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The
Historical and Theological Wars
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The Prophecy of the Song of Moses
The Biblical cause for the Roman Jewish war can be found in the "Song of Moses" (Deuteronomy 32:1-47), the only open reference to the Old Testament in the Book of Revelation (Rev. 15:3). According to the Song of Moses, God promised to punish his "children" if they ever made him jealous with strange gods, especially "ones their fathers had never stood in awe of or new ones recently arrived" (this meant Jesus!). God warned his children that "he would send the nations against them to punish them but that He would later avenge their blood and take vengeance on their enemies and cleanse the land for his people."
The Book of Isaiah
(Explains the Assyrian
Conquest of Israel in 721 BC
and the deliverance of Judah in 701 BC)
The Book of Isaiah, probably the finest example of apocalyptic literature ever written, is a compilation of 66 chapters written over a period of perhaps two hundred years. The historical context begins in 737 BC when Judah (the Southern Hebrew State with capitol at Jerusalem), Israel (the Northern Hebrew State with capital at Samaria) and Syria were all paying tribute to Assyria, their powerful neighbor to the north. Israel and Syria decided to join forces against Assyria and asked Judah to join them in an alliance. When Judah refused, Israel and Syria declared war on Judah in 734 BC. Judah called on Assyria for aid which quickly came. Syria and Israel were defeated by Tiglath-pileser of Assyria in 732 BC and agreed to pay reparations and tribute.
Israel then allied itself with Egypt and again stopped paying tribute to Assyria. Shalmanser V of Assyria invaded Israel in in 724 BC and besieged its capital Samaria, which fell to Sargon II in 721 BC. This war annihilated Israel as a nation. Isaiah reported that 22,000 Jews were deported to Assyria. After Sargon was killed in 704 BC, Judah rebelled against his son Sennacherib who then invaded Judah in 701 BC, took forty-six towns, but withdrew back to Assyria when plague swept through his army outside the walls of Jerusalem.
The first thirty-five chapters in the Book of Isaiah were an anthology of magnificent poems written shortly after Sennacherib abandoned his siege of Jerusalem in 701 BC.
Chapters 1-5 indicted Israel and Judah for sinning against God, assimilating foreign religions, and worshipping idols, corruption, and injustice. Verse 1.27 was the key to the whole book: "Zion will be redeemed by judgement and her repentant ones by justice." Because the Jews had sinned, God would use the Assyrians as his rod to punish his people. The ones who repented and survived would be allowed to return to God in justice.
Chapters 6-12, prophesized that Israel and Judah would be reunited and that Israel’s enemies would be thwarted by a messiah named Immanuel, meaning "God with us." The book of Isaiah was one of the favorite Old Testament books used by the early Christians to foretell the coming of Christ and his virgin birth (Is 6-7.14).
Chapters 13-24 were oracles against the pagan nations that surrounded Israel and Judah. Chapters 24-35, the apocalypse of Isaiah, envisioned the destruction of the nations and the salvation of the remnant of Israel. Chapters 36-39 were a detailed history of the siege of Jerusalem. Chapters 40-66 were a book of consolation celebrating the physical and spiritual liberation of Israel and the return of the first captives.
The
Template
for the Book of Revelation
John of Patmos used Isaiah’s motifs of overcoming foreign religious ideas and remaining faithful so that his God would later deliver his divine retribution against Jesus (the Bright Morning Star) and the nations (the Romans and their Greek allies who defeated Israel in the Jewish-Roman War). John used the following passage from the taunt song in Isaiah 14, the bibles finest piece of satire, as his template for the Book of Revelation:
How
you have fallen from the heavens,
O Morning Star, Son of the Dawn!
How are you cut down to the ground,
you who mowed down the nations!
You said in your heart: I will scale the heavens;
above the stars of God I will set up my throne;
I will take my seat on the Mount of Assembly,
in the recesses of the North.
