophecy, the secret rapture [so-called], the mass conversion of Jews to a 'kingdom' gospel, Jesus' earthly reign in Jerusalem for 1,000 years, etc etc), are all the direct result of an underlying belief that completely misconstrues the central theme of the Bible.
And what is this belief, I hear you all ask with one voice? For want of a better title, let us refer to it as 'The Church/Israel Dichotomy'. In essence, it proposes that God has two separate and distinct plans for two separate groups of ppl for all eternity: the Jews and the church. He has a heavenly plan for the church, and an earthly plan for Israel, and never the twain shall meet. According to this tenet, the church is a 'parenthesis', an unscheduled and unforeseen interruption in God's plans for and dealings with His first love - the chosen ppl who belong to the nation of Israel. As soon as God removes the church from the scene (the secret rapture), He will once again resume His dealings with Israel and fulfill all the Old Testament promises He originally made to them under the Abrahamic and Davidic covenants. Although no advocate of this doctrine would ever admit it, its logical conclusion is that the church would not even exist but for the Jews' rejection of their own messiah.
But all this begs an obvious and pressing question. Namely, whence cometh this revolutionary doctrine? It was first introduced by John Nelson Darby (1800 - 1882) in the 1830's. Founder of an obscure separatist sect known as the Exclusive or Plymouth Brethren, this central plank of his theology is notable only for its complete absence from the entire corpus of Christian literature for nigh on 18 centuries. But like all cultists before him and since, the explanation offered for its glaring omission from the annals of church history is a well rehearsed and much overused one. Simply put, it is that God was pleased to keep His church in complete ignorance of this profound 'truth' until Darby appeared on the scene. His superior intellect and God-given enlightenment was sufficient to ensure its recovery after languishing for 18 centuries in complete obscurity. If that explanation sounds vaguely familiar to you, it should be. It has been used by every cultist since time immemorial, from 2nd century gnostics to the current leaders of the NAR movement, and everything else in between.
Although the Church/Israel Dichotomy doctrine was first formulated by Darby in the 1830's, it was later given much wider circulation in his 'Collected Writings', a work of 47 volumes published in the 1870's & 80's by his close friend and associate Wm Kelly. As their title suggests, they represent his lifetime output, and now underpin all the assumptions made by end time apocalyptic doom-mongers, false prophets, so-called 'rapture' watchers, date-setters, red cow and 3rd temple enthusiasts, etc etc. So although the sect Darby founded is now all but defunct, his legacy lives on in a manner which I doubt even he could have foreseen. How this came about is itself one of the sorriest episodes in the entire history of the church* (or perhaps more accurately, cultdom) but it continues to serve as a valuable object lesson in what can happen when one departs from the historic creeds and standards of the faith.
*Anybody wanting more information on how Darby's heresy came to dominate the end time lunacy that is now running rampant on various social media platforms can find it in this excellent article by one of the stalwarts of the faith:
NOTE: I will expand on some aspects of this heresy in future debunks, as time permits, but hopefully this brief summary will suffice for now for those who have a general interest in this subject.