ANONYMOUS - OUR VOICE

Muslims Declare This Warning To Pope Francis: “Remember there won’t be any pope after this one. This is the last. Don’t ...

<img alt="pope isis copy" class="attachment-large wp-post-image" height="325" src="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/pope-isis-copy.jpg" width="640" />
<img src="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/pope-isis-copy.jpg" style="max-width: 100%; height: auto;" width="240" />
<div class="pf-content">
<a href="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/pope-isis-copy.jpg"><img alt="pope isis copy" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-88959" height="325" src="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/pope-isis-copy.jpg" width="640" /></a>
By Theodore Shoebat
Muslims in Italy made this declaration to Pope Francis:
<blockquote>
“Remember there won’t be any pope after this one. This is the last. Don’t forget what I am telling you.”
</blockquote>
According to the <a href="http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2015/12/02/suspected-isis-terrorists-arrested-in-kosovo-italy-made-threats-against-pope/" target="_blank">official report:</a>
<blockquote>
Police in Italy and Kosovo detained four Kosovars with Islamic State contacts Tuesday for making threats against the pope and a U.S. diplomat.
Authorities said the suspects had posted on their Facebook pages images of themselves with weapons and “in circumstances characteristic of Islamic State fighters.” All four often visited a jihadist Facebook group whose members are known to be in Syria, where a few hundred Kosovo-born volunteers have joined the Islamic State group.
Chief prosecutor Tommaso Buonanno said the most alarming messages were aimed at the pope, stating, “Remember there won’t be any pope after this one. This is the last. Don’t forget what I am telling you.”
Police said the men’s posts included threats against a former U.S. ambassador to Kosovo, as well as celebrating the Paris attacks, saying “this is only the beginning.”
</blockquote>
Why do Muslims hate Rome so much? Because Islam, as I have said many times, is a form of protestantism and was founded as a protest against the Church. Just as Mormonism is against the Catholic Church (it calls it the Harlot of Babylon) so is Islam. I would go so far as to say that Islam is a pre-Reformation protestant sect. Muslims tried to invade Rome seven times, and they began their attempts hundreds of years before Luther supported the Islamic Ottoman conquest of Rome.
I remember a few years ago spending time with an Evangelical friend of mine. Within our conversation, somehow, the subject of the Crusades came up. Of course, I defended the Crusades, explaining that they were fighting off Islamic invaders in the Middle East. He, on the other hand, vehemently condemned the Crusaders as evil and barbarous people. I asked him, “Who would you rather win, the Muslims or the Crusaders?” He said, with a tone of vitriol, “It doesn’t matter, they are both the same! I would not care at all if the Muslims invaded the Vatican, the Catholics are just as evil.”
This is the predicament that we are in. While the Vatican is hated as the Harlot of Babylon, the Muslims are currently conspiring to take over and destroy Rome. And many would not have a problem with this.
The Muslims will invade Rome in the near future. Why would they try such a seemingly useless endeavor? Because when Muhammad founded his cult, there were two cities that he aspired for the Muslims to conquer: Rome and Constantinople.
The desire to invade Rome is still throbbing like a beating heart; it is alive and remains vibrant like a torrent within the very soul of the Muslim world. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the most influential Sunni scholar today, made the prediction in 2002 that the Muslims will soon rise and invade Rome, making references to the declaration of Muhammad himself:
<blockquote>
He [Muhammad] answered: “The city of Hirqil [Emperor Heraclius, that is, Constantinople] will be conquered first” … Romiyya is the city called today Rome, the capital of Italy. The city of Hirquil was conquered by the young 23-year old Ottoman [sultan] Muhammad bin Morad, known in history as Mohammad the Conquerer, in 1453 [CE]. The other city, Romiyya, remains, and we hope and believe [that it too will be conquered]. This means that Islam will return to Europe as a conquerer and victor, after being expelled from its twice-once from the South, from Adalusia, and a second time from the East, when it knocked several times on the door of Athens.
</blockquote>
In the year 1453, the raging Ottoman Empire flooded the city of Constantinople, creating a flood of human gore and countless pools of warm thick blood. It was one of the saddest events in Christian history, and the cries of those slain still echo from the vault’s of mighty Heaven. But such an invasion of the heathen has not stopped; the savages have merely delayed their warpath for the purpose of deciet, and within their conspiring minds is the envisioning of a certain city under their subjugation. It is Rome. Rome, after Jerusalem, is the city that the Muslims have been bent on conquering since the founding of their religion.
Within the entire span of their existence, from Muhammad until now, the Muslims have attempted to conquer Rome seven times, and in each time their attempts were found to be in vain. In the earlier Islamic invasions of the ninth century, Pope Gregory IV protected Ostia, a suburb of Rome, from the Muslim attacks by fortifying it “with higher walls, and with gates and crenellations and trap-doors, and on top he arranged catapults with noble artfulness to fight off the enemy if necessary.” (Liber Pontificalis, 103: Gregory IV, 39, trans. Raymond Davis)
<div id="attachment_50309" style="width: 260px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/8821838_124828081199.jpg"><img alt="Pope Gregory Iv" class="size-full wp-image-50309" height="261" src="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/8821838_124828081199.jpg" width="250" /></a>
Pope Gregory Iv
</div>
At one point they tried to invade Rome when it was under the pontificate of Sergius II. The Muslims reached the Church of St. Paul, only to be crushed by resilient Italian Catholics. When the Muslims were about to enter Montecassino, southeast of Rome, monks begged God for mercy with prayer and ashes on their foreheads. Right before the Muslims gained entry, a storm struck and the floodwaters flowing through the Garigliano River blocked the barbarians. The Muslims made a truce, Pope Sergius II accepted, and the enemy departed. (See the commentary of Raymond Davis on the Liber Pontificalis, 104: Sergius II, n. 92)
<div id="attachment_50308" style="width: 230px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/220px-Pope_Sergius_II_Illustration.jpg"><img alt="Pope Gregory II" class="size-full wp-image-50308" height="321" src="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/220px-Pope_Sergius_II_Illustration.jpg" width="220" /></a>
Pope Gregory II
</div>
But out of all the battles the saints fought to defend Rome, the most sublime and epic of them was the Battle of Ostia in 849 AD. The Muslims sacked Rome, pillaged and plundered the Churches of St. Peter and St. Paul. When they entered the tomb of Peter they stripped away a silver altar, and overran Saint Peter’s church in the name of Allah and for their hatred of the Gospel.
Pope Leo IV arose as the defender of the city. When he first became pontificate he consecrated entire days to prayer and religious processions to render hope unto the people and to kindle the fire of Christian zeal after it had been extinguished by the Islamic barbarians. He had the city’s walls repaired; fifteen towers were built or renewed, and he iron chain was drawn across the Tiber river to hinder any enemy naval ships from sailing into Italy.
<div id="attachment_50311" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/leone_IV.jpg"><img alt="Pope Leo IV" class="size-medium wp-image-50311" height="300" src="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/leone_IV-300x300.jpg" width="300" /></a>
Pope Leo IV
</div>
Before the Muslims returned to Rome Leo made a prayer that transcended time and space, that the God who had protected St. Peter and St. Paul on the confounding waves of the sea would fortify the hands of his warriors who were about to fight the enemies of Christ. Before the battle, Leo IV gazed up to Heaven, and with with soul rooted into eternity, his flaming heart throbbing with the utmost of zeal, his mind interconnected to the most learned of expositions, he proclaimed:
<blockquote>
O God, who didst confer on thy apostle Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven and didst grant him the pontificate of binding and loosing, grant that by the help of his intercession we may be delivered from the bonds of our sins; and cause that this city which we have newly founded with thy assistance may ever remain safe from thy wrath and have new and manifold triumphs over the enemy on whose account it has been constructed; through [our Lord Jesus Christ]. (Liber Pontificalis, 105: Leo IV, 73, trans. Raymond Davis)
</blockquote>
This prayer offends many, I know. But this is what the ancient Christians believed in, and this is how they prayed (and for those who say that Leo IV is not a Christian or a saint, and that the Catholic Church is a false church, please provide one thing: evidence and documentation for the true Christians in the time of Leo IV).
Moments before the heat of valor and arms commenced, the Muslims declared their savage prayer to their false god, and advanced for a naval attack. The Christians made ready their galleys of war, and headed toward the Muslim ships. Then all of a sudden, as the unpredictable spark of destiny manifested its majestic flame, a powerful wind came upon the seas, and the roaring waves collided right into the Muslim ships. The enemy was dashed to pieces on the sharp and soulless rocks, and those who survived shipwreck received no quarter from the pursuing Italian Christians.
<div id="attachment_50310" style="width: 1031px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Raphael_Ostia.jpg"><img alt="The Christians take the victory in the Battle of Ostia" class="size-full wp-image-50310" height="720" src="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Raphael_Ostia.jpg" width="1021" /></a>
The Christians take the victory in the Battle of Ostia
</div>
The Islamic world does not forget such defeats, and the hope of victory, to take what they almost conquered, has been forever in their infernal minds. Yunis Al Astal, a popular cleric for Hamas and a scholar on Islamic law, once stated in a speech:
<blockquote>
Very soon, Allah willing, Rome will be conquered, just like Constantinople was, as was prophesied by our prophet Muhammad. Today, Rome is the capital of the Catholics, or the Crusader capital, which has declared its hostility to Islam, and has planted the brothers of apes and pigs in Palestine, in order to prevent the reawakening of Islam – this capital of theirs will be an advanced post for the Islamic conquests, which will spread through Europe in its entirety, and then will turn to the two Americas, and even Eastern Europe.
</blockquote>
Al Astal believes that the conquest of Rome will be not just a Islamic advancement, but a strategic point from which the Muslim warriors will expand into the rest of Europe and eventually into the Americas.
Another example is Egyptian cleric Salem Abu Al-Futouh, who <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2012/03/egyptian-muslim-cleric-muhammad-foretold-the-islamic-conquest-of-rome" target="_blank">said</a> in 2011:
<blockquote>
The Prophet Muhammad told us that Islam would spread. He told us about the Islamic conquest of Constantinople – Turkey of today – and indeed, it was conquered. He also told us about the conquest of Rome, which is Italy. People find this strange. “How can we conquer Italy?” they say. “We are too weak.” You should consider the number of Muslims in that great Christian center – another person converts to Islam every day. Check on the Internet how many people want to convert to Islam in the very heart of that papal center of Christianity, on their own turf.
</blockquote>
Kamil Zarouq, a sheikh in Tunisia, also made the emphatic announcement that the Muslims will conquer Rome:
<blockquote>
The prophet Muhammad said: “Rome shall be conquered.” Rome will be conquered in our days. This is the age of the Muslims.
</blockquote>
This belief in the future conquest of Rome is not some dream or superficial idea Muslims say in passing, but a universal goal that all Muslims, both layman and scholar, aspire to fulfill. Rome is not just another place the Muslims want to take over (they want to rule the whole world), but a specific region that was desired by the founder of Islam himself, Muhammad. This cannot go ignored. There were three cities Muhammad wanted under Islamic rule: Jerusalem, Rome, and Constantinople. Why? Because these are the three heads of Christendom.
It was from Jerusalem where the Church received, in the words of Pope Sylvester II, “the oracles of the prophets, the manifestations of the patriarchs”. It is in Jerusalem where “the clear lights of the world, the apostles, made their appearance; here it [the world] discovered the faith of Christ” (The Letters of Gerbert, Letter 36, trans. Harriet Pratt Lattin).
<a href="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/jerusalem.jpg"><img alt="jerusalem" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-50312" height="1024" src="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/jerusalem.jpg" width="1536" /></a>
It is Constantinople that was built by Constantine, to be a city “without any temple of image of the demons.” (City of God, 5.25). And so with such a founding, and such a spiritual foundation, the devil would have his eyes to take it for his dominion.
And why would the devil seek the destruction of Rome? Such a metropolis has been concluded by numerous theologians to be the Great Whore of Babylon, the city of Antichrist. Why would Satan bother with such a place, why would his followers be so filled with vitriol against Rome if it truly was the mother of all false religions, including their own?
Satan hates Rome because it is a city whose church is beloved by God and destined to be saints. I do not say this from my own authority, but from the blessed Apostle Paul, who wrote these words to the Church of Rome:
<blockquote>
To all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ. (Romans 1:7)
</blockquote>
When reading these words, we must keep in mind that St. Paul is writing to the Church of Rome, that is, the Roman Catholic Church. For those who affirm that I am wrong, I ask you kindly, if Romans is not being written to the Roman Catholic Church, then which church is it being written to? And where today can I find this church?
You cannot find it, and you never will, no matter how hard you try. But if you would like to take up the challenge, then I would gladly see your findings. In antiquity, the primacy of the Roman Church was established as the head of the churches. This was not an invention of Constantine. Tertullian, one of the oldest and most ancient authorities of Christianity, declared the primacy of the Roman Church. I will let his words speak for themselves:
<blockquote>
Since, moreover, you are close upon Italy, you have Rome, from which there comes even into our own hands the authority (of apostles themselves). How happy is its church, on which apostles poured forth all their doctrine along with their blood! where Peter endures a passion like his Lord’s! where Paul wins his crown in a death like John’s! where the Apostle John was first plunged, unhurt, into boiling oil, and thence remitted to his island-exile! See what she has learned, what taught, what fellowship has had even (our) churches in Africa! One Lord God does she acknowledge, the Creator of the universe, and Christ Jesus (born) of the Virgin Mary, the Son of God the Creator; and the Resurrection of the flesh; the law and the prophets she unites in one volume with the writings of evangelists and apostles, from which she drinks her faith. This she seals with the water (of baptism), arrays with the Holy Ghost, feeds with the Eucharist, cheers with martyrdom, and against such a discipline thus (maintained) she admits no gainsayer. This is the discipline which I no longer say foretold that heresies should come, but from which they proceeded. However, they were not from her, because they were opposed to her.(Tertullian, On the Prescription Against Heretics, ch. xxxvi, trans. Rev. Peter Holmes)
</blockquote>
There are a number of points that are beneficial for our current discourse. Notice how Tertullian writes that it was the Roman Church that united the “law and the prophets” “in one volume with the writings of evangelists and apostles”, meaning that it was the Roman Church that put together the New and the Old Testaments in one compilation. Such an advancing action would, no doubt, provoke the devil to hate it, and hence, use the Muslims to destroy it. Since St. Paul wrote a letter to the Church of Rome, that means it was founded by God. Why, then, would God desire the Church of Rome to be destroyed by Muslims? Only the devil would desire such a thing.
The significance of the Roman Church in regards to the Christian Faith was first mentioned, not by any Church Father, but by Saint Paul. In his letter to the Romans he wrote:
<blockquote>
First , I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world. (Romans 1:8)
</blockquote>
Take notice to whom St. Paul is writing this: the Roman Christians of the Roman Church. Thus when he says “I thank God through Jesus Christ for you all,” by “you” he means the Roman Christians, so he therefore is writing to a specific group and not to a general one. Thus, when he writes “your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world”, he is speaking of the faith as taught through the Roman Church, into which the Apostles “poured forth all their doctrine”, as Tertullian says, and the faith of which was “spoken of throughout the whole world”.
It is for this reason why St. Paul expresses such immense gratitude to the Roman Church with these words: “I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all” (Romans 1:8).
<a href="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/BNMsItal81Fol18RomeWidowed.jpg"><img alt="BNMsItal81Fol18RomeWidowed" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-50313" height="1024" src="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/BNMsItal81Fol18RomeWidowed-652x1024.jpg" width="652" /></a>
Also, one cannot ignore the fact that no where in the epistles of St. Paul do we find the faith of a particular church praised as being “spoken of throughout the whole world”. It is only to the Roman Church that St. Paul gives this very significant description.
When the last Islamic confederacy configures itself, led by Turkey’s revived Ottoman Empire and its leader, the Antichrist, the Muslims will invade Rome, but just like their predecessors, they will fail. They will not succeed because Paul said, “To all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints”. There is a divine plan for Rome, and this great destiny will prevent the Muslims, as it always has, from conquering the city.
The Italians are prophesied by God to be one of the enemies of the Antichrist. The prophet Daniel foretold:
<blockquote>
For the ships of Chittim shall come against him: therefore he shall be grieved, and return, and have indignation against the holy covenant: so shall he do; he shall even return, and have intelligence with them that forsake the holy covenant. (Daniel 11:30)
</blockquote>
Chittim is located in Cyprus, and also encompasses the rest of Greece and the whole of Italy. For Josephus, in his own words, describes Chittim as
<blockquote>
Cyprus: and from that it is that all islands, and the greatest part of the seacoasts, are named Cethim by the Hebrews (Antiquities, 1.6.1, trans. William Whiston)
</blockquote>
From this we know that Josephus saw Chittim with a twofold significance, in that while it is Cyprus it comprises also mainland Greece and Italy, as we learn from Rawlinson (The Origin of Nations, part 2, ch. 2, pp. 185-186). Moreover, in far antiquity, as we learn from the ancient historian Justin, Italy was called Greater Greece, or Magna Graecia (Justin, 20.2). Therefore, Italy, through an ancient lens, can be viewed as a part of Greece, and therefore constitutes as Chittim.
<div id="attachment_50314" style="width: 518px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/naval_battle_of_lepanto_1571_o_hi.jpg"><img alt="Italian and Spanish ships fight the Turks in the Battle of Lepanto " class="size-full wp-image-50314" height="400" src="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/naval_battle_of_lepanto_1571_o_hi.jpg" width="508" /></a>
Italian and Spanish ships fight the Turks in the Battle of Lepanto
</div>
There is significance in the Bible’s mentioning of Chittim as an enemy of the Antichrist. God says that He “will bring strangers upon thee, the terrible of the nations” (Ezekiel 28:7), and “seven shepherds, and eight principal men” (Micah 5:5) against the Antichrist. While God makes known that He will raise countries against the Antichrist, the only specific countries He mentions are those comprising Chittim, that is, Cyprus, Greece, and Italy. This is not to say that these will be the only countries (America will definitely be involved), but that these are the only ones mentioned specifically.
We also believe that Spain will be involved in warring against the Antichrist; my father, Walid Shoebat, has always interpreted Chittim to consisting of Spain.
Therefore, the Christians of Italy who will one day fight against the revived Islamic Ottoman Empire, will be those who are, in the words of St. Paul, “called to be saints”.
In the greatest naval battle of Christendom, the Battle of Lepanto, the Spaniards and the Italians allied together in what was called a holy alliance, and fought and crushed the Ottoman galleys. The Italian poet Giovanni Baptista Arucci wrote of this alliance between Italy and Spain to war against the Turks (who he refers to as the Thracians):
<blockquote>
You have only to make the peoples of Italy and Spain strike a holy alliance. Let this be your labor, daughter: to join kings together, mind with mind, and spirit with spirit. In this way let Rome unite with Spain and the rich Republic of Venice against the Thracian [Turkish] Tyrant. (Giovanni Baptista Arucci, The Victory at Naupactus, 60-64, ed. & trans. Elizabeth R. Wright, Sarah Spence, and Andrew Lemons, The Battle of Lepanto, I Tatti Renaissance Library)
</blockquote>
After Lepanto, the Church of Rome was esteemed as the glorious victor, destined by God to have victory over the Muslims. An anonymous poet, after the battle, wrote a poem in praise of Rome called One hundred verses: to the City, in which he exclaimed:
<blockquote>
Glorious Rome, those wretched men [the Muslims] you now see passing by with their hands bound behind their backs, they are the enemies of your name. (One hundred verses: to the City, 16-18, ibid, brackets mine)
</blockquote>
In the future the great crescent of the Ottoman empire will ascend from the rubble of its past defeats, ruling all of the nations of Islam, and it will charge against that city which Muhammad called to conquer: Rome. The fiery zeal of Christian passion will spark within the souls of the Romans, the spirit of Crusade will revive itself, and they, and the whole of Italy, will fight off the Muslim invaders. The Italians will also ally with Spain and Russia, as well as the United States and the other mighty nations called by God to destroy the Islamic empire out of existence.
What many do not understand is that the past battles between Catholics and Muslims are not isolated incidences in forgotten history, but parts of an entire war, that stops and resumes, in a continually eternal and cosmic struggle, between those who believe in the Trinity and those who uphold unitarianism. The war has never ended, and has only taken a temporary truce.
The Holy Cross will obliterate the idol of the Crescent, and destined by the hands of the Almighty, in that last and greatest battle of earth’s destiny, the enemies will be destroyed by those who are “beloved of God, called to be saints” (Romans 1:7).
When I began saying that Islam is a form of Protestantism, this irked Calvinist apologist, James White, whom many consider to be the most formidable Protestant apologist, who argued that the Catholics of Muhammad’s day could not be considered what we today would think as Catholic.
Whatever changes that were made to present day Catholicism, they do not change much what was considered Orthodox Christianity in Muhammad’s time, as we will show here in great detail. White’s argument is mute.
What we will discuss here is by no means an attack against Protestants, but simply to refute White’s assertions.
White also objected to my statement that Muhammad founded his cult for, amongst a number of theological reasons, to eradicate the doctrine of the Trinity, and other Catholic doctrines, arguing that since Muhammad did not understand the Trinity and other Orthodox beliefs, he could not revolt against it.
So lets see if this scholar is worth his salt, especially in these days we witness a war between Islam and Christianity.
So when<a href="http://wdtprs.com/blog/2014/08/france-churches-desecrated/"> few days ago</a> a Muslim man entered two very old Catholic parishes in France, and ransacked them, destroying and ruining altars, statues, a bronze cross, and then opened the tabernacle, took the Eucharist, and smashed it with his feet, he did not understand what he hated? And while White disagrees with the vandalism, he agrees with the hatred the Muslim harbors for Christian icons, statues of saints, altars, and the Eucharist.
Did this Muslim do this because he did not have knowledge of Catholic doctrine?
Why such hatred and vitriol toward the Catholic Church? Because the perpetrator was a Muslim, and his heresy, Islam, was founded as a protest against the doctrine and practices of the Catholic Church, many of which White and his ilk as well protest against.
Moreover, White’s assertion is not an argument. Even if Muhammad didn’t understand the Trinity, this does not take away from the fact that Muhammad rejected the Trinity.
White is an expert sophist and nothing more. The argument he presents is as if someone says that Hitler hated the Jews, but that he did not fully comprehend Judaism.
So what? Why are so many like James White taking the laity on such spins? And does White truly understand what he claims to talk about? Is he as he claims, seasoned on issues of history on either the Catholic Church or even Islam?
But White is wrong, Muhammad may have not fully comprehended the Trinity as Christians do, but he most definitely had knowledge of its existence as a Christian doctrine, for in the Koran it says:
<blockquote>
“So believe in God and His messengers and do not speak of a ‘Trinity’—stop, that is better for you—God is only one God, He is far above having a son” Qur’an, sura 4:171
</blockquote>
This alone should suffice. And in another verse it reads:
<blockquote>
They have certainly disbelieved who say, “Allah is the third of three.” And there is no god except one God. And if they do not desist from what they are saying, there will surely afflict the disbelievers among them a painful punishment. (Koran 5:73)
</blockquote>
How many times have we seen heretics reject the Trinity as false and pagan, and not even understand the theological details behind it? Just because someone does not understand a theological concept, does not mean they can’t reject it, or try to overthrow it. Many a time do people reject what they cannot comprehend.
Moreover, Muhammad was an Arian heretic, in that he accepted Arianism (the denial of Christ’s divinity), and merged it with some elements of Arabian paganism. Arius, the originator of Arianism, protested the Catholic Church’s doctrine of the Trinity, and desired to strip from it this most orthodox belief. When studying the history of Islam, one must not begin with Muhammad, but Arius. By following Arius, Muhammad resumed the Arian mission to obliterate the Trinity. Islam, essentially, is an Arabian extension of Arianism, the religion of the Antichrist. (1 John 2:22)
St. John of Damascus, one of the first Christians to write against Islam, wrote in the 8th century:
<blockquote>
This man [Muhammad], after having chanced upon the Old and New Testaments and likewise, it seems, having conversed with an Arian monk, devised his own heresy. (3)
</blockquote>
Muhammad continued the Arian conspiracy against Orthodoxy, and thus, this makes Islam innately a protest against Catholic doctrine.
White loves to tout the idea that the present Catholic Church is more of a product of the Middle Ages, and to this I would like to ask: Mr. White, who then were the “true believers” during the Middle Ages? Point them out, if you can, you can’t?
Were they the heretic Cathars, the heretic Bogomils, or the Catholics? If you say that the world was under some great apostasy, then your argument is not with the Vatican, but with Christ Himself when He declared:
<blockquote>
I am with you always, even to the end of the age. (Matthew 20:20)
</blockquote>
Who was Christ with during the Middle Ages? Surely, to White, He was not with the valiant Crusaders who fought against the Muslims, protected holy sites, preserved Eastern Christendom, and advanced the glory of the Cross, or the holy warriors who vanquished the wicked and evil Cathars in France, who said that the God Who created the world is evil and the devil?
If Christ was no longer in the Church during the Middle Ages, when did He leave? Did He lie when He said He would always be with His Church? Did He all of a sudden decide to leave, and then return when Martin Luther hammered his theses on the door?
White asserts that when I say Catholics, I mean strictly Roman Catholic. Apparently he thinks he can read minds, for I never said that the term Catholic is limited to Rome. When I say Catholic, I mean all those who are a part of the Roman Church, and the many zealous Orthodox who, for centuries before any Reformed Baptist came into existence, they worshipped God through ancient rites in the East, such as these:
<iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/kOKoJS7ABVc" width="440" height="335" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
These Christians have been observing such rites for millennia, and yet I do not see any Christian leader such as White, or his ilk, conducting services such as these.
To White, the Church Fathers were like him, and not like these Catholics and these Orthodox who reign in Rome, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Russia, Serbia, Yugoslavia, Macedonia, and the rest of the nations where ancient Christianity is most piously, and sublimely, observed.
 
