How to parse a timezone into a long to store into sqlite?

so I am using nodejs to send back a json object, on return I get the following value for date "2016-05-02T04:00:00.000Z" What I need to do is store this in the sqlite db as a long on my Android app - (timezone does not matter, the only things I care about are the year,month, and day).

Now I will be getting a list of 50 objects with this date format - so it has to be efficient somewhat.

I have read that timezones are not parse-able but then people stated that in the new Java it is, so please let me know how I can go about parsing it correctly.

Is SimpleDateFormat suppose to work?