North New South Wales Conference

Justin Torossian

Wars and Rumors of Wars

Is the War Bigger Than You Think?

Lyle Southwell

Is Peace Really Possible?

Is Christianity the Religion of War?


Revelation 16 has a fascinating prophecy. In verse 13 the Bible says, "...and I saw 3 unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet. They are the spirits of devils working miracles which go forth to the kings of the earth and of the whole world to gather the world together for the battle of the great day of God Almighty. Notice that we have here religious powers, dragon, beast, false prophet, going out to political powers, the kings of the world, to gather the world together at the end of time. That indicates that what we have is religion behind the scenes driving politics.

Or we could say we have prophesied a religious power that will work behind the scenes to incite the political leaders of the world to go to war. So we must ask ourselves, what has been the involvement of religion in war throughout history? Is this an accurate prophecy? And does it relate to our day? You can find the full video on our YouTube channel.

It's called, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It's a great video. I hope you enjoy it. I'll see you next time. Bye.

Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. In 508, Clovis, King of the Franks, converted to Christianity during a desperate encounter on the battlefield.

And then he bequeathed his army to the service of the Church, using it to fight the theological enemies of the Church, specifically people who rejected the Godhead. In 538, the Roman general Belisarius drove the Ostrogoths from Rome to depose the Ostrogoth appointed Pope and replace him with 1 appointed by the Eastern Roman Empire. The church in the wilderness, a term used to describe many groups of Bible-believing, peace-loving Christians in many parts of the world faced nearly a millennia of crusades before the period of the Reformation. Rising in the 6th century, Islam proclaimed an Abrahamic religion free of idolatry. It went on to be an aggressive religion that also faced the great crusades brought upon it by the Western Church.

In the 16th century, the Great Reformation produced Protestantism and yet more crusades. In fact, some historians estimate that 150 million people died as a direct result of war and persecution instigated just by the Vatican during this era. But today let's talk about what we call the Northern Crusades, a history less well known to us in the West than the Crusades in the Holy Land. And to understand these conflicts, we must understand the history of Russia and Ukraine. When we think of the Vikings, we typically think of the Norsemen from Scandinavia moving out across the sea in their powerful, clink-constructed Viking ships, either under the power of wind or banks of rowers.

We think of them raiding the coasts of the United Kingdom, France, Spain, forming colonies as far south as Italy. We remember their exploration and colonization of Iceland, Greenland and Canada. However, we don't always think of their eastward expansion. The Viking ship, with its rows of oars and shallow draft, was perfectly fitted for raiding up the greatest rivers of Europe that now flow through modern day Russia. What red-blooded, golden-haired Viking would resist the opportunity to raid the wealth of the East?

The Norse raiders in the east, rather than being called Vikings by the Slavic population, were called Rus, which means rowers or the men who row. In 862, a Rus warrior by the name of Rurik became the leader of the most significant state in the region at the time, the Novgorod Republic. His son Ivar, or Igor, raided further south and conquered Kiev and formed what became known as Kievan Rus'. Kievan Rus' grew so much in power that at its height it rivaled and even attempted to conquer both the Byzantine and Persian Empires. In 988, A Viking by the name of Vladimir the Great was ruling Kievan Rus and decided that it was time to change his religion.

Up until this point, the Eastern Vikings had served the Baltic Slavic god Perun, who was essentially a northern version of Baal. Vladimir investigated the major religions of the day, Latin-Rite Christians or Roman Catholicism, Greek-Rite Christians, Orthodoxy, Islam, and Judaism. He bypassed the local church in the wilderness already in existence within his own region as lacking in political influence. He was initially attracted to the 72 virgins of Islam, but was not prepared to give up pork and alcohol. Judaism placed great emphasis on their land but had lost that land for many centuries so that it just didn't look right.