<div id="attachment_57966" style="width: 984px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Hagia-Sophia2.jpg"><img alt="Christian art from the Hagia Sophia, in Turkey. " class="wp-image-57966 size-full" height="656" src="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Hagia-Sophia2.jpg" width="974" /></a>
Christian art from the Hagia Sophia, in Turkey.
</div>
As I say in my essay, <a href="http://shoebat.com/2014/04/12/muslims-will-invade-vatican-try-destroy-roman-catholic-church-2/">The Muslims Will Invade The Vatican,  And Try To Destroy The Roman Catholic Church</a>, the Muslims have such hatred for Rome that they at numerous times tried to invade it as early as the ninth century. The heat of desire to conquer Rome is still throbbing and ebbing within the hearts of the Muslim world, with ISIS recently declaring:
<blockquote>
So to arms, to arms, soldiers of Islam, fight, fight. Rush O Muslims to your state. It is your state. Syria is not for Syrians and Iraq is not for Iraqis. The land is for the Muslims, all Muslims. This is my advice to you. If you hold to it you will conquer Rome and own the world, if Allah wills.
</blockquote>
To the Muslim mind, to own Rome is to own the world. Why? Because Islam came as a theological disagreement with Orthodox Christianity, especially in regards to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. The Church of Rome upheld and greatly defended Orthodox teachings for centuries, and thus to take such a church would be to dominate the center of Western Christianity. Muhammad himself expressed his desire to conquer Rome, and Constantinople.
Should we all do nothing either morally or militarily while the wretches of Islam conquer Rome and the Middle East, while we only make hum-and-drum when terrorists bomb New York? Is this how Christ loved the whole world?
Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the most influential Sunni scholar today, made the prediction in 2002 that the Muslims will soon rise and invade Rome, making references to the declaration of Muhammad himself:
<blockquote>
He [Muhammad] answered: “The city of Hirqil [Emperor Heraclius, that is, Constantinople] will be conquered first” … Romiyya is the city called today Rome, the capital of Italy. The city of Hirquil was conquered by the young 23-year old Ottoman [sultan] Muhammad bin Morad, known in history as Mohammad the Conquerer, in 1453 [CE]. The other city, Romiyya, remains, and we hope and believe [that it too will be conquered]. This means that Islam will return to Europe as a conquerer and victor, after being expelled from its twice-once from the South, from Adalusia, and a second time from the East, when it knocked several times on the door of Athens.
</blockquote>
Rome was the spiritual head of the Western Church, while Constantinople was the holy city for the Eastern Orthodox. To take both of these would lead to the spiritual crumbling of both branches of Christendom.
The violence of the Muslim devils is not just against Roman Catholics, but the Catholics of the Eastern Orthodox Church as well. Muslim jihadists are systematically slaughtering Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics in Syria and Iraq, beheading their children, raping their mothers, and lynching their fathers. They have desecrated the churches, tore down the holy crosses and Christian icons and statues, calling them idols, and have conspicuously shown their ardent desire to destroy all of Orthodox Christendom.
Why the vicious hatred for the Holy Cross, the Christian icons, the Eucharist, the altars? Because Islam was founded to destroy the Catholic Church. Look to its heretical book, the Koran, and Hadith, and you will not only see attacks against the divinity of Christ, the sonship of Christ, the Crucifixion, but against Catholic monks, and the veneration of the Virgin Mary, all doctrines and concepts defended and proclaimed by the Catholic Church. In the Koran it says that Christians worship both Christ and His mother, Mary, proving that Muhammad had knowledge of Catholic adoration for Mary as Mother of God:
<blockquote>
And when Allah will say: O Isa son of Mary! did you say to men, Take me and my mother for two gods besides Allah he will say (Koran 5:116)
</blockquote>
The idea that Christians deified Mary is not common only to Islam, but to what White propagates against Catholics.
Even the hatred toward Catholic monks is deep within the Koran and Islamic history.  In the Koran it accuses Christians of worshipping their monks in place of Allah:
<blockquote>
They have taken their scholars and monks as lords besides Allah , and [also] the Messiah, the son of Mary. (Koran 9:31)
 
