Can Preterism Put an End to Christian Zionism?
Part 1

The Destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD changed the religious order of the Roman Empire.

3,173 words

Part 1 of 3 (Part 2 here)

Theology matters. The ideas arising from how religious thinkers have connected things in scripture drive a great deal of social policy. The outcomes of these policies can be good or bad. Societies that follow a Calvinist interpretation of Christianity, for example, tend to be wealthy. Much of America’s social policy ultimately arises from Protestantism, but within that branch of Christianity there is a broad range of interpretations of the sacred texts. One way to interpret such a text is though eschatology, or the study of how things end.

The story of Jesus Christ and the meaning of his message is told in the New Testament. The complete message of Christianity is beyond the scope of this article. To put one part of that message in simple terms, the end of the “old” world comes when Christianity’s primary figure, Jesus Christ, returns in the clouds after he rose from the dead and ascended into heaven following his unjust crucifixion, which was organized by the Jewish religious leaders of the time. Christ’s return is preceded by seven years of tribulation that are divided into two parts of three and a half years.

For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand? The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Eschatology’s political impact

It is unwise to ignore eschatology, because American white advocates cannot escape America’s dominant religious form. Attempts to replace religion with a rational, “science-based” approach always end up failing. “Science-based” solutions ultimately become a religion — albeit a lower, more absurd, and cult-like faith. It is a faith where an effeminate liberal man will post photos of his Pfizer vaccine tattoo on social media while having a a silly, open-mouthed look on his face. American white advocates must engage with theology.

Interpretations of eschatology affect events in the real world. The FBI, America’s semi-competent Praetorian Guard, mercilessly burned American whites alive in a “compound” in Waco, Texas in 1993, in part because their victims believed that they were actors in a divinely-inspired eschatological event.

Perhaps the most famous juxtaposition of eschatology and real-world political events was the Iraq War, which was launched in part because President George W. Bush, as well as millions of Americans, believed that events in the Middle East were unfolding as described in the Bible, especially in the prophetic Book of Revelation. There are other dismal examples of the results of mixing American Protestant interpretations of eschatology and wars fought for Israel. Today, Israel has been given a free hand by the Biden regime to commit genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza, and many American Christians are shamefully standing by while Jewish bombs strike churches built by the early Christians.

The British capture of Jerusalem in 1917 caused many to believe that New Testament prophecies were being fulfilled in modern times. This has not helped Christians, however.

The End is always near?

The New Testament is filled with eschatology. Some Biblical scholars insist that two-thirds of the New Testament is eschatological. Perhaps one verse in 25 deals with the second coming of Jesus Christ; it is mentioned eight times more often than Christ’s birth, and is the New Testament’s most frequently-mentioned topic. Additionally, the New Testament contains 101 references for the timing of Christ’s return. These indicators include phrases such as “at hand,” “near,” and “shortly.” Perhaps the most specific one is when Jesus said, “There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:27 KJV).

In the English-speaking world, these passages have led to a cottage industry of end-of-the world predictions in which the return of Jesus Christ is “just around the corner.” While obviously none of these predictions have come to pass, their failure to manifest nevertheless has an impact. The most serious is that Christians, and ultimately Anglo–European whites, retreat from the field of human endeavor and passively await the Divine Reset.

William Miller, an American preacher, predicted that Jesus Christ would return in 1844. The failure of Miller’s prediction became known as the Great Disappointment. Many “Millerites” continued to believe in it, however, and the Millerite movement became a denomination called the Seventh-day Adventists.

The dominant eschatological interpretation in American Christianity is “futurist.” This school of thought argues that Christ’s second coming has yet to occur. A sub-section of the futurist interpretation is Premillennial Dispensationalism. Premillennialism is a futurist eschatological interpretation which is valid within the greater body of Christianity, holding that Christ will return prior to ruling for a thousand years.