I will ascend above the tops of the clouds;
I will be like the Most High!
Yet down to the nether world you will go,
to the recesses of the pit!
Isaiah called the king of Babylon the "Morning Star" to mock his previously exalted position of power and glory and then the magnitude of his future fall to the depths of degradation! John used the above passage as his blueprint for his attack on Christianity by equating Jesus Christ with the king of Babylon and the Morning Star (the rising sun)! John used the passage "I will be like the Most High" to point out that the Old Testament prophesized that Jesus Christ would try to usurp the power of God Almighty by setting up his own throne in heaven. This is exactly what Jesus tried to do in the Book of Revelation. John used the passage "Yet down to the nether world you will go, to the recesses of the pit!" as a prophecy of what fate would befall Jesus. We all know that the beast and the false prophet were thrown into the pit in Rev 19. This chapter will soon show all the many Sacred Geometry diagrams that ingeniously prove that Jesus Christ, the Beast, the red Dragon, and the False Prophet were all one and the same person!
The Books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel
(Explains the Babylonian
Conquest of Judah in 586 BC
and the return of the captives in 538 BC)
The Assyrian Empire was so weakened by civil war in the mid-7th century BC that the Babylonians rose in revolt against Assyria and captured Nineveh in 612 BC. The Egyptians, allies of Assyria, extended their northern borders to the Euphrates River. Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, totally defeated Assyria in 605 BC and drove the Egyptians to the southern border of Judah. When the Egyptians fought the Babylonians to a draw in 601 BC, Judah was emboldened to stop paying tribute to Babylon.
Nebuchadnezzar then sent an army down to Jerusalem. Jehoiachin, the new Jewish king, surrendered the city. Nebuchadnezzar took Jehoiachin and other high officials and priests back to Babylon as hostages and appointed his uncle Zedekiah as king. Nine years later the Egyptians persuaded Zedekiah to rebel against Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar returned with his army and besieged Jerusalem for two years until it finally fell in July of 586 BC. Nebuchadnezzer was so infuriated with the Hebrews that he destroyed Jerusalem and its Temple and exiled over 4,000 members of Judah’s ruling class to Babylon.
Only years later, when the Assyrians were defeated by Cyrus, king of the Medes, were the Israelites allowed to return to their homeland in 538 BC. The short time span of 49 years between the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the exile allowed Jeremiah and Ezekiel to record the destruction of Judah and the return of the Jews to Jerusalem in the form of a prophecy.
The Book of Jeremiah
The three great prophetic books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel were written shortly after the period of time when Assyria and Babylon wiped out the two Jewish kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Jeremiah’s oracles, especially his Temple sermon, prophesied that God would allow Babylon to destroy Jerusalem and exile his people because the Jews had broken God’s covenant and slipped into moral laxity. Jeremiah also prophesied against false prophets who deceived the people, a theme that John would incorporate in his Book of Revelation. Jeremiah prophesized the return of his people, a new covenant, and the restoration of Jerusalem but only after the Jews had served their allotted time in exile. Jeremiah ended his book with a series of oracles against the nations and the prophesy that Babylon would be destroyed by the kings of Media. The Book of Jeremiah was published about 528 BC, just about the time when the last exiles returned from Babylon.
The Book of Ezekiel
The next great piece of Jewish apocalyptic literature inspired by the destruction of Jerusalem and the Babylonian exile was the Book of Ezekiel, written by a priest who accompanied king Jehoiachin to Babylon in 597 BC. Ezekiel was influenced by the many symbols, images, and mythical beasts that came from Assyrian religion. In Ezekiel’s first vision, a spirit entered his body that allowed him to see God, hear his subsequent messages, and see various visions. In these visions, God called Ezekiel by the title "Son of Man" eighty-seven times. In one of the visions, Ezekiel saw elders in the Temple worshipping loathsome beasts, women weeping for Tammuz, and others bowing down to the rising sun. He then saw one angel dressed in linen who marked the foreheads of all Jews who were worthy of being saved and six other angels dressed as soldiers who put to the Jewish idolaters to the sword. Ezekiel promised that the Jews who repented and remained faithful in exile would be rewarded.