</blockquote>
In another verse Christian monks are generalized as greedy and of hoarding gold:
<blockquote>
O you who have believed, indeed many of the scholars and the monks devour the wealth of people unjustly and avert [them] from the way of Allah . And those who hoard gold and silver and spend it not in the way of Allah – give them tidings of a painful punishment. (Koran 9:34)
</blockquote>
 
During the seventh century, when Abu Bakr, the successor to Muhammad, was about to conquer Syria, he commanded his men to slaughter monks with tonsures (if you don’t know what a tonsure is, <a href="http://shoebat.com/2013/10/18/muslims-kill-men-haircut/" target="_blank">click here</a>), and to spare the monks without tonsures. The reason for this was because the monks with the tonsures were Catholics, believing in Orthodox doctrine, while the monks without the tonsure were heretical, and non-Catholic.
At first Abu Bakr said:
<blockquote>
You will meet people who have set themselves apart in hermitages; leave them to accomplish the purpose for which they have done this.
</blockquote>
No one was to be killed, except for one, men with the dreaded hairstyle – the Catholic tonsure:
<blockquote>
You will meet people who have shaved the crowns of their heads, leaving a band of hair around it. Strike them with the sword.
</blockquote>
The hatred towards the Catholic Church within Islamic history can be found just three years after Muhammad’s death, in 635: the caliph Umar captured Jerusalem, and when Saint Sophronius, an Eastern Catholic (not a Baptist, sorry), looked upon this Arab conquerer dressed in filthy camel hair and defiling the City of God with his idolatry and heresy, he proclaimed:
<blockquote>
In truth, this is the abomination of the desolation established in the holy place, which Daniel the prophet spoke of.
</blockquote>
Umar built a mosque in Jerusalem, just as Antiochus erected temples to Jupiter in the same holy city. The mosque crumbled down, and when he asked as to why this took place, a number of Jews approached him and said, “If you do not tear down the cross on top of the Mount of Olives, your building will not stay up.” He, in his hated for holy icons, removed the cross, and thus did great defilement taint the Holy Land. It is of no wonder that with bitter tears saint Sophronius wept for the loss of the Holy City, and over the Christian people who would suffer greatly. (1)
Their vitriol against Catholics was so horrendous, that in the Middle Ages the Muslims went so far as to rape Catholic men, and in one moment, sodomized a Catholic bishop, as Guibert of Nogent writes:
<blockquote>
Their lust overflowed to the point that the execrable and profoundly intolerable crime of sodomy, which they committed against men of middle or low station, they also committed against a certain bishop, killing him. (2)
</blockquote>
Well let us put White’s objections against the words of the Fathers themselves. To demonstrate that the Christians of Muhammad’s time were indeed Catholic, I will present the statements of certain Fathers who lived around the time in which Islam arose as a new sect, and in such we will allow their words to speak of their own Catholicity.
St. John of Damascus, amongst the greatest Fathers of the Church, was one of the earliest theologians to write against Muhammad, his exposition against the Islamic heresy being written within the 8th Century, when Islam was a very new cult.
<div id="attachment_57932" style="width: 410px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/john-damascus.jpg"><img alt="St. John of Damascus, fighter of heresies " class="size-full wp-image-57932" height="567" src="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/john-damascus.jpg" width="400" /></a>
St. John of Damascus, fighter of heresies
</div>
Because of the time he wrote in, and for the reason that he lived within the infant stage of Islam, St. John of Damascus’ theological works are an adequate illustration as to what orthodox Christians believed in during the time of Muhammad, and in the time of Islam’s new beginnings. In his book, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, St. John of Damascus explains and vindicates the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist, writing:
<blockquote>
If, then, “the word of the Lord is living and effectual [Hebrews 4:12],” and if “whatsoever the Lord pleased he hath done [Pslam 134:6]”; if He said: “Be light made, and it was made. Be a firmament made, and it was made” [Gen. 1.3, 6]; if by the word of the Lord the heavens were established, and all the power of them by the spirit of his mouth [Psalm 32:6]; if heaven and earth, water and fire, and air and the whole universe of these were made perfect by the air and the whole universe of these were made perfect by the word of the Lord, and this much famed living being, too, which is man; if by His will God the Word Himself became man and without seed caused the pure and the undefiled blood of his blessed Ever-Virgin to form a body for Himself; — if all this, then can He not make the bread His body and the wine and water His blood? In the beginning He said: “Let the earth bring forth the green herb,” [Genesis 1:11] and even until now, when the rain falls, the earth brings forth its own shoots under the influence and power of the divine command. God said: “This is my body,” and, “This is my blood,” and, “This do in commemoration of me,” and by His almighty command it is done, until He shall come, for what He said was “until he come.” And through the invocation the overshadowing power of the Holy Ghost becomes a rainfall for this new cultivation.
For, just as all things whatsoever God made He made by the operation of the Holy Ghost, so also it is by the operation of the Spirit that these things are done which surpass nature and cannot be discerned except by faith alone. “How shall this be done to me,” asked the blessed Virgin, “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee.” And now you ask how the bread becomes the body of Christ and the wine and water the blood of Christ. And I tell you that the Holy Ghost comes down and works these things which are beyond description and understanding. Now, bread and wine are used because God knows human weakness and how most things that are not constantly and habitually used cannot be put up with and are shunned. With His usual condescension, therefore, He does through the ordinary things of nature those which surpass the natural order. And just as in the case of baptism, because it is the custom of men to wash themselves with water and anoint themselves oil He joined the grace of the Spirit to oil and water and made it a laver of regeneration, so, because it is men’s customs to eat bread and drink water and wine He joined His divinity to these and made them His body and blood, so that by the ordinary natural things we might be raised to those which surpass the order of nature.” (4)
</blockquote>
And by what fashion can one reject the Catholicity of this long discourse? Here he defends the Eucharist, here he declares it the body and blood of Jesus. Of which doctrine can you place this endurable theologian, but in that of the Catholic Faith? Tell me, what protestant church teaches such doctrine, in these words and with these terms? It was such doctrine that St. John of Damascus upheld and defended against the heresies of his day, and amongst those false doctrines was Islam, which he had deemed “a forerunner of the Antichrist.” (5)
This same John wrote that after the gnostic heretic Marcion was excommunicated, “He came to Rome, where he requested those who were ruling the Church at that time to receive him to penance” (6). St. John of Damascus says here that those who were in Rome at that time, ruled the Church, signifying that He Himself upheld the primacy of the Roman Church.
St. John of Damascus, moreover, upheld the Catholic beliefs in regards to Mary, in that she was a perpetual virgin, having no other children but Christ, that she was bodily assumed into Heaven after death, and that one can pray to her. There are numerous examples of this. In one homily St. John of Damascus declares:
<blockquote>
Mingling, rather, fear with desire, and weaving them into one crown, with reverent hand and longing soul, let us show forth the poor first-fruits of our intelligence in gratitude to our Queen and Mother, the benefactress of all creation as a repayment of our debt. (7)
</blockquote>
He declared that Mary, after her death, was assumed in both spirit and body into Heaven, explaining the doctrine as such:
<blockquote>
O how does the source of life pass through death to life? O how can she obey the law of nature, who, in conceiving, surpasses the boundaries of nature? How is her spotless body made subject to death? In order to be clothed with immortality she must first put off mortality, since the Lord of nature did not reject the penalty of death. She dies according to the flesh, destroys death by death, and through corruption gains incorruption, and makes her death the source of resurrection. O how does Almighty God receive with His own hands the holy disembodied soul of our Lord’s Mother! He honours her truly, whom being His servant by nature, He made His Mother, in His inscrutable abyss of mercy, when He became incarnate in very truth. We may well believe that the angelic choirs waited to receive thy departing soul. O what a blessed departure this going to God of thine. If God vouchsafes it to all His servants–and we know that He does–what an immense difference there is between His servants and His Mother. What, then, shall we call this mystery of thine? Death? Thy blessed soul is naturally parted from thy blissful and undefiled body, and the body is delivered to the grave, yet it does not endure in death, nor is it the prey of corruption. The body of her, whose virginity remained unspotted in child-birth, was preserved in its incorruption, and was taken to a better, diviner place, where death is not, but eternal life. Just as the glorious sun may be hidden momentarily by the opaque moon, it shows still though covered, and its rays illumine the darkness since light belongs to its essence. It has in itself a perpetual source of light, or rather it is the source of light as God created it. So art thou the perennial source of true light, the treasury of life itself, the richness of grace, the cause and medium of all our goods. And if for a time thou art hidden by the death of the body, without speaking, thou art our light, life-giving ambrosia, true happiness, a sea of grace, a fountain of healing and of perpetual blessing. Thou art as a fruitful tree in the forest, and thy fruit is sweet in the mouth of the faithful. Therefore I will not call thy sacred transformation death, but rest or going home, and it is more truly a going home. Putting off corporeal things, thou dwellest in a happier state.” (8)
</blockquote>
In another part he exclaims:
<blockquote>
To-day the spotless Virgin, untouched by earthly affections, and all heavenly in her thoughts, was not dissolved in earth, but truly entering heaven, dwells in the heavenly tabernacles. (9)
</blockquote>
St. John of Damascus prayed to Mary, and exhorted her to watch over the Christians:
<blockquote>
We, too, approach thee to-day, O Queen; and again, I say, O Queen, O Virgin Mother of God, staying our souls with our trust in thee, as with a strong anchor. Lifting up mind, soul and body, and all ourselves to thee, rejoicing in psalms and hymns and spiritual canticles, we reach through thee One who is beyond our reach on account of His Majesty. If, as the divine Word made flesh taught us,  honour shown to servants, is honour shown to our common Lord, how can honour shown to thee, His Mother, be slighted? How is it not most desirable? Art thou not honoured as the very breath of life? Thus shall we best show our service to our Lord Himself. What do I say to our Lord? It is sufficient that those who think of Thee should recall the memory of Thy most precious gift as the cause of our lasting joy. How it fills us with gladness! How the mind that dwells on this holy treasury of Thy grace enriches itself.
This is our thank-offering to thee, the first fruits of our discourses, the best homage of my poor mind, whilst I am moved by desire of thee, and full of my own misery. But do thou graciously receive my desire, knowing that it exceeds my power. Watch over us, O Queen, the dwelling-place of our Lord. Lead and govern all our ways as thou wilt. Save us from our sins. Lead us into the calm harbour of the divine will. Make us worthy of future happiness through the sweet and face-to-face vision of the Word made flesh through thee. With Him [Christ], glory, praise, power, and majesty be to the Father and to the holy and life-giving Spirit, now and for ever. Amen. (10)
</blockquote>
Is James White prepared to proclaim St. John of Damascus as a heretic?
St. John of Damascus even maintained that Mary never had any children after Christ, writing,
<blockquote>
Hence, the Ever-Virgin remained a virgin even after giving birth and never had converse with a husband as long as she lived. (11)
</blockquote>
Neither the Muslim nor the Protestant would agree with any of the above sermons, but this is what Christians, around the earliest times of Islam, until now, believed in, and it is such a doctrine that the Muslims and Protestants want to destroy.
And we ask James White, is such doctrine during the 8th century any much different from how Christianity was taught during Islam and how it was taught during the 12th century or even in the 21st century as you claimed?
So what sort of clever sophist device will you come up with to refute this? Was St. John of Damascus wrong? Was he a pagan? Was he teaching heresy when he wrote such things?
To claim that Christianity was different long ago is exactly what Muslims, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons and every other heretical belief  claim, that Christianity was corrupted and needed to be saved by some reformer. So we ask, why do you have this in common with Muslims?
For what reason would St. John of Damascus, this learned theologian, fight against the heresy of Muhammad? It was to defend Orthodoxy against Islam, and therefore, to maintain the doctrine of the Catholic Church. And if it was not the Catholic Church, then which church was it? Evangelical? Baptist? Methodist? There can be no dispute, that St. John of Damascus was thoroughly Catholic, and that his enemies, the Muslims, were warring against the Catholic Church.
And this leads us to our next ancient theologian, who lived close to the time of Islam’s advent, Theodore Abu Qurrah, an 8th century Melkite bishop who superintended the church in Harran, at Mesopotamia, and who was one of the first to organize a theological defense for Orthodoxy against the heresies of Islam.
<div id="attachment_57967" style="width: 972px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/ConquestOfConstantinopleByTheCrusadersIn1204.jpg"><img alt="Islamic conquest of Constantinople " class="size-full wp-image-57967" height="568" src="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/ConquestOfConstantinopleByTheCrusadersIn1204.jpg" width="962" /></a>
Islamic conquest of Constantinople
</div>
 
