The Crusades: The Reasons, the History & Consequences

So this week we're covering the Crusades. And just to ask a question, and we'll be looking at this in more detail, have any of you ever had anybody come to you as a sort of an objection to your Christian faith? What about the Crusades? Ever had that? Ever heard that? Yeah, okay, I see Brad's raising his hand vigorously. People will from time to time say, well look at the crusades, the church did something just horrible. And as we'll look at it, yeah we'll agree it's horrible.

But I think it's good for us to have an understanding of it, at least be able to give an answer. As Peter writes, we should be able to give a reason for our faith. We have a reasoned faith, we have a reasonable faith. And there are some good answers here, and we'll take a look at them shortly.

So this subject, the Crusades, the reasons, the history, and the consequences, is what we're looking at here. First, just to get the time perspective, and those of you who might be joining us for the first time, this is the page number in your series, and if I have a red there, that means that's the very first slide on that page, so you kind of get cued in. First of all, the Crusades were basically a military exploit, and I put in general because there were some minor exceptions. motivated by the Roman Catholic Church to take Jerusalem and the surrounding land.

That was the idea. Take Jerusalem and the surrounding land, hold it for the Church. You see the arrow up there? It basically extended for a period of roughly 200 years of waves of military exploit. We'll get a little more detail on this in a little bit. This is from a medieval drawing, by the way. It's from the period.

The people who were going through this actually made this The word crusade means for the cross. Once we get into it, it's almost a head-scratcher. How on earth could this be for the cross? But nonetheless, that's what it means. It's used sometimes today. Have you ever seen it used for an evangelistic effort or something of that sort?

I'd almost rather they drop the word as far as its connection, because of the evil connections that go along with it. Thick doctrinal errors that motivated the Crusades. Now, I think this is key. Bad doctrine can kill people. Bad doctrine is not just, oh, it's neither here nor there, you have your truth, I'll have mine. Bad doctrine can kill people, case in point. It's fatal.

Now, the first one there, the Pope can speak as God's representative with ongoing revelations. One of the things that we'll see here as we look at a chart is that not all, but several of the Crusades were motivated directly from the top. The very first one was stemming from a speech given by the Pope at the time. So this is one problem. This goes contrary to what we've pointed to, Jude 3, that we contend for the faith that was once for all given to the saints, not looking for subsequent revelations from someone who is supposedly a spokesman from God. I see also 1 Peter 5, 1-4, not lording it over others, and Christ is the chief shepherd.

So these are some key principles that come out of scripture. Next one there, the church consists of an ongoing earthly organizational structure aligned with political and military forces. That's what was conceived of as the Kingdom of God. If we look at that, here's Ephesians 4, 11-16, which as we were going through God's intent for the church, this was a passage we kept returning to.

Why? Because it sets forth the church not as an organization primarily, but as an organism. Key distinction. It doesn't mean that we're intentionally disorganized. It means that the church is living and not just an organizational structure, and that its ties are, as we'll see here in a minute, heavenly and not earthly.

You can also look at Philippians 3.20. The believer's citizenship is in heaven. That's where citizenship lies. Key principle and point here. The next one, the church replaces Israel. This is one that we've talked about before. It had a big impact here.

The New Testament addresses the church from Acts 2 all the way up to the time of the rapture, still waiting for that, and mentions Israel over 70 times, specifically, not some allusion to by name, Israel. It never shows the church replacing Israel, and it never shows Israel as rejected. And we looked at this in more detail before, Romans 11, 1 and 2. Paul asks the question, has God rejected his people?

Absolutely not. So there's a clear statement. What had been taught, and this started in the second century, way back, and it got well entrenched, was that the church had replaced Israel, some even to the point, God hates Israel. One of the phrases that had gotten well entrenched by the time of the Crusades is, the Jews were the Christ killers. I hate to tell them, but Romans drove the spikes in. Gentiles. But that was what had been drilled into people's thinking. The Jews were the Christ killers.

The book of Revelation continues in describing future events to see Israel as having an ongoing and separate identity. Israel has a place. We pointed out something else we'll see in a bit here. The land of Israel belongs to the church was one of the teachings. That's ours. We can't have Muslims and Jews living there. That's ours, was the claim. The land is promised to Israel first through Abraham, Genesis 12, 1-7. And then in other chapters, basically that promise to Abraham gets repeated through Genesis, right?