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Dispensationalism is a separate theological interpretation that is not consistent with the Christian message. It puts modern Jews at the forefront of all humanity and casts modern Israel as a heroic nation at the center of a battle in which real-world armies will gather on behalf of divine forces, allowing good to triumph at the end. Dispensationalism is a modern, Israel-based view of Christianity rather than a Christ-based view. It has influenced every aspect of American culture. I’ve come across Dispensationalist tracts which boiled the message of the Bible down to “unquestionably provide modern Israel with weapons” in an extremely rural part of the American western prairie.

There is, however, an alternative eschatological view in Christianity that is completely opposite to futurism: Preterism. This term comes from the Latin word praeter, meaning “past.” Preterism holds that most of the prophecies in the New Testament have already been fulfilled. The most extreme version of this interpretation, Full Preterism, holds that all the prophecies have been fulfilled and that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ occurred in 70 AD, when both the Temple and Jerusalem were destroyed by the Roman army during the First Roman-Jewish War (66-70).

The road to the First Roman-Jewish War: Alexander the Great & the Prophet Daniel

The last material event recorded in the (Protestant) Old Testament is the building of the Second Temple and the walls of Jerusalem following the Babylonian captivity. The last spiritual event is the prophecy of Malachi, who says in Chapter 4, verses 5 and 6:

Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord:

And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse. (KJV)

In the Christian tradition, the “Elijah” prophesized by Malachi is John the Baptist, whose birth is the first event recorded in the New Testament. Then there are roughly four centuries of silence between the Old and New Testaments. The Book of Daniel, however, contains prophecies regarding the events that happened between the building of the Second Temple circa 516 BC and the start of the New Testament.

The goat with one horn defeating the ram represents Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Persian Empire.

When the Second Temple was built, Judea was ruled by the Persians — but the Persian Empire’s days were numbered. After the Peloponnesian War left the Greek city-states of Athens and Sparta weakened, the Macedonians, who were ethnically Greek, took over all of Greece. Their ruler, Alexander the Great, went on to conquer Egypt, Anatolia, and Persia.

The Prophet Daniel describes Alexander the Great in Chapter 8 as a male goat with one horn who defeats a rival ram. In Chapter 11, Daniel describes how Alexander’s empire fell apart:

And a mighty king shall stand up, that shall rule with great dominion, and do according to his will. And when he shall stand up, his kingdom shall be broken, and shall be divided toward the four winds of heaven; and not to his posterity, nor according to his dominion which he ruled: for his kingdom shall be plucked up, even for others beside those. (Daniel 11: 3-4, KJV)

“. . . [A]nd when he was strong, the great horn was broken; and for it came up four notable ones toward the four winds of heaven.” (Daniel 8:8 KJV) Daniel’s prophecy predicts the division of Alexander the Great’s empire.

There is some controversy regarding Daniel’s prophecies. They are a bit too perfect, leading some to believe that they were written in the second century BC, making the text a pseudo-prophecy. But it is difficult to make a pseudo-prophecy canon. Additionally, the Book of Daniel was shown to Alexander, and the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, who lived in the first century, claims the following in his Antiquities of the Jews:

And when [Alexander] went up into the temple, he offered sacrifice to God, according to the high priest’s direction, and magnificently treated both the high priest and the priests. And when the Book of Daniel was showed him wherein Daniel declared that one of the Greeks should destroy the empire of the Persians, he supposed that himself was the person intended.

After Alexander’s empire was divided among his generals, Judea became a self-governing province, and it was swapped among the various Hellenistic empires from time to time. The region then became heavily influenced by Greek language and culture. Greek settlers in turn founded a civilization in Syria called the Decapolis. The Greek city of Alexandria in Egypt became the most prominent city in the Eastern Mediterranean. In Alexandria, scholars translated a collection of Jewish scriptures into Greek called the Septuagint, or the Greek Old Testament.

Areas where the Greek language was spoken during the time of Christ.

Greek Culture in Galilee

The Septuagint’s impact on the early Christians must have been enormous. There is no evidence as to whether Jesus Christ used the Greek Septuagint or the Hebrew-language Bible or both, but it is certain that his disciples used the Septuagint. The Apostle Paul quotes the Septuagint Bible in many of his letters.[1] In Revelation, the Apostle John also deliberately uses Septuagint-style Greek wording in the same way that Abraham Lincoln used English in the style of the King James Bible in his speeches, For example, “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent . . .”

