The King's Hall - Yarmuk： The Most Pivotal Battle in Western History

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, Brian here with a big announcement from New Christendom Press.

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00:00:37.560 It is impossible to understand the identity of Western Christendom in Europe,

00:00:42.340 apart from its centuries-long antagonistic relationship with Islam.

00:00:46.980 In truth, Islam and the West have been mortal enemies since Islam's inception in the 7th century.

00:00:52.560 As we'll see in today's episode, the conflict between Islam and Christendom goes back much

00:00:57.660 further than the first crusade in 1095.

00:01:00.760 Likewise, many assume that after the last crusade, which occurred in 1291, conflict

00:01:06.420 between the two faiths subsided.

00:01:08.540 However, even after the last official crusade, the conflict didn't really abate.

00:01:13.560 In fact, it is a battle that continues even to the modern day.

00:01:17.080 As Bernard Lewis writes,

00:01:19.220 We tend nowadays to forget that for approximately a thousand years,

00:01:22.800 from the advent of Islam in the 7th century until the second siege of Vienna in 1683,

00:01:28.720 Christian Europe was under constant threat from Islam,

00:01:31.660 the double threat of conquest and conversion.

00:01:34.940 Most of the new Muslim domains were wrested from Christendom.

00:01:38.520 Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa were all Christian countries no less,

00:01:43.860 indeed rather more than Spain and Sicily.

00:01:46.720 All this left a deep sense of loss and a deep fear, end quote.

00:01:51.680 Another reality comes to fore when the true history of Islam is compared to the revisionist

00:01:56.940 history often told today.

00:01:59.160 Conflict was not caused by an expansionist Christianity that advanced into Muslim territory,

00:02:04.700 but rather just the opposite.

00:02:06.360 The Crusades, among other events, were reactionary and defensive campaigns to stop the invasion

00:02:12.780 of a brutal new religion of tribesmen who didn't play by the same set of moral codes as the

00:02:18.000 Christians did. In fact, the place where this Muslim aggression is best cataloged is in the

00:02:23.280 writings of Muslim historians and chroniclers themselves. They were proud to have invaded

00:02:28.980 Christian territories and made no effort to hide the barbaric, violent, and oppressive practices

00:02:35.000 in their own recorded histories. They too admit that crusaders so often marched troops into Asia

00:02:40.980 minor in an attempt to stop the spread of jihad into mainland Europe and to defend already

00:02:46.440 Christian territories. Before the Muslim expansion of the 7th century, Christian peoples controlled

00:02:52.080 all of North Africa, Syria, and beyond. It is important in all of this that we should ask,

00:02:58.920 where did this newfound tribal religion of Islam, one marked by bloody jihad and brutal,

00:03:04.400 violent oppression come from? The story begins with Muhammad bin Abdullah. He was a merchant

00:03:11.500 in Mecca who lived from the years 570 to 632 AD. In 610 AD, he began telling his fellow tribesmen

00:03:19.420 that the angel Gabriel had come to him in a dream and commanded him to become the prophet of Allah.

00:03:25.180 The basis of this new Islamic religion was simple. It revolved around complete submission

00:03:30.880 to every command of Allah. Submit to Allah and you are known as a Muslim, which means

00:03:36.500 one who submits. This was the first pillar of Islam or the Shahada. There is no God but Allah

00:03:42.880 and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. Originally, Muhammad preached throughout Mecca unmolested,

00:03:49.680 yet without really much success. Soon, the elite ruling class of Mecca, known as the Quraish,

00:03:55.360 became weary of his proselytizing and expelled him from Mecca.

00:03:59.780 He and his followers fled to the oasis region of Yathrib,

00:04:03.280 later called Medina, which means the Radiant.

00:04:06.320 From there, he began to launch his raids.

00:04:08.920 After a decade of peaceful but rather fruitless preaching,

00:04:12.700 Muhammad had won just over 100 converts to his new religion,

00:04:16.800 and let's be honest, mostly from his own family.

00:04:19.380 He decided to reinforce the violent aspects of his religion

00:04:23.000 in an effort to spark a more powerful movement.

00:04:26.380 Where his initial preaching proved futile,

00:04:29.100 Muhammad found success with raiding.

00:04:31.520 After 10 years of brutal raiding,

00:04:34.140 Muhammad had converted nearly the whole of Arabia.

00:04:37.140 Muhammad Simitar had been successful.

00:04:39.420 He gave his followers the command,

00:04:41.320 fight them, the non-Muslims,

00:04:43.560 until they testify that there is no God but Allah

00:04:46.000 and Muhammad is his messenger.

