06/29/2023 – “Volkmar” – Level V – 1096 – 1105 C.E. – Chapter Twelve // Group discussion and fellowship
“Volkmar” = Level V – 1096 – 1105 C.E. – Chapter Twelve
The Rhineland Massacres – 1096 – see pg. #660 in the Chapter:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhineland_massacres
Take a look at this paragraph excerpt from Robert Chazan’s : “Let not a Remnant or
Residue Escape.”
https://www.jstor.org/stable/20466542
Gripping poignant excerpts from this chapter:
“For two silly hour the Crusaders stormed through the streets of Gretz, killing and maiming and defiling. When at last they leaned weary on their swords, with blood on their tunics and smoke in their eyes, they justified their slaughter to each other: ‘It would be folly to leave for Jerusalem when the men who crucified our Saviour stayed behind to grow rich.’ When they withdrew from the city they left behind eighteen hundred dead Jews and the beginning of a heritage that would haunt Germany forever.” Pg. # 658
The following is “The Tell” segment where we are projected back to modern day with our archaeologists:
“Was Tabari saying that in October, 1097, when the Crusaders reached Antioch they were too imbued with Christian zeal to weigh the actual situation confronting them, just as the Arabs in 1964 in the nations surrounding Israel were so infatuated by the concept of ‘Jihad’ that they could not rationally accept the fact that Israel existed as a sovereign state? Or was he slyly charging the Jews with an error of which they were not yet guilty: constructing a religious state with such enormous blinkers that the world’s reality was prevented from shining through?” (Pg # 670)
Insert: Who cares about the “world’s” reality?; instead, What is God’s Truth?
“… but toward the end of the morning Tabari returned to his main theme: ‘The real tragedy of the Crusades has always been the fact that the Turkish barbarians could have been eliminated…. They were nothing but a gang of murderers, you know, surging out of Asia…’
‘You sound as if you didn’t like them,’ Cullinance suggested.
‘I despise them. They ruined our Arab civilization and it may never recover.’ For some minutes Tabri reviewed with sadness the eight-hundred year Turkish domination of the Arabs, concluding, ‘And the hell of it is that all the while you Crusaders battled these Turks, we Arabs were waiting on the sidelines, willing to path up some kind of alliance with you, but your leaders lacked the imagination to achieve it. So the moment passed. And in the end you Christians were defeated. And we Arabs went down the drain with you.” (Pg # 671)
“Mournfully he sipped his arrack, adding a final point that Cullinance had not heard before: ‘How do you explain, John, that in the final days even the Mongol descendants of Genghis Khan offered to become Christians if the Pope would allow them to enlist in the Crusade and attack the Turks from the rear? That’s right. And no one in Europe even answered the Mongol letters. He shook his head reflectively, then stooped to pick up three small pebbles which he tossed one by one into the plaza. ’So were are all lost together. Christians, Arabs, Mongols. Because when men. Ignite int heir hearts a religious fury, they inflict at the same time a blindness upon their eyes.” (Pg # 672)
Thoughts? Do we believe that all events ultimately lead to His glory?
Soli Deo Gloria!