And then in Deuteronomy, and we'll see that in a minute, chapters 26-32, you'll see subsequent promises. This is Israel's land, not the church's. The church's blessings are heavenly. We see that in Ephesians and Colossians. for example, elsewhere too, but certainly there. We showed previously this chart here, and what happens, you see in Deuteronomy 26-32, Moses lays out the future of Israel. This was given 3,400 years ago. Some of it we've only seen begin to be fulfilled within the last century.

But Israel gets the land, it's promised to them. God's faithful to His promise. And that's still true. The Church was never intended to take that up. It was promised to Israel. It will be fulfilled. God will be faithful to His promise, even if Israel isn't. Here's another one. Taking the land back is worth whatever price it costs on the part of the Church and or the current inhabitants of the land.

This was a very costly set of undertakings. By some studies, figures of up to 300,000 children in the Children's Crusade died marching with no adults. The oldest child in the group, as far as we can tell, is about 12. Thousands, hundreds of thousands, over 300,000 by some studies, of children died in this thing.

The idea, and the false teaching here, was it's worth whatever it costs, whatever it takes. And the other point there, taking the land back is worth whatever price. We had this chart that we showed you last week, and you don't have a copy of it in the small size in this set. But the point being here, that notice how Saul, the Jew, was then, when he became a believer, turned to Paul, way at the other end of the extreme there. What did Saul think? he needed to do to the Christians? Kill them! He said, I sought them even to the point of death. He wanted them dead and out of the way. And Paul, as the Apostle, how many people did he kill for the sake of Christ? We have no record of anything of the sort. So, we find the exact opposite of what was being taught to these people. The exact opposite. of what was being taught.

The next thing, the church can grant complete forgiveness of past sins for participation in the Crusades. Here are some of the impacts of that. People were told if you fight in the Crusades, all past sins will be forgiven. Therefore, if you die fighting the Crusades, you'll go immediately to heaven and bypass purgatory. That was what they were told. So as a consequence, they said, sure, I'll go fight. The other consequence is they didn't care what they did on the way, because they knew it would be forgiven when they fought.

Horrible things transpired, rapes and plundering and murdering. We brought the first crusade, killed 12,000 Jews just on the way, just to make use of the time. Yes. Unfortunately, what you have is the Jews, the Islamic people, and the Christians all had a similar mindset in that respect. That's a good point, good observation.

Salvation in scripture is by faith alone. Nothing we can do as individuals or the church will impact the forgiveness of past sins. They're completely forgiven already. You can't do it. You can't go to battle, you can't take up this, stop doing that. Nothing we can do will impact that salvation. It's God's accomplishment, not ours.

How did this whole thing begin? People were going down to Jerusalem from Europe, and they would travel down and make pilgrimages. The Turks, who were of a Muslim background, the group of the Seljuks, They had just recently captured Jerusalem and they told the Christian pilgrims when they would come to try to pay a visit to Jerusalem, you can't come in.

So people went back and told the Pope and they told other people in Europe and of course that started a furor. One of the points that we made some months back now, remember in 284 Rome was split in two halves and consequently the church had split in two because the church was aligned with political and military forces. So you had the Western Church, which was the Roman Catholic Church, and then you had the Eastern Church, which was the Orthodox Church. They increasingly split apart as well, and by 1054 AD, each of the leaders of those churches excommunicated the other. But, here, Shortly thereafter, the Muslim forces kept pounding away at the Eastern Church. Remember, the Eastern Church wasn't just the Eastern Church, it was aligned with political and military forces. A couple decades after excommunicating each other, the Eastern leader appeals to the Western leader for help, because they're getting pounded by the Muslims.

Now, you've got this in small scale. Watch carefully the map on the next page. One of the things that you'll see here is changing boundary lines. Do you see that? As you step through those times. Changing boundary lines. As the ebb and flow of battling the Moslems changes the area that they dominate. So here we are by the latter end of the Crusades. The Eastern Empire is getting shrunk. Here all you see is the very southern tip of Greece now starting over.