00:04:48.180 Author Raymond Ibrahim writes,

00:04:50.140 That Muhammad had only won over some 100 followers after a decade of peaceful preaching in Mecca,

00:04:55.680 but nearly the whole of Arabia after a decade of successful raiding,

00:05:00.080 an average of no fewer than nine campaigns annually, speaks for itself.

00:05:04.460 As Edward Gibbon observed,

00:05:06.640 Muhammad employed even the vices of mankind as the instruments of their salvation,

00:05:11.140 and the use of fraud and perfidy, of cruelty and injustice,

00:05:14.760 were often subservient to the propagation of the faith.

00:05:17.560 End quote.

00:05:18.560 In 630, Muhammad marched 10,000 armed soldiers into Mecca.

00:05:23.700 Ultimately, he forced the occupants of Mecca to conform to his religion.

00:05:27.620 He reclaimed the city from which he had once been infamously cast out.

00:05:31.580 He sent an ultimatum.

00:05:33.180 Embrace Islam and you shall be safe.

00:05:35.420 You've been surrounded on all sides.

00:05:37.460 You're confronted with a hard case that is beyond your power.

00:05:40.780 When the Kirash chieftain balked at the convert or die demand,

00:05:44.280 Muhammad threatened to cut off his head.

00:05:46.500 The chieftain, Abu Sufyan, and his tribe immediately proclaimed the shahada to cries of

00:05:51.160 Allahu Akbar. Such was the rise of Muhammad from insignificance to immense power.

00:05:57.500 One of the main attractions of Islam was its high degree of compatibility with the traditional

00:06:02.140 and pre-existing values of Arabian society, an emphasis on loyalty to your tribe,

00:06:08.160 enmity against other tribes, and raiding to increase wealth. This captured the feelings

00:06:13.340 of Arabs very nicely. They were a tribal people. To them, tribe was everything. To be inside the

00:06:19.540 tribe was to be human. To be outside was to be subhuman. A Muslim philosopher, Ibn Khaldun,

00:06:27.200 writing in the 15th century, described the Arabs of his time as, quote, the most savage human

00:06:31.840 beings that exist. Compared with sedentary people, they are on a level with wild, untamable animals

00:06:38.260 and dumb beasts of prey. Such people are the Arabs, end quote. Of their tribal beliefs,

00:06:45.020 Ibrahim says that, quote, the tribe was what humanity is to modern people. To be part of it

00:06:50.480 was to be treated humanely. To be outside of it was to be treated inhumanely, end quote.

00:06:56.420 Likewise, Muhammad intentionally designed his tribal religion to transcend national and

00:07:02.040 linguistic barriers as well as blood relatives. According to Ibrahim, Islam thus became a kind of

00:07:08.680 super tribe to which loyalty and enmity meant everything. As the coming centuries would show,

00:07:15.680 Muslims had very little regard for any human life that existed outside the boundaries of tribe

00:07:20.900 and would wage endless jihads against them. To the Muslim, as one researcher has said,

00:07:27.420 Non-Muslims are described in the Quran as, quote,

00:07:29.780 end quote.

00:07:47.840 And so the foundation of this super tribe was Jihad, which means holy war.

00:07:53.060 Muhammad saw all the world as two tribes.

00:07:55.580 There were the followers of Allah, and there were the infidels.

00:07:58.580 The goal of the Muslim religion was to bring every other tribe under Allah,

00:08:02.920 hence the birth of jihad, which is the violent undertaking of that mission.

00:08:07.080 In the opinion of Ibrahim, one of the most lasting contributions of Muhammad

00:08:10.960 was his deification of tribalism with jihad at its center.

00:08:15.180 The Quran itself portrays jihad as the noblest of all endeavors.

00:08:19.240 Quote,

00:08:19.440 lining up in battle in the path of Allah, Muhammad said, is worthier than 60 years of

00:08:24.960 worship. This deified raid or jihad led to a newfound fanaticism precisely because it promised

00:08:31.580 temporal and eternal rewards. Not only were victors promised the usual spoils of war,

00:08:37.780 such as slaves, concubines, and plunder, but they were promised eternal paradise and total

00:08:42.460 forgiveness simply for dying as a martyr or shahid. Put another way, salvation was attained

00:08:48.280 through jihad. And yes, one of the eternal rewards promised was copulation with 72 virgins.

