Universal Life Church

The Universal Life Church Monastery

Saturday, 23 July 2016

The See of Ecumenicalism

The See of Ecumenicalism

Osama bin Laden, the Saudi Arabian, came from that place in the Middle East where the holiest place in Islam is Mecca, because of the temple of Abraham, the patriarch of both Judaism and Islam`s Ka` Ba. As leader of Islam, king Fahd, had assumed the title, `Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques` which, according to tradition, had been Saladin`s, the Kurdish Moslem leader, who`d defeated the Christians at the battle of Hattin (1187) to maintain their control of the city revered by Christianity, Jerusalem, because it was where Jesus Christ, a Jewish rabbi, had his victory over death: `Love your neighbor as you love yourself.` (Mk: 12. 31) Jesus had been taken to the hill of Calvary outside Jerusalem by the soldiers of the Roman Empire then occupying Jewish Palestine, and nailed to a cross of wood where he died, `Surely, this was the son of God.` (Matt: 27, 54) Subsequently Jesus, known as `Christ`, because it means `Messiah`, had Resurrection and Ascension to heaven above, which began the success of the Christian religion that ultimately deposed the Roman Emperor in Rome and replaced him with a religious leader, the first of whom was Jesus` disciple, Peter, who held the title, Pope (30 A.D.), and whose successors would live in the Vatican, a city within a city, in Rome, Italy, although the Protestant move away from centralization of Christian authority would eventually result in the see of Christ becoming Ecumenical and effectively moving to the US` Presidency and the White House on Capitol hill in Washington, D.C.

 The Christians` tradition was to fight the Moslems, whose leader, Mohamed, descendant of the second son of Abraham by his wife, Sara`s maid, the Egyptian woman, Hajer, had accepted the Moslems` holy book, the Koran (610-30 C.E.), from God`s angels. The Koran reveres Jesus, so Christianity`s wars, known as `crusades`, to capture and keep the holy city, Jerusalem, meant their victories over Islam were hollow ones. Although the title, `Custodian`, assumed by Saudi Arabia`s king Fahd in 1986, reflected a belief in a peaceful Moslem union, it derived rather from a desire to heal the wounds of Islam inflicted by the Ottoman Turkish Empire of Selim I, who captured the cities of Mecca and Medina in 1517, and afterwards assumed the title, `Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques` there. The rulers of the Ottoman Empire, which at its height, included much of the Middle East, South Eastern Europe, including Greece and the Balkans as far West as Hungary, and parts of North Africa (Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt), remained Custodians until the last Sultan, Mehmed VI (d. 1922). Consequently, when Fahd was instrumental in persuading a Moslem coalition of nations to militarily support the US against President Saddam Hussein in the Gulf war (1990-1) to retake Kuwait after the invasion by his Iraq army, Fahd was in the tradition of a religious leader seeking to heal Islam, which was again his role when the US invaded Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein in 2003 after he unwisely evinced support for the Al-Qaeda terrorist group operating under the auspices of the misogynist Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

 Ostensibly, the US invaded Iraq because Saddam Hussein was waging war on the Kurdish peoples within Iraq`s borders, although the Turks resisted a coup d`état in July, 2016, before continuing to wage war on the Kurds within their borders by helping the US against the Iraqi successor to Saddam Hussein, Abu Omar Al-Baghdadi (d. 2010), who`d effectively proclaimed a new Islamic Sultanate, the Independent Levant of Iraq and Syria. In simple terms, Fahd represented the Custodians of peace against even his fellow countrymen, Osama bin Laden, leader of the Al-Qaeda terrorist group that crashed hijacked civil airliners into the World Trade Centre in New York city, and the west wall of the Defense Department of the Pentagon building in Arlington, Virginia, on September 11, 2001, and who was killed by US Navy Seal Team Six on May 2, 2011. Where Fahd represented the custodians of peace, the Sultanates were division and war. For Islam, which reveres Jesus, the problem is that, despite the symbolism of a holy Mosque built within the site of the old Jewish temple in Jerusalem built by Solomon (957 B.C.) and destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar II`s pagan Babylonian Empire (586 B.C.), Christianity continues to wage war, rather than defend: `Mystery, Babylon the great, mother of harlots and of the abominations of the Earth.` (Rev: 17. 5) The US use of Turkish airbases to bomb Omar`s Independent Levant (IL) successor, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi`s Sultanate, while the Turks use the same airbases to bomb the Kurds, illustrates this.

 The Kurds are the people of Saladin, traditionally credited in Islam as being the first `Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques`, and although the US gave defense of the Kurds as the excuse for invading Iraq, trading permission for the Turks to wage war on the Kurds in order to use Turkish airbases to bomb Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi`s Sultanate, rather than defend the Kurds after the execution of Saddam Hussein on December 30, 2006, it looks very much like the US, Turkey and the IL are competing to complete Saddam Hussein`s planned conquest of Saladin`s Kurds. Especially if Jesus` see is considered to be that of a future custodian of three holy mosques including the Qubbat Al-Sakhrah, that is, the Dome of the Rock (691 C.E.), built upon the site of the second temple of the Jews in Jerusalem by the Moslems after its destruction by the Roman Empire (70 C.E.). Although the Jews look forward to a third temple, effectively the Moslem`s mosque is the seat of Jesus` Ecumenical see, because the Moslems revere Jesus. The mosque stands where the Jewish temple couldn`t; in fulfilment of the Kurd Saladin`s defense of Jesus` Jerusalem against the Christians at the battle of Hattin in 1187. The plight of the people of Saladin, that is, the Moslem Kurds in Islam, is of the defenders of Jesus` see of Ecumenicalism, which seeks to bring peace amongst the nations, and so defeat the evil, who seek to wage war, rather than defend against it.