Theodore believed that Islam, alongside other heresies, were enemies of the Roman Catholic Church, which he esteemed as being founded by Christ, and as “the seat of St. Peter” (12). He stresses in his book, Discerning the True Church, that the authentic Church is the Catholic Church, that Apostolic succession must be upheld, and that the only Orthodox Church Councils were the ones commenced by Rome, and that all heretics are against the Roman Church:
<blockquote>
You should understand that the head of the apostles was St. Peter, he to whom Christ said, “You are the rock; and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not overcome it.” [Matthew 16:18] After his resurrection, he also said to him three times, while on the shore of the sea of Tiberias, “Simon, do you love me? Feed my lambs, rams, and ewes.” [John 21:15-17] In another passage, he said to him, “Simon, Satan will ask to sift you like wheat, and I prayed that you not lose your faith; but you, at that time, have compassion on your brethren and strengthen them.” Do you not see that St. Peter is the foundation of the church, selected to shepherd it, that those who believe in his faith will never lose their faith, and that he was ordered to have compassion on his brethren and to strengthen them?
As for Christ’s words, “I prayed for you, that you not lose your faith; but you, have compassion on your brethren, at that time, and and strengthen them,” we do not think that he meant St. Peter himself [and the apostles themselves]. Rather, he meant nothing other than the holders of the seat of St. Peter, that is, Rome, [and the holders of the seats of the apostles]. Just as when he said to the apostles, “I am with you always, until the end of the age,” he did not mean just the apostles themselves, but also those who would be in charge of their seats and their flocks; in the same way, when he spoke his last words to St. Peter, “Have compassion, at that time, and strengthen your brethren; and your faith will not be lost,’ he meant by this nothing but other than the holders of his seat. Yet another indication of this is the fact that among the apostles it was St. Peter alone who lost his faith and denied Christ, which Christ may have allowed to happen to Peter so as to teach us that it was not Peter that he meant by these words. Moreover, we know of no apostle who fell and needed St. Peter to strengthen him. If someone says that Christ meant by these words only St. Peter himself [and the apostles themselves], this person causes the church to lack someone to strengthen it after the death of St. Peter. How could this happen, especially when we see all the sifting of the church that came from Satan after the apostles’ death? All of this indicates that Christ did not mean [them] by these words. Indeed, everyone knows that the heretics attacked the church only after the death of the apostles — Paul of Samosata, Arius, Macedonius, Eunomius, Sabellius, Apollinaris, Origen, and others. If he meant by these words in the gospel only St. Peter [and the apostles themselves], then after [them] the church would have been deprived of comfort and would have had no one to deliver her from those heretics, whose heresies are truly “the gates of hell,” which Christ said would not overcome the church. (13)
</blockquote>
Theodore later recounts that when the major heretics, Arius, the one who rejected Christ’s divinity; Macedonius, the one who who rejected the Holy Spirit’s divinity; Nestorius, the one who rejected the full divinity of Christ, and Eutychius, the one who affirmed that Christ’s divinity consumed His humanity, taught and spread their heresies like diseases that consume the flesh, it was the Church of Rome that commanded that Church Councils be conveyed to settle the theological conflicts and vanquish heresy. As Theodore recounts:
<blockquote>
Do you not know that when Arius arose, by command of none other than the bishop of Rome, a council was summoned against him. The holy council anathematized Arius and his heresy, and the church accepted this council and rejected Arius, even as in earlier times the church of Antioch had accepted the letter of the apostles and rejected the heretics instructing it to be circumcised and keep the law. When Macedonius arose and said certain things about the Holy Spirit, again, by command of the bishop of Rome, a council was summoned against him at Constantinople. This holy council anathematized him, and the church accepted this council, even as it had accepted the first council, and expelled Macedonius, even as it had expelled Arius. …When Nestorius arose and said certain things of Christ, the church disclaimed his words and, as was their customs, referred him to the holy council. By command of the bishop of Rome, a council against him was summoned at Ephesus. This holy council expelled him and declared his teachings false, and the holy church accepted that council, expelled Nestorius, and rejected his teachings. …When Eutyches and Dioscurus [a supporter of Eutyches] arose and said certain things about Christ, the church disclaimed their words and holy fathers arose to argue against them. Nonetheless, the church accepted the opinion neither of those two nor of those who were arguing against them. Rather, as was their custom, they referred the two to the holy council. By command of the bishop of Rome, the fourth council was summoned against them at Chalcedon. It anathematized them and declared their teachings false, and the church accepted the words of this council, even as it had accepted the first three councils, expelling Eutyches and Dioscorus and rejecting their teachings.” (14)
</blockquote>
Both of these statements indicate the catholicity of Theodore Abu Qurrah. His view of Rome as the protector of Orthodoxy, and the bastion against heretics, can only be one subscribed by a Catholic. Would a Reformed Baptist ever say such a thing? He esteems Rome as the protector against heresies, one of which was Islam, for Theodore debated a Muslim over the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist, and such a debate further evidences Islam’s protest against the Catholic Church’s doctrine, even that of the Eucharist. In the theological dispute the Muslim told Theodore his objection of the teaching that the Eucharist is the body of Christ, and that it can forgive sins (a very Catholic precept):
<blockquote>
Bishop, why do you priests delude the Christians? Given two pieces of bread baked from the same flour, one of you allow to be eaten as common food; the other you distribute in little pieces to the people, calling it “the body of Christ” and affirming that it can forgive the sins of those who partake of it. Do you mock yourselves or those over whom you have charge?” (15)
</blockquote>
Now, those like White and his ilk would not hesitate to agree with the Muslim, and utterly reject what Theodore Abu Qurrah told the Muslim in the end of the debate:
<blockquote>
The priest puts the bread and wine on the holy altar; and when he prays the sacred Eucharistic prayer, the Holy Spirit descends on the gifts placed there. Through the fire of his divinity, he transforms the bread and wine into Christ’s body and blood, no less than the liver transforms food into the body of a person. Or don’t you concede, my friend, that the Holy Spirit can do what the liver can do? (16)
</blockquote>
Sounds like transubstantiation. Whatever word you wish to use for it, this theological description coming from Abu Qurrah would be wholly rejected by White and his kind, and accepted by both Orthodox and Catholic.
Mr. White, again I must ask you, was Theodore Abu Qurrah wrong? Was he teaching false doctrine? And this is the main question I have for you: Who was right in this debate, the Muslim, or Theodore Abu Qurrah?
White would be supporting the opinion of the Muslim while berating the statement of Theodore. The conversation further vindicates our main affirmation: Islam came to protest the teachings of the Catholic Church.
A pupil of Theodore, John the Deacon, as well believed that all of the heretics, including Muslims, war against the Church of St. Peter, and he praises Theodore Abu Qurrah as a defender of the Church for his contending with the false doctrine of Muhammad:
<blockquote>
As I pondered how heretics are at present assaulting the church, how those who are hostile are attacking her, how enemies are rising up against her, it occurred to me to liken such events to sicknesses, which are present in the body of a living being and then gone. This is in accord with the unfalsifiable promise of him who founded the church on the unshakable rock of the faith of Peter, the chief of the apostles — the promise of him who is the head of her body, he who is the Word of the Father and the Holy Spirit, he who like them is without beginning and eternal, he who is equal in dignity. … And because the Lord had promised Peter, the chief of the apostolic choir, that he would lay the church’s foundation on the unshaken rock of his confession, and because he had assured the church that she would overcome the gates of hell, so the opponent of God, up to the present, struggles against the church. He endeavors to throw her down. He plots and contrives to that the essential Truth of God the Father spoke falsely. Charlatans and ‘deceitful workers,’ as it is written, he continually arms against her with corrupting doctrines, as it were, combining sicknesses with sicknesses on every side. While the lover of evil struggles to kill the immortal bride of Christ and endeavors to shut her up within the gates of hell, her bridegroom and lord, who protects those who cling to him, does not overlook those in danger for his sake. Even though, being opposed to God, the tyrant stands in hostile array, continually urging on against her his soul-destroying soldiers, still, against each one her protector sets up in rivalry one of his shield-bearers and defenders, who is easily able to ward off that one’s hands. (One of these, in particular, will be mentioned shortly.) It is clear, accordingly, that the error of idolatry was undone by the victorious and holy martyrs. Similarly, it is clear that the destruction of each of the heretics was accomplished by the assembly of the holy fathers. While there is no need now for us to list these fathers, in that they are everywhere openly mentioned in all the sacred books, the present task induces me to mention them. I am speaking of the most blessed and most philosophical bishop of Haran in Coele Syria, Theodore. In his writings, which were truly inspired by God, he worthily held up to public scorn the impious religion of the Agarenes [Muslims] and showed to all that it was worthily of complete derision. (17)
</blockquote>
John the Deacon here not only affirms the Catholic position on St. Peter as the head of the Apostles, but declares that the heretics, in this instance the Muslims, come about to overcome the Church, illustrating quite clearly that Islam originated to obliterate the Catholic Church. And who in the mind of John the Deacon, is trying to overthrow the Catholic Church? The Muslims. Mr. White, tell me, if you were to meet John the Deacon, would he, or would he not, see you as the same, an attacker of his Church?
The Muslims of antiquity who attempted to destroy the Catholic Church, did they not have the same goal as you? and that is, to overthrow Catholic doctrine?
Surely this writing of John the Deacon can be speaking of no other church but the Catholic Church, for no one would ever speak of a church with such terminology unless they were Catholic. John the Deacon praises Theodore Abu Qurrah, the bishop who affirmed the primacy of the Roman Church, and because he was a part of the same Church as Theodore, he most definitely was Catholic. If not, then what was he? Reformed Baptist? Was he Five Point Calvinist?
Theodore Abu Qurrah lived in the height of Islam, so tell us, how different are his beliefs from the Catholics of today?
Let us look to another great father of the Church, Theodore the Studite, who lived and worked laboriously to combat heresy in the 8th century, an early time in Islam’s history.
<div id="attachment_57934" style="width: 331px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/st_theodore_studios.jpg"><img alt="St. Theodore the Studite. Does he look Protestant to you? " class="size-full wp-image-57934" height="400" src="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/st_theodore_studios.jpg" width="321" /></a>
St. Theodore the Studite. Does he look Protestant to you?
</div>
In his book, On the Holy Icons, Theodore the Studite combated the Iconoclasts, a group of heretics who rejected the Catholic Church’s reverence for Christian icons as idolatry. Although Islam is not mentioned in this book, it most definitely reflects the Orthodox beliefs of Christians in the early days of Islam, in this case the veneration of icons and the Holy Eucharist, and it as well contends with heresies that both Muslims and those like White would agree with, such as the shunning of icons of saints and angels, and the rejection of the Eucharist as the literal body and blood of Jesus.
The Iconoclasts saw the Eucharist as only a symbolic image and memorial of Christ, isolating the passage, “Do this in remembrance of me,” and thus did not believe that it was the actual body and blood of Jesus. Theodore the Studite confronted this assertion:
<blockquote>
“We grant,” the heretics say, “that Christ may be represented, but only according to the holy words which we have received from God Himself; for He said, ‘Do this in remembrance of me,’ obviously implying that He cannot be represented otherwise than by being remembered. Only this image is true and this act of depiction sacred.” It is sufficient for your refutation that you are clearly contradicting yourself, when you admit that Christ is circumscribed, although previously you denied this. But since it is not right to leave any of your propositions unchallenged, let us proceed to their refutation one by one.
What do you say about these very things to which the priest refers in holy words and hymns? Are they an image or truth? If they are an image, what absurdity! You go from one blasphemy to blasphemy, like those who step into some sort of mud, and in trying to get across fall with both feet into something even more slippery. For you have chosen to fall into atheism in order to keep your argument consistent. But if they are the truth — as indeed they really are, for we confess that the faithful receive the very body and blood of Christ, according to the voice of God — why do you talk nonsense as if the sacraments of the truth were mere symbols?” (18)
</blockquote>
White and those like him would agree with the Iconoclasts, that the Eucharist is a mere symbol, and not the body and blood of Jesus. Tell me then, Mr. White, was Theodore the Studite a heretic? Was he teaching idolatry?
In another part of the same book, Theodore the Studite gives quite a fascinating explanation as to the purpose of venerating Christian icons, something both Muslims, and Mr. White, reject:
<blockquote>
So whether in an image, or in the Gospel, or in the cross, or in any other consecrated object, God is evidently worshipped “in spirit and in truth,” as the materials are exalted by the raising of the mind toward God. The mind does not remain with the materials, because it does not trust in them: that is the error of the idolaters. Through the materials, rather, the mind ascends toward the prototypes: this is the faith of the orthodox.” (19)
</blockquote>
Later in the book Theodore the Studite exclaims with great force that the tradition of icons of Christ, and even the Theotokos, or Mary the Mother of God, goes all the way back to the Apostles, and that those who reject this tradition are heretics:
<blockquote>
For evidence, moreover, that we have received from the apostles themselves and have preserved up to the present time the tradition of erecting the icon of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Theotokos [the Mother of God], and of any of the saints — raise your eyes, look around, and see everywhere under heaven, throughout the sacred edifices and the holy monuments in them, these images depicted and necessarily venerated in the places where they are depicted. Even if there were no dogmatic reason nor voices of inspired fathers to uphold both the erection and the veneration of icons, the prevailing ancient tradition would be sufficient for confirmation of the truth. Who can presume to oppose this tradition? By his opposition he falls away far from God and the sheepfold of Christ, because he thinks like the Manicheans and the Valentinians, who babbled heretically that God had dwelt among those on earth in appearance and fantasy. (20)
</blockquote>
Mr. White, who here is correct, Theodore the Studite and all of the Catholics who agree with him, or the Manichaeans, the Cathars, and the Muslims who didn’t?
Muhammad thrived in the 7th century, and in order to know what orthodox Christians believed in, we must look to Church records and documents written within and around this same century. A voluminous compilation of Church records written in the 7th and 8th centuries was done by St. Bede, in his History of the English Church, and it is from this volume that we will extract documents contemporary to Muhammad and his earliest followers.
<div id="attachment_57936" style="width: 211px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Saint-Bede-the-Venerable.jpg"><img alt="St. Bede. Does he look like a Reformed Baptist?" class="wp-image-57936 size-medium" height="300" src="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Saint-Bede-the-Venerable-201x300.jpg" width="201" /></a>
St. Bede. Does he look like a Reformed Baptist?
</div>
What we find in these records are doctrines thoroughly Catholic, such as the veneration of the Virgin Mary and the saints.
Pope Boniface IV, who would have lived when Muhammad was alive, had the Roman pagan temple of the Pantheon purged of its idolatry and transformed into a church dedicated to Mary and the Martyrs. Would James White ever dedicate his church to Mary and the Martyrs of Christ? As St. Bede records:
<blockquote>
After solemn purification, Boniface consecrated it as the Church of the Holy Mother of God and all Christian Martyrs; and once its company of devils had been cast out, it became a memorial of the Company of Saints. (21)
</blockquote>
Churches to the “Mother of God”? Again, Mr. White, and all those like him, was Pope Boniface an idolater? The Muslims would have surely hated such an act, and I am sure that you would have agreed with them.
No one reading such an account would refer to such actions as anything but Catholic. I cannot help but be amazed at how some people will read such stories and say, “No, the Christians in Muhammad’s day were not Catholics,” after this story which took place within the same period of Muhammad. In the year 605, Pope Boniface IV summoned a Church council to discuss the procedures for the life of monks and monasticism (another Catholic idea), as Bede recounts:
<blockquote>
At this time Mellitus, Bishop of London, visited Rome to acquaint the Pope with the affairs of the Church of the English. This most reverend Pope had summoned a council of the bishops of Italy to draw up regulations for monastic life and discipline, and Mellitus sat with them at this council, which took place on the twenty-seventh of February 610 in the eighth year of the Emperor Phocas. (22)
</blockquote>
A Pope summons a council, the Bishop of London, all the way from England, travels there to report to the Pope the details of the the Church of the English, and in the same council, a dialogue on the life of monks and the monastic life is commenced. I see nothing Baptist, nothing Methodist, nothing Presbyterian, nor anything Calvinist about this story. With the talk of popes, Rome, and monks, the only word that can come to mind is Catholic. Monasticism, and the entire idea of monks and monasteries, is despised by hardline Protestants, why on earth would these Christians be anything but Catholic?
<div id="attachment_57937" style="width: 181px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/img-Pope-Saint-Boniface-IV.jpg"><img alt="Pope Boniface IV" class="size-full wp-image-57937" height="250" src="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/img-Pope-Saint-Boniface-IV.jpg" width="171" /></a>
Pope Boniface IV
</div>
In the year 625, the year when Muhammad fought Islam’s first battle, the Battle of Uhud, Pope Boniface IV sent a letter to Ethelburga, Queen of Northumbria, not to discuss the discipline of elders in Baptist churches, or to talk about Five-point Calvinism, no, what the Pope told her every Protestant would anathematize: he gave her the blessing of a saint, St. Peter:
<blockquote>
We impart to you the blessing of your protector, blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles. (23)
</blockquote>
I don’t know about you, but I have never heard a Reformed Baptist minister call Peter “your protector,” and if the good priest from the parish down the road ever dared to say to one of these pastors “we impart to you the blessing” of Peter, and then calls Peter, “Prince of the Apostles,” he would have to endure a tongue lashing with words like “pagan” and “antichrist” from a pulpit of theological thuggery. Yet this is what the Pope of Muhammad’s day, and thus what Christians in 625, were believing in. They held to the intercession of saints, and popes, and what else could this be called but Catholic?
What about relics? There is no way the Christians of Muhammad’s day could have believed in those things, right? Because we all know that thats unchristian, and pagan, and heretical (in White’s eyes of course). But it turns out that the ancient Christians of the 7th century did in fact believe in relics, relics of the Apostles and the martyrs.
When Wilbrord, the man who brought Christianity to the Frisians of the modern Netherlands (earning him the title, the “Apostle to the Frisians”), got permission in 692 to preach from the prince of Frisia, he immediately went, not to Geneva, but to Rome, to visit not a Calvinist minister, but the Pope, Sergius I, to obtain his blessing, and to receive the relics of the Apostles and the martyrs, so that when he destroyed the pagan temples of Frisia he could put them in the newly built churches that were to replace them. As St. Bede records:
<blockquote>
On the first arrival of Frisia, as soon as Wilbrord learned that the prince had granted him permission to preach, he hurried to Rome, where Pope Sergius then ruled the apostolic see, in order to obtain his approval and blessing on the evangelistic work he wished to undertake. He also hoped to obtain from him relics of the blessed Apostles and martyrs of Christ, so that when he had destroyed the idols and built churches among the people to whom he preached, he might have the relics of the saints ready to put in them. And when he had deposited them, he intended to dedicate these places fittingly in honour of each of the saints whose relics they were. (24)
</blockquote>
These are the Christians who lived around the time of Muhammad. Mr. White, are these pagans? Are they apostates? Was Wilbrord wrong? Was Pope Sergius I heretical?
Pope Sergius I is referred to by St. Bede as the one who “ruled the apostolic see”, that is, the Catholic Church. The Christian missionary does not go to a Baptist minister for approval, but the dreaded Papacy, and to even vex the spirits of the ant-Catholics even more, he requests for relics to be given to him. Anyone who wishes to object to the point of this article, I ask, if this is not Catholic, than what in the world is it? Most definitely it is not what James White and his ilk are. I don’t see White, and those like him, requesting for relics, or visiting the Pope, rather, I see him, and the Muslims, attacking these very things, while at the same time claiming the Church Fathers for himself, and for his church.
In the year 658 (just 26 years after Muhammad’s death in 632), an abbot named Sexwulf gave a request to Wulfhere, king of Mercia (in what is today’s England), to be allowed to build a monastery to revere the Virgin Mary:
<blockquote>
I have here ‘godfrihte’ [God-fearing] monks who wish to spend their lives as anchorites, if they knew where. And there is an island here, where is called Anchorets-isle, and my desire is, that we might build a minister there to the glory of St. Mary, so that those may dwell therein who wish to lead a life of peace and rest. (25)
</blockquote>
What did the king do? Did he shun the abbot away as a heretic? Did he call him an idolater? Did he object and say that such a monastery would be unbiblical? Not at all. Like a good Catholic, King Wulfhere joyously approved and granted the request:
<blockquote>
Behold, Sexwulf, lo! not only that one which thou hast desired, but all things which I know thee to desire on our Lord’s behalf, I thus approve and grant. (26)
</blockquote>
<div id="attachment_57968" style="width: 410px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/peterpaul.jpg"><img alt="Ancient Christian mosaic of Sts. Peter and Paul" class="size-full wp-image-57968" height="281" src="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/peterpaul.jpg" width="400" /></a>
Ancient Christian mosaic of Sts. Peter and Paul
</div>
 