00:08:54.440 That's not made up. That's not propaganda. There were also eternal torment for those who refused

00:08:59.180 to participate in jihad. Such vile creatures would, Muhammad said, be tortured like no other

00:09:05.040 sinful human being. What was the effect of paradise-laden promises of salvation for jihadists?

00:09:11.180 Well, quite naturally, it created radical soldiers willing to do anything on the field of battle.

00:09:17.620 As one Byzantine official said,

00:09:19.680 quote,

00:09:20.180 it is almost as if they are driven by the very demons of hell itself, end quote.

00:09:25.160 As for Christendom, which originally had included much of Europe, North Africa, Syria, Egypt, and Asia Minor,

00:09:31.180 it had lost nearly three-fourths of its territory to the advance and violent expansion of Islam.

00:09:36.900 As such, resistance to Islam came to define European existence, as did the Christian religion.

00:09:42.920 By the time 634 A.D. had rolled around, Heraclius, who served as Byzantine emperor from 610 to 641, had been long in fighting the Persians and then Arabs flooding into Syria, which then included Israel, Jordan, and Palestinian territories.

00:09:59.300 The main reason the Roman Empire was vulnerable to a Muslim invasion was because its strength had been depleted from a lengthy conflict it had been waging with the Persian Empire.

00:10:09.900 This decades-long conflict was known as the last great war of antiquity.

00:10:14.060 One of the fiercest of those Arabs was Khalid bin al-Walid.

00:10:17.900 His path with Heraclius would eventually cross an all-out warfare.

00:10:22.360 Brutal in combat, Muhammad had given Khalid his eagle,

00:10:26.160 a black flag with a shahada on it, and nicknamed him the Sword of Allah.

00:10:30.760 One story captures Khalid's temperament.

00:10:33.140 Ibrahim writes,

00:10:34.440 Modern-day Muslims often have nothing but praise for Khalid's commitment to the jihad.

00:10:38.640 But he had a darker side. During the Ridah Wars, Khalid accused Malik bin Nuwaira, a well-liked

00:10:46.680 Arab chieftain, of apostasy from Islam. The sword of Allah slaughtered him, and that same night

00:10:52.400 raped, Islamic chronicles called it married, his wife Layla. Not content, he decapitated Malik,

00:11:00.120 stood his head up between two stones, set it aflame, and cooked his evening meal in a cauldron

00:11:04.800 above it. And Khalid ate from it that night to terrify the apostate Arab tribes and others,

00:11:09.580 writes Muslim historian in Al-Khathir. It was said that Malik's hair created such a blaze as

00:11:16.100 to thoroughly cook the meat, end quote. By 636, Muslim and Christian forces had met for battle.

00:11:23.680 Heraclius led a multi-ethnic mix of Christians, Armenians, Georgians, Greeks, Christian Arabs,

00:11:29.720 Slavs, and Franks. Their forces numbered around 30,000, accompanied by priests reciting prayers

00:11:35.820 over the troops and parading relics before them. It was a distinctly Christian procession that

00:11:41.000 sought to defend its faith and way of life. The Muslim contingent was astonished by what they

00:11:45.900 saw. Once they had set camp, the Christian procession measured some 17 miles long. Khalid's

00:11:51.880 forces, meanwhile, swelled to 24,000 after Khalif Omar had sent reinforcements from Arabia per

00:11:58.820 Khalid's request. Muslim sources say that to see Christendom fall was Omar's delight and his meat

00:12:05.540 was their humiliation, his very breathing, their destruction. One Muslim jihadist and a companion

00:12:11.320 of Muhammad said, we have tasted blood and find none sweeter than the blood of Romans.

00:12:16.840 Khalid himself made no illusions about why he and his Muslim army had gathered.

00:12:21.220 Quote, it is neither hunger nor poverty that has driven us from our land in Arabia. We the Arabs

00:12:27.440 are drinkers of blood, and we know there is no blood more tasty than that of the Greeks.

00:12:32.260 That is why we have come, to spill and to drink your blood, end quote. Parties from both sides

00:12:38.220 met to discuss a diplomatic solution. After Christian forces refused to confess the shahada,

00:12:44.080 8,000 Muslims, quote, marched before the Roman camp, carrying the heads of 4,000 Christian

00:12:49.560 soldiers mounted atop their spears. These were the remains of 5,000 reinforcements that had come

00:12:54.720 from Amman to join the main Christian army at Yarmouk, only to be ambushed and destroyed, end

00:13:00.520 quote. This horrific practice was in keeping with verses in the Quran to strike terror into the

00:13:05.660 hearts of the infidels by decapitating them. After parading the piped heads before Christian forces,

