There are a many people who do not know history. President Obama is only one of them. He won't read this short essay by Bill Wilson in his "Daily Jot" of February 11, 2015, but maybe a few more will, as we have received Mr. Wilson's permission to re-post it here. I taught for almost 30 years. One of the subjects I taught was history. The following is only skimmed in history texts....or left out altogether. But we need to know it. Yes, the Crusades got out of hand and yes there were some horrid atrocities connected with them. By both sides, by the way...but why they happened is often ignored. Here is "the rest of the story" -- Helen Setterfield

Prophetic impact--Crusaders and Islam

Bill Wilson, The Daily Jot, February 11, 2015

What many Bible scholars overlook in their postulation about end time prophecy is that there was an empire that arose out of 670 years of battles, eventually conquering the Middle East and parts of Europe after the Roman Empire. The Ottoman Empire, an Islamic Caliphate, benefitted from Muslim conquests beginning with Mohammad (circa 622) until it was officially formed in 1291. By then, Muslims ruled the Middle East, parts of Eastern Europe, and had advanced on Italy and Spain. The Ottoman Empire emanated out of Turkey, coalescing the Caliphate and uniting Islam from 1291 to 1922. It was ended with a severe, seemingly fatal blow, when Turkey became a Republic in 1922 and abolished the Caliphate in 1924.

From 1096 to 1291, seven Crusades responded to hundreds of years of Muslim attacks on Europe, threatening to eliminate Christianity from the world. Even in 1801, the Ottoman Empire’s sanctioned piracy prompted America to commission a navy to fight. The Ottomans had required ransom of what amounted to 20% of the US government’s revenue, yet were still taking our ships and enslaving our Christian citizens. Renown Crusade historian Thomas F. Madden of Saint Louis University writes: “Christians in the eleventh century were not paranoid fanatics. Muslims really were gunning for them...From the time of Mohammed, the means of Muslim expansion was always the sword.”

Madden continues: “With enormous energy, the warriors of Islam struck out against the Christians shortly after Mohammed's death. They were extremely successful. Palestine, Syria, and Egypt—once the most heavily Christian areas in the world—quickly succumbed. By the eighth century, Muslim armies had conquered all of Christian North Africa and Spain. In the eleventh century, the Seljuk Turks conquered Asia Minor (modern Turkey), which had been Christian since the time of St. Paul. The old Roman Empire, known to modern historians as the Byzantine Empire, was reduced to little more than Greece...That is what gave birth to the Crusades.”

Madden says the Crusades “were not the brainchild of an ambitious pope or rapacious knights but a response to more than four centuries of conquests in which Muslims had already captured two-thirds of the old Christian world. At some point, Christianity as a faith and a culture had to defend itself or be subsumed by Islam. The Crusades were that defense.” Prophetically speaking, the Ottoman Empire met several criteria of what could rise again as the beast empire. For example, Ezekiel 38:12 says Gog (the antichrist, emanating from modern Turkey), attacks “To take a spoil, and to take a prey.” If you are watching prophecy, keep an eye on Islam--it is an antichrist religious system and it seeks to reestablish world rule.

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Following up the above article, it would be wise to read Ex-Muslim Imam Gives Obama a ‘..History Lesson on Islam