A Biblical Perspective on History

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The region has been known as the Balkans for centuries. It is an area of the earth, that I perceive to be among the most demon infested places on this planet. War has been constant in the region for at least some 3,000 years. The Balkans is a land bridge between Europe and the Middle East and many are the conquerors who have tried to subdue this land.

The Roman empire fought in this region for centuries, and the people who lived north of the Roman borders were called “Barbarians.” With the division of the Roman Empire in 395 A.D. different kinds of people tried to move into the region and establish control, Visigoths, Huns and Ostrogoths. These barbarian tribes swept through the region in bloody raids and inflicted great pain upon the people living in the area.

Not long after the bloody raids of these marauding bands the Slavs appeared. Between the 6th and 8th century they settled in lllyrian territories and proceeded to assimilate lllyrian tribes in much of what is now Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Herzegovina and Serbia. The tribes of southern lllyria, however, including modern Albania, averted assimilation and preserved their native tongue.

With the death of the East Roman Emperor Heraclius in 641 came the end of the East Roman Empire, which was transformed into the “Byzantine Empire,” a Greek speaking Christian civilization, that could be better described as a religious political war machine created for its power hungry leadership and driven by a quest for more power and greed Before Heraclius died, he had victoriously led his army to a crushing defeat of the Persian Empire at Nineveh in 628 A.D. But this turned out to be a hollowed victory, since the newest world power swept north and began to chew on his empire, the deadly menacing force of Islam.

The Islamic armies conquered the crushed Persian empire, Palestine and Syria and forced these people to convert to the Islamic faith, or be executed. For the next two hundred years war was raging on all fronts of the Byzantine empire, with its capitol, Constantinople, besieged twice (674-8 and 717-8), but with the Arabs unable to take the city.

Around 680 the Turkish Bulgars flooded into the land that today is known as Bulgaria. They militarily subdued the Slavs who were living there, took the land away from the Byzantine Empire and established THE BULGARIAN EMPIRE under its leader Asparukh. They were only able to move to within sixty miles of Constantinople, where they were stopped. The next ruler, Tervel (701-718) made an alliance with certain political powers in the Byzantine Empire and helped to restore Emperor Justinian II to the Byzantine throne and was rewarded for this with the title “Caesar.”

The next one hundred years was a period of raids and larger military campaigns, which were usually won by the Byzantine Empire. But under the leadership of Khan Krum (803-814), the army of the Byzantine empire was annihilated, emperor Nicephorus I, was killed, his head cut off, lined with silver and made into a drinking cup. After this victory Krum expanded his empire into Macedonia, Serbia and Croatia.

During the 8th and 9th centuries, the Turkish Bulgars were assimilated by the Slav majority, which was speeded up with the spread of Christianity.

Boris I of Bulgaria (852-889) was baptized (sprinkled) a Christian in 864, under the auspices of the Greek Orthodox Church. Boris played both empires in order to gain maximum political control.

As most world leaders are, he was only a Christian “in name,” and he could care less if he was going to be a Roman Catholic convert or a Greek Orthodox convert. When the Byzantine Greek Orthodox Church granted autonomy to Bulgaria in church affairs, Boris and Bulgaria became firmly anchored in the Greek Orthodox fold.

Two Greek Orthodox missionaries working in the Bulgarian Empire, Cyril and Methodius, invented an alphabet in which to write the Slavic language (known as Old Church Slavonic or Old Bulgarian), and they also developed a Slavonic liturgy in Moravia. When Moravia joined the Roman Catholic Church and the Western Empire, Cyril and Methodius were expelled and resettled in Bulgaria, where they were welcomed by Boris and undertook the translation of church books and the training of priests. More than 3000 priests were trained and dispatched into the Bulgarian empire.

STATE RELIGIONS

The reader must understand that at this time each nation or empire had its own state religion. In Byzantine it was the Greek Orthodox Church that ruled, in Rome it was the Roman Catholic Church. In Rome the religious leader was called “Pope,” in Constantinople he was called “Patriarch.” Boris I used his faith to establish an absolute rule, and all people who did not convert to the Greek Orthodox faith were executed. (This has been a standard procedure in many nations. When the Scandinavian countries converted to the Protestant faith around 1510, all who resisted and wanted to remain Roman Catholics were executed. In England this was done to anyone who resisted the State Church.)

In 889, Boris abdicated from the throne and entered a monastery. When his eldest son, Vladimir, reverted back to paganism and tried to destroy the new Christian state religion, Boris left the monastery and overthrew his son in a coup. Boris had Vladimir blinded (his eyes were destroyed) and then the third son of Boris, Simeon, became the new ruler. The Greek Orthodox faith was now established in the region. Simeon I took the title “Tsar of the Bulgars and Autocrat of the Greeks. He ruled from 893-927.

THE DEFEAT OF THE BULGARIAN EMPIRE

In the military campaign of 1014, the Byzantine emperor, Basil II, defeated the Bulgarian army. 15,000 Bulgarian soldiers who had been taken captive, had their eyes destroyed. For this act, Basil became known as “Basil Bulgaroctonus” (Slayer of the Bulgars). In 1018 the entire Bulgarian empire was taken and until 1180 it remained under Byzantine rule. This also included Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Kosovo, Montenegro and Macedonia.