The point being, between being squeezed by the Roman Catholic Church on the one side, and being squeezed by the Muslims on the other side, the Eastern Empire just kind of continued to change and morph, just like you see in the map. And then, November 1095, Pope Urban II made a public appeal for support for this crusade of liberation of Jerusalem. We've got to liberate Jerusalem and take back the land. And then the people were shouting, about 50,000 strong at that gathering, God wills it, God wills it, they shouted in French.

Oh, one thing. This is the cathedral there. That cathedral was not built but a little bit later. So just so you don't misunderstand what I've got there. This is the Cathedral of Clermont. It wasn't built until they started building it at the end of the Crusades period.

Okay, one of the things we've shown this before, the early Crusades tended to go towards the north and the later ones through the south. We'll look at that in more detail in a bit here, okay? Broad generalization. Once the Crusades began, there was a rather continuous flow of warriors and supplies down towards the eastern end of the Mediterranean.

You will find some people who study this saying, well, there were 15 Crusades, or there were 8, and the point is, how big of a wave do you count? That's really the reason for the difference. It's not that there's a disagreement per se. Do you count a small wave as another Crusade, or just something of a resupply? So that's the main difference you'll find if you see different historians saying that there were seven or eight or sometimes 15 is what some will say. It's just a question of where do I cut it off? How big is big enough to call a new crusade?

And we'll be taking a look at that. The Children's Crusade added nothing to the battle at all, as we'll see here in a little bit. It's obviously, you know, if you've got everybody 12 years and under, they're not going to help. And by the way, they took no weapons with them.

Okay, you've got a chart that looks something like this. I don't expect you to read off of here, you may just want to follow along. Hopefully you have in your package the chart and the little S there means it's a special, it's not included in your numbered set.

One of the things to look at, these are the ones that were specifically motivated by Popes. So not all the Crusades had the blessing of the Popes, but some in fact did. And so we find those, and we'll find also that Innocent III had involvement with the Children's Crusade as well, but it was not an approval. He actually tried to discourage it, but he didn't forbid it. Okay, first one, that's obviously the one we talked about that got initiated by this speech in Clermont, France, and everybody's yelling, God wills it.

What happened there, you have a chart also with you, and it follows this line starting there in Central Europe going through Constantinople and then down to Jerusalem. If you could call it that, this one was the most successful of the Crusades. I hate to call it success, but that's how they would style it.

They basically went in and did end up taking Jerusalem. They attacked it, went in, just as you see here, they would actually bring these large wooden structures up against the wall and people would climb up on there and then try to get on the wall and of course the opposing forces would try to... You see the logs on the side? They would hang logs off the side and torch them with the idea of trying to torch the tower that the soldiers were using to climb on the wall. But anyway, they did succeed in taking over. They slaughtered all the Jews and Muslims they could find. Horrible stories, I could tell you.

I'd rather not have you lose your breakfast. Anyway, Second Crusade. also motivated through the Catholic Church this was the last one fighting the Seljuk Turks and it was not terribly successful. One of the things you see on the right side because the Eastern Christians were supposedly allies but had been in part betrayed they were very mistrusting and just the lack of cooperation from them doomed the second crusade. And you can understand why they'd be mistrusting.

They themselves got slaughtered, some of them, in the process. And this one here went through Constantinople and then went down to Antioch. It didn't go down as far as Jerusalem. They didn't make it there. Now, the Seljuk Muslims were the ones in the first two crusades. After that, another group of Muslims, the Saracens, came in.

So a different group, still Islamic, but a different group. And if you think about it now, isn't that what the Islamic groups are about now? You'll have Islamic groups, but there's all kinds of different countries and parties and tribes. Same issue then. You've got one Muslim group falls away, the other one takes over. They're still fighting the Muslims, it's just a different group of them in charge.

Third crusade here, the idea was to take Retake Jerusalem what they ended up doing though is some of the leaders and you know one of them drowned another one went home, so it ended up being a real wash and a pretty sad ending That one here started going more of a southern route you see him going more by ship The fourth crusade was a very sad story This one, a bunch of guys said, hey, let's have a crusade. We need some ships.