Ezekiel's work was more structured than Isaiah or Jeremiah. It’s forty-eight chapters were built around four themes: God’s indictment of Judah for faithlessness and idolatry; oracles against the nations; the promise of punishment, repentance and return; then a vision of the restoration of Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the Temple. The influence of Ezekiel was so enormous that he is called "the father of Judaism." John paraphrased virtually every important theme, motif, and phrase in Ezekiel’s book when he wrote his Book of Revelation.
The Book of Daniel
Explains the Greek
Occupation of Judea (334-167 BC)
and the Maccabean Revolt (167-142 BC)
Alexander the Great
After a little more than two hundred years of peace between Israel and Persia, Alexander the Great defeated Darius III, the king of the Persians, in 334 BC and then took control of Asia Minor, Palestine, and Egypt. The Greeks exiled the Persians of Samaria and brought in Greek colonists to take their place. When Alexander was on his deathbed in 323 BC, he divided his kingdom among three of his generals. One received Greece and Macedonia, Egypt went to Ptolemy, and Persia and Syria went to Seleucid. Ptolemy brought in huge numbers of Greek colonists to Egypt, the coastal cities of Palestine, Galilee, and Jordan. Seleucid brought even more colonists to Asia Minor and Syria. The Jews living among the new immigrants studied Greek art, literature, mathematics, and science. Before long, so many Jews spoke Greek as their first language, especially in Alexandria in Egypt, that the Jewish Scriptures had to be translated into Greek (the Septuagint). The Egyptian Greek Ptolemies benevolently ruled Egypt and Palestine for one hundred twenty five years (323-198 BC).
Antiochus III
The powerful Greek Seleucid dynasty which controlled Syria under Antiochus III laid claim to Israel and took over Jordan and Palestine from the Egyptian Ptolemies in 198 BC. Antiochus III magnanimously reduced the taxes of the Judean population and exempted priests and the upper Jewish classes from all taxation. Greek culture then made huge inroads into the Jewish population.
Antiochus Epiphanes IV
When Antiochus III died, his son, Antiochus Epiphanes IV (175-164 BC), became king and tried to impose Greek culture, language, and religion on all his subject peoples. He appointed the high priest from the candidate who offered the highest bribe and promised to advance Greek culture in Palestine. Epiphanes greatest ambition was to conquer Egypt which he attempted to do in 169 BC. A civil war then erupted in Jerusalem for control of the high priesthood. Epiphanes marched on Jerusalem and confiscated the Temple treasure. He attacked Egypt again in 168 BC but was turned back by Roman threats. Epiphanes then resolved to Hellenize his kingdom. His mercenaries entered Jerusalem on the Sabbath, sacked the Temple, killed 40,000 Jews, and sold another 40,000 into slavery. He then outlawed by pain of death, the Sabbath, circumcision, and the Jewish religion. He burned the scriptures, converted the Temple and Altar into a shrine to Zeus, and ordered the people to sacrifice to Greek gods.
The high priest Matthathias, the head of the Hasmonean clan, immediately organized a revolt against Epiphanes. Judah, called Maccabee-the Hammer, one of the five sons of Matthathias, led the Jews in a guerilla war against the Greek army. On a campaign in Persia to raise tribute, Epiphanes took sick and died of natural causes in late November or early December of 164 BC. The Jews then conquered most of Judea and Jerusalem including the Temple in December of 164 BC. Jews celebrate the restoration of the Temple every year in December during the eight day feast of Hanukkah, also called the Feast of Dedication, or the Feast of Lights.
