Category: Roger’s writing archive

Roger Harned, Christian author – Not all writings are talk of Jesus; however a thread of theme will generally connect to scriptural truth and contemporary application in our 21 c. Christian lives. SHARE a link to your SOCIAL WITNESS to your ‘Friends.’ Please COMMENT on talkofJesus.com to witness your thoughts of witness to our Christian community.

  • EMPIRE Fallen: Church Divided – Part 2

    EMPIRE Fallen: Church Divided – Part 2

    9 August, AD 2013 – This time in history.

    Genesis 1:2a King James Version – And the earth was without form, and void…

    ‘without form’ – tohuw – place of chaos;

    “Most history is untold and unknown to most.

    We look at history as a timeline of what someone has suggested has relevance to our own lives.

    AD abbreviationAnno Domini (used to indicate that a date comes the specified number of years after the traditional date of Christ’s birth). Forgotten in secular timelines.

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    AD 753 – AD 1806 — The Holy Roman Empire

    By the time of its end, the Holy Roman Empire was far from holy, had nothing to do with Rome and evolved slowly from powerful Empire of Charlemagne to a powerless attempt to keep title of sovereignty from Napoleon.  The sometime anarchy from power plays of royalty and church leadership was just one facet of a complex schism of the Church with political alliances divided between Rome in the West and Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem in the East.

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    AD 1375– AD 1378 The War of the Eight Saints, carried on with spates of unprecedented cruelty to civilians…

    9 August, in the year of our Lord 1378, French bishops declared Urban VI’s election as pope invalid. This began the great schism in which two and then three popes claimed the Holy See of Rome at once. Once in office, Urban (ca. 1318–1389) had become overbearing.

    1378 A.D to 1417 A.D. – Western Schism or Papal Schism was a split within the Catholic Church.  Two men simultaneously claimed to be the true pope, driven by politics rather than any theological disagreement. The Western Schism is sometimes called the Great Schism, although this term is also applied to the East–West Schism of 1054 A.D.

    “Doubt still shrouds the validity of the three rival lines of pontiffs during the four decades subsequent to the still disputed papal election of 1378. This makes suspect the credentials of the cardinals created by the Roman, Avignon, and Pisan claimants to the Apostolic See.” [3]

    Urban was declared excommunicated by the French antipope and was called “the Antichrist“, while Catherine of Siena, defending Pope Urban, called the cardinals “devils in human form.

    On the death of Charles of Naples in 1386, Urban contrived to take advantage of the anarchy which had ensued and in August 1388 Urban moved from Perugia with thousands of troops.

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    AD 1432 – Mehmed II was born in this capital of the Ottoman Empire. Islamic education had a great impact in molding the mindset of Mehmed and reinforcing his Muslim beliefs. He began to praise and promote the application of Sharia law.

    The influence of Ak Şemseddin in Mehmed’s life became predominant from a young age, especially in the imperative of fulfilling his Islamic duty to overthrow the Byzantine empire by conquering Constantinople.[5]

    AD 1453 – The capture of Constantinople marked the end of the last remnant of the Roman Empire, an imperial state which had lasted for nearly 1,500 years.  The Christian Church had been divided by the Great Schism of 1378 for less than 80 years and the enemy of Christ extends the political and religious power of Islam.

    Edirne, in northwest Turkey located north of the Aegean Sea and south of the Black sea, was formerly known as Adrianople and borders areas of conquest between Rome and its invaders.  During the existence of the Latin Empire of Constantinople, the Crusaders were decisively defeated by the Bulgarian Emperor Kaloyan in the battle of Adrianople (1205).

    To be continued…

  • EMPIRE Fallen; Church Divided – Part 1

    EMPIRE Fallen; Church Divided – Part 1

    8 August, 2013 A.D. – This time in history.

    Genesis 1:2a King James Version – And the earth was without form, and void…

    Creation, mankind, nations, the church, families and individuals ALL have a history.

    “Most history is untold and unknown to most.

    We look at history as a timeline of what someone has suggested has relevance to our own lives.  Take just this particular day from American history for example.  August 8, 1635 AD, Roger Williams was sentenced to banishment by the British colony of Massachusetts for his differing religious views. In exile he founded Rhode Island on principles of freedom of conscience.

    Among other issues of the time, Christians were divided not only as Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox Catholic minorities in the Colonies, but Protestants were divided in Europe and the New World over other doctrine, including use of the Geneva Bible or the King James Bible.

    In the Empire of Great Britain, Prince James became King of Scotland on 24 July, 1567, at the age of 13 months, after his mother Mary, Queen of Scots was forced to abdicate. Mary fled to England, where she was imprisoned for the next 19 years. Mary and Elizabeth were heirs through different mothers, among the six wives of: “Henry the Eighth, by the Grace of God, King of England, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith and of the Church of England and also of Ireland in Earth Supreme Head”

    When Elizabeth I died childless, James inherited the throne. He married Anne of Denmark and fathered several children, dissolved Parliament in 1622, and allegedly had sexual relationships with both women and men.  King James, who also authored several books about himself, was quoted as saying, “Monarchy is the greatest thing on earth. Kings are rightly called gods since just like God they have power of life and death over all their subjects in all things. They are accountable to God only … so it is a crime for anyone to argue about what a king can do.”

    8 August, 1635 A.D, is just twelve years after King James dissolved Parliament and Roger Williams is banished from Massachusetts to Rhode Island.

    You may know well the partial histories of Henry VIII creating new political alliances that broke relationship between the British Throne and the Roman Catholic Church.  You may know of the previous separation of Protestants under Martin Luther from the Roman Catholic Church.

