Well over 900 years ago, in 1096 to be exact, a church leader made a speech that was to change history.
An “overflow” crowd listened as Pope Urban II preached a persuasive sermon:
“Come forward to the defense of Christ…. Fight a just war …. Set forth, then upon the way to the holy Sepulcher; wrest that land from the evil race, and keep it for yourself. . . Jerusalem, fruitful above others lands, where rested our Lord.”
Thus began a move by so-called Christian people to fight a so-called holy war against the Muslim Turks who controlled Jerusalem.
Each of the estimated quarter million Europeans who set out for Jerusalem to fight wore a cloth cross sewed or pinned on his clothing, either on his shoulder or chest. For that reason, these fighters were called crusaders, a word meaning “cross bearers.”
These “cross bearers” were also sword bearers. The words of the Bible that “all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword” literally came true for thousands of the crusaders. Famine overwhelmed some and killing took thousands more.
The Crusades lasted for almost 200 years. For a while crusaders controlled Jerusalem, but those who went soon lost their desire for preserving the great city. Their motives were wealth, new land, escaping work, and even prison sentences in their home countries.
Before it was all over there was even a children’s crusade. In all, more than 50,000 children, mostly under age 12, led by two young boys, set out for Jerusalem on foot. They expected the Mediterranean Sea to divide before them as the Red Sea divided before the Children of Israel. Needless to say, none of them ever reached Jerusalem.
We modern people tend to laugh at the Crusades as the result of a mixed-up, superstitious people hundreds of years ago. Surely enlightened twenty-first-century Christians would not stoop to do something so absurd in the name of religion. Or would they?
Those eleventh- and twelfth-century crusaders are surprisingly similar to many people living now.
Thousands are even now fighting crusades against governments and peoples, all in the name of Christianity. They may, in the name of Christianity, join in fighting against modern Muslims or others to “defend” Christianity or their countries from the threat. They fail to recognize that Jesus taught Christians to “love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you” (Matthew 5:44).
Others are fighting and protesting, not using swords or guns. Their weapons are more subtle than that! Their weapons may be so-called nonviolent demonstrations, sit-ins, self-burnings, boycotts, verbal abuse, and on and on.
Like the crusaders of old, these social-gospel people, political reformers, pacifists, or whatever they may call themselves, are out to seek some kind of earthly utopia or perfect society where everybody is “Christianized” and loves everybody else. Again, they fail to see that Christ calls Christians to preach the Gospel of truth, the only way to truly transform people’s lives.
Some, like the crusaders, may have underhanded motives for personal gain, but I’m convinced the majority are just caught up by the spirit of the age, blindly following anything that comes along.
The Crusades proved that peace and Christianity could not come by the sword or any kind of resistance. Yet modern “crusaders” have forgotten this lesson and tried again to reform the world by legislation, violence, and even nonviolence. It won’t work!
The Bible answer for reaching a corrupt society has always been and still is: “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19, 20).
“For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds” (2 Corinthians 10:4).
The Christian’s job is to teach the all things of the Gospel. This alone will change men’s lives. Man’s pressure tactics only treat the symptoms of evil in man, not the sin that is the cause.
God needs Christians who are willing to begin a crusade, not to bring revolution in society or fight violence with weapons, but to take the Gospel to the world. It will have its effects on the way men live and treat each other! Carrying the Gospel of Christ we can be true cross bearers in a sinful world.
-by Roger L. Berry