00:13:11.440 the jihadists pushed 1,000 more living Christian captives to the front. There they forced them to

00:13:17.180 kneel and began to savagely hack off their heads to the utter shock and horror of the Christian

00:13:21.840 army. In preparation for battle, Christian priests prayed death prayers over the kneeling Christian

00:13:27.740 forces who had just watched as their brethren were ignominiously beheaded. Vahan, an Arab

00:13:33.340 Christian commander, told his men, quote, these Arabs who stand before you seek to enslave your

00:13:38.900 children and women, end quote. The Romans were fighting for the defense of nothing less than

00:13:44.000 their land, life, family, and faith. Meanwhile, Abu Sufyan, once an enemy of Muhammad, but now

00:13:51.540 leading the prophet's tribal armies, pranced around on his horse, waving his spear, and exhorted the

00:13:57.360 Arabs to jihad in the way of Allah so that they might seize their Christian lands and cities and

00:14:02.220 enslave their women and children. The battle was upon them. It would last for six grueling days.

00:14:09.280 On day one, a large phalanx of Byzantine forces marched ahead through a shower of Arab arrows

00:14:15.040 that were said to blot out the sun. Taking heavy losses, they pressed forward, hitting the Arab

00:14:20.800 front with ferocity, such that a bloodbath of close proximity fighting ensued. On day four,

00:14:26.800 Jabla's Christian Arab cavalry broke through the Muslim center and met Khalid's horse and camel.

00:14:32.460 Savage fighting killed many on both sides, but eventually the Christians were forced to retreat.

00:14:37.660 Christian archers sent volley after volley of arrows into the Muslim pursuers. So fierce was

00:14:43.060 the barrage from Roman archers that it is said some 700 Muslims lost an eye, and thus it was

00:14:48.320 called the Day of Lost Eyes. On the final day of battle, Muslim chroniclers say much about the

00:14:54.060 Christian right flank, whom they deemed the mightiest of the Romans. These warriors tied

00:14:58.460 themselves together with chains, displaying their determination and vowed by Christ and the cross

00:15:03.320 and the four churches to fight to the last man. Khalid was astounded and concerned by their valor.

00:15:09.580 In response, he sent his troops to attack the leftward flank, and unfortunately for the Romans,

00:15:14.380 a dust storm kicked up, confounding their movements. Amidst the confusion, the Roman

00:15:19.540 cavalry broke off and headed north. This action left the right flank exposed and vulnerable.

00:15:25.260 Ibrahim writes, realizing that they were forsaken by the rest of the imperial army,

00:15:30.620 the Christian infantry, including the chained men, maintained formation and withdrew westward,

00:15:36.180 the only place open to them. They were soon trapped between an Islamic hammer and anvil,

00:15:40.260 a crescent of Arabs spreading from north to south

00:15:42.900 continued closing in on them from the east,

00:15:45.120 while a semicircle of the Wadi Raqqad's precipitous ravines

00:15:48.420 lay before the Christians to the west.

00:15:50.920 Khalid had already captured the only bridge across the Wadi.

00:15:54.480 As darkness descended on this volatile corner of the world,

00:15:57.820 the final phase of war took place on the evening of August 20th.

00:16:01.860 The Arabs, whose night vision was honed by desert life,

00:16:04.940 charged the trapped Romans,

00:16:06.580 who, according to Muslim sources, fought valiantly.

00:16:09.680 Soon the terrain echoed with the terrifying din of Muslim shouts and battle cries.

00:16:14.100 Shadows suddenly changed into blades that penetrated flesh.

00:16:18.220 The wind brought the cries of comrades as the enemy stealthily penetrated the ranks among the infernal noise of cymbals, drums, and battle cries.

00:16:26.760 It must have been even more terrifying because they had not expected the Muslims to attack by dark, which was one of Muhammad's strategies.

00:16:34.320 Crowded and blinded as they were, the Christians could not properly maneuver and even lacked elbow room to utilize their weapons.

00:16:41.540 Muslim cavalrymen continued pressing on the Roman infantry, using the hooves and knees of their steeds to knock down the wearied fighters.

00:16:48.620 Pushed finally to the edge of the ravine, rank after rank of the remaining forces of the imperial army, including all of the chained men, fell down the steep precipices to their death.

00:16:59.520 Several other soldiers, including officers, knelt, uttered a prayer,

00:17:03.500 made the sign of the cross, and waited for the onrushing Muslims to strike them down.

00:17:08.400 No prisoners were taken on that day.