The Septuagint is not the whole of Jewish scripture. In the time of Christ, the Jews were beginning to develop the Talmud, which is a much larger religious work. The Talmud is filled with legalistic hair-splitting, and the totality of its message is wildly different from that of Christianity. This religious split likely grew out of a controversy between various groups of Jews at the time. On the one hand there were the ethnonationalist Jews who clung to their ethnic identity and were hostile toward outgroups. Then there were the Hellenist Jews, who appreciated Greek culture. From 167 to 160 BC, the Hellenists and ethnonationalist Jews fought a war over their cultural differences that came to be called the Maccabean Revolt.

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Scholars are divided over how much Jesus was a Hellenist. It is clear though, that there is some Greek influence upon his ideas. Jesus, for example, quotes from the spiritual passages of the Old Testament rather than the vicious Jewish calls for genocide, such as one to bash babies against rocks. Christ’s advice to “turn the other cheek” is a form of Stoicism. His message accepts Greek law and philosophy while replacing the Greek gods with the Hebrew god.

We know that Jesus spoke Aramaic, because he is directly quoted as speaking Aramaic in Mark’s Gospel. The Jews of Jerusalem also accused Peter of being a follower of Christ due to Peter’s Aramaic speech. The Aramaic of Galilee was heavily influenced by Greek and the city of Sephoris, where Jesus would have found work as a carpenter. Sephoris was home to many Greeks and was completely integrated into Greek and Hellenist Jewish culture. The story of the Virgin Birth seems influenced by Greek myth, and many Greek heroes, such as Heracles, have a god for a father. Alexander the Great was the son of Philip, but there was a legend that Alexander’s real father was Zeus. During the Roman – Jewish War, Sephoris didn’t join the Jewish side.

Jesus Christ’s ideas didn’t arise in a vacuum, either. He publicly began his ministry by being baptized in the Jordan River by his cousin, John the Baptist, who was clearly part of some pre-existing reform movement the message of which Jesus sympathized with. And while it is uncertain if the early followers of John the Baptist and Jesus Christ were Hellenists, it is known that they joined a religious movement which was outside the mainstream of ethnonationalist Jewish thought. Indeed, Jesus Christ makes many counter-Semitic statements.

Rome and the Jews

In the first century BC, the Roman Republic became increasingly drawn into the Eastern Mediterranean. The Roman General Pompey the Great conquered Judea in 63 BC. Thereafter the Republic morphed into the Roman Empire due to domestic political pressures. When Jesus Christ was born, Caesar Augustus was firmly in power and Rome’s Empire was peaceful and prosperous. Jesus and his disciples were free to travel along Roman roads, protected by Roman law and order as they spread Christ’s message.

The Romans completed their conquest of Asia in 63 BC.

The organized Jewish community took advantage of political discord in Rome to pressure the local Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate, into crucifying Jesus, although both Pilate and Harod Agrippa didn’t believe that he had committed a crime, and a member of Harod Agrippa’s household staff indeed funded Christ’s ministry. Once the ethnonationalist Jewish leadership established the precedent that they could kill an ethnically Jewish subject of the Roman Empire for what he believed, they moved on to killing or imprisoning any of Christ’s followers who fell into their grasp. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, was killed without any Jew bothering to consult a single Roman official.

Christ was crucified during the reign of the Emperor Tiberius, who was followed by Caligula and then Claudius. Claudius was a capable ruler, and during his reign Christianity was spread by the missionary journeys of Paul, Silas, Barnabas, and John Mark, among others. The message of the Gospel reached every part of the Roman Empire in the 40 years between Christ’s ministry and the start of the Roman-Jewish War.