The Jews fought various Greek kings over the next twenty-two years before Judea achieved autonomy under Simon Maccabeus in 142 BC. The following Hasmonian rulers became corrupt, fighting among themselves for control of the throne and the high priesthood. A civil war erupted in 67 BC and John Hyrcanus allied himself with the Roman general Pompey who took control of Jerusalem in 63 BC.
The Book of Daniel
(Written soon after the death of Antiochus Epiphanes IV)
The desecration of the temple in 167 BC, followed by the war for Jewish independence, the unexpected death of Epiphanes, and the restoration of the Temple in 164 BC inspired the apocalyptic Book of Daniel to comfort the Jewish people during their war of independence against the Greeks. The setting was the court of king Nebuchadnezzar (604-562) during the Babylonian exile. According to the fanciful story, Daniel and three other young Jews were trained as scribes for the king. God gave the four men knowledge in literature and science and Daniel received the additional power to interpret dreams. The first five chapters relate how Daniel interpreted the dreams of Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar and prophesied the fall of Babylon to the Medes and Persians. The king was so impressed with Daniel’s various miracles and interpretations that God allowed Daniel to perform that he formally recognized the Hebrew God and bestowed power and riches on Daniel. In chapter 6, Darius the Mede (522-486) became king of Babylon who was also so impressed with Daniel and his God that he appointed Daniel as supervisor over one third of his kingdom. Chapters 1-6 were written to amaze the reader at how God influenced the fortunes of this chosen people when he protected Daniel from danger and gave him the supernatural wisdom to interpret dreams.
Chapters 7 through 12 dealt with Daniel's dreams that were disguised as prophecies of future events affecting Jews in the 2nd century, specifically the dire struggle for religious survival with Antiochus Epiphanes IV. All the visions taken together foretold (after the fact) the coming of Cyrus, Darius, Alexander, Ptolemy, Selucid, the death of Epiphanes IV and the restoration of the Temple three and a half years (1,290 days) after the start of the persecution. The three and a half year struggle with Epiphanes (167-164 BC) culminating with the restoration of the Temple and the three and a half year war with the Romans (66-70 AD) which culminated with the destruction of the Temple was an uncanny coincidence. John immediately recognized the ironic coincidence and extensively used other parallel imagery in Daniel’s vision in his Book of Revelation to illustrate the Jew's struggle with Rome and Christianity in the 1st century.
The Greek Occupation of Judea
After Alexander the Great defeated Darius III, the king of the Persians, in 334 BC he then occupied the Persian controlled satellite states of Asia Minor, Palestine, and Egypt. Huge numbers of Greek colonists poured in to Egypt, the coastal cities of Palestine, Galilee, and Jordan. Many Jews living among the new immigrants avidly studied Greek art, literature, mathematics, and science. The Greeks then magnanimously reduced the taxes of the Judaean population and exempted priests and the upper Jewish classes from all taxation whereupon Greek culture made huge inroads into the Jewish population. The Hellinization of the Jews came to an abrupt end soon after Antiochus Epiphanes IV became king in 175 BC. After invading Egypt in 168 BC the Roman Senate gave him an ultimatum to withdraw under threat of war. After Antiochus backed down to the Roman's he decided to consolidate his power at home by issuing a similar ultimatum to all his subject peoples in 167 BC to forcibly accept Greek culture, language, and religion. He plundered the Temple in Jerusalem and passed laws of conformity forbidding circumcision, the Torah, and observance of the Sabbath under the penalty of death. He then erected of a pagan altar to Zeus at the Temple. These events ignited a war with the entire Jewish population led by Judas Maccabaeus.
Jewish Independence
The Jews obtained their independence through the Maccabean War that lasted from 167-142 BC. The Jewish nation was then independent under the Hasmonian dynasty for the next 79 years. A Jewish Civil War then began in 67 BC that ended when the Romans took sides with one faction and occupied Jerusalem in 63 BC.
