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The Historical and Theological Wars

that inspired the Book of Revelation

Table of Contents

Song of Moses

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The Apocalypse of Jesus Christ, called the Book of Revelation, is the most
controversial and misunderstood book in the New Testament. This book is
filled with extravagant, symbolic language, numerous and purposely
confusing metaphors, numerology, double entendres, riddles, and
extensive parallels to apocalyptic passages in the Old Testament. Mystical
and symbolic language, however, was the primary and most important
characteristic of Jewish and Christian apocalyptic literature from 700 BC
to 200 AD.

To understand Revelation one must be aware, from a Jewish perspective at

the time the book was written, of the historical conflicts the Jews had with
the many foreign nations who had enslaved their people or occupied their
homeland over the previous 1400 years. The most important piece of
knowledge necessary to understand Revelation is the conflict the Jews had
with the newly emerging religion called Christianity during the first
century AD.

The Old Testament Books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel are all
classified as persecution literature which was written to console the
victims of a major national or religious disaster that was so severe that
only divine intervention could correct the situation. To make their books
appear as if they came from God, the authors described their visions and
dreams in enigmatic, figurative, poetic, and dreamlike language. Through
these literary devices, the authors chastised anyone who broke God’s
covenant, explained why God allowed the national tragedy to occur,
prophesied divine retribution to sinners and the aggressor, and promised
rewards and restitution to the faithful.

The Book of Revelation, like Isaiah and the other Jewish apocalypses, was
written as resistance literature to explain a crisis. On its face, Revelation

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appears to be Christian literature written in response to the persecution of

Christians by the Roman emperor Domitian in 95 AD. A detailed analysis
of Revelation however, reveals it was actually Jewish persecution
literature written in response to three events: the widespread ethnic
cleansing of Jews that occurred throughout the Mid-East during the
Jewish-Greek Civil War of 66 AD, the destruction of Jerusalem and the
loss of hundreds of thousands of Jewish lives during the Roman-Jewish
War of 66-70 AD, and finally by the rise of Christianity due to the
religious vacuum brought about by the fall of the Jewish Temple-State.

In order to understand why the Book of Revelation was disguised to look

like Christian persecution literature, one must first examine the historical
events that precipitated the Old Testament literature written shortly after
the Jews successfully freed themselves from Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, and
Greece. One must then examine the the historical events that precipitated
the Book of Revelation written shortly after the Jews unsuccessfully tried
to free themselves from Rome and Christianity. Only then can one see and
understand the complex literary structure and the secret Jewish agenda
hidden in the riddles and figurative language of the Book of Revelation.

The Jewish Apocalyptic Literature

written prior to the Book of Revelation

The Book of Exodus

The book of Exodus picks up the historical account of God's chosen people
from where the book of Genesis ends. The book recounts the oppression of
the Israelites in Egypt and how God, through Moses, allowed his people to
miraculously escape across the Red Sea into the Sinai desert to the
promised land. The word Exodus comes from the Greek word meaning
"departure." John borrowed many important themes from Exodus. Some of
the more important parallels were the following:

• the cry of the Israelites for freedom from slavery verses the cry of
the saints for vengeance
• the ten plagues that God unleashed on the Egyptians verses the
plagues unleashed by the angels of the seven trumpets and seven
bowls
• the song of the Israelites over the bodies of the Egyptians who
were drowned in the Red Sea verses the song of the saints in
heaven after the fall of Babylon

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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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

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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.

After the death of Tiberius, the Roman occupation of Judea started to

became oppresive under the irrational rule of the despotic emperor
Caligula (37-41 AD). Caligula craved the honor of being called a god,
which the Roman senate posthumously bestowed on his great grandfather,
the emperor Augustus. Caligula declared himself a god while he was still
living and even had a statue made of himself which he ordered set up
inside the temple in Jerusalem. This sacrilege, prevented by his
assassination, probably would have started the Roman Judean war 25 years
earlier than when it finally occurred.

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

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

How to download the book

Vol 1: The Gospels Sacred Geometry Bible Study Publications Vol 2: The Book of
www.jesus8880.com The Sacred Geometry Mysteries of Jesus Christ Revelation
Copyright © 1998-2004 www.revelationjesuschrist.com
Daniel Gleason, all rights reserved

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