Only by taking such religious movements into account can we see the thread that connects a forgotten 17 th -century philosopher to the warmonger pastors of the 21 st century. Join us on Telegram , Twitter , and VK . Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God was founded by Edir Macedo in Rio de Janeiro in 1977. In 2014, after consolidating its presence in various countries around the world (especially in Africa and Ibero-America), it inaugurated the gigantic Temple of Solomon in São Paulo. The building is intended to be a replica of the Old Testament temple and resembles the emblems of the Third Temple used by the Israeli army. Since then, Edir Macedo no longer presents himself as a normal Protestant pastor in a suit and tie. He cosplays as a rabbi in an environment that could be used in as a film set for the biblical soap operas of Record TV, his television network.
Edir Macedo merely makes it visible to the naked eye that televangelists, in general, have abolished the New Testament and dedicate themselves to living a fantasy of Old Testament inspiration that commands submission to Israel and promises money to the people. All this is quite surprising, since it is a Christianity without Christ that enjoys great popularity.
It seems like a collective delusion. Listening to the pastor-coaches of the “prosperity theology,” we cannot understand why Jesus lived in poverty, instead of becoming the greatest merchant in history. By multiplying bread, fish, and wine, he would be the only merchant capable of profiting with zero investment. He would break the competition with dumping and conquer the market of the entire Roman Empire. Then he would even sell bread multiplication courses to the gullible.
The rise of Christian Zionism in general and televangelism in particular are objects of fruitful research on the interference of the CIA and Mossad. However, I have been showing that Christian Zionism has a longer history. We have seen, for example, that the first Christian Zionist in history is probably the 16th-century Kabbalist priest Guillaume Postel, who was considered insane by the Church and forbidden to teach. He wanted the King of France to reconquer the Holy Land, end the corrupt papacy of Rome, and rebuild the Third Temple in place of the Golden Mosque. When this happened, all hidden things would be revealed, and the world would have a single religion: that of Kabbalah.
I came across Postel’s name because he is cited as a likely inspiration for Isaac La Peyrère in the 17th century. Like Postel, Peyrère believed that the King of France had a special role in the history of salvation and that he should reconquer Jerusalem. Peyrère argued that France was the “land of freedom” because there was no slavery, so all the Jews in the world should go there and wait for the King of France to lead them to Jerusalem. In this preparatory phase, a Judeo-Christian church should be created to receive the Jews.
I will use the summary by historian Richard Popkin in La Peyrère (1596-1676 His Life, Work and Influence : “La Peyrère’s method was to create a special Jewish Christian church which would adhere to a minimal Christian belief that would at the same time be acceptable to Jews. Such a church, he envisaged, would have no doctrines, dogmas or creeds except for belief in Jesus and belief in the resurrection of the dead. This church would have no rational theology (because that breeds scepticism). The ceremonies would be reduced to just two, baptism and the Eucharist. Obviously, La Peyrère noted, this would make life simpler for the Jewish Christians than if they continued following the Mosaic Law. In this Church, baptism would replace circumcision. The Eucharist would be the basis for making people live virtuous lives. The effect of all of this would be, according to La Peyrère, the re-creation of primitive Christianity, which was, after all, Jewish Christianity. The liturgy of this Church would be simplified. It would stress the Old Testament basis for Jewish Christianity. All of the myriad theological points that have been developed since the first century would be dropped. Thus Jewish Christianity would be Christianity developed strictly from Judaism.”
The televangelism of the late 20th and early 21st centuries is an even more despoiled Christianity than La Peyrère planned. Certainly, televangelism did not meet the expectation of converting Jews. Still, looking at current Judaism, which is overwhelmingly Zionist, and at Christian Zionism, we can conclude that La Peyrère’s plan was so good that the Jews didn’t even need to convert: the Christians themselves became de-Christianized and began to support the very same agenda as the Jews.
Peyrère’s is, therefore, a Zionist discourse quite different from that of Theodor Herzl (the 19th-century atheist, father of the Zionist movement), but very similar to current Zionism, which unites Netanyahu with millions of Protestants.
Who was this La Peyrère? Publicly, he was a French Calvinist who worked for Prince Condé, cousin of King Louis XIV. Condé, in turn, wanted to take his cousin’s place – thus, Postel’s messianic writings were great for Peyrère to suck up to his boss. It is relevant to note that Grand Condé was a libertin érudit , just like Queen Christina of Sweden, who notoriously had the habit of blaspheming even after abdicating the Swedish throne and converting to Catholicism. And when Christina abdicated, she moved to a Jewish merchant’s house in Brussels, and Grand Condé sent La Peyrère to live in the adjoining building. There he engaged in politics and influenced, through Cristina, other messianic figures already discussed here at SCF: Menasseh Ben Israel and Antônio Vieira.
According to Popkin, La Peyrère was most likely a Marrano, since “Peyrère” must be a Frenchification of the Portuguese name Pereira, and because Bordeaux, his city of origin, was a hub for Sephardic Jews fleeing Portugal (the Péreire brothers, 19th-century bankers, were Sephardic Jews from Bordeaux). Furthermore, in a correspondence, Peyrère described himself as a Christian Jew.
Peyrère became known in the literary world for his manuscript Prae-Adamitae, in which he interpreted a letter from Saint Paul to conclude that there were men before Adam, that Adam is the ancestor only of the Jews, and that the Jews are responsible for the salvation of humanity, since they did us the favor of rejecting Christ and leaving him for us. Pre-Adamitism aside, this is the mainstream belief of neo-Pentecostalism today: the salvation of humanity comes through the chosen people, and Jesus is seen more as a Jew than as God incarnate. Nevertheless, Peyrère angered the Calvinists of the time and ended up converting to Catholicism to escape. He converted and renounced pre-Adamitism, claiming that his philosophy was the natural consequence of Calvinism, a religion without authority that allows free examination. By this time, the manuscript had already been printed with Cristina’s funding.
From all this, what do we conclude? That the history of Zionism is probably the history of a branch of Kabbalah that tried to infiltrate Christianity and dominate Judaism. It failed to infiltrate Catholicism; it managed to infiltrate Protestantism quickly, and only in the 20th century did it become dominant in Judaism. The most famous Zionist movement, led by Herzl, emerged among atheist Jews of the 19th century. Since he had the support of English Protestants and opposition from rabbinical orthodoxy, Marxist historians commonly attribute the invention of Zionism to English Protestants interested in Ottoman oil. However, it is important to remember that Judaism has more than one branch, and the 17th century (of Peyrère, Condé, Christina of Sweden, Antonio Vieira, Menasseh Ben Israel) was the century of the greatest Jewish messianic and Kabbalistic movement, Sabbateanism.
History needs to be restudied taking these religious movements into account. Only then can we see the thread that connects a forgotten 17th-century philosopher to the warmonger pastors of the 21st century.