The Roman Occupation of Judea
Julius Caesar became dictator in 49 BC, which ended the Roman Republic. He appointed Herod, a local Palestinian strongman, governor of Judaea. The Romans effectively ended Jewish independence but allowed John Hyrcanus’s son, Hyrcanus II and then Antigonus to rule as kings under Roman supervision until 37 BC.
Marc Antony appointed Herod’s son, called Herod the Great, as king of Judaea in 37 BC. Herod, a converted Jew, put down a mini revolt by the Hasmonean family then created a secret police force and summarily killed anyone who plotted against him or his Roman rulers. He cleverly kept religious problems under control by starting the construction of a new temple in 20 BC to replace the one destroyed by Epiphanes IV.
When Herod the Great died in 6 BC, the Romans didn’t want his sons to fight for control of their father’s throne so they divided his kingdom and appointed his sons as puppet rulers over their assigned territories. The Herodians continued work on the magnificent temple their father began, a job that wasn’t completed until 64 AD. Under Herod the Great, Judaea was relatively peaceful, but with his death and the division of his kingdom, the political and religious situation soon became unstable.
The Roman Republic and the first two Roman emperors Augustus (30BC-14AD) and Tiberius (14-37AD) were very tolerant of other people’s religion in the lands they ruled. They were mainly interested in keeping order and collecting a reasonable amount of taxes to offset the upkeep of their army which brought peace throughout the Roman Empire. As the Greeks coexisted with the Jews for many generations until the fascist Antiochus Epiphanes IV attempted to wipe out the Jewish religion by force, the Roman Republic and early Emperors also coexisted with the Jews for many generations because they allowed the Jews freedom of religion.
Christianity
and Judaism
under Roman Occupation
From the end of the reign of Tiberias up until the Roman Jewish war 30 years later, four different Jewish religious parties plus the new Hellenized Jewish mystery religion called Christianity vied for the hearts and minds of the Jewish people.
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The Sadducees had control of the temple, the sacrificial rituals, and it’s finances. As temple priests, they didn’t believe in the immortality of the soul or of rewards or punishment in an afterlife.
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The Pharisees taught, studied, and prayed with the people in the synagogues. They taught that the soul was immortal and that people would be punished or rewarded in an afterlife depending on what works they performed on earth.
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The Essenes lived and prayed in isolation at Qumran. They dressed in white linen, performed daily cleansing rituals, taught of a coming battle between the forces of light and darkness, and predicted that the end of the world was at hand.
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The Zealots, who were probably militant Essenes, though few in number, actively engaged in small-scale guerilla warfare with the Roman army and assassinated Jewish collaborators with sharp concealed knives called sicarii. Their goal was to expel the Romans from their land just as the Maccabees expelled the Greeks over a century before.
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The first Christians, who were probably Hellenized Jews, used the sacred Jewish Law as their source text for their new God and savior Messiah called Jesus Christ. The first Christian writings were written about 50 AD by Paul of Tarsus. Paul was a Roman citizen, studied for the Jewish priesthood, wrote exclusively in Greek, and was born in Tarsus, the most important city of the Greek mystery religions, the city were the Mythraic Mysteries was founded. His Jesus was a cosmic Christ. He never quoted the actual words spoken by a real life Jesus who lived just 20 years before. He also never wrote about the accounts of people who were witnesses to miracles performed by Jesus even though the pool of witnesses would have numbered in the thousands. Paul's Jesus came from personal revelation and from passages in the Old Testament that Christians claimed foretold his coming or existence. The first Christians were no real threat to the Hebrew religion at this time because the Jews rejected Christianity as just another foreign Greek mystery religion. Even Paul's own writings admit this rejection. His writings allude to many other parties or factions teaching different brands of Christianity. Many other self proclaimed prophets, healers, baptizers, and would be Messiahs roamed Judea during this time gathering followers. Although Christianity was gathering strength during this time it didn't come from the Jews ... it came from the Greek Gentile population. Events were in motion that would soon wipe the religious slate clean in favor of the new Greek religion.