They went to Venice, talked to the bankers there in Venice, got a huge loan, and the bankers at Venice really twisted their arm. We want to get paid back. So what did they do? They went from Venice down across, and you see where they touched land just across the little sea there on the other side? In what is now Croatia and Kosovo, in that area, they attacked the eastern Christian town of Zara. They attacked Zara, and that was to get money to pay off their ships. That was not well received back home, as you can imagine. Innocent III, the Pope at the time, excommunicated everybody involved. He didn't like it. However, there was still money owed.

So what did they do? They went over to Constantinople, which is the eastern capital, and raided there too. So they attacked the capital of the eastern Christian group in order to get the money back to pay for their ships. They never went where they intended to go, which was Egypt.

Instead, they went and they burned the churches and raped and robbed and looted and took things out of the buildings. They took all sorts of valuable things, burned thousands and thousands of copies of the Old and New Testament in the process. A great many of the things ended up going back to the Vatican, even though it was not approved by the Pope. So that's where a lot of it ended up, and a lot of it ended up getting lost and destroyed. But they just raided. They'd go into the churches and kill whoever fought against them and took all the goods that they could. The churches in Constantinople had a lot of the goods that were taken out of the eastern portion of the Mediterranean.

So a terrible story, all to pay back the bankers. In the end, Innocent reversed the excommunication of the Crusaders. They brought some things back to the Catholic Church, but left the excommunication in place for the Venetian bankers. A very sad story. The next one, Innocent III, was also involved in, in that he met with them and discouraged them from continuing, but didn't forbid them.

This was the Children's Crusade. It was actually a couple of different waves. One of them was smaller, about 20 or 30,000, and another one some figures up to around 300,000. And they would send children off. The oldest of them would be about 12. And they'd head to the southern part of... Let's see if I can get a map up here. The southern part of Italy. They'd head to the southern part and just be there. They expected the waters to part to get across the Mediterranean. Just like the Red Sea parting and all that.

Most of them got slaughtered. Some of them got sold into slavery. Some of them drowned trying to walk into the water. Terrible, horrible story. And why the parents would go along with this, I don't know. Hard to comprehend. Hard to imagine. What's that? No, that's a problem.

They had no food. They had no supplies. They didn't have any weapons. Not that they would have any way of using them reasonably anyway. So anyway, that was a very sad story. Very few of them actually were able to escape and some years later get back and explain what had happened. But that was very few.

The Fifth Crusade was another one. They started going to the southern route to release things out of Egypt. And the last few Crusades tended to be focused in that direction. Some historians also had an 8th crusade, 1270-1272, also unsuccessful. As time went on, especially after the 4th crusade, where you had basically so-called Christian groups attacking Christian groups, the support for the crusade rapidly diminished. People just said, this is nuts, you know, what are we doing this for? What basis is there for this? One of the things that the Crusaders did, and this reinforces some of the difficulty, frankly we're seeing the same difficulty in Iraq right now.

It's one thing to take a land, it's another thing to hold it. Taking a land and going in and being victorious on the first push is one thing. To go in there and to hold it decade after decade after decade was a tough thing. But one of the ways they did was they built castles, and this is one of the 12th century, the early Crusaders' castles. And this would be attacked and rebuilt, so what you see has been rebuilt more than once. Here's another sea castle out of Lebanon.

And they built out into the sea where it was real tough for people to attack them. And then you have this walkway out, and of course, if you could defend the walkway, you'd defend the land pretty well, defend the little castle. This area shows how much longer that walkway is, and it still doesn't show all of it. So the walkway is quite long, so it's quite a distance out and then they would build out there because it was a whole lot easier to defend that with the sea around them and just the narrow walkway to have to defend.

Here's another Crusader's castle in Jordan. Think about this now. Jordan is on the eastern side of where the Crusaders would have tried to hold the land. Why would they have to build castles on the east side? Yes, the Moslems are all on the east, right? And so they would have to have places kind of out on the eastern edge of the desert there in order to hold the Moslems off, because that's where they would come from. So they'd build castles like this.

To us it looked like out in the middle of nowhere. What are you doing that for? It was to kind of hold the line against the Moslems who were coming from the east. What else would you expect them to do? So, anyway, that was a case in point. Why did they end? Ah, okay.