00:17:10.800 The Byzantine army, which Heraclius had spent a year of immense exertion to collect,

00:17:15.740 had entirely ceased to exist.

00:17:18.920 There was no withdrawal, no rearguard action, no nucleus of survivors.

00:17:23.480 There was nothing left.

00:17:25.140 As the moon filled the night sky and the victors stripped the slain,

00:17:30.380 cries of, there's no God but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger,

00:17:34.080 and Allahu Akbar rang throughout the Yarmouth Valley, end quote.

00:17:41.100 The King's Hall podcast exists to make self-ruled men who rule well and win the world.

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00:18:29.940 Well, gentlemen, welcome to this episode of the King's Hall podcast. We are in season

00:18:34.260 three, episode two. Nobody is more excited than Dan Burkholder to be here because his

00:18:39.720 face always, Brian says, pure, unadulterated excitement.

00:18:43.580 Just rivers of joy.

00:18:44.700 Rivers of joy.

00:18:45.560 Dan, welcome to the show.

00:18:47.800 Thanks.

00:18:48.780 See what I mean?

00:18:49.780 Do you see what I'm working with here?

00:18:51.360 Thanks.

00:18:51.920 Can't you tell I'm like a child on Christmas?

00:18:54.080 Yeah.

00:18:54.800 Yeah, like a depressed child.

00:18:56.280 A child that was run over by a train and is in a vegetative state.

00:18:59.660 Oh, brutal.

00:19:02.120 Wow.

00:19:02.540 I'm just kidding.

00:19:03.600 Guys, look.

00:19:04.780 And the raging Cajun Frenchman himself, Brian Sauvé, welcome to the show.

00:19:09.400 It is good to be here, Eric.

00:19:10.620 And thank you for assigning me to read possibly the longest cold open outside of the Haunted Cosmos podcast of all time.

00:19:17.380 I just I just want to say it's ironic that you say the word jihad like President Xi.

00:19:24.200 Like there's an X on the front.

00:19:25.760 And how did you pronounce Oaxaca?

00:19:28.340 That has X's in it, right?

00:19:29.500 Wait, wait, wait, wait.

00:19:30.400 Isn't jihad pronounced jihad?

00:19:32.920 Jihad.

00:19:33.700 Well, how would you pronounce it?

00:19:35.760 Jihad.

00:19:37.460 It's a jihad.

00:19:38.540 it's a jihad all right fellas we we decided that we're gonna pronounce all the muslim names

00:19:44.360 as if we're from west virginia just to make them more mad i actually don't think that's what that's

00:19:48.960 what they're gonna be mad about before i don't think we need the mispronunciation they're probably

00:19:53.560 not too they have internet in the hollers i thought you were talking about the middle east

00:19:58.220 are we just they don't have the wheel i thought you were talking about the west virginians no no

00:20:02.420 we're just trying to offend everybody no i actually no i'm saying the west virginians are

00:20:06.240 based and and what we're going to do is make the muslims mad by mispronouncing all their names

00:20:10.640 egregiously on purpose it's not because we're ignorant guys despite the fact that we have

00:20:17.040 annoyed or offended most of our audience by now we're gonna make it up to them brian yeah we are

00:20:22.920 we've got a giveaway guys we do we're gonna be doing a giveaway of a great book along with the

00:20:27.900 release of this episode this is one that one in the stack that we used in preparation we're gonna

00:20:32.720 to be trying to do some of these giveaways throughout the season. This one's going to be

00:20:35.920 God's Battalions by Rodney Stark. And we're going to put everyone in a drawing who signs up today

00:20:41.680 for any tier of support on our Patreon channel and send you a book for free. You don't have to

00:20:46.840 cover shipping or the cost of the book, a brand new copy of it, direct to your door. So if you

00:20:51.860 sign up for our Patreon, any of the tiers today, which is Lord willing, Friday, January 26th,

00:20:57.960 Anno Domini 2024, you'll be in the running.

00:21:02.140 You don't have to be the first to sign up or whatever.

00:21:03.880 Because when it comes out at midnight, the Europeans get a head start.

00:21:06.700 Yeah, it's not fair.

00:21:07.200 It's kind of not fair.

00:21:09.340 And everybody knows we got a lot of European listeners on the King's Hall.

00:21:14.240 I mean, come on.

00:21:15.540 And also, hey, speaking of our Patreon, Eric,

00:21:19.660 we're doing a special show this season just for patrons called what?

00:21:24.380 It is called the Deus Vault.

00:21:26.960 What a clