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...
I'm saying Christian division causes islam to advance, yes.
Could it be Christian spiritual coldness or apathy instead?
No
Were these periods characterized by the waning of holiness and faithfulness in the Christian people? --- no, on the contrary, they were holy and faithful
It's like the man on the roof in a flood refusing a raft, then a boat, then a helicopter saying "God will save me". Then when he drowns and goes to heaven he rushes to God and says "I trusted you, why didn't you save me?" and God says "who do you think sent the raft, boat and helicopter?"
No, action is needed and more critically action in not looking at some fallen individual or Church and saying "oh, God was never there..." instead of fighting for that individual or Church.
The weapon? The Rosary!
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The Battle that Saved the Christian West (October 7, 1571: Battle of Lepanto)
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Bishop compares election to Battle of Lepanto
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Civilization in the Balance: The Battle of Lepanto and Election ‘08
LEPANTO
A Call To Prayer: This Lepanto Moment [Repost]
Lepanto, 1571: The Battle That Saved Europe
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Our Lady of the Rosary of La Naval (A Mini-Lepanto in the Philippines)
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The Battle of Lepanto
The first part is incorrect, the Arians were already pushed away during Nicea
the second part is also incorrect. Nestorius did not posit that and the belief system of the Assyrian Church is not derived from that
Also, Chalcedon alienated the Copts and Syriacs
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. - incorrect, Sassanid Persia had a large and thriving Christian community -- the Assyrian Church of the east
After Chalcedon, the Copts and Syriacs broke away.
The Empire was recovering somewhat after Manzikert -- though it is theoretical that they could have held up even if the 4th Crusade did not occur.
The defeat at Buda (Pest was a separate town across the river) in 1686 was due to the victory at 1683. In 1683 we had Christians fighting on the side of the Ottoman Caliph. THAT is what i’m pointing out..
There is in-fighting in the denomination in which pro-sodomy folks are trying to take over, but are being fought back.
What I say is that those fighting the sodomists in the UMC need the help of other Christians
To the PCUSA no comments and to the ECUSA, they're too far gone
But to the secular world these are "proof" that even the Catholic Church should accept "gay marriage"
See how it affects us? We cannot sit by and let one fall or we all are affected imho
In those examples I don’t see Christian disunity coming into play — in fact Christian unity showed how even a tiny force could fight off a huge army
“Regular season counts” discount the fact that the formerly Christian heartlands of Syria and Egypt and Turkey are being “cleansed of Christians”
And the Copts and the Syriacs agree with that statement.
We don’t have any say in it.
Look at contraception. We’re the only ones holding the line there. If it has to be the same with gay marriage then we’ll do the same thing.
They have already decided and chosen to walk away from God.
What we can do is make a pitch to the faithful members who aren’t happy with the direction of their Church. If they come in unity with us and in obedience to the magisterium - we end up farther ahead.
See, it’s not the brands that matter - it’s the people.
Then they support Chalcedon since that is what Chalcedon teaches.
“What I say is that those fighting the sodomists in the UMC need the help of other Christians”
I was Anglican. Where was the Catholic church then? Did you fight to help us? What the ones who support traditional marriage need to do is swim the Tiber. You want unity - then lets have unity. True unity.
And you’re arguing we need to side with the side that fights with the Ottomans? It was the heretics and schismatics who did everything they could to help the Ottomans back then.
I’m not quite sure how you arrive at your thesis that we should collaborate with the same folks now? They see the Church as their primary enemy and Islam as an ally.
I want all the faithful Christians - the ones who believe in traditional marriage, the ones who believe in the personhood of the unborn to fight together. If that means leaving the UMC, PCUSA, ECUSA, and the ELCA to swim the Tiber than that is what they should do.
It’s what I did. Can’t say I regret it.
“Also, Chalcedon alienated the Copts and Syriacs”
So you reject Chalcedonian Christianity? Yes or no. I am not convinced that the cause of Islam’s success was Chalcedon.
I am saying that if they were unwilling to follow Rome with Chalcedon then they were never in union with us. Schism is schism. Arguing that the Church should deny correct Christological teachings in order to accommodate Schismatics is precisely the wrong way of thinking. Absolutely backwards.