THE DEFEAT OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE

In 1096, the first Crusade by the Roman Catholic Church took place and it became clear that Rome and Byzantine could not peacefully co-exist. In the 1170’s, the Bulgarians, Norman crusaders, Angevins of southern Italy, Serbs and Venetians attacked the Byzantine empire. By 1180, Serbia was virtually independent, Hungary absorbed Dalmatia, and Bulgaria and Wallachia rose again as independent states.

In 1347, the Serbs, led by its emperor Stefan Dusan, invaded Albania and caused a massive exodus of Albanians who fled to Greece and other nations in the region. (History seems to repeat itself.) After having been part of the East Roman Empire for a thousand years, Albania was, for a time, going to be ruled by the Serbs and later by the Turks.

But peace was not going to come to the Balkans. The demons of war had created another empire, THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE, which was going to last from 1301 to 1922.

In 1354, the Ottoman military machine struck across the Straight of Dardanelles and took the important city of Gallipolo (today Gelibolu), which was an important city in the Byzantine Empire. In 1361, they had moved on to the city of Adrianople (now Erdirne), which controlled the road leading from Constantinople to Belgrade.

In 1364, Pope Urban V organized a crusade force to retake Adrianople and drive the Islamic Turks back to their homeland. This Western army was defeated by the Turks, but before their defeat, this Roman Catholic army committed so many atrocities against the Orthodox Christian civilian population, that many Bulgarians preferred Islamic rule over Christian rule by the Western forces.

The Turkish war machine continued to grind on. In 1371, Macedonia fell to the Turks, central Bulgaria, including Monastir, fell in 1382, the apitol Sofia fell in 1385 and Nis in 1386. The remaining Balkan nations had formed an alliance, and in 1389 the allied forces confronted the Turks in the province of KOSOVO. The Ottoman Empire Murad was killed during the battle of Kosovo, but the Turkish war machine soundly defeated the Serbs and their allies.

In 1390, the Serbs and the Bulgarians revolted against the Turkish rule, backed by Hungary and what was left of the Byzantine empire. The new Ottoman, emperor Bayezid I (1389-1402), became furious and returned to the Balkans with his armed forces. By 1393, the revolt was crushed and the rebels routed. Hungary tried to organize a European force, but this one was beaten at the battle at Nicopolis on the Danube River in 1396. It was then that the Ottoman war machine was turned on the Byzantine Empire and in 1453 the capitol of Constantinople was taken, and its name changed to Istanbul. This was the end of the Byzantine Empire. At this time, Bosnia and Herzegovina were firmly in the hands of the Islamic invaders.

The Ottoman empire was going to exist for more than 600 years and, at its height, included the Balkans (part of Austria, all of Hungary, Serbia, Bosnia and Romania) Greece, the Ukraine, Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, North Africa as far west as Algeria and most of the Arabian Peninsula.

ATROCITIES BY THE TURKS

During their long rule, the religion of Islam was forced upon the people living in the conquered nations. The Christian faith that had been preached in the first century by the apostles had taken root in many nations and the church of Jesus Christ was strong until the third century, when the Christian faith became a state religion in the Roman Empire. The following nations were Christian strongholds by the second century: Egypt, all of North Africa, Ethiopia, Lebanon, Syria, Babylon, Persia, the entire peninsula that is today called Turkey, Greece, Italy, Spain and a large portion of southern France. Christian churches had been planted as far east as India, where the apostle Thomas had traveled.

What Mohammed and his Arabs did not destroy, the Turks did. It is sad to see the people in Bosnia and Kosovo clinging to the Islamic faith, which is something that was forced upon them by the sword. They do not know that not only have they lost part of the land where they have been living, when they die, they are going to end up in the Lake of Fire and spend an eternity in torment.

As you can see through this very brief introduction of the history of the Balkans, war, murder, rape and destruction have been the norm in this part of the world for the last 2000 years. And yet the region has one of the most beautiful landscapes in the world, with lush forests, mountains, rivers and beautiful coast lines.

During the years of 1875 through 1878 another major crisis took place in the Balkans. After decades of nationalistic ferment, an uprising broke out in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1875 and spread to Bulgaria the following spring. It was cruelly suppressed by the Turks, who were using para-military units to strike down the uprising.

These units were called “bashi-bazouks.” At the city of Phillopoli some 15,000 persons were rounded up and brutally massacred. Many villages and some monasteries were destroyed. At that time the word “ETHNIC CLEANSING” was not in use, but it was carried out as brutally as we see it today.

Know this, the demon princes and their underlings never die. Instead, the same demon princes that possessed emperors, generals, officers and soldiers for the last 2000 years in the Balkans are still there, and today they are possessing the people now living. Despite that this is 1999 and that people today in the Balkans have been educated, drive cars, watch TV and are on the cutting edge of human technology, when the demons take over, it will be the same program of war, murder, rape, pillage, ethnic cleansing etc. These demons cannot be bombed into submission. They love war and they are going to escalate the conflict instead of slowing it down.