Equilibrium was temporarily restored with the reign of Claudius (14-54AD). When Claudius died, his nephew Nero (54-68 AD) became emperor when he was just 17 years old. The Roman senator Seneca and Nero's mother helped him with the affairs of state early in his reign until megalomania and paranoia drove him to murder Seneca, his mother, and his most able advisors. Nero paid no attention to the affairs of state or the conduct of the men who administered the Roman empire. Nero delegated authority and let the empire run itself through his surrogates which resulted in the appointment of Florus, the most savage and corrupt procurator that Judaea had ever known.
The Jewish-Greek
Civil War of 66 AD
Florus extorted from and killed Jews with impunity to fill his own purse. According to the former Jewish general and historian Josephus, some Jews bribed Florus to halt the construction of an illegal building adjacent to their synagogue in Cesarea. Florus took the money, but then did nothing. A group of armed Greeks then sent one of their men to sacrifice a bird in front of their synagogue. This insult then led to an armed battle. When the Jews went to Florus to complain, he threw them in jail then extorted more money from the temple in Jerusalem. Certain Jews then publicly insulted Florus by taking up a collection of small change as if Florus was a destitute pauper. Florus then sent a small army to Jerusalem and demanded that the people who mocked him be turned over for punishment. When the Jewish authorities didn’t produce the people Florus was looking for, the troops were ordered to go into the streets and homes surrounding the market and kill whoever they wished. Over 3,600 innocent people were killed and some prominent Jewish citizens were crucified. This was the atrocity that started the Roman-Jewish War in the spring of 66 AD.
The Zealots then took Masada by stealth and Jerusalem and other strongholds by force. Immediately upon learning of the armed revolt, the Greek population rose up in support of their Roman masters and started a civil war with Jewish communities from Egypt in the south to Syria in the North. According to Josephus, the Greeks killed 50,000 Jews in Alexandria, and tens of thousands more in the cities of Cesarea, Scythopolis, Askelon, Ptolemais, Tyre, Hippos, Gadera, and Joppa. In Damascus Syria, the the Greeks brought Jews to a stadium and in the short span of one hour, 10,000 men, women, and children had their throats cut. The fierce civil war between the Greeks and Jews resulted in the deaths of approximately 100,000 Jewish citizens.
The Roman-Jewish War of 66-70 AD
After the Jews defeated a small Roman army sent down from Syria, like the Maccabees had done two hundred years earlier, Rome sent the legions V-Macedonia, X-Fretensis, XII-Fulminata, and XV-Apollinaris commanded by the Roman generals Vespasian and his son Titus to put down the rebellion. Two of the legions had Greek names and all four were raised in the surrounding former Greek provinces. This Roman army, which had many Greek soldiers,.quickly conquered all the cities in Galilee. With Nero’s death by suicide in 68 AD, Vespasian consolidated his position in Judea. The next year saw the violent deaths of the emperors Galba, Otho, and Vitelius. Vespasian was declared emperor in July of 69 AD and he left for Rome in the spring of 70 AD.
Titus was put in charge of the war and built a wall around Jerusalem. The Jews who tried to escape were at first disemboweled by the soldiers to recover whatever gold they may have swallowed. When this atrocity was prohibited, the escapees were crucified before the walls of the city. Weakened by starvation and internal strife, Jerusalem finally fell to Titus after several pitched battles on August 30 of 70 AD. By decree of Titus, all the people in Jerusalem were sold into slavery and all the buildings were razed to the ground. Josephus claimed almost a million Jews lost their lives during the war. The Jews that were left had to pay reparations in the form of a yearly tax that was earmarked to build a pagan Roman temple.
