The reformation of Christianity broke Christian faith from its ties to a corrupt Vatican and Papal excesses. One of the main differences and unanswered complaints against Rome was the selling of absolution to wealthy aristocracy thus allowing the Church to gain material gain for forgiveness of the sins of the most wealthy while the poor were left facing condemnation despite their hard lives and desperate need for an understanding Church. This was to prove to be a strange affair when now many Protestant churches are forgiving sins as a last resort to gain membership, a move the most religious blame for the death of their denominations and the currently swelling ranks of Evangelical churches which preach a return to Scripture and taking a literal interpretation of faith. A large part of the decline of the old Churches has been their evolutionary drift away from their austere origins and seeking new interpretations which often twist doctrine to the breaking point and many even further until their doctrine bears little resemblance to the origins of Christianity.
Christianity is far from alone in this as Judaism has also had its reformation though we just refer to them as the Reform and Reconstructionist Movements. The Reconstructionist Movement has been true to its name and built a form of Judaism which is more form and less Judaism and allows virtually any doctrine to be accepted through democratic vote. They are more of a political leftist haven wishing to have a claim of affiliation with Judaism which may have once existed but died long ago and now exists largely in name only. The Reform branch of Judaism can be viewed as including the branch of Conservative Judaism as their movement to the left politically and more permissive form of Judaism at a slower rate, but was in all reality the same smorgasbord cafeteria Judaism where you went through the Halachic Laws and chose the ones with which one was comfortable and discarded those which were considered onerous or simply too difficult. The Reform Movement permitted women ordained as Rabbis, mixed marriage ceremonies even having a dual role of Priest or Minister and a Rabbi officiating, and eventually Gay unions. The Conservative movement has reached these concessions in most congregations currently. The intermarriage and eventual loss of connection with Judaism and complete assimilation has come close to fruition for Reform Jews so much so that some congregations have begun a return to traditions and a stricter interpretation of Torah. This last gasp attempt to retain a sufficient attachment to Judaism is guaranteed to fail and the death of these two movements will arrive when their members, who wish for an actual and lived faith, will simply return to the Orthodoxy and the rest will have absolutely no use for their faith at all. The final straw will be acceptance of complete Bar/Bet Mitzvah Ceremonies done completely in a language other than Hebrew and the use of scripture in books in lieu of Torah Scrolls as the Torah Scrolls will be seen as a revenue business rather than a strict actualizing of tradition and the steadfast holding to tradition which predates history.
Just as traditions, Halachic stringency, community, and a holding to the word and original interpretations and applications of the law and of Torah of the Orthodoxy, especially as it currently thrives in the majority of areas in Israel and in its strongholds in the United States and Europe will be the only form of Judaism practiced in the world, so will the traditionalist branches of Christianity which will survive and will slowly reconnect, independent of Europe and possibly even independent of Rome and the Vatican, as Europe is about to be subsumed by Islam and Christianity erased from the landscape of Europe completely. The influx of the Syrian refugees and the terrorists implanted will be the ones who finally get to dictate the future of what was once the stronghold and bastion of Christianity, the Church and the seeding of Christianity throughout the world. The battle for the heart of Europe is in its closing chapters and Christianity in the Middle East and North Africa will die alongside each other in the next half century. What remains to be seen is whether the conquest of Europe will cause a reformation within Islam as it spreads over all of Europe and begins its march into Asia.
This will not be Islam’s first foray into the Far East. Islam needed some fierce troops to act as their shock troops when attack and taking their nascent faith out of Mecca and Medina into the Middle East against the remnants of Persia, Alexander’s Greece, Rome (the Byzantines), the remainder of ancient Egypt from the Polemic Egypt and the rest of the tribes across Northern Africa and against the impervious walls of Constantinople whose wall withstood everything thrown at them for over two centuries. The Christian stronghold held behind its walls, its impressive and unprecedented walls with the possible exception of Troy, Jericho, Jerusalem and China, hunkered down and secure but the siege cannons (see below) employed by Mehmed II were a match for any wall ever built, breached the walls and Constantinople was named Istanbul to the shuddering horror of Christians throughout Europe as it spelled potential doom. Meanwhile Islam had torn across Northern Africa and onto Spain only to finally be halted at Tours, France by Charles the Hammer Martel who routed the Islamic juggernaut turning back into Spain where they were finally vanquished by the Spanish Inquisition instigated and plied by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. The needed shock troops for the Islamic forces were tempted to join the Islamic armies. These troops were found with the spread of Islam into Indonesia around 1200s and the Philippines in mid-1300s. This provided the additional forces and shock troops which propelled Islam into Spain along with Berber troops who provided the main force for Islam in Western Europe.
Great Turkish Bombard Siege Cannon
Utilized by Mehmed II in his Siege
and Breaking of the Impenetrable
Great Walls of Constantinople
After being blunted by Martel in France in Western Europe and at Vienna in Eastern Europe, Islam settled down and had its internal challenges. A war with the United States over the Barbary Pirates twice revealed that the young United States, even back in those early days, was fully capable of projecting power eventually settling as the Ottoman Empire. This final iteration ended during World War I when the Ottoman Empire chose to back the Austro-Hungarian Empire against the Allies resulting in the Allied European powers redrawing the borders and establishing new borders throughout Central and Western Europe, the Middle East and Northern Africa. There are constant denunciations of the European colonialism in the Middle East and Northern Africa while the world is totally ignoring the thousand years of colonial occupations by the Arab powers which exploded from the Arabian Peninsula around 700 AD. Islamic nations were released from their colonial occupations between the 1920s through the earliest 1950s making the longest of colonial occupations to under half a century, a negligible timeframe when compared to the Islamic occupation, which when one thinks about it, continues despite the European marshalling after World War I.
