Posted on 05/13/2013 1:34:20 PM PDT by Cronos
In 640 AD Christianity is spread over all of North Africa. Egypt, Syria are centers of Christianity. Iraq is nearly completely Christian, there are Christians all over the Persian Empire. Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan etc. are Christian, 100% Christian.
Egypt is a font of Christian knowledge as is Edessa, as is Syria
Europe is missionary terriroty with the Picts, Germanics etc. either pagan or Arians...
the Pentarchy, the 5 Churches: Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople and Rome --> only 1 is in Europe
Loss 1: Then Chalcedon occurs and Egypt, Syria etc. has most of the people alienated from the Chalcedonian government. Net result, when Mohammed invades, there is no unity and the Syrians and Copts actually welcome or do nothing to stop the Moslems. If there was a united people, would the same have happened? No
So we lose and the Copts, Syriacs and Assyrian Church of the East are engulfed by Islam
Loss 2: The Westerners come to the Easterners aid in the 11th century and initially all is well, but then in the 13th century Christian politics come to form -- the massacre of the Latins is caused by the Venetians (recently freed from Byzantine) get killed. This leads to the shameful 4th crusade
Byzantium never recovers and collapses to the Turks in 1453.
27 years later the Turks invade Italy (the Pope today honored the 800 martyrs of Oranto) -- and this time again splits between Christians lead to the demise of one branch
Near loss 3: The Western Church splits and when the Turks are invading Vienna in 1683, some Hungarian actually fight on the side of the Turks against their Christian brethren. Luckily this does not result in a Turkish win, or else Rome too would be under the yoke of Islam
And now again - again we see Christians fighting each other and gloating when the ELCA or UMC stumbles instead of stepping in and fighting shoulder to shoulder. There are two enemies: secularism and Islam. They will fight each other, but right now both focus on us.... and we are fighting amongst ourselves...
“And now again - again we see Christians fighting each other and gloating when the ELCA or UMC stumbles instead of stepping in and fighting shoulder to shoulder. “
Haven’t we been fighting since the 1,500’s?
You are positing that Christian division causes Islam to advance. Could it be Christian spiritual coldness or apathy instead? Were these periods characterized by the waning of holiness and faithfulness in the Christian people?
God never loses.
“Then Chalcedon occurs and Egypt, Syria etc. has most of the people alienated from the Chalcedonian government. Net result, when Mohammed invades, there is no unity and the Syrians and Copts actually welcome or do nothing to stop the Moslems. If there was a united people, would the same have happened? No”?
What’s more important - unity or Truth? What was the main issue at Chalcedon? That Christ was fully God and fully Man. Many of those who left and broke away were arians, (who denied that Christ was really God), or Nestorians (who denied that Christ was really Man.
Blaming Chalcedon for what happened with Islam is a terrible argument. Christianity was for the most part united after Chalcedon. The Christians actually won. Look at what happened to Sassanid Persia. It was crushed - very shortly after the Empire defeated them.
Yes, it was a defeat - but it wasn’t Chalcedon that was responsible for it.
“The Westerners come to the Easterners aid in the 11th century and initially all is well, but then in the 13th century Christian politics come to form — the massacre of the Latins is caused by the Venetians (recently freed from Byzantine) get killed. This leads to the shameful 4th crusade
Byzantium never recovers and collapses to the Turks in 1453.”
Why are you blaming the West for the disaster at Mazinkert? Was the west responsible for the advance of the Turks all the way to Nicaea? No. In the 13th century what was left of the Empire? Not very much at all. Yes, Constantinople fell, but the reason the Crusaders went to Constantinople is because the deposed Emperor tried to get the Latins to restore him. The Latins were promised pay for successfully pulling off the coup which they did. Then the new Emperor discovered that he couldn’t promise the Crusaders the money they had been promised to intervene.
Had the former Emperor not brought in the Crusaders, Constantinople would not have been sacked. But it’s difficult to see that the Empire would have recovered after Mazinkert and the loss of some of their largest and strongest areas in Cappadocia and Bithnya.
“The Western Church splits and when the Turks are invading Vienna in 1683, some Hungarian actually fight on the side of the Turks against their Christian brethren. Luckily this does not result in a Turkish win, or else Rome too would be under the yoke of Islam”
What about the defeat at Budapest under Suleyman, etc. By 1683 - they were already on the decline and this was their last ditch attempt to take Vienna. They failed because of the collaboration between the Poles and Vienna.
The first invasion of Vienna was far more serious and resulted in the subjugation of Hungary.
BUMP
“again we see Christians fighting each other and gloating when the ELCA or UMC stumbles instead of stepping in and fighting shoulder to shoulder. There are two enemies: secularism and Islam. They will fight each other, but right now both focus on us.... and we are fighting amongst ourselves.”
How can we fight with the ECLA when they bless sodomy? Paul is very clear on this - “with such a man do not even eat”.
How can we fight with the UMC when they bless sodomy?
How can we fight with the ECUSA when they bless sodomy?