    One related history of the English Bible is that of William Tyndale.  He is frequently referred to as the “Architect of the English Language”, (even more so than William Shakespeare) as so many of the phrases Tyndale coined are still in our language today.

    William Tyndale’s New Testament, 1525-26, was defiance of protest against Papal authority.  It was printed in Germany, where Martin Luther’s New Testament was first printed in 1529. One risked death by burning if caught in mere possession of Tyndale’s forbidden books.  Having God’s Word available to the public in the language of the common man, English, would have meant disaster to the church. No longer would they control access to the scriptures. If people were able to read the Bible in their own tongue, the church’s income and power would crumble.

    Tyndale’s flight was an inspiration to freedom-loving Englishmen who drew courage from the 11 years that he was hunted. Books and Bibles flowed into England in bales of cotton and sacks of flour. Tyndale was arrested and imprisoned for over 500 days of horrible conditions. He was tried for heresy and treason in a ridiculously unfair trial, and convicted.

    Tyndale was then strangled and burnt at the stake in the prison yard, Oct. 6, 1536. His last words were, “Lord, open the king of England’s eyes.” This prayer was answered three years later, in the publication of King Henry VIII’s 1539 English “Great Bible”.  (In 1539, Spain annexes Cuba and Hernando De Soto claims Florida for Spain.)

    The great American Empire of the 20th century little remembers that England and Spain, Empires of the day, would be divided and fall, as had the great empires of earlier history, most notably Rome.  At the center of this great history of the conquest and sin of man, God remains sovereign over Creation, mankind, nations, the church, families and individuals.

    To be continued…

  • Life Interrupts Life

    Life Interrupts Life

    LIFE INTERRUPTS LIFE.  It may be a marriage, a birth, a graduation, a job change.  It could be a death, a divorce, a disaster, an accident.

    In an instant everything of your mundane or over-stressed daily life comes to a halt and the life-interrupting event changes your entire perspective on this day.  Tomorrow will never be the same.

    Do you stop to allow a relationship of love for another person to interrupt your tireless routine?

    The pattern in the life of the Son of Man continually allowed for interruption as opportunity to glorify God through compassion for others.

    John 2: The next day there was a wedding celebration in the village of Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples were also invited to the celebration. The wine supply ran out during the festivities, so Jesus’ mother told him, “They have no more wine.”

    “Dear woman, that’s not our problem,” Jesus replied. “My time has not yet come.”

    But his mother told the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

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    John 4: Jacob’s well was there; and Jesus, tired from the long walk, sat wearily beside the well about noontime. Soon a Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Please give me a drink.” He was alone at the time because his disciples had gone into the village to buy some food.

    Pretty ordinary stuff of life.  Jesus and His Disciples are walking between towns. They have to stop for lunch and buy food.  Jesus is thirsty for a drink of water.

    The interruption brings Jesus to reveal to a Samaritan woman: “I Am the Messiah!”

    Rather than continuing back to Galilee, Jesus and the Disciples go with the interruption and stay in that village for two days.

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     Jesus continues to live an ordinary daily life as Son of Man.  He travels with other pilgrims to festivals in Jerusalem.  Miracles are just a moment in a crowded and busy day:

    John 5: “Would you like to get well?”

    “I can’t, sir,” the sick man said, “for I have no one to put me into the pool when the water bubbles up. Someone else always gets there ahead of me.”

    Jesus told him, “Stand up, pick up your mat, and walk!”

    You know the witness of the miracle; but other than that, in the life of Jesus and the life of one man who had been lame for a long time on every day of his life, it was just an interruption.

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    The examples are numerous throughout the Gospels.  The interruptions to Jesus schedule even include interruption of life to the point of interrupting death.  Jesus did this more than once.

    Jesus interrupts our thinking that life is burdensome or ordinary.

    Every moment has the possibility for a miraculous interruption of interaction in the will of God.

    A sudden and unexpected death… or a gradual, painful fading away: all of it is expected in one manner or another. No life is ordinary in the eyes of God.

    The pregnancy and birth, the courtship and marriage, the sickness and health: all are ordinary stuff of life in the eyes of God and the walk of man.

    Therefore let us be more like Jesus with a willingness to allow life to interrupt our daily life as we have seen it.  The Lord has a miracle for us; if not now, in His own eternal time.

    John 14: “Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me. There is more than enough room in my Father’s home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am. And you know the way to where I am going.”

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    Life interrupts life.  As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be.  Expect it.

    Greet life’s interruptions like the One who interrupted the world with His loving interruption of hope.

    Matthew 24: 37 “When the Son of Man returns, it will be like it was in Noah’s day. 38 In those days before the flood, the people were enjoying banquets and parties and weddings right up to the time Noah entered his boat. 39 People didn’t realize what was going to happen until the flood came and swept them all away. That is the way it will be when the Son of Man comes.

    40 “Two men will be working together in the field; one will be taken, the other left. 41 Two women will be grinding flour at the mill; one will be taken, the other left.

    42 “So you, too, must keep watch! For you don’t know what day your Lord is coming.

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    P.S. The above post was not intended to be my first blog post.

    This is dedicated to my brother in the Lord, Vinny LaGuardia, who was murdered by a gunman who opened fire on this innocent man and others at a township meeting last night.  Vinny played drums for our praise band at Benders Mennonite Church and was a friend.

    Jesus Christ, our Lord will comfort Vinny’s widow, our dear sister in the Lord. We pray for his family, neighbors and many friends, and also the families of the others slain.  May the Lord have mercy on the soul of their killer.

    Roger Harned