- PERSPECTIVE -

- EVERYONE SEEMS NORMAL UNTIL YOU GET TO KNOW THEM! -

My Photo
Name:
Location: London, Canada

Thanks for reading my blog.

Saturday, March 01, 2008

The Church of Allan - The Plain Truth About God.

A serialization of the book, The Plain Truth About God (Chapter 5 - Timelines)

Chapter 5 – TIMELINE
You cannot tell who, or where you are, unless you know how you got there!


1534 A.D. - Henry V111 marries Anne Boleyn. Excommunicated by Clement V11.
- Henry V111 breaks away from the Catholic Church and makes himself the head of the Episcopal Church, or, Church of England.
1534 A.D. - John Calvin publishes his first edition of the “Institute of the Christian Religion.” This work is destined to become one of the most influential works of Protestantism. The book details his theology of Humanities depravity, the necessity of grace for salvation and predestination.
1535 A.D. - House of Hapsburg drives Turks out of Hungary.
1536 A.D. – Portugal has its own version of the “Inquisition.”
1543 A.D. - Spanish Catholics begin burning Protestants at the Stake while Sweden made Lutheranism the official state religion and banned Catholicism.
And, oh yes. Did not burn anyone!
1540 A.D. - Copernicus refuses to publish “De Revolutionibus Purbitum Coelestium” out of fear of Church censure.
** Is it so bad to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.-Ralph Waldo Emerson
1542 A.D. - Pope Paul 1V decides that Rome needs its own Inquisition, vows that Rome will not be outdone by Spain. New twist to an old tale, he boiled them rather than burnt them!
1545-1563 A.D. - Council of Trent Catholic Reformation, or Counter Reformation, met Protestant challenge by clearly defining an official theology.
1553-1558 A.D. - Catholic Queen Mary reigned in England, persecuting Protestants and restoring Catholicism as the official religion.
1558 A.D. - Elizabeth 1 succeeded Mary as Queen of England and restored Protestantism as the official religion. - The Puritan movement develops among those dissatisfied with her reforms of the church.
1560 A.D. - Phillip 1 inherits Spain for House of Hapsburg.
1550-1580 A.D. - John Knox publishes “The First blast of the trumpet against the monstrous regiment of women.” Deploring the authority of women. “Misogynists to the left of us, Misogynists to the right!” Scotch Presbyterian Church founded by John Knox. Knox was a follower of Calvin because of his disagreement with Lutherans over sacraments and church government.
1604 A.D. - John Smith establishes Baptist Church. - King James bible.
1616 A.D. - The Church prohibits Galileo from further scientific work
**“I do not believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use.” -Galileo
1620A.D. - English Puritans, known as Pilgrims, established a colony in America at Plymouth Rock to escape religious pluralism in England. **By the way, they only stopped at Plymouth Rock because they “ran out of beer” and had to stop for more supplies!
1633 A.D. - Galileo forced by the Inquisition to renounce theories of Copernicus.
- Descartes stops publishing in France in response to the Churches attacks on Galileo.
1647 A.D. - George Fox founded the Society of Friends. (Quakers)
1648 A.D. - Peace of Westphalia ends thirty years war - Guarantees greater religious freedoms and........... The Beginning of the Modern Era;

Let us take a quick refresher course in European history. Civilization in the West evolved following the disintegration of the Roman Empire in the late 5th century.
The adoption of Christianity as a major state religion in Rome and the absence of Imperial authority saw the eventual birth of the medieval world.
The major emphasis of this culture was humankind’s relationship with God. Popes, Bishop’s, Priests and Monks were extremely influential and exercised an enormous amount of power.
There was only one Church, and it was referred to as “universal,” or in Latin, the Catholic church. Judaism was more or less tolerated, but its followers often became the focus of persecution during times of distress.
Because of this “Catholic” viewpoint, Western Europe eventually followed a path that led in a completely different direction than that of the Eastern World. This included the Near East and the territories, which would become Eastern Europe and Russia.
The most deciding factor had been the split during the Early Middle Ages between East and West over the issue of the supremacy of the Pope.
Elsewhere, the Near East and Africa (including what is now Spain) remained more or less unified by Islam and it retained supremacy unrivaled in either Western or Eastern Europe until the coming of the Renaissance.
It was during the Renaissance period when Humanist philosophers began to question their contemporary culture that the medieval framework began to breakdown.
As these scholars began to look at the classical past, the ideology of man’s place in the world started to rival the ideology of man’s place in heaven. Eventually Renaissance humanism caused some to question the Church’s monopoly on thought and we slowly emerged from the dark ages that started when Otto the First turned out the lights in 962 A.D.
Of the people that questioned the Churches theology, most were burned at the stake. One of them, however, a monk by the name of Martin Luther, was able to avoid the flames, at the same time causing some flames of his own.
Luther’s ideas were not new. He just happened to be in the right place at the right time.
The political situation in Germany was greatly divided. For centuries, the disorganized principalities had been paying tribute to Rome in an attempt to court Papal favor.
The princes saw Luther’s ideology of religious reform as a means to circumvent the Papacy and so he gained the backing and protection of a majority of influential German princes.
Luther’s “Reformation” eventually fragmented into groups that adopted some of his beliefs and rejected others.
The result was that Europe became divided into two camps, the Protestants (including Lutherans and other offshoots of Lutheranism), and the Catholics.
The Catholic Church then launched a Counter-Reformation in an attempt to restore the “universitality” of Christian belief.
Despite its attempts at eternal reform, most notably the Council of Trent and the creation of the Jesuits, the Catholic effort to restore Catholicism to all of Western Europe eventually failed. However, not before a great deal of blood was shed on both sides.
The bloodiest struggle, and one of the most terrible wars in all of history, began in 1618. The fighting, which raged off and on all over Europe came to be known as “The Thirty Years War.” A conflict that at its heart was due to the manipulations of the Church and the Hapsburgs.
The war was a last attempt by Catholic forces to restore Religious unity in Europe.
It was a dismal failure and the Catholic Church finally surrendered to the fact that their religion was no longer “universal.” This failure led to a new European worldview. One that included the possibility of alternative thought.
The exploration of new ways of thinking began with religion, but did not end there.