In the 8th century, over 70 years after Muhammad, when the Caliph al-Walid I reigned over the Muslim world, Wilfrid, the Bishop of York, had a vision of the Archangel Michael, telling him that God had his life preserved, not by believing in John Calvin, or reformed theology (heavens no), but by the intercession of the Virgin Mary. The story is a delight to the Catholic, but a dread to the Calvinist, and yet this is what the Christians of Islam’s earliest days accepted with bliss, the same Christians who Muhammad wanted dead. Wilfird reported his vision to a priest named Acca, and it reads as follows:
<blockquote>
I have seen a momentous vision, which I want you to keep secret until I know God’s will for me. There stood beside me a noble being in white robes, who told me that he was Michael the Archangel. “I am come to recall you from death,” he said, “for our Lord has granted you life at the prayers of your brethren and the intercession of his blessed Mother the ever-virgin Mary.” (27)
</blockquote>
In one story monks desire to have a place to adore the Virgin Mary, and in another a bishop has a vision in which he is told by the Archangel Michael that his life was preserved through the intercession of the Virgin Mary. Such events are as Catholic as Catholic can be, and they all happened in Islam’s earliest days, reflecting the collective view of ancient Christians within this time period.
James White took issue with my belief that Islam came to declare war on the Catholic Church. In his diatribe against what I said, he asserted that I was wrong to say that the Christians in Muhammad’s day were all Catholics, and in his attempt to refute this he pointed to the Donatists as examples of Christians. I took a clip of his statement:
<iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/vCnfNLOG_bU" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
When I refer to the Orthodox Christian beliefs during Islam’s advent, I am referring to actual Christians who were a part of the Church, and not schismatic heretics such as the Donatists, of whom St. Augustine wrote, “they even fail to recognize the Church on the authority of the divine writings.” (28)
Firstly, the Donatist were not Christians of the Apostolic See, or the Church whose lineage goes back to the Apostles, as the Church of the Fathers, such as Augustine, St. John of Damascus, St. Theodore the Studite, Theodore Abu Qurrah, and many other learned men who fought heresies. St. Augustine warned against a certain hyper charismatic Donatist priest who urged a Catholic that an angel commanded him to tell him to join the Donatist church. In his warning, Augustine writes that Donatists have no Apostolic succession, in that they cannot trace their origin to the Apostles, where as the Catholic Church can trace itself back to St. Peter. He gives a list of the bishops of the Catholic Church from Peter onward, and then states emphatically that not a single Donatist is found in the list:
<blockquote>
If therefore, while you hold to these promises, an angel from heaven should say to you: “Give up the Christianity of the world, and lay hold of the sect of Donatus, whose origin is explained for you in a letter of a bishop of your city,” he ought to be anathema, because he is trying to cut you off from the whole and to push you into a part, and to make you a stranger to the promises of God. For, if the order of succession of bishops is to be considered, how much more surely, truly and safely do we number them from Peter, to whom, as representing the whole Church, the Lord said, “Upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
For, to Peter succeeded Linus, to Linus Clement, to Clement Anacletus, to Anacletus Evaristus, to Evaristus Sixtus, to Sixtus Telesphorus, to Telesphorus Hyginus, to Hyginus Anicetus, to Anicetus Pius, to Pius Soter, to Soter Alexander, to Alexander Victor, to Victor Zephyrinus, to Zephyrinus Calistus, to Calistus Urban, to Urban Pontian, to Pontian Antherus, to Antherus Fabian, to Fabian Cornelius, to Cornelius Lucius, to Lucius Stephen, to Stephen Sixtus, to Sixtus Dionysus, to Dionysus Felix, to Felix Eutychian, to Eutychian Gaius, to Gaius Marcellus, to Marcellus Eusebius, to Eusebius Melchiades, to Melchiades Sylvester, to Sylvester Marcus, to Marcus Julius, to Julius Liberius, to Liberius Damasus, to Damasus Sircius, to Siricius Anastasius. In this order of succession not a Donatist bishop is found.” (29)
</blockquote>
Secondly, the Donatists cannot be considered Christians, for “Ye shall know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:16), and the fruit of the Donatist is nothing but rotten rubbish, exuding a stench of pure evil.
In the time of St. Augustine, the Church was dealing with a most dangerous sect of heretics called the Donatists, founded by Donatus. They were schismatics who broke away from the Catholic Church, and believed with shameless pride that the true church was to be found in Africa alone. In doing this they became very insurrectionist, and like all heretics, tried to replace the Catholic Church. (30)
They held a fanatic belief in martyrdom, reminiscent to that of the Muslim. They would attack pagan idols simply to be killed by the pagans; they would willfully seek death unlike true Christian martyrs who simply accepted their end when it came. They would threaten armed men with death if they did not kill them. If they could not find someone to spill their blood, they would jump off cliffs or drown or burn themselves alive. They burnt down homes, stabbed Christians with swords, beat men almost to death, and took others and tied them to millstones and afflicted them with blows. They would also a throw a liquid made up of vinegar and lime into the eyes of Christians to blind them. They took a bishop and severed off his hands and tongue, burnt down churches, threw Bibles into the flames, and even massacred Catholics. (31)
They attacked the Bishop of Bagai in his church, beat him with clubs and stabbed him in the groin. As they dragged his body, with a trail of blood following him, some dirt clogged the wound and stopped the bleeding, sustaining him from death. They dropped his body, and the Christians tried to carry him away. But anger seized the Donatists and they grabbed him again and drove the Christians away with viscousness and kicks. They thought the Bishop was dead and so they tossed him into a tower. He landed on a soft surface, and was discovered in the evening by some good samaritans who rescued and brought him to a church where he was revived. The Bishop then requested from the Roman emperor that laws be passed to protect the Church from these heretics. (32)
When ISIS declared that they wanted to conquer Rome, Sister Henid Haddad, a Lebanese Catholic nun, declared with great and apostolic zeal:
<blockquote>
The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church… We derive our strength in the resurrection of Christ. Those who bark like dogs don’t scare us.
</blockquote>
Where do we find such zeal amongst James White and his ilk? No where. They are too busy attacking the Catholic Church, just like the Muslims.
White labels me as following “medievalism” simply because I believe on the cause of the Crusades. But such a label, I accept with honor.
<a href="http://www.ffmu.biz/christian-militancy-by-theodore-shoebat/" target="_blank">TO LEARN MORE ABOUT CHRISTIAN MILITANCY CLICK HERE TO GET OUR NEW 2-DISK DVD SPECIAL ON CHRISTIAN MILITANCY </a>
 
