"How to avoid Israeli brutality"

Oh btw, do any of you know any Israeli? I work with them.

 

I suppose you could characterise me as a partial preterist. I prefer the term orthodox preterist, since my position is consistent with and loyal to the position of the Ecumenical Councils and thus the mind of the whole Church on the issue.

 

You are no different than the "right" with your false information and bring politics into this issue. It's a Biblical issue not a political.

The crusades were clearly a response to Muslim aggression. Muslims had been encroaching the eastern Empire for years. The catalyst for the First Crusade was the arrival of an envoy from the Byzantine Emperor, Alexios I Komnenos, beseeching the Latins for aid. The Empire was in dire straits and was feeling pressure from all sides, not the least from the Seljuk Turks, who only a few decades prior had crushed the Byzantine forces at Manzikert in 1071. The envoy reached Urban II in March of 1095 at the Council of Piacenza, where he asked those present to lend aid, but the big moment came several months later in November at the Council of Clermont.

America is clearly a Christian nation. Have you read any of Jefferson's proclamations? That is just dribble from the left to silence Christianity and harm our way of life. No serious historian would say other wise. I am a well educated person, I have spent years studying and researching. I teach at a seminary/university with 3,000 students. I am shocked when I see this issues come up from people who claim to be followers of Christ.

Edit: Muslims bought more slaves then any Christian country ever did, they also captured more and shipped more. Muslim slaves had a 99% chance of death compared to the treatment they received in America. They were freed in America by the efforts of Christian abolitionist. At least try.

 

Would you call the Crusades a Biblical issue or a political issue among the nations of this world. Where in the Bible do you find justification for calling any nation "a Christian nation?"

As for Jefferson, you've picked a very poor example to prove your point. He wouldt be considered a Deist, a non-Christian philosophy fairly popular in his time.

Jefferson's Religious Beliefs | Thomas Jefferson's Monticello

"Thomas Jefferson was always reluctant to reveal his religious beliefs to the public, but at times he would speak to and reflect upon the public dimension of religion. He was raised as an Anglican, but was influenced by English deists such as Bolingbroke and Shaftesbury. Thus in the spirit of the Enlightenment, he made the following recommendation to his nephew Peter Carr in 1787: "Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear."1 In Query XVII of Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson clearly outlined the views that led him to play a leading role in the campaign to separate church and state and that culminated in the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom: "The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. ... Reason and free enquiry are the only effectual agents against error."2 Jefferson's religious views became a major public issue during the bitter party conflict between Federalists and Republicans in the late 1790s when Jefferson was often accused of being an atheist.3

Jefferson believed in the existence of a Supreme Being who was the creator and sustainer of the universe and the ultimate ground of being, but this was not the triune deity of orthodox Christianity. He also rejected the idea of the divinity of Christ, but as he wrote to William Short on October 31, 1819, he was convinced that the fragmentary teachings of Jesus constituted the "outlines of a system of the most sublime morality which has ever fallen from the lips of man."4

So Jefferson was impressed by the moral code of Jesus. He constructed his own Bible by removing any reference to Him as divine or performing miracles. This is the same way Jesus is viewed by the Muslims.

His attitude on Thanksgiving is also quite illuminating.
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1777, when Congress declared a national day of thanksgiving after America’s victory at the Battle of Saratoga. Afterward, presidents would proclaim periodic days of fasting, prayer and expressing gratitude.

But not Jefferson. When he became president, he stopped declaring the holidays that George Washington and John Adams had so enthusiastically supported.....

For Jefferson, it was more important to maintain a strict separation of church and state than to cave in to the public’s love of giving thanks. But since he never explained himself in public, American citizens never got the chance to appreciate his principled stance on the holiday. Jefferson’s public silence on Thanksgiving spun out into a centuries-long rumor that he was a Turkey Day grinch—especially when his successor, James Madison, resuscitated the tradition in 1815.

 

I will tackle the founders being Christina in a second. What about the crusades? Did you agree with me on that point?

 

Yes and no. Jerusalem had been ruled by Muslims for over 400 years without denial of Christian access to the Holy Places. It was the intervention of the Seljuk Turks that changed things from the mid 11th century. They were very recent converts to Islam, with all the usual zeal of neophytes of any faith, compared to the more lukewarm Arabs; they were also much less civilised than the settled Muslim population that they encountered in the Middle East, and these established Muslims were their first victims quite a while before the Christians felt their force against them. Their zeal though meant that they restricted Christian access to Jerusalem once they took over the Holy Land from the Arabs.

None of the above though had anything to do with Constantinople's appeal to the Papacy, except that the Seljuk Turks were a common link. This originated in Christian aggression against other Christians, specifically the Byzantine conquest of Armenia in 1045, removing them as a valuable buffer. Byzantine ineptness then led them into an unnecessary war with the Seljuks, culminating in an avoidable defeat at Manzikert. Even then, the Seljuks would have backed off were it not for continued Byzantine incompetence and treachery, which then led to the loss of most of Anatolia. It was at that point that they appealed to Rome, and they dangled the diversionary carrot of Jerusalem as a fellow victim of the Seljuk. The Latin West didn't really give a fig about Constantinople by then - there was a schism between Rome and the East since 1054 - but they did care about the Holy Places, and Byzantium hoped the West would defeat the Seljuks and reconquer Anatolia for them en passant. The ensuing massacre of the non-Christian population (Jews and Muslims) by the Crusaders exceeded many times over the worst excesses of the Muslims.