The Rise of Christianity: 70-95 AD
After the war ended, the gospel of Mark was published which dated the death of Jesus forty years earlier to the reign of Pontius Pilate. Other gospels followed containing ever more specific details about the life and death of Jesus than the gospel before it. The Jews who would have been witnesses to Jesus were either dead of old age or casualties of war. The Christians used their new gospels to try and convince the Jews to abandon their religious beliefs, laws, and customs. The various Christian epistles, acts, and gospels proclaimed that the Jews brought this destruction on themselves for not believing in Jesus Christ. To add insult to injury, the documents were all written in Greek, and originated in many cases, according to oral Christian tradition, from Rome, the capital city of the evil empire that had just crushed them. The gospels employed hidden puns to imply that some of the apostles were Zealots and Jewish freedom fighters, but later chapters would chastise the Pharisees and condemn all Jews, even their unborn children, for the death of Jesus.
According to Christian theology, humans had Original Sin on their souls because Adam and Eve ate forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. To atone for this sin, God sent his only son (a son he always kept secret from his chosen people) to earth as a sacrifice to die on a cross so mankind could be saved. In order to obtain salvation, all that was needed was faith in Jesus and baptism. The Christian documents cleverly incorporated verses, themes, prophecies, and incidents from the Greek translation of the Old Testament to make it appear that Jesus was the messiah prophesied by the Jewish scriptures. The Christians also claimed that Jesus came to save all men, not just Jews, therefore rules against eating certain foods, offering sacrifices, and performing circumcision were no longer required. The gospels called Jesus a Rabbi who said he wouldn’t change one jot or tittle of the Law, then another book such as the Acts of the Apostles or the letters of Paul would declare the Jewish Law null and void in regard to diet and circumcision. The Christian promise of a glorious eternal life and the easy way to achieve it appealed to people all over the Roman Empire. The Jewish and Christian communities quickly became engaged in verbal and physical battles over the nature of Jesus Christ. Orthodox Jews knew they were dealing with a new religion and rejected Christianity.
Domitian Persecutes the Christians
Christian dogma and Roman authority were on a collision course with Vespasian’s son, the emperor Domitian (81-96 AD). After the Senate honored him with the title "Our Lord and God," he expected his subjects to worship him as a god, the same way the Roman people honored previous deified emperors. The Christians absolutely refused to worship pagan gods, much less a pompous mortal, even if he was the emperor of Rome. The Roman State viewed refusal to sacrifice and give respect to the emperor as sedition, a challenge that if ignored would only encourage similar resistance all over the empire. Domitian instituted a loyalty test where all citizens of the Roman Empire had to participate in a public ceremony that involved a sacrificial offering to the state gods. Many Christians refused to participate in the public sacrifices that were meant to bring peace and prosperity to the nation. Many were severely punished, sometimes with torture and death.
The Book of Revelation Appears
The environment now existed for a work like The Apocalypse of Jesus Christ to become a sensation with the persecuted Christian church. Most biblical scholars today believe that the Book of Revelation was written in 95-96 AD. Early Christian writers such as Irenaeus declared that it was written "towards the end of Domitian's reign." At the same time that the Christian religion was experiencing its first real persecution, the Jews were still reeling from the Roman Jewish war (66-72 AD) that had just ended twenty five years before.
Many Jews of the 1st century believed that the authors of the gospels were really Greeks with an extensive knowledge of Jewish literature, geography, language, and customs who were masquerading as Jews. The Jews viewed the early Christians, not as an offshoot Jewish sect that believed in a Messiah called Jesus, but rather as a group of sun worshipping pagan Greeks or traitorous Jews who hijacked the Old Testament and interpreted the words of their holy Jewish Scriptures to falsely foretell the coming of a new god called Jesus Christ. The early church father Justin Martyr defended Christianity in his debates with Jews against just this charge, that Christians had "invented some sort of Christ" and had accepted "a futile rumor" (Dialogue with Trypho, 8, written around AD 135).