The only reason they survived as long is because of Western support after Mazinkert and the 1st Crusade. Nor did they reclaim most of Anatolia or regain her former strength prior to Mazinkert.
The logic between their miaphytism and our beliefs is the same except for linguistic subtleties yet they believe the same divine nature, same 100% God and 100% man as we do.
And we were in union. that is a fact
Cyril explained the union between the divine and human natures of Christ as "inward and real without any division, change, or confusion." He rejected the Antiochene theory of "indwelling,", or "conjunction" or "close participation," as insufficient. Thus the Alexandrian formula adopted by Cyril and Dioscorus was "one nature of God the Word Incarnate," which translates into Greek as mia physis tou theou logou sesarkomene, by which Cyril meant "one nature"—that Christ is at once God and man. On the other hand, the Antiochene formula was "two natures after the union," or "in two natures," which translates to dyo physis. This formula explained Christ as existing in two natures, God and man.
Nestorius was condemned and deposed by the First Council of Ephesus, which approved of the Second Epistle of Cyril to Nestorius.
This in-fighting over semantics was one of the root causes of the success of Islam imho. Add in of course the Roman-Sassanid wars. But a religiously united Empire would still have faced off against the Moslems well..
It is not because they are for sodomy, which The God, His Christ, and The Holy Ghost are against.
I believe our predicament is because all denominational associations in their ecclesiology have abandoned Christ's plan for building His earthly realm, the churches. To those subscribing to a neo-Platonic universal structure, the denominational (catholic) approach must impose an over-arching governing body external to the local churches, overruling and bringing them into line to obtain the earthly influence and power of solidarity.
Such denominations mistake this sort of solidarity for spiritual unity. The resulting schisms, dabbling in civil government, often murderous in passion, and suicidal to the evangel, have produced the cyclic wars occurring throughout the history of the Christendom sphere.
The panegyrical gathering and instructional convocation of the committed disciples of The Anointed One, The First-born From The Dead, is continuously assembled in the third heaven, where it is ever increasing, never fractured, eternally praising and learning from the Master, Who only yet anticipates a clothing with the never-dying spiritual body. There the entire complement of rescued souls are always present and in intimate association with Him. That is the perfection yearned for by the ones spiritually reborn but still physically not yet separated from their carnal bodies. It is the heavenly manifestation of The Kingdom of The God that is not yet possible in the Earthly realm.
Here, His Plan that He has demonstrated and implemented for building His earthly churches is the assembly of immersed regenerated believer-disciple priests in a particular locale, teaching them to follow His commands, heralding the blood-bought Kerygma, making disciples, inducting convincingly serious students into eternal union with The Christ through the rite of water immersion, congregating them regularly for public instruction, maintaining the purity of the local assembly through provoking the love of one for another in disciplined conduct, and observing the Remembrance Supper every Lord's Day on the first of the week.
Trusting The Lord Himself to Personally conduct His earthly congregations without applying a worldly catholicity superior to and external of the local, autonomous, churches, none accountable to any other but the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost speaking through His Word, no broad fracturing can ever appear; and local civil morality may be directly influenced by the local churches.
This is, of course, directly opposed by the Cyprian/Ignatius/Augustinian catholic paradigm of a visible global organization, whose forms and polity must be universally accepted without question, clamped wherever possible to the civil government to force its obedience, entered into by infant baptism, maintained by access to sacrament, implemented by control of the means of dispensation of grace, and rejection of deviation by excommunication. This superimposition of a sacral society concept is by a state religion, headed up by one leader, entered into by one means for all inhabitants, and defended by exterminating all dissidents with prejudice. This method has through the centuries produced religious bloodbaths equalling the Black Plague in magnitude, and divorcing those who maintain respect for a privilege of individual soul-liberty in deciding one's life course, by means of appeal to the Holy Scriptures, and exercising spiritual growth and maturity.
These systems are, of course, antagonistic. The solution of the one side is by appeal to Scriptural authority, persuasion, patience, cogency, and respectful regard for and value of the human soul.
The resolution attempted by the other is appeal to tradition and rationalization, refutation, rejection, intransigency, and persecution to death for opposition.
IMHO
That's like cutting off our nose to spite our face.
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