EXCLAIMER: The views presented in this article do not represent the views of everyone on Shoebat.com
SOURCES
(1) (Chron. Theophan. Annus Mundi 6127, 6135)
(2) (Guibert of Nogent, book 1, p. 33, ed. Echo Library)
(3) St. John of Damascus, On Heresies, 101, trans. Frederic H. Chase, Jr., brackets mine
(4) St. John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 4.13, trans. Frederich H. Chase, Jr.
(5) (St. John of Damascus, On Heresies, 101, trans. Frederich H. Chase, Jr.)
(6) (Heresies, 42)
(7) (Three Homilies on Dormition, Sermon 1, trans. Mary H. Allies)
(8) (Ibid)
(9) (Ibid, Sermon 2)
(10) (Ibid, Sermon 1)
(11) (St. John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 4.14, trans. Frederich H. Chase, Jr.)
(12) (Theodore Abu Qurrah, Discerning the True Church, ch. 6, B164, trans. John C. Lamoreux)
(13) (Theodore Abu Qurrah, Discerning the True Church, ch. 6, B164-B165, trans. John C. Lamoreux)
(14)(Theodore Abu Qurrah, Discerning the True Church, ch. 6, B166-167, trans. John C. Lamoreux, ellipses and brackets mine)
(15) (Theodore Abu Qurrah, Discerning the True Church, part iv, ch. 18, Refutations of the Saracens by Theodore Abu Qurrah, the Bishop of Haran, as Reported by John the Deacon, GKh108, trans. John C. Lamoreux)
(16) (Ibid, GKh110)
(17) (Theodore Abu Qurrah, Discerning the True Church, part iv, ch. 18, Refutations of the Saracens by Theodore Abu Qurrah, the Bishop of Haran, as Reported by John the Deacon, GKh86, trans. John C. Lamoreux, ellipses mine)
(18) (Theodore the Studite, On the Holy Icons, 1.10, trans. Catharine P. Roth)
(19) (Ibid, 1.13)
(20) (Ibid, 2.49)
(21) (St. Bede, Hist. 2.4, trans. Leo-Sherley Price)
(22) (Ibid)
(23) (Bede, Hist. 2.11)
(24) (St. Bede, Hist. 5. 11)
(25) (The Anglo Saxon Chronicle, 657)
(26) (Ibid)
(27) (St. Bede, Hist. 5.19)
(28) (Augustine, On the Treatment of the Donatists, ch. 2, trans. Sister Wilfrid Parsons)
(29) (Augustine, Letter 53, trans. Sister Wilfrid Parsons)
(30) *Augustine, On the Treatment of the Donatists, chs. 1, 3, trans. Sister Wilfrid Parsons, The Fathers of the Church, vol. 30*
(31) *Augustine, On the Treatment of the Donatists, chs. 12, 15, 18, 30; letter 88*
(32) *Augustine, On the Treatment of the Donatist, chs. 27-8*
</div>
-- Delivered by <a href="http://feed43.com/">Feed43</a> service

anonymous armageddon isis islam war Muslims Declare This Warning To Pope Francis: “Remember there won’t be any pope after this one. This is the last. Don’t ...

By Theodore Shoebat Muslims in Italy made this declaration to Pope Francis: “Remember there won’t be any pope after this one. This is...

VIDEO of HOW MOST AMERICANS FEEL ABOUT OBAMA! DEAR OBAMA!

The San Bernardino, California terrorist attack by ISIS-pledged terrorists is the worst in our nation’s history since September 11th. Fourteen Americans were murdered, another 21 injured.
And yet Barack Obama refuses to utter the words “Islamic terrorism.”
He shrugged off ISIS as merely a “JV team.” And hours before the Paris terrorist attacks that claimed 130 lives, Obama assured the world he had “contained” ISIS.
In this dark moment in history, our nation has reached an inflection point–a moment when, together, Americans render their collective condemnation of a commander-in-chief who works aggressively against American interests and national security.
In that spirit, Breitbart News presents: “A Letter from America to Obama.”
Play below:
<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/beqisLzVtcs" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
-- Delivered by <a href="http://feed43.com/">Feed43</a> service

anon anonymous news VIDEO of HOW MOST AMERICANS FEEL ABOUT OBAMA! DEAR OBAMA!

The San Bernardino, California terrorist attack by ISIS-pledged terrorists is the worst in our nation’s history since September 11th. Fourte...

Trump on Obama’s speech: ‘Is that all there is?’

<img alt="" class="" height="294" src="http://cnnphilippines.com/incoming/drx4ao-Donald_TrumpCNNPH.png/alternates/FREE_768/Donald_Trump+CNNPH.png" width="490" />
WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Barack Obama’s Oval Office address to the country Sunday did little to impress one of his loudest critics in the race to replace him.
In a rare prime-time speech, Obama called the shootings in San Bernardino, California, an “act of terrorism.” He prodded Congress to adopt new restrictions on assault weapons and ban people who are on no-fly lists from purchasing firearms.
<a href="http://cnnphilippines.com/world/2015/12/07/US-president-Barack-Obama-terrorism-ISIS-ISIL-San-Bernardino-shooting.html" target="_blank">Related: ‘This was an act of terrorism’ — Obama</a>
And he urged Americans against associating terrorism with all Muslims — even as he said that extremism in some communities is “a real problem that Muslims must confront without excuse.”
GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump, who had promised to live-tweet the speech, came to the quick conclusion, “We need a new President – FAST!”
The real estate mogul had little else to say other than, “Is that all there is?”
In other tweets, Trump excused Obama for reading a prepared speech off of a teleprompter, but said he hoped Obama wouldn’t criticize Second Amendment gun rights.
After Obama’s speech, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio called Obama “completely overwhelmed” by the terrorism threat in a Fox News appearance.
Rubio also said Obama was “cynical” for spending time urging Americans not to discriminate against Muslims.
“Where is the evidence that we have widespread discrimination against Muslims?” he said.
And he blasted Obama’s focus on gun control.
“The notion that a radical jihadist who is on a no-fly list is going to walk into a local gun shop to purchase a gun is absurd,” Rubio said.
Republican Ben Carson called Obama’s speech “strange.”
“President Obama’s declaration tonight that his policies are working was strange,” Carson said in a statement. “Strange that it took four days from the attack to respond and even more strange that somehow the attack on our soil is proof his policies are working. One must wonder who has contained who.”
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz responded to Obama by taking aim at the immigration system.
“If I am elected President, I will direct the Department of Defense to destroy ISIS. And I will shut down the broken immigration system that is letting jihadists into our country,” he said in a statement. “Nothing President Obama said tonight will assist in either case.”
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush called the struggle against ISIS “the war of our time.”
“We need to remove the self-imposed constraints President Obama has placed on our intelligence community and military, and we need to put in place an aggressive strategy to defeat ISIS and radical Islamic terrorism as I have proposed,” he said.
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul used his statement to criticize Obama’s calls for gun control reforms and also took aim at the U.S. immigration system.
“We should not double down on this failed and dangerous policy that the President called for tonight,” he said in a statement. “We must arm our allies, the Kurds, and insist on Arab boots on the ground for our allies in the region.”
Ohio Gov. John Kasich, another 2016 contender, said Obama’s strategy “is not enough.”
“Bolder action across the board is needed because our way of life is what’s at stake,” said Kasich in a statement. “Also, when terrorists threaten us, our response can’t be to target our own constitutional rights. Our rights aren’t the problem, our unwillingness to act to defeat extremists is the problem. We need to decisively and aggressively protect our nation and our ideals.”
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus also blasted Obama’s speech.
“We will defeat ISIS but we cannot do so by continuing the current approach. The path laid out by President Obama and supported by Hillary Clinton has not worked, and ISIS has only gained in strength,” Priebus said in a statement. “The attacks in San Bernardino should serve as a wake-up call for Obama and Clinton that the way to victory is not through the status quo but refocusing our efforts to defeat ISIS.”
Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley have yet to comment on the President’s remarks.
This story was first published on CNN.com, <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2015/12/06/politics/obama-isis-oval-office-2016-reaction/index.html" target="_blank">“Trump on Obama’s speech: ‘Is that all there is?'”</a>
-- Delivered by <a href="http://feed43.com/">Feed43</a> service

anon anonymous news Trump on Obama’s speech: ‘Is that all there is?’

WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Barack Obama’s Oval Office address to the country Sunday did little to impress one of his loudest critics in ...

Atlantis Discovered in the Bermuda Triangle: The Sunken City Features Giant Pyramids and Sphinxes

<img alt="bermuda-triangle-02" class="aligncenter" height="289" src="http://i1.wp.com/soulsurfing.website/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/bermuda-triangle-02.jpg?resize=700%2C408" width="496" />
I. The report
Two scientists, Paul Weinzweig and Pauline Zalitzki, working off the coast of Cuba and using a robot submersible, have confirmed that a gigantic city exists at the bottom of the ocean.
The site of the ancient city — that includes several sphinxes and at least four giant pyramids plus other structures — amazingly sits within the boundries of the fabled Bermuda Triangle.
According to a report by <a href="https://www.blogger.com/profile/05942529252160087271" target="_blank">Arclein</a> of Terra Forming Terra, <a href="http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.ca/2012/09/cuban-subsea-pyramid-complex.html?utm_source=BP_recent" target="_blank">Cuban Subsea Pyramid Complex</a>, the evidence points to the city being simultaneously inundated with rising waters and the land sinking into the sea. This correlates exactly with the Atlantis legend.
 
<div class="separator"><img alt="" border="0" class="aligncenter" height="319" src="http://i0.wp.com/3.bp.blogspot.com/-oLZJxM2PZBk/Uv4Z6CxP7JI/AAAAAAAAKbQ/ymQNH0xVMEA/s1600/atlantis+bermuda+triangle+cuba.jpg?w=660" width="437" /></div>
<div class="separator"></div>
<div class="separator"></div>
<div class="separator"> The disaster may have occurred at the end of the last Ice Age. As the Arctic icecap catastrophically melted it caused sea levels to rise quickly around the world, especially affecting the Northern Hemisphere. Coast lines changed; land was lost; islands (even island continents) disappeared.</div>
At the end of last Ice Age sea levels were nearly 400 feet lower than present day levels. Once the waters began to rise, they rose swiftly. Conceivably, no technology then, or now, could have saved Atlantis from its watery grave. The evidence that land in what’s now the Caribbean also sank into the sea concurrently seems pretty certain.
Arclein observes:
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“At the time uplifted portions of the Mid Atlantic Ridge subsided also including Lyonese and the home islands and land mass around the Azores. Even if that had not happened, this subsidence was amply large enough.
“This would have produced an orthogonal pressure forcing subsidence to either East or West. Since the ridge between Cuba and Yucatan is the natural point of weakness between the Gulf subsidence basin and the Caribbean subsidence basin, it naturally subsided deeply. The driver for all this was the hydrostatic changes brought about by both the original crustal shift of 12,900 years ago that I have called the Pleistocene Nonconformity and the slow uplift of the Hudson Bay Basin brought about by the ending of the Ice Age.”
</blockquote>
Cuban missile crisis stops research
According to journalist <a href="http://www.luismarianofernandez.com/AtlantidaEnCuba4.html" target="_blank">Luis Mariano Fernandez</a>, the city was first discovered decades ago, but all access to it was stopped during and after the Cuban Missile Crisis.
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“The U.S. government discovered the alleged place during the Cuban missile crisis in the sixties, Nuclear submarines cruising in the Gulf (in deep sea) met pyramid structures. They immediately shut down the site and took control of him and the objects, in order that it will not come to Russians hands.”
</blockquote>
The science team of deep ocean experts, archaeologists and oceanographers found ruins of ancient buildings 600 feet below the ocean. They say the city is Atlantis.
Evidence that the island of Cuba is the vestige of a once mighty culture is supported by Zalitzki’s discovery on the island of extremely ancient symbols and pictograms identical to those seen on the underwater structures.Pyramids and sphinxes bigger than Egypt’s 
Incredibly the ancient city also has magnificent sphinxes and “stones that arranged like Stonehenge, and a written language engraved on the stones,” reports Fernandez.Using exploration submersibles, they discovered amazingly huge pyramid structures similar to (but larger than) the pyramids in Giza, Egypt. They estimate the Atlantis pyramids are constructed with stones weighing many hundreds of tons.
Could such a discovery change Mankind’s view of history? Yes, it could change everything.
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Fernandez writes, “It has confirmed that the stones were cut, carved and polished to make them fit together and thus form larger structures. On the strange inscriptions, some of them similar to Egyptian hieroglyphics, very little is known, except that they are very abundant and found in almost all parts of the field. They have also appeared symbols and drawings whose meaning is unknown.”
</blockquote>
The exploration of Atlantis, called Project Exploramar, is expanding to discover more of the mysteries of the mega-city.
Speaking with a scientist about the possibility that the ruins are indeed Atlantis, Fernandez reports the expert replied:
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“…in the Yucatan cultures today is possible that what still remains of the aborigines of those places perhaps the Olmecs or some very primitive civilization of Yucatan, the northern part of Central America—originated according to them on an island that sank by a cataclysm. This island is called Atlanticú.”
</blockquote>
That too fits the stories about the sudden demise of the wondrous Atlantis. Atlanticú is, of course, Atlantis. The aboriginal natives still call it that in their history.
“When we published the first news of this finding,” she said, “the University of Veracruz was interested in our work and we had recorded images of these structures on the seabed. Specifically, the Institute of Anthropology of the University excavations invited me. They were doing [studies] on parts and ruins of the Olmec civilization.During an interview about the exploration of the mega-city, Fernandez asked lead scientist Pauline Zalitzki about the civilaztion that built it.
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“When they saw these submarine images [they] found similarities and parallels with the ruins found in these excavations that the Institute was undertaking.
“The Olmecs and other native peoples all have primary morphology marking the arrival of this continent. This mean coming from the direction of Cuba, and had to occur in a very large earthquake where their land sank.
Morphologies indicate that they belong to three families who were saved. One of these families came to the coast of Veracruz, which are supposedly the Olmec. Others came to Central America and traveled to the Pacific coast, and these families created the civilization of the Americas as we know it today, because they distributed all their knowledge.
When these anthropologists saw underwater images of this city, and saw some stone monoliths, some symbol, and inscriptions, they identified with Olmec motifs. They were very surprised.”
</blockquote>
<table class="tr-caption-container" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" align="center">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><a href="http://i2.wp.com/1.bp.blogspot.com/-lWj7Ox0kLKw/Uv4bi3QP-DI/AAAAAAAAKbw/DDUr7QjMMyI/s1600/Mega_structure+sonar+cuba+atlantis.jpg?resize=400%2C262"><img alt="" border="0" height="197" src="http://i2.wp.com/1.bp.blogspot.com/-lWj7Ox0kLKw/Uv4bi3QP-DI/AAAAAAAAKbw/DDUr7QjMMyI/s1600/Mega_structure+sonar+cuba+atlantis.jpg?resize=400%2C262" width="300" /></a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tr-caption">Sonar images of mega-structures on the seabed [Image: <a href="http://www.luismarianofernandez.com/AtlantidaEnCuba4.html">LMF</a>]</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
 