Islam is awakening and started their new rise smashing against the nascent state of Israel over 1948 through 1949 and renewed aggressions in 1967 and 1973 while instigating terrorism from the 1920s through and continuing to this very day. Islam is taught that their warriors are invincible and must never face defeat as Allah cannot be defeated and any defeat is a form of shame on Allah inflicted by his believers. This has been the root of the war against Israel and the reason that no peace can be attained not because the Jews are refusing to sacrifice but because the Arab Islamists refuse to accept anything short of the annihilation of Israel and the complete and total victory of Islam against the Jew. The other problem is rampant though unrecognized anti-Semitism in the halls of power added to the fear of a resurgent Islam cripples the west and the United Nations from being a fair or honest arbiter which is why the pressure is always placed on Israel to sacrifice and provide tempting morsels until there are no morsels short of surrender of Israel itself left to give; yet the demand made even this day by United States Vice President Joe Biden is for more flexibility by Israel in giving even more where there is nothing left to give. The Presidency of Barack Obama has granted Israel one favor by their complete and total aggressiveness against Israel in their dealings and complete refusal in recognizing any right of the Jews to their homeland has been their laying bare the unadulterated aggressiveness to force Israel without any trace of Arab acceptance of the right of Israel to exist in any border and their and the rest of the world’s complete acceptance of the sacrifice of Israel on the alter of Islamic appeasement as if such would even in the slightest appease and soothe the savage beast. The reality is this complete and unadulterated desire to sacrifice Israel before the alter of Allah, the modern alter of Baal and the Arabic Moon god, has empowered Islam to believe that Europe itself, the stronghold of Christianity for two-thousand years is as fragile and weakened with no real faith or force from above and all but devoid of the graces from Heaven is an empty trampling shell ready for the onslaught by Islam and the complete surrender without so much as a fight as they are willingly inviting Islam to take the leading role in their future as they desire no longer to control their own destiny. The European people no longer care about the future as they have few if any children and have already surrendered their future to Islam and hope only that the chains of their servitude weigh lightly on their posterity leaving that as their only legacy.
The question is no longer how far into Europe Islam will spread nor whether or not the Churches of Europe including the Vatican itself will survive; all are already surrendered to Islam and the toll in blood and treasure the sole remaining variable. The hope of the West and Christianity must be to save the treasures of the museums, art galleries and the Vatican vaults by removing them to safe keeping be that the United States, Canada, South America or wherever the society is still resilient and holding sufficient faith that they will not fold before Islam in quiet remission as Europe appears prepared to submit herself. The question to pose to Europe is whether they feel that their societal history and the greatness which went before is worth saving. If the Europeans believe that their history has any value today then they must necessarily be prepared to make not only a sacrifice to preserve it before the ravages of Islam as displayed so graphically by the Islamic State, but also find a belief around which to rally and find the means of restoring both a next generation and the desire for the continuing generations after that into the future or there will be no European museums of art, literature, sculpture and her grand cathedrals will be disembodied from all things Christian and Islam will literally paint the entire last twelve centuries of Christendom from the pages of history with a sweeping of the continent removing every last vestige of Christianism. The Reformation, which was designed to restore and defend Christianity from what they saw as the defaming of the religion of Christ which they accused the Pope and the Cardinals of the Catholic Church, will now end with the loss of unity of Christendom and be a contributing factor to the death of Christendom in Europe. There are those who complain that had only Christianity had not fragmented in the reformation, then Christianity would today remain unfragmented and stand a chance of withstanding the coming onslaught of Islam and perhaps may have preserved political core strength which would resist inviting masses of Islamic refugees within the halls and gates of Europe. Perhaps a unified Church might have held the societies within its halls and adapted such that retaining a Europe which retained sufficient pride, valuing and love of European history and the valuable contributions in art, music, literature and religious thought that they desired to continue the traditions to the next generations, something requiring a next generation.
The real crippling of Europe is that lack of a following generation of native Europeans which has left Europe in the start of a downward spiral where the next generation will have less population than the current generation and in all to many nations far less leading to an unrecoverable trend from which Europe, and any society, cannot recover without unparalleled leadership. Such leadership is not represented by the likes of Angela Merkel or unfortunately any of the current national leftist leaders. Can Europe be saved or has Europe fallen in silent surrender brought on by the current generations live for today, who cares about tomorrow selfish attitude. The question is bordering on asking how long will Europe survive before surrendering to Allah as has every Muslim since the Seventh Century, not whether Europe will fall. What a sad ending to such a noble past, the likes of Newton, Galileo, Copernicus, Nobel, Curies, Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Beethoven, Shakespeare, Chaucer and Bach amongst so many others from such a rich history and additionally those who excited the imaginations of the founding fathers of the American colonies when crafting a new nation of the United States, Locke, Hobbes, Montesquieu, Hume and Rousseau amongst others. For such a history to fall and be erased and vanquished forever will be a sin beyond compare throughout known history. The loss will be painful to watch but we may all live long enough to experience these horrific death throes of Europe and hopefully witness an epic struggle saving all that which can be readily moved to safer climes as less than an all-encompassing effort would be a crime laid atop that sin of the death of all Europe. This is one time we pray we are completely wrong and Europe awakens in time to save themselves, and this prayer had best be heeded by the United States and any other Western nation whose population currently relied too heavily on immigration, legal and otherwise.
Beyond the Cusp
Beyond the Cusp 