Roman Catholicism made the boldest claims of being the only authoritative religion but was far away and idolatrous with its many images. Greek Orthodoxy was a larger denomination and was geographically close and made for a natural alliance with Byzantium. The deal was sweetened with a marriage to the 27-year-old sister of the Byzantine Emperor, Basil II. This was the first time a Byzantine imperial princess had been married to a barbarian ruler despite the strenuous efforts of Christian kings in Germany, France and other places. Being of Byzantine imperial blood, she became the first Tsarina or Queen of Kievan Rus'.

On the new couple's arrival back in Kiev, Vladimir and Anna began a vigorous Christianisation of the Russian people. This involved destroying the images and worship centres of Perun and baptising the entire population under the threat of making themselves enemies of the Prince. Fire and sword followed through the land until the entire region had been baptised and accepted the Orthodox faith. The rites of the church were translated and written using the Cyrillic characters giving the church a distinctly Slavic favour. But not long after this, in 1054, the Great Schism shook the world with the Latin Rite Church forming the Roman Catholic Church and the Greek Rite Church breaking away and forming the larger Eastern Orthodox Church.

1 of the main issues causing the divide was the issue of the primacy of the Bishop of Rome. For the East, the primacy, the primary bishop or patriarch was considered to be the first among equals. What's called a primacy of honor. In the West, the Pope or the Father was the representative of Christ on earth. As such, he could claim nothing less than a primacy of authority.

His word when spoken ex cathedra on issues of dogma was infallible, irreformable, and binding on all Christians. The bishops could only be appointed by him and gain their legitimacy only by their connection to the Pope. The Vatican was incensed that their primacy had been rejected and the schism began a war that has not stopped from that day to this and is central to the existing conflict today. When we think of the Crusades we typically think of the 7 or 8 wars fought to capture and hold Jerusalem for Christianity, and entirely ignore the Northern Crusades to bring the Orthodox Church back to Rome. This series of wars extended for a period of nearly 400 years and included attacks on pagans as well as orthodox Christians.

Relief finally came when the great Protestant Reformation broke out and the attention of the church became focused closer to home with wars such as the Hussite Crusades taking place in Bohemia. However, the division and the hatred caused by these wars only deepened the divide between Eastern and Western Christianity. In more modern times in 1853 war broke out between the 2 churches in what we call the Crimean War. Roman Catholics asserted sovereign authority over all Christians, including those in Palestine. They were backed by France and the UK, with the rights of the Orthodox Christians in that region being backed by Russia.

The conflict quickly escalated to all-out conflict between the great powers in Crimea. Possibly no war has been fought with greater confusion of purpose or more notoriously incompetent butchery. A little further along, halfway through World War I, another opportunity briefly appeared on the horizon. The Tsars were fanatically orthodox and had a long memory of the many attacks and abuses Russia had suffered at the hands of Catholic nations trying to defeat her for the Church. However, by 1917, Russia had become deeply divided and unstable.

She was gridlocked with Germany and the Bolsheviks were rising to power. Lenin, the leader of the Bolsheviks, of course, was exiled, trapped in Switzerland. But maybe if he could return, communism could be used to bring down the Orthodox Church. Lenin's journey in a sealed train through enemy Germany, a nation that had every motivation if they caught him to execute him on the spot, is 1 of the great conspiracies of all time. And its architect was none other than Diego von Bergen, German Ambassador to the Vatican.

Of all men, Diego von Bergen was probably the most qualified for arranging the journey. He was a devout Roman Catholic, trained in Jesuit schools, and he seems to have possessed an instinctive understanding of the revolutionary mind. 1 of his special functions in the Foreign Office was to study the possibilities of sabotage and subversion and vast sums of money were made available to him for this purpose. He knew everything that there was to be known about Lenin and was only waiting to spring the trap on Russia. Within days of Lenin arriving in Russia and lighting the revolution on fire, new events were happening in Portugal to add weight to the overthrow of the Orthodox Church.