 
The Olmecs devolved from the survivors of Atlantis, a much superior culture destroyed aft the end of the Ice Age flooding. The world was reshaped and a super-civilization destroyed, remembered for millennia only in legend and a passing refernce by the philosopher Plato.
<table class="tr-caption-container" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" align="center">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><a href="http://i2.wp.com/2.bp.blogspot.com/-nzWuSKgOoO8/Uv4bxrXFtFI/AAAAAAAAKb4/VyMG-04l9M0/s1600/sonar+image+cuba+atlantis+02.jpg?resize=280%2C320"><img alt="" border="0" height="342" src="http://i2.wp.com/2.bp.blogspot.com/-nzWuSKgOoO8/Uv4bxrXFtFI/AAAAAAAAKb4/VyMG-04l9M0/s1600/sonar+image+cuba+atlantis+02.jpg?resize=280%2C320" width="300" /></a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tr-caption">Another image of an Atlantean mega-structure [Image: LMF]</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
 
 
But Atlantis was real, is real: scientists Paul Weinzweig and Pauline Zalitzki have found it.
<div class="separator"><a href="http://i2.wp.com/3.bp.blogspot.com/-01abGvKoZCg/Uv4dqf21qEI/AAAAAAAAKcM/Upwq74fKUFc/s1600/atlantis+sinking+-+maya+tikal.jpg?resize=640%2C463"><img alt="" border="0" class="" height="348" src="http://i2.wp.com/3.bp.blogspot.com/-01abGvKoZCg/Uv4dqf21qEI/AAAAAAAAKcM/Upwq74fKUFc/s1600/atlantis+sinking+-+maya+tikal.jpg?resize=640%2C463" width="480" /></a></div>
The above work of art was once part of the old Maya city of Tikal, in Guatemala. It probably illustrates the demise of Atlantis. Since this does not fit the prevailing picture, a German archaeologist took it to Germany, where it was “accidentally” destroyed in the Second World War — <a href="http://humansarefree.com/2011/09/atlantis-egyptian-and-greek-connections.html" target="_blank">Continue reading: the amazing Egyptian and Greek connections to Atlantis</a>.
II. Updates about Cuba’s underwater megalithic research
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“They (megalithic stones) are very unique structures. They really are not easy to understand and I do not have any easy explanation for them in a natural geological process.” – Manuel Iturralde-Vinent, Ph.D., Geologist, National Museum of Natural History, Havana, Cuba
</blockquote>
Ocean engineer, Paulina Zelitsky, described their 2000 findings as follows:
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Possibly a sunken city built in the pre-classic period and populated by an advanced civilization similar to the early Teotihuacan culture of Yucatan… Researchers using sonar equipment have discovered at a depth of about 2,200 feet (700-800 meters) a huge land plateau with clear images of what appears to be urban development partly covered by sand. From above, the shapes resemble pyramids, roads and buildings.” – Source: Earthfiles May 18, 2001
</blockquote>
Since then, I have interviewed Paulina and her husband, Paul Weinzweig, several times about the evolution of their research and goal to get a specially built robot down to the megalithic site which could have lights for videotaping and drilling equipment to sample from the megalithic stone structures.
<div class="separator"><a href="http://i2.wp.com/2.bp.blogspot.com/-vMkWkFIKI2I/VmQydDo8Y2I/AAAAAAAAby8/rSRi2nv1pic/s1600/Atlantis%2B%25E2%2580%2594%2BHistory%2BChannel%2BReconstruction.png"><img alt="" border="0" class="" height="275" src="http://i1.wp.com/2.bp.blogspot.com/-vMkWkFIKI2I/VmQydDo8Y2I/AAAAAAAAby8/rSRi2nv1pic/s1600/Atlantis%2B%25E2%2580%2594%2BHistory%2BChannel%2BReconstruction.png?w=660" width="494" /></a></div>
<div> History Channel reconstruction of Paul Weinzweig and Pauline Zalitzki’s scans (via <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=as_li_qf_sp_sr_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&index=aps&keywords=Ancient%20Aliens&linkCode=as2&tag=humarefre-20&linkId=EYHIMTAGH6M5WXTX" target="_blank">Ancient Aliens</a>)</div>
The couple operates the Advanced Digital Communications known as ADC in Canada and Havana which contracts to perform deep ocean research.
Originally, ADC had hoped to have a robot on the ocean floor by the summer of 2002, but its cost of $2 million has been an obstacle. So far, the National Geographic Society continues to express interest in adding its resources and media production efforts to the exploration, but to date no official contract has been signed.
So, Paulina and Paul have taken on other assignments to pay bills while periodically sending remote operated vehicles known as ROVs down to pick up small rocks that lay on thick sand around the large megalithic stone “structures.”
Some of those samples have gone to geologist Manuel Iturralde-Vinent, Ph.D., who works for Cuba’s National Museum of Natural History in Havana. Since early spring 2002, Dr. Iturralde-Vinent has studied side-scan sonar images and videotape from the half-mile-deep site and has concluded that he cannot assign a completely natural geological explanation for the large, rectangular-shaped rocks that stand up on a vast, white field of deep sand spread over 20 square kilometers.
However, he is waiting for the first analyses of rock samples expected around July 19th. Until then, he is reserving opinion about the composition of the megalithic structures. However, Paulina Zelitsky describes the structures are polished granite not indigenous to either Cuba or the Yucatan.
This week I talked with both Paulina Zelitsky and Dr. Iturralde-Vinent about their current research and theories about what might have happened off the extreme northwestern Cuba peninsula known as Guanahacabibes.
III. Interviews:
Paulina Zelitsky, Ocean Engineer, Advanced Digital Communications, Havana, Cuba:
<table class="tr-caption-container" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" align="center">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><a href="http://i0.wp.com/4.bp.blogspot.com/-9lnsEuKryf8/Uv4cVA-CTTI/AAAAAAAAKcA/x5OafPzVZq0/s1600/atlantida+atlantis+cuba+-+pyramid.jpg?w=660"><img alt="" border="0" class="" height="365" src="http://i0.wp.com/4.bp.blogspot.com/-9lnsEuKryf8/Uv4cVA-CTTI/AAAAAAAAKcA/x5OafPzVZq0/s1600/atlantida+atlantis+cuba+-+pyramid.jpg?w=660" width="487" /></a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tr-caption">Paulina Zelitsky at her computer in Havana studying a pyramidal-shaped stone videotaped 
at the half mile deep site in July 2001 by her ADC remote operated vehicle (ROV).</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
 
Samples that we recovered from the ocean bottom have justified our structures that we call megalithic structures. The samples are granite stone, completely polished, with some incrustations of fossils. Fossils of organic creatures that normally live on the surface, not on the ocean bottom. This is very interesting because this is evidence that the whole surface sank to the depth of 700 meters (2,297 feet, or about a half mile down).
The area has been seismically active for thousands of years. And what we find on the ocean bottom are fractures from which the magma and volcanic ash came out. From these structures we were able to delineate a configuration of the land that sank because you can see them clearly. The land that sank is very obvious from our image of the ocean bottom. And you can see bays, like harbors, and it’s all at the depths of 900 and 700 meters.
Geologically, does Dr. Iturralde-Vinent and others have any idea what happened volcanically? Was it one large eruption or series of eruptions?
Series of eruptions and as he is saying, it is still active. A series of eruptions that created major tectonic movement to such a degree that land is sinking. For example, Cuba has sank and re-emerged a couple of times! But that was long ago, geologically. Now, what happened more recently geologically is that land sank that joined to Yucatan islands between Yucatan and Cuba, they sank.
Also, geologically and botanically in terms of organic life, Yucatan and Cuba the extreme northwestern part of Cuba which is Peninsula Guanahacabibes are completely identical. Completely identical. It’s the same limestone and the same organic life and the same botanic and animal represented.
It’s very obvious that land that was joining that is now on ocean bottom is land that was joining Yucatan and Cuba. But this land was sinking because of tectonic movement which were occurring.
Of course, earthquakes and volcanoes were accompanying the tectonic movements. Tectonic movement is not something that moves softly. It is always accompanied by dramatic volcano and earthquake activity.
But we saw on ocean bottom where the bays and coastal lines of the island that sank. We think there was a series of islands between Cuba and the Yucatan. There could have been sinking 15,000 years ago.
One area between the fractures. Not on the fractures. It is between the fractures was left undisturbed and just sank flat without fractures. On this area, we can observe those megalithic structures, or constructions. And they have completely different and independent delineation from geological faults, from our geology of the sunken land, or the geology of island Cuba. Completely independent delineation of their own.
As if they came from some place else?
We don’t know yet. But it obviously didn’t come from Cuba. That’s one thing. The stone we recovered from ocean bottom is very polished granite. All of the peninsula of northwest part of Cuba, all of this peninsula is limestone, very fractured limestone. So, geologically, it (megalithic granite structures) is totally foreign to Cuba. But it’s also not known in Yucatan because Yucatan is also limestone, not granite. Granite is found only in the center of Mexico.
It covers approximately a beautiful, beautiful, flat, clean area. Nothing else in this area. And it covers approximately 20 square kilometers of this area. It’s flat, completely flat. Huge white silicon field. In the middle of all of that are these megalithic structures surfacing out of it.
What is the scientific consensus so far about how 20 square kilometers could get down a half mile?
The whole island sank. Probably what we think happened is that Cuba and Yucatan at one historical time were both joined. But little by little, this land was fractured into islands and sank to the ocean bottom. So, the land on which we discovered megalithic structures sank somewhere between 15,000 and maybe 50,000 years ago, which is quite recent geologically.
What for you is the next most important step you can take to collect one or more samples directly from the megalithic structures?
I wouldn’t be able to do any serious work without a robot to that is working on ocean floor because I need stability in order to be able to make an opening in the megalithic structures. We need to make an opening to enter. National Geographic is interested in investigating the site with submersibles. So that might be another opportunity.
Do the submersibles have the ability to drill into stone?
No. Submersibles don’t. They just have the ability to observe with human eyes. Or videotape. Or video camera, yeah. But it must be operated by humans.
If you can get the special robot constructed and down there that costs $2 million, you would be able to photograph with good light and be able to drill into a megalithic structure?
Oh, yes. I would be able to make opening and enter inside the structures. What I am the most interested in doing is to enter inside because if there are some artifacts, they should be inside the structures and not outside.
Then if National Geographic, or other interested organization, can get funding together, you might be able to go forward full time on research and get the robot down to both photograph and drill into the structures?
Yes, that’s right. And discover a completely new page in our history.”
Manuel Iturralde-Vinent, Ph.D., Geologist, National Museum of Natural History, Havana, Cuba, who presented a scientific paper about the deep water megalithic structures in March 2002 at an International Geophysical meeting in Havana:
“I do not yet know if the megalithic structures are granite. I have been working with the data provided by Paulina for three months and I have been observing the side-scan sonar images, the video images with some samples recovered from different places within the area with the megalithic stones are and also from an area located to the south of this region.
My impression is first that the structures that are in the megalithic area at the 600 to 700 meter depths, I cannot explain these structures by any geological means right now. So, I am not sure that I can find a geological explanation for the origin of these structures.
So I’m clear the structures don’t fit into any natural explanation currently?
Yeah, we think that in natural geological terms, I cannot give a logical explanation now. So, I am not telling that they are artificial, but what I say is right now I don’t have a good explanation as to the origin by natural cause of these structures. They might have an artificial origin.
But in this case, we are opening into a very interesting situation because given the depth of this structures and if we calculate the timing when these might have been uplifted, it will take us up to 50,000 years ago. (Meaning, when the land mass now down a half mile might have been above sea level.)
This is if we follow the rules of the normal tectonic movement as we have been recording them in the past 100 years in Cuba. But these figures are well known in the world. More or less, the sea floor can move down as quickly as 16 millimeters a year. That’s one of the very interesting issues that are related to this discovery.
Meaning that the area is still active seismically and you are seeing that parts of Cuba are still sinking.
Current geological knowledge and data indicates that the area is still very active and sinking even now. We are not done with this research. We need to still do more research, collect more samples, provide more observation to be sure about what we are talking about. But something is very safe to say now is that we are not dealing with blocks that have been falling down from the slope. They (megalithic stones) are very unique structures.
They really are not easy to understand and I do not have any easy explanation for them in a natural geological process. That’s my conclusion now. I need more time and more data before going forward.”
<iframe id="_ytid_59822" class="__youtube_prefs__" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/g9ivUMErK-I?enablejsapi=1&autoplay=0&cc_load_policy=0&iv_load_policy=1&loop=0&modestbranding=0&rel=1&showinfo=1&playsinline=0&autohide=2&theme=dark&color=red&wmode=opaque&vq=&controls=2&" width="494" height="494" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" name="_ytid_59822"></iframe>
source :  <a href="http://soulsurfing.website/index.php/2015/12/06/atlantis-discovered-in-the-bermuda-triangle-the-sunken-city-features-giant-pyramids-and-sphinxes-complete/" target="_blank">soulsurfing</a>
-- Delivered by <a href="http://feed43.com/">Feed43</a> service

anon anonymous news Atlantis Discovered in the Bermuda Triangle: The Sunken City Features Giant Pyramids and Sphinxes

I. The report Two scientists, Paul Weinzweig and Pauline Zalitzki, working off the coast of Cuba and using a robot submersible, have confi...