 

Haha that's funny! The reason that the crusades occurred from Muslim invasion of Christian lands. Plain and simple...you can spin it how every you like but it does not change that fact. You're so liberal that you hate the very thing that you claim you are. You willful believe falsity's that are negative towards Christianity because you can't break the liberal mold. See, I can follow facts. I see Israel as an occupier because of scripture. You? It's just another liberal talking point.

It's boarder line sick (sicko) stuff to believe that Christians were some how worse than Muslims....

"According to some calculations, the Indian (subcontinent) population decreased by 80 million between 1000 (conquest of Afghanistan) and 1525 (end of Delhi Sultanate). -- Koenrad Elst as quoted on Daniel Pipes site

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/05/the_greatest_murder_machine_in_history.html#ixzz58GKGcSap
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"... a minumum of 28 Million African were enslaved in the Muslim Middle East. Since, at least, 80 percent of those captured by Muslim slave traders were calculated to have died before reaching the slave market, it is believed that the death toll from 1400 years of Arab and Muslim slave raids into Africa could have been as high as 112 Millions. When added to the number of those sold in the slave markets, the total number of African victims of the trans-Saharan and East African slave trade could be significantly higher than 140 Million people. -- John Allembillah Azumah, author of The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa: A Quest for Inter-religious Dialogue

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/05/the_greatest_murder_machine_in_history.html#ixzz58GKbLWA2
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"

"By the year 750, a hundred years after the conquest of Jerusalem, at least 50 percent of the world's Christians found themselves under Muslim hegemony… Today there is no indigenous Christianity in the region [of Northwest Africa], no communities of Christians whose history can be traced to antiquity.-- "Christianity Face to Face with Islam," CERC

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/05/the_greatest_murder_machine_in_history.html#ixzz58GKj0dzZ
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"
"
What happened to those Christian millions? Some converted. The rest? Lost to history.

We know that over 1 million Europeans were enslaved by Barbary Pirates. How many died is anybody's guess.

...for the 250 years between 1530 and 1780, the figure could easily have been as high as 1,250,000 - BBC

In the Middle Ages…

…many slaves were passed through Armenia and were castrated there to fill the Muslim demand for eunuchs. -- Slavery in Early Medieval Europe.



Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/05/the_greatest_murder_machine_in_history.html#ixzz58GKylWNv
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"

 

My belief is that Christianity is a religion of peace not war. As Jesus said:
[Mat 5:38-39 KJV] 38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: 39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. [Mat 5:43-44 KJV] 43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. 44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

And Paul reinforced that.
[2Co 13:11 KJV] 11 Finally, brethren, farewell. Be perfect, be of good comfort, be of one mind, live in peace; and the God of love and peace shall be with you.

[Rom 12:18-21 KJV] 18 If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. 19 Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but [rather] give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance [is] mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. 20 Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. 21 Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.
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The Crusades can shed a light on our current situation with Islamic Jihad. Both are an attempt to justify bloodshed in the name of religion as a response to an act of the enemy. For the Crusades it was a response by "Christian" Europe against the seizure of the Holy Lands. For Islamic Jihad recently, it was a response by Muslims against the American invasions and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. ISIS was born in the terrible situation we created in Iraq.

There is a doctrine of justified war. It's not Bible but has risen out of a desire to justify war using the Gospel. I struggle with this especially in the case of wars to defeat terrible tyrants like Hitler and Stalin and would say I agree with the need to do so. But it does not justify wars of aggression like the Crusades, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq.

My basic perspective is that we cannot defeat hate with more hate and violence. Only Christian love can defeat hate. If we hate our enemies just as they hate us we lose. The only way to show that world that Christianity is in truth a religion of love and peace is to respond to their hate with our love and leave vengeance to God.

This is not the human response to aggression. A response like this can only come from someone who has the love of Jesus in their heart.

 

Terrorism is about world conquest not any particular war.

 

You don't know me from Adam so you make blanket assumptions about me.

Up until the Crusades, yes - Christian atrocities at the storming of Jerusalem did indeed exceed anything perpetrated by the Muslims on Christians up until then. Thereafter the level of Muslim violence ramped up.

The point is that Christians don't come to this table with clean hands when it comes to religious violence. Our track record is scarcely unblemished, which is to be expected when dealing with a pre-Modern religious outlook that characterised Christianity prior to the Enlightenment and which still characterises much of the Islamic world. This is why fundamentalism in all religions - Islamic, Jewish, Hindu and, yes, Christian - is to be resisted, since it rejects Modernism and seeks to return to that pre-Modern worldview.