The Christian Bible's nonsensical Book of Revelation, at Revelation 2:9 and Revelation 3:9, has Jesus referring to "the synagogue of Satan". Gentile Christians have for centuries latched on to this phrase, that is attributed to their Jewish savior, as a battle cry against Jews.
This interesting article explains the probable origins of this phrase. It states,
In its original context, it was likely part of an internal Jewish dispute within the first century, when early Jesus followers were struggling to define themselves in relation to the broader Jewish community.
Many Gentile Christians are not aware that Christianity is an offshoot of Judaism and that Jesus, IF he really did exist as a person, was a religious Jew who followed the ungodly and cruel Hebrew Bible, falsely believing it to be the Word of God. This is evident at Matthew 15:4-6 in which the anonymous author of the Gospel of Matthew wrote that Jesus said,
"For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death. But ye say, Whosoever shall say to his father or his mother, It is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; And honour not his father or his mother, he shall be free. Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition."
This past Saturday morning, January 10, 2026, a 19-year-old Christian, Stephen Spencer Pittman, set the synagogue of the Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson, Mississippi on fire. Pittman referred to it to police as "the synagogue of Satan". He also showed his Christianity in court when asked if he understood his rights, he responded, "Jesus Christ is Lord!"
Pittman has a Roman Catholic education, graduating with honors from St. Joseph School in Madison, Mississippi. After his arrest, the school, along with the Catholic Diocese of Jackson, issued statements condemning his actions as being incompatible with Catholic values. Looking at this attempt to distance themselves from Pittman's Christian religious violence, we see that throughout much of history, the Catholic Church slaughtered many Jews and burned down their synagogues. They changed their focus on Bible teachings and moved away from being anti-Jewish, especially with Vatican II in the early 1960s.
Many Christian sects have become much less anti-Jewish, especially after World War II. Today, a large number of Christians hold Jews and the Jewish state of Israel in very high esteem. This is obvious when looking at the large and politically powerful Christian Zionist movement, and is seen in the documentary Til Kingdom Come, which shows a Gentile Christian clergyman telling Christian children who are sending money to Israel,
"The Jews, they are better than us, all of us. You need to accept that... Every good thing we know, all the things we love about the Bible, they were given to us of the Jewish nation, Israel, their people, the Jews."
It should not be surprising that Christian sects change their Bible-based positions on Jews, as well as on many other subjects. Thomas Paine pointed out why this is true in The Age of Reason, The Complete Edition when he wrote,
"...the Bible decides nothing, because it decides any way, and every way, one chooses to make it."
Stephen Spencer Pittman was not the first Christian to attack the synagogue of the Beth Israel Congregation. On September 18, 1967, KKK member Thomas Tarrants bombed the synagogue. The motivation for Tarrants' bombing and Pittman's torching of the synagogue were both based on Christianity. That form of Christianity is sometimes labeled Identity Christianity. It claims that White Gentiles are the true Jews of the Christian Old Testament/the Hebrew Bible. I guess most people want to see themselves as God's chosen people. In Europe at the time of the Enlightenment, Christians believed that God turned his back on the Jews and made Christians his new chosen people. This inspired the Enlightenment Deist Voltaire to write,
"We hold the Jews in horror, and we insist that all which has been written by them, and collected by us, bears the stamp of Divinity. There never was so palpable a contradiction."
Deism is offering us a way out of this endless cycle of religious violence. This is because Deism lets everyone who is reached with it know that The Supreme Intelligence/God did NOT give us the Hebrew Bible, the Christian Bible, the Quran or any man-made book as the Word of God. Instead, The Supreme Intelligence has given us the intelligence-based, life promoting, beautiful and inspiring universe and nature as evidence of The Supreme Intelligence. In The Age of Reason, Thomas Paine expressed this fact in a wonderful way when he wrote,
"It is only in the CREATION that all our ideas and conceptions of a Word of God can unite. The Creation speaks a universal language, independently of human speech or human language, multiplied and various as they may be. It is an ever-existing original, which every man can read. It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. It does not depend upon the will of man whether it shall be published or not; it publishes itself from one end of the earth to the other. It preaches to all nations and to all worlds; and this Word of God reveals to man all that is necessary for man to know of God."