**This is the turning point historians mark as the beginning of the Modern Era.

1653 A.D. - Oliver Cromwell becomes “Lord Protector” of England.
1664 A.D. - First women were condemned as witches in the new world, leading up to the Salem witch panic in Salem, Massachusetts.
1720-1760 A.D. - American Colonies experienced the “Great Awakening,” involving the widespread conversions to Charismatic Protestant Churches emphasizing personal piety and individual interpretations of the Bible. (Influenced the “Founding Fathers”)
1727 A.D. - Death of Sir Isaac Newton. - Voltaire preaches ideas of political freedom. - Methodist Church founded by John Wesley.
1776 A.D. – The American Revolution
1788 A.D. - The French Revolution
1827 A.D. - Mormon Church established by Joseph Smith because of visions of the Angel Moroni. - Degradation of women still practiced by allowing men to have multiple wives. (Not quite as good as seventy two virgins upon arrival in Paradise, but what the hell!)
1832 A.D. - Spanish Inquisition was finally abolished.
1858 A.D. - “Mary” in a one-night engagement at Lourdes. - Florence Nightingale held over during the Crimean War.
1859 A.D. - Charles Darwin publishes “Origin of Species.”
1863 A.D. -House OF Hapsburg - King Maximilian of Austria made Emperor of Mexico. – (Hapsburg’s attempt to get into North America.) - Maximilian shot dead in 1867. -So much for that!
1870 A.D. - First Vatican Council affirmed the doctrine of Papal infallibility.
1896 A.D. - Billy Sunday, American Presbyterian evangelist, began his preaching with road shows. Attracted huge crowds and foreshadowed the modern-day evangelists and televangelists.
1901 A.D. - Beginning of Pentecostal Church.
1914 A.D. - Archduke Ferdinand of the “House of Hapsburg” is assassinated by a Serbian Nationalist leading to the start of the “war to end all wars.” -World War 1.
1917 A.D. - “Mary” comes back for an encore after Lourdes and appears at Fatima, Portugal. Reportedly witnessed by 100,000 people.
1918 A.D. - With the end of the First World War in 1918, most of the House of Hapsburg’s possessions and titles were either taken away or abolished. This ended a thousand years of significant control over most of Europe. Many claims by various members of the House of Hapsburg to have titles or land reinstated are still going through the courts in Europe here in the 21st century!
1925 A.D. - “Scopes Monkey Trial” John T. Scopes convicted of teaching evolution in public school.
1947 A.D. - Discovery of the “Qumran” or “Essene” scrolls. (Dead Sea Scrolls.)
- Discovery of the “Gospel of Thomas” sayings of Jesus written down shortly after his death.
1957 A.D. - Founding of Church (?) of Scientology.
1962-65 A.D. - Second Vatican Council.
1979 C.E. - The Iranian Revolution results in the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the first Islamic state in the modern era.
2000 C.E. - Pope John Paul 11 offers apology and asks for forgiveness for Catholicism’s history of “Violence in the service of truth.”
Now that’s one small step for a man and a giant leap for humanity!


**”And so it goes!” - Kurt Vonnegut Jr.


Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com

Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com

Labels: , ,

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Eh mate, your serialization articles entitled, "The Church of Allan - The Plain Truth About God," are positively WONDERFUL!!! I gave you 10's on every one of em. Thank you so much for sharing . .

Saturday, March 01, 2008 2:12:00 p.m.  

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home