Waves of the Black Plague epidemic struck Europe. Basically, waves that went on for four centuries. And so that was one of the things that kind of cut it off. You know, you think of it, you're losing a significant percentage of the population. Some say, figures even up to 50% of the population was decimated by the plague. Now, if that's going on, what are you lacking? you're lacking soldiers, you're lacking people to be able to fight, you're lacking food and supplies, the political leaders can't get taxes out of people because people are just dying off. I mean, you've got a major disruption.

So the ability to carry on the crusades, which were already difficult, we saw what happened with the fourth crusade where they ended up just borrowing all the money and turning into a looting party. This just put an end to it. There just wasn't enough reserve left to continue it on. That was one of the factors.

Another thing, initially taking the Holy Land, we mentioned this before, was one thing, but holding it was an entirely different matter. And then, finally, there was another group, and we brought this, the Paulician Kassari was a group in there, and they were a group that was Protestant, in the sense that they weren't Roman Catholic, you and I would probably radically disagree with some of the things they taught. They were actually fairly new age in their teaching.

But nonetheless, the approach of the Roman Catholic Church at that point in time was, kill them. Remember the head of the Abbey that told them, kill them all? Kill them all, God will sort out his own. And that was the direction that the soldiers got. But nonetheless, that took soldiers away from the effort to try to keep holding on to Jerusalem. That was their way of eradicating their false teaching, going in and slaughtering the Paulistian Cathari that was particularly prominent in France.

Were there benefits from the Crusades? Oh boy! Benefits! There resulted a generally better understanding of other cultures and a much broader perspective of the world. People went places they'd never been before. It was during the latter end of this time that Marco Polo, for example, ventured across the Silk Road back into the Orient. In fact, there had been trading during New Testament times that went from China and India and carried things from the Orient into the Roman Empire Antioch, where the Christians, remember, were first called Christians, was on that road. That trade had gotten lost, and this ended up restoring it at the tail end of it. And there was other trade that was established as well.

Now, question to you. Is it worth it? Are the benefits worth it? What do you think? There's benefits, yes. Is it worth it? No. Is it biblically justified? No. So yes, we can point to some things that were benefits. There's no way those justify what was done. Yeah, Nancy?

What ended up happening, certainly it was a real damaging thing, because over time it lost support. But in terms of the financial support, one of the things is the Catholic Church ended up with a lot of the goods that were hauled out of there. As a matter of fact, the Vatican's museum holdings, if you will, include some things taken during the crusades. So they gained more wealth by it, for one thing. Additionally, it didn't diminish them because they still retained all the political and military connections and power.

So, that stays there. Other thoughts on this? Yeah, Brad. Right. After a while you say this was a horrible thing. Even the people living then, given the things that they were being taught that were not correct, still recognize that this is awful. you know, this is just horrid and saw beyond it even then.

I'll take us to Philippians 3.20-21 here because this gets the biblical perspective square on and we went through this just recently on Sunday morning.

For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. There is our hope, not, boy, I sure hope we can slaughter enough Muslims and Jews to take Jerusalem. Further, who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory? Our hope bodily is not that, boy, I hope I can get to Jerusalem and fight so I can get all my sins forgiven.

We have a hope that is certain, not dependent upon what we do, but dependent upon the Lord Himself and what He's done. Then it says, by the exertion of the power that he has even to subject all things to himself. Will there come a time when Jerusalem will be subject to the rule of the Lord Jesus Christ? Yes. The Lord will do it, not because we send soldiers over to do it. This is key.

The biblical understanding would have prevented this whole two century error and tragedy. The biblical understanding would have prevented it. And that's what was lacking. That's what was missing. So anyway, I come back to the statement that I started with. Bad doctrine can kill you. Bad doctrine is not inconsequential. In this case, millions were killed as a result of bad teaching.

So it does matter. It matters a lot. But it matters beyond getting killed, doesn't it? It matters in our daily lives here, because no matter what's going on here on planet Earth, this is true. Our citizenship is in heaven. That's what we're looking for, not, gee, I hope we can take over Jerusalem. Thoughts, questions, ponderings?

Brad, could I have you just briefly tell, because you were rather vigorous in your saying of, you know, I've had somebody say, well, what about the Crusades? Can you give us a brief summary of what that was about? You know, we spent quite a bit of time talking about the Crusades.