The environment now also existed for an ingenious Jew to masquerade as a Christian and write a work that had the outward appearance of praising Jesus Christ when all the while he was secretly insulting him through feigned poor Greek grammar, scriptural citations with double meanings, gematria, and their own secret Christian Sacred Geometry diagrams. Based on the gematria diagrams hidden in the most obviously key verses, this is exactly what he did. His deception worked so well that the Christian Church, which he must have despised, embraced his satirical work as Holy Scripture.
The Book of Revelation, was very popular in the Western Roman Empire. The Church of Rome, composed of simple Latin speaking congregations just loved it. The Eastern Church, which spoke only Greek, questioned the authorship and the content of the book. Dionysius of Alexandria, Cyril of Jerusalem, John Chrysostom, the Council of Laodicea, and most importantly Eusebius of Caesarea, the father of Church history, declared it a spurious work. Over two hundred years after the Apocalypse was written, an Alexandrine bishop named Athanasius finally persuaded the Greek church over much opposition to accept Revelation into the official canon of 27 books we now call the New Testament. The Third Council of Carthage in A.D. 397 listed Revelation as canonical. The Book was not officially ratified until the Council of Constantinople in A.D. 680. The Eastern Orthodox Church, even after ratification, never read from the book of Revelation in their church services which was equivalent to a rejection of its inclusion in the New Testament.
The Greeks had good reason to be wary. The author of the book of Revelation was a Jewish scholar who was well versed in all the literary techniques of his time. He was well versed in the old style of Gnostic Christianity that expounded on the mystical geometry and numerology of the raised Jesus (8880) that was overthrown by the new version of Christianity that evolved after the fall of Jerusalem. The old Cosmic Christ of Paul was dead. The new historical Christ of the gospels was now alive. This new Jesus who supposedly actually lived, died, and rose again was now the new mystical enemy of the Jews.
The majority of early Christians were recently converted pagans whose former religion was permeated with superstition, magic, and mysteries. All the religious "bells and whistles" in Revelation such as visions, seals, and magic numbers were very familiar and appealing to the formerly pagan Christians. "John" was a masterful storyteller who then employed misdirection, hidden reference, double meanings, gematria, and secret diagrams based on riddles to advance his hidden Jewish agenda ... to "reveal" Jesus Christ as Satan himself. The simple superstitious Christians were very receptive to this form of stealthy attack. The author of Revelation used the sacred geometry mysteries of the old Jesus Christ to battle the new historical-based Jesus Christ. This is why the Book of Revelation was disguised to look like Christian persecution literature. The Book of Revelation's secret agenda was to destroy, humiliate, villify, and demonize Jesus Christ in every possible way and at every opportunity using the old weapon of Christian Sacred Geometry against this new fundamentalist strain of Christianity.
Although the plot for John’s book was totally original and ingenious, the majority of the key words, phrases, and themes in the Book of Revelation were purposely copied from Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and other Old Testament sources. Studies have shown that about 65% of the verses in Revelation have allusions to the Old Testament! John skillfully misled his readers by outwardly praising Christ with titles that formerly were used to describe the King of Babylon, an enemy of the Jewish people. He also used words and images with double meanings that equated Christ with the Beast which made the Book of Revelation the most successful book of false praise, parody, and satire ever written. John’s goal was to hoist the Christians on their own petard by using the same scriptures to reveal Jesus Christ as a Beast and to foretell his destruction the same way the Christians twisted Jewish scriptures to foretell the coming of Jesus Christ as a Jewish Messiah. This book will explain John's message and vision from a Hermetic Hebrew point of view and will point out some of the many puns and allusions to Hebrew scripture that John used to try and counter and strike back at the Christian religion that was converting pagans and Jews alike all over the Roman empire.
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Vol
1: The Gospels |
Sacred
Geometry Bible Study Publications
The Sacred Geometry Mysteries of Jesus Christ Copyright © 1998-2004 Daniel Gleason, all rights reserved |
Vol
2: The Book of Revelation |