On the 13th of May 1917, 3 children in Fatima, Portugal, received visions they believed to be from Mary, the mother of Jesus. And in 1 of those visions, Mary supposedly called for the consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart. If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted. In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Pope will consecrate Russia to me and she shall be converted." The timing was perfect.

It fell flat when atheist Lenin decided he valued the gold that could be supplied by the Orthodox Church more than the moral support of the Catholic Church. His persecution of Catholicism was instantaneous, brutal and without restraint. This was an insult the Catholic Church would not soon forget. But soon a new power began to rise in Europe and The papal nuncio to Germany, Cardinal Pacelli, was quick to realise its potential. Adolf Hitler had Russia just as firmly in his sights as the Vatican, and when Hitler embarked on Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of Russia, an act, by the way, which resulted in the death of 20 million people, Cardinal Pacelli, now Pope Pius XII, praised Hitler's move as high-minded gallantry in defence of the foundations of Christian culture.

A German bishop enthusiastically called it a European crusade and a mission similar to that of the Teutonic Knights in the Northern Crusades. And Just in case you were wondering exactly what was meant by that, we need only look at what happened in Yugoslavia when Germany and Italy set up an Axis-controlled puppet state. Separatists, known as the Ustashe, under the leadership of Ante Pavelic, the Croatian Führer, embarked on a campaign of enforced conversion, deportation, and mass extermination, targeting a population of 2.2 million Orthodox Christians. In a typical act of atrocity, a band of Ustashi rounded up 331 Orthodox in a place called Ottachag. The victims were forced to dig their own graves before being hacked to death with axes.

The local priest was forced to recite the prayers for the dying while his son was chopped to pieces before his eyes. Then the priest was tortured, his hair and beard were torn off, his eyes were gouged out, finally he was skinned alive. The very next month Pope Pius XII hosted a pavilich at the Vatican. In all, nearly half a million Orthodox Christians were massacred. All the while a close relationship was maintained between the Eustachian regime and the Catholic bishops with a constant flow of information about the massacres being fed back to Pope Pius XII who continued to extend warm wishes to the Ustashe leadership.

An understanding of this centuries-old conflict helps us to understand why, that on learning of the death of Adolf Hitler, Archbishop Adolf Bertram of Berlin ordered all the priests of his archdiocese to hold a solemn requiem mass in memory of the Führer. Truly, history is dark with stories we like to forget. Now we move on to the Cold War, and what is, according to Time Magazine, the greatest conspiracy of the modern age, the alliance between Pope John Paul II and Ronald Reagan to bring down communist Russia. The Vatican had long studied the Eastern Bloc countries and recognized that if they could energize the population of a Catholic communist country like Poland, they could possibly light a spark that would white ant the entire system and bring it crashing down. On the 26th of August 1978, Pope John Paul I was elected and then mysteriously died just 33 days later.

The conclave met again and then for the first time since 1523 elected a non-Italian Pope, this time a Polish Pope from the Eastern Bloc who became Pope John Paul II. Now John Paul II was dedicated to the worship of Mary and fully committed to the fulfillment of her aims in relation to Russia as outlined in the Fatima Visions. When Reagan came to power, he broke with entrenched US policy to form an alliance with the Vatican. This policy had been in place since the late 1800s when Pope Pius IX and Pope Leo XIII had both written errors and encyclicals against freedom of religion as enshrined in the US Constitution. The Reagan-Vatican alliance combined the information technology of the United States with the information gathering ability of the Church to energize the population of communist countries and orchestrate the complete collapse of Soviet Russia.

Since that time, during what many have called the Great Peace, the ecumenical movement has been extensively used to try and bring Orthodox Christianity back to the Mother Church, but has yet met with only modest success. Have people forgotten the abuses and injustices of the past? And do these deeply held conflicts still exist? Do these religions still play a role in armed conflict? Well, to answer that question, all we need to do is to look at the more recent conflict that tore Yugoslavia apart.