While Christianity was spreading during Claudius’ reign, there are indications in the historical record which highlight growing tensions between the Jews and the Greeks. In 41 AD, following rioting between the Jews and Greeks in Alexandria, Claudius wrote:

. . . I conjure you that, on the one hand, the Alexandrians show themselves forbearing and kindly towards the Jews who for many years have dwelt in the same city, and dishonor none of the rites observed by them in the worship of their god, but allow them to observe their customs as in the time of the Deified Augustus, which customs I also, after hearing both sides, have sanctioned; and on the other hand, I explicitly order the Jews not to agitate for more privileges than they formerly possessed, and not in the future to send out a separate embassy as though they lived in a separate city (a thing unprecedented), and not to force their way into gymnasiarchic or cosmetic games, while enjoying their own privileges and sharing a great abundance of advantages in a city not their own, and not to bring in or admit Jews who come down the river from Egypt or from Syria, a proceeding which will compel me to conceive serious suspicions. Otherwise, I will by all means take vengeance on them as fomenters of which is a general plague infecting the whole world. If, desisting from these courses, you consent to live with mutual forbearance and kindliness, I on my side will exercise a solicitude of very long standing for the city, as one which is bound to us by traditional friendship.

It is clear from this letter that Claudius viewed the Jews of Alexandria as the party that caused the riots and stated that he would send troops to suppress the Jews, if necessary — even if he said this politely. Claudius died in 54 AD, either by poisoning or ill health, and he was succeeded by a very young Nero.

During Nero’s reign, the Apostle Paul became involved in a notable incident. Paul was recognized at the Temple in Jerusalem by Jews from Asia Minor. A riot ensued, and Paul was taken into custody by the nearby Roman garrison. Paul ended up using his arrest and his Roman citizenship to help spread his message. He appealed to plead his case before Caesar himself and was sent to Rome. Paul preached and wrote letters throughout the entire time he was in Roman custody.

It is very likely that the charges against Paul would have been dismissed by Caesar out of hand, but Paul was a prisoner who had a powerful faction of Jews arrayed against him. Paul therefore remained as a prisoner-at-large in Rome during several critical years. The Jews likely behaved toward Paul in the same way that they behave toward a modern university President who allows a pro-Palestine protest on his campus today: They threw principle and law to the wind and did everything possible to end his ministry.

Christian tradition holds that the Apostle Paul was beheaded by the Emperor Nero.

The Jews got their chance when Rome was destroyed by fire in July of 64 AD. Paul was martyred by beheading shortly after the fire. Nero blamed the fire on the Christians, believing that a small sect with powerful enemies such as the Jews would be an easy scapegoat. Nevertheless, Nero was unable to truly shake the suspicion among his people that he himself had deliberately caused the fire to rebuild Rome in accordance with his wishes.

Additionally, his unjust targeting of Christians increased the movement’s visibility in a “no press is bad press” sort of way. Tacitus writes:

Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion [for the Christians]; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man’s cruelty, that they were being destroyed.

Nero’s persecution lasted approximately three and a half years, or 42 months. It ended when Nero died. Nero’s persecution is the first part of the seven-year tribulation. John knew those who were killed in Rome, and their unjust deaths must have had an emotional impact upon him. This gives the verse in Revelation 21:4 a poignant meaning:

And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away. (KJV)

See also: “Dispensationalist Theology,” “Roman-Persian War,” “Christian Zionism,” “Revolution in American Protestantism,” “Malign Social Contagions,” “Good Book,” “A Bit More of the Good Book,” “Door, Bars, & Bolts,” “Race & the Bible, “America in Israel”

Note

[1] For example, the verse in Romans 11:8 comes from Isaiah 29:10. A comparison with the Greek is as follows:

(Septuagint) Isaiah 29:10 — ὅτι πεπότικεν ὑμᾶς Κύριος πνεύματι κατανύξεως καὶ καμμύσει τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς αὐτῶν καὶ τῶν προφητῶν αὐτῶν καὶ τῶν ἀρχόντων αὐτῶν, οἱ ὁρῶντες τὰ κρυπτά.

Romans 11:8 — καθὼς γέγραπται, ἔδωκεν αὐτοῖς ὁ θεὸς πνεῦμα κατανύξεως, ὀφθαλμοὺς τοῦ μὴ βλέπειν καὶ ὦτα τοῦ μὴ ἀκούειν, ἕως τῆς σήμερον ἡμέρας.