Muslims Declare To Christians: “You don’t deserve to live. Its a shame you are unbelievers and you are still alive.” One...

<img alt="2B3E0A2D00000578-3192048-image-a-2_1439195296134" class="attachment-large wp-post-image" height="357" src="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/2B3E0A2D00000578-3192048-image-a-2_1439195296134.jpg" width="634" />
<img src="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/2B3E0A2D00000578-3192048-image-a-2_1439195296134.jpg" style="max-width: 100%; height: auto;" width="240" />
<div class="pf-content">
By Theodore Shoebat
Muslims in Iraq declared to Christians: “You don’t deserve to live. Its a shame you are unbelievers and you are still alive.” There was one Christian who told his persecutors: “Let me die. Its better than abandoning my religion to become Muslim.” You can hear about what happened in a recent video of interviews with Christians who suffered ISIS oppression against Christians:
<div class="fb-video" data-href="https://www.facebook.com/persecuted/videos/10153996039017454/?pnref=story" data-width="500">
<div class="fb-xfbml-parse-ignore">
<blockquote cite="https://www.facebook.com/persecuted/videos/10153996039017454/">
The Nine: Overcoming ISIS- Mighty.LA http://ow.ly/VuAzO
Posted by <a href="https://www.facebook.com/persecuted/">International Christian Concern</a> on Thursday, December 3, 2015
</blockquote>
</div>
</div>
The most beautiful line from the video is this:
<blockquote>
Like people say, Christ is far more precious not to sacrifice anything for him. Of course persecution will bring us closer to God. Because you feel joy when you are being persecuted for Christ.’Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.’ Thats something I tell myself that I’m not even worthy to be persecuted for Christ.
</blockquote>
<a href="https://ffmu.webconnex.com/rescuechristians" target="_blank">CLICK HERE TO MAKE A DONATION THAT WILL HELP SAVE CHRISTIANS IN MEXICO</a>
</div>
-- Delivered by <a href="http://feed43.com/">Feed43</a> service

anonymous armageddon isis islam war Muslims Declare To Christians: “You don’t deserve to live. Its a shame you are unbelievers and you are still alive.” One...

By Theodore Shoebat Muslims in Iraq declared to Christians: “You don’t deserve to live. Its a shame you are unbelievers and you are stil...

Russia And Turkey Sounding The Drumbeats Of World War III

<img alt="RussiaTurkey-With-ISIS_HL" class="attachment-large wp-post-image" height="350" src="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/RussiaTurkey-With-ISIS_HL1.jpg" width="580" />
<img src="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/RussiaTurkey-With-ISIS_HL1.jpg" style="max-width: 100%; height: auto;" width="240" />
<div class="pf-content">
<a href="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/RussiaTurkey-With-ISIS_HL.jpg"><img alt="RussiaTurkey-With-ISIS_HL" class="wp-image-88940 aligncenter" height="501" src="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/RussiaTurkey-With-ISIS_HL.jpg" width="830" /></a>
By Walid Shoebat
The Middle East is looking more like the Hindenburg hydrogen filled blimp where a spark could ignite it up in flames anytime soon. Today we <a href="https://www.rt.com/news/324903-nato-poland-nuclear-weapons/">hear</a> of one spark coming from Poland which wants NATO nukes to counter what it considers Russia threat. Then we have Turkey igniting fire-works at every Russian blimp as it has already imposed <a href="http://www.todayszaman.com/diplomacy_straits-could-be-closed-to-russian-ships-if-turkeys-security-threatened_406058.html">restrictions</a> on Russian cargo ships at the Bosporus Strait delaying their passage through the waterway in a  “clear violation” of international norms. We even see one Russian soldier who was spotted atop a Russian warship Caesar Kunikov, with a shoulder-fired missile while crossing the Bosporus. This is yet another spark that could ignite from a simple trigger to a complex war. Then we have Turkey entering Iraq, uninvited, with troops on the ground, while the Iraqi government is screaming for it to leave while crying out to the world: “military occupation”.
<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PLaPlsWbNGw" width="660" height="415" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
<div id="attachment_88934" style="width: 860px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/235013.jpg"><img alt="235013" class="wp-image-88934" height="425" src="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/235013.jpg" width="850" /></a>
A Russian soldier was spotted atop a Russian warship Caesar Kunikov, with a shoulder-fired missile while crossing the Bosporus. It was considered a move that Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu called a “provocation.”
</div>
Following the downing of a Russian jet by two Turkish F-16s last week and an increasing Russian military presence in Syria since the incident, <a class="news-detail-tag-link" title="Turkey, Turkey news, turkey news, turkey latest newsies" href="http://www.todayszaman.com/index/turkey">Turkey</a> may play its valuable trump card and close its straits to Russian ships if it considers its national security threatened. This will definitely ignite the blimp.
Then we have President Vladimir Putin also ordered the deployment of long-range S-400 air defense missile systems to a Russian air base in Syria just 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of the border with Turkey threatening to shoot down any Turkish jets.
Putin, many falsely think, stands alone, not considering that China might come to the aid of its ally. Turkey is confident since Turkey’s president knows he has such a spiritual influence on the U.S. through his Cushite male slave, Obama, and on Europe, through his Gothic concubine Merkel of Germany.
<div id="attachment_88943" style="width: 970px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/erdogan-carresing-Obama.jpg"><img alt="erdogan-carresing-Obama" class="wp-image-88943 size-full" height="651" src="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/erdogan-carresing-Obama.jpg" width="960" /></a>
Don’t you love this photo. Its priceless. Erdogan caressing Obama cheek telling him “Well done my good and faithful slave”
</div>
The NATO alliance’s program allows non-nuclear countries like Poland to borrow US missiles, a move by Poland would unlikely be taken kindly by Russia. The Russian leader sits on the world’s second-biggest nuclear arsenal. He has shown he is willing to use force, and to escalate. The East is more stubborn than the West. All nations know that any attempt to confront Russia militarily risks the end of life on the planet and are better not pursued. Putin and his senior associates regularly refer to their nuclear weapons in both public and private meetings with foreigners. Most recently the gadfly Vladimir Zhirinovsky suggested dropping a nuclear weapon in the Bosphorus to obliterate Istanbul.
<a href="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/putin-imagesmbexk40c.jpg"><img alt="putin-imagesmbexk40c" class=" wp-image-88939 aligncenter" height="276" src="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/putin-imagesmbexk40c.jpg" width="499" /></a>
So will the U.S. stand with Turkey if and when all hell breaks loose? One has to imagine a chess-game between God and the devil. If the devil puts the U.S. as a knight in the chessboard, the United States is overwhelmingly dominant in every part of the military spectrum, from space to cyber via conventional and nuclear weapons, just as the Western alliance with its combined GDP of around $40 trillion, and population of 800 million, is overwhelmingly more powerful than Russia with its GDP of $1.7 trillion and population of 140 million.
That is, unless two things happen. The first is that Russia will win the moral ground. Americans historically always stood with what is right, despite that their government at times could have been elected devils. The second is that the U.S. elections results next year, is a chip in God’s hand, and the Scottish-American highlander, sir Donald Trump wins, then the devil is in checkmate. It is the type of thing where God finally shows up.
<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OsYEy8yNyus" width="660" height="415" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
And besides all this serious cyber rattling, now in Iraq, Turkey began the deployment process of its troops into Iraq’s sovereignty. Beginning on December 3rd and ended late night December 5th Turkish troops crossed into Iraq with 1,200 soldiers along with 25 tanks and several armored vehicles in the Bashiqa region near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.
We are seeing the trumpets of war sound and it could ignite World War III, which is on the horizon. How fast things moved just in the last month and a week. All this, just right after ‘experts’ were positive when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan attended an opening ceremony for a mosque in Russia with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Yet from the Bible, we said otherwise; the Antichrist, Daniel tells us will be attacked from the north (Russia) and Putin today makes it clear, this is not about tomatoes:
<blockquote>
“But if anyone thinks that having committed this awful war crime, the murder of our people, that they are going to get away with some measures concerning their tomatoes or some limits on construction and other sectors, they are sorely mistaken”
</blockquote>
Russia is preparing for an “anti-Turkey” posture and the downing of the jet may have been the last straw that broke the Russian-bear’s back. Russia’s negative view of Turkey started some time ago regarding Caucasia, the Mediterranean, Cyprus and beyond. Russia will soon reinforce its anti-Turkey policies with the support of other allies such as Iran (for now), China and India: Turkey’s bad news from the east (Daniel 11:44).
While some think that Turkey’s NATO alliance has many friends, Russia also has a loyalty in the Middle East. Chairman of the Iraqi Parliament’s Security and Defense Committee Hakim al-Zamili already addressed Turkey’s military deployment in Mosul an act of “occupation” and said the Iraqi army was ready to bomb Turkish forces there, another spark that could get the kettle boiling.
The Iraqi parliament’s defense committee chairman calling the move “an incursion.” Zamili said Turkey’s military thus targeting Iraqi sovereignty and added that Iraqi Air Forces informed Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi of the situation and were waiting for his permission to attack Turkish troops. The American faulty understanding of the Middle East created a void that will soon be filled by either Iran or Turkey.
Mosul, a city of more than one million people, was under the control of Northern Iraqi Kurdistan until last year. But in June 2014, ISIS terrorist group seized the biggest city in northern Iraq after heavy clashes with northern Iraqi Kurdish forces.
So now Turkey, like the rest do, is using the ‘War On ISIS’ as an excuse to enter Iraq’s richest oil fields.
And its not only the riches of Iraq that Turkey is interested in. It wants Egypt and Syria (Daniel 11).
A word of eastern wisdom. The Turkish locusts whenever they invade, they always initiate famine and hunger. I learned this from our own history when My grandfather Daud was in the Ottoman army fighting against the British during World War One. All my Grandpa Daud had was a sword, a gun and a horse. He said they were always hungry because the Turks brought a mass starvation throughout the whole land. He and his fellow soldiers would pick the grains and hay out of their horses’ manure, then bake those into crackers to eat.
Even nature switches things around when the chewing locusts and the crawling locusts and the swarming locusts invade (Joel 1:4). Many Arabs would transfer from fighting for the Ottomans when the British gave them bars of chocolate to come fight with them instead. The land had pleanty to give of its yields when the Jew came home and now the Turks are set to invade, even Israel in few years, to take away “their livestock and seize their goods and carry off plunder” (Ezekiel 38:12) because the Turkish locust always brings starvation and war.
It is a spiritual rule-of-thumb, when the Muslim locust marches for war, the earth becomes barren.
Our hatred for the Turk did not stem when only I became Christian. I remember when one time the TV was showing a documentary on the Ottoman Turks and my father got so upset he started cursing. “Why are you so upset?” I asked. “I hate the Turks!” he said. “They brought us nothing but misery, slavery and witchcraft. They took everything green in the land. They destroyed the trees, the land and everything else. They cut down every tree to build railways. There was nothing but hunger and starvation during the time the Turks ruled over this land.” Unlike westerners, the Arab never forgets and neither does the Turk. This will be a repeat of history where the world will plunge into utter chaos.
The stories I heard from my father and grand parents were of poverty and the land didn’t produce much because it was in a severe drought—they would tell me that at one time not a single drop of rain had fallen in what they called seven years of famine. It is a prophecy that is repeated throughout history and is only sparked when the devil rules the earth and is why this coming seven year covenant brings in hell for the earth.
The secular Arab speaking tongue hates the Turk and will always do. A statement from the Iraqi prime minister’s media office said Turkish troops entered its territory without request or permission from Baghdad authorities and called on the forces to leave immediately.
In fact, while so many belabor the Turkish-Kurd hatred for one another, there is a better chance that these two could get along better than the Arab ever getting along with the Turk. The U.S. is blinded by their love-affair with the Kurds. The Turkish Armed Forces in fact, has trained 2,700 Permergas, 2,400 Sunni and 1,400 Turkmen soldiers as a part of the supposed fight against ISIS so far and the trainings will continue.
They say that the movement of Turkish trainer troops from Arbil to Mosul is thought to be a sign of an upcoming ground offensive to retake the city from ISIS. All of the sudden, is Turkey in a love affair with the Kurds, or is it to simply occupy northern Iraq’s oil wealth, then cut a deal with Iran to take its share of the three ribs of Iraq.
It is for these reasons that the east, be it Greek Orthodox or convert Muslims, can figure out Bible Prophecy much better than in the Western who lives in a bubble (no offense).
In the meanwhile, listen, listen closely, you can barely hear it, but I can. I hear it. The sound of the drumbeats. Its the sound of the drumbeats of war and the Greek will soon get what he lost from the years the swarming locusts invaded.
<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HUfBTGavAg4" width="660" height="415" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
</div>
-- Delivered by <a href="http://feed43.com/">Feed43</a> service

anonymous armageddon isis islam war Russia And Turkey Sounding The Drumbeats Of World War III

By Walid Shoebat The Middle East is looking more like the Hindenburg hydrogen filled blimp where a spark could ignite it up in flames a...