And I thought to myself, I mean, how do you believe in something under the age of 30, 40, 50, 60, 70? You know, like that. It was off his eyes. Right. So what kind of an answer would we have for somebody who asks that? Because I've been asked that too.

What answers would you have for somebody that came to you and said, I won't believe in Christianity, they're responsible for this horrible crusade. What would you say? What would be your answers? How would you respond? Yeah, one is certainly a long time ago. This isn't me or my parents that did this, but yeah, that's one response. What else would you say? Yeah, you can agree with them, this was horrible, and God didn't call for it. We pointed out those six points of false doctrine. that was the doctrinal basis for the horrible tragedy. These aren't things the Bible teaches. It's not in Scripture.

That's another response that you can have. Good. What else could you tell them? Yeah, Margaret? This is out of man's sinful nature that this came about. Yes. Key point. The sin nature expressing itself. If you want an example of what is the sin nature capable of, how bad can it get? Good place to start. You can thoroughly agree with them. This is awful.

You can also use it to point out what mankind is capable of apart from God. This was apart from God. This was not based on scripture. This was not something that the Holy Spirit was moving Christians to do. Good. Any other thoughts? Yes, I still call the Christian Crusaders Yeah, several things that we can stand apart with, and your point's well taken.

One is that we can point out Christians are not, as a church, to make alliances with government and military powers. That's just not the way God operates. And that would be one. I'm not saying pacifism, but the church is not to make military and political alliances. And you could point that out as well. This church obviously did it at this point in time, and the consequences were disastrous. Horrible. But as much as possible, one defense is simply to agree with them. This is horrible. This is absolutely awful. If that's what Christianity is about, I don't want anything to do with it. But that's not what Christianity is about. That's not what a biblical faith is about. That's right, pseudo-Christianity. Mark?

Yeah, okay. Yes. Osama Bin Laden himself has said that these are the crusaders again. Yeah. And so how do you respond to that? Yeah, that would be one approach to say, hey, you know, we had people come and take out thousands of Americans. Yeah, yeah. Brad?

Yeah, the move that is taking place now is a political move. It's a military move, and it needs to be looked at on that basis. As a Christian believer, I don't particularly, and even given the expressed faith of our President, as a Christian believer, I don't have to be in a position automatically of trying to justify it.

The Bible itself doesn't say, you know, you must go attack these people. That's right. Yeah, that's right. He's not put that as the founding basis. It's always been, you know, we have a country here, we have a right to defend ourselves, etc., and we have very obviously been attacked. He said there's no real mission work tied into it. Yes. And you bring up a good point.

I had kind of overlooked it here, but many of these crusades had missionary work connected with it. Imagine going in with the soldiers and the missionaries. Francis of Assisi, who is very often pictured as being a very peaceful person, was a part of one of these crusades. He traveled with them in order to go down to Egypt, and he did talk about Christianity with the sultan of Egypt, among other people. But that's a good point, and it's a sharp contrast. We're not using this as a spearhead for missionary efforts, and that's an excellent point. Other thoughts? Yeah, Josiah? One other thing about the crusades, Yes.

Basically, this is the organized Roman Catholic Church to the extent that you can get people to understand, recognizing that the organization is different from the organism. We are not first and foremost an organization. We are first and foremost an organism. We are the body of Jesus Christ. That's a real distinction from saying we're a religious-military-political alliance. A real important point.

Doug? Yes it was, by several centuries. That's a good way to put it, putting together what the two of you have said, that the Reformation, which really was the founding of a great many of the Protestant churches, wasn't for a few centuries until after this was all done. Other thoughts?

Okay, let's pray. Lord, we thank you that as we look at this certainly there are many horrible things and yet we know in the end that every believer that had any contact with this was in the process of being conformed to the image of Jesus Christ and we know we can count upon that even in our own lives where we are now and even with the conflicts in the same general part of the world that are currently in place we can count upon in the midst of whatever we're going through that you will conform us to the image of Jesus Christ and we thank you for that and Lord as we encounter unbelievers particularly that question this we just would pray for wise words that we might explain well the difference between what took place those many centuries ago and our personal relationship with you. We thank you for it in Jesus' name. Amen.