Simply ask yourself, which side did the Vatican and other churches take in that conflict and why? Which brings us to the present conflict. It is no secret that Putin is deeply committed to the Orthodox Church. Russia became militarily involved in Ukraine in 2014. In 2016 Putin unveiled a statue in Moscow of Saint Vladimir the Great.

Remember he was the Viking ruler of Kiev who forced the Slavic people to convert to Christianity. Clearly this was a typically Putin-esque provocative move as the Ukrainian claimed Saint Vladimir as their patron saint and founder of their Ukrainian church, not the Russian church. And so in response in 2019, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church broke away from the Russian Orthodox Church and established full communion with the Roman Catholic church. And a couple of days ago, with Russia deep into its full-scale invasion of the Ukraine, Pope Francis described Ukraine as a martyred nation. And in a completely unprecedented mood, dispatch 2 cardinals to the country, as his personal representatives.

Now, popes choose their words very, very carefully when they make speeches. So what exactly does he mean by calling Ukraine a martyred nation? Well a martyr is a person who gives their life for their faith. If the Ukraine is a martyred nation then Francis has very clearly chosen and stayed at his side while claiming that Ukraine is a country that is being destroyed because of its faith, because of its religion. In other words, he has called this a religious war And if it is a religious war, what are the 2 sides?

Once again, Roman Catholic and Orthodox, a conflict that's a thousand years old and just refuses to go away. And so the wheel of history continues to revolve, repeating itself over and over and again. And while we refuse to learn from our mistakes, we have to ask ourselves, is the Ukrainian war purely a religious war? Well, far from it. The issues are far too complex for that but make no mistake, religion that has nothing to do with the religion of Jesus is a significant driving force once again, just as the Bible said it would be.

How is it that the followers of the Prince of Peace and the 1 who said, my servants will not fight and thou shalt not kill, seem to be unable to refrain from war? Surely nothing more clearly illustrates the utter brokenness of human nature than the senselessness of war in contrast to the peace of Jesus. Of course Jesus saw all of this. He was not ignorant of what people would do. Justin has mentioned the prophecies that Jesus made of wars and rumors of wars.

In John 16 and verse 2 Jesus goes further describing professed Christians killing other Christians and all in the name of Christ. Christians fighting Christians, Jesus saw it all. Thankfully, All of this will soon come to an end. Jesus will return and eradicate evil and establish a government of peace and love. The Bible tells us that evil will never return.

Suffering, pain and death will be gone forever. Families torn apart by conflict will be reunited together again. Hearts and minds will be healed from the trauma that this world has produced. The Bible says, and the lamb shall feed together. The lion will eat straw like the bullock, and dust will be the serpent's meat.

They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain. There shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things have passed away. And the city, the new Jerusalem, has no need of the sun, neither of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God and the Lamb is the light thereof. And the nations of those which are saved shall walk in the light of it, and the kings of the earth will bring their honour into it, and the gates shall not be shut at all, for there shall be no night there, and there shall in no way enter into it anything that defiles, neither whatever makes abomination or a lie, but those which are in the Lamb's Book of Life. Friend, don't you want to have your name written in the Lamb's Book of Life?

The Lamb who died for you as the Prince of Peace. I don't know about you, but the history of the Christian Church, the wars that have been fought, the persecutions that have gone out and the people who have stood for their faith is a history that I find both fascinating, at times horrifying and always inspiring. If you would like to know more about the history that we've just sort of scratched the surface of in this presentation, we would like to make a free offer to you. This book, The Great Controversy, goes through the last 2, 000 years of Christian history. It talks about the great Protestant Reformation, which broke out across Western Europe.

It talks about the church in the wilderness that existed previous to that. It talks about the persecutions, it talks about the faith of the martyrs and it brings us through to the triumph of the return of Jesus Christ. We would like to make this book available to you. Simply text the number on your screen the word WAR and you

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Wars and Rumors of Wars

Is Christianity the Religion of War?

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Is the War Bigger Than You Think?

15m

Is Peace Really Possible?

19m

Is Christianity the Religion of War?

24m

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