How can we fight with the PCUSA when they bless sodomy?
They have all made their choices and they have chosen to side with the enemy and not with us. We don’t need them. We need to look at it like God looked at it with the Israelites. Remember how he sifted among those who were willing to fight and how he brought victory insofar as Israel was faithful.
That is our challenge - our first duty is to remain faithful - to HIM. God will deal with the rest. Why is the West weakened - talk about the Lambeth conference 80 years ago now. Very few - if any people - remember what the world used to be like. That is why we are having difficulty - it’s because we’ve embraced contraception, divorce, and sodomy. The flesh availeth us nothing.
And now again - again we see Christians fighting each other and gloating when the ELCA or UMC stumbles instead of stepping in and fighting shoulder to shoulder. There are two enemies: secularism and Islam. They will fight each other, but right now both focus on us.... and we are fighting amongst ourselves...
Could I suggest a few hours worth of reading: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism.
Machen argues that the sort of Protestant religious liberalism today represented by the likes of the ELCA, ECUSA, etc., is not Christianity. He had better things to say about the old pre-Vatican II Roman church, than he had for the Protestant liberals.
If you look you should be able to find a cheap paperback or free ebook copy.
Can add to near misses in 1529 the siege of Vienna
Unexpected heavy rains slowed the ottoman advance and bogged
down many of their siege guns
1565 Siege of Malta when Knights of St John in epic battle
fought off attempt to capture the small island
If Malta fell Sicily and much of Southern Italy would have been next
Refer to Siege of Otranto (1480) for outcome - Pope Francis
canonized several hundred saints who refused to convert after city fell
***“And now again - again we see Christians fighting each other..”***
“When men speak of you the speak of poets and scientists. MAKE WARRIORS OF YOUR POETS! HAVE YOUR SCIENTISTS invent new poisons for our arrows! Encourage the Christians to fight one another.
And when they are weak I will sweep up from Africa and kill, kill, kill!”
Ben Yusef in EL CID.
Two, actually, though just barely.
I’ve read the back of the book. Islam’s founder will take a belly flop into the lake of fire, and Jesus will reign forever. Regular season records don’t count - only what happens at the end.
I think Chalcedon contributed, but the big reason Byzantium (almost) collapsed was the same reason the Sassanids did collapse. They’d been fighting each other hammer and tongs for centuries and had stopped fighting finally only out of mutual exhaustion.
And that period of vulnerability was when the Arabs rode out of the desert.
So the Eastern Romans and the Persians committed a sort of mutual suicide. Though without realizing it till too late. Had they settled their differences on some soft of reasonable basis a decade or two earlier, they would have been strong enough together, or even separately, to easily crush Islam in its cradle.
But that there was little or no popular resistance against Muslim invasion in Syria, Palestine and Egypt was indeed a religious issue, not one so much of doctrine, but of persecution.
For the (heterodox) Christians of these regions, submitting the Muslim rule meant an end to persecution, lower taxes, no compulsory military service, self-rule in most things, etc. A darn good deal, from their perspective. Turned out a disaster for them in the long run, but they didn’t know that at the time.
“For the (heterodox) Christians of these regions, submitting the Muslim rule meant an end to persecution, lower taxes, no compulsory military service, self-rule in most things, etc. A darn good deal, from their perspective. Turned out a disaster for them in the long run, but they didn’t know that at the time.”
Again, it all comes back to the truth. Is Christ fully God and fully Man? Then it’s important that the Church teach the truth of Christ’s true nature.
The other thing that didn’t help was the Justinian Plague. It prevented the reunification of the West with the East - but it occurred in 542, some 100 years after Chalcedon.
The Byzantines fought the Sassanids back in 570 for 20 years and were stalemated. So if the blame is put on Chalcedon - then why weren’t they defeated back then?
The Sassanids took advantage of the weakness in the Byzantine Empire and they actually acheived their summit in 621 - prior to Heraclius finally figuring out how to defeat them.
They very nearly won the war outright in two years. It wasn’t that the Byzantines were intractable - they were fighting for their survival vs. Khosrau. They had already been losing for 20 years, before Heraclius finally turned the tide.
This is why they were exhausted. They fought one 20 year war and then a close to 30 year one that was decisive. So from 570 to 620, they spent almost every year at war after the Justinian plague. Both times the war was initiated by the Sassanids who felt they could conquer Byzantium.
Christian “conquest” can’t really be defined by military victories. Christ never said He was setting up a Earthly Kingdom, but rather that His kingdom isn’t even of this world. The whole world could be under “Christian” rule, and yet be utterly damned. Look at the Christians in China. They’re growing in numbers, though the government and military is run by atheists. Soon, perhaps, that country will be more Christian than our own.
Christianity will never lose to Islam.
There will always be a remnant and Jesus reigns triumphant.
We can stay complacent and let those not "in the remnant" fall or we can do something about it -- case in point now what's happening in Syria or Iraq, we sit back while Christians are targetted and in fact want to oust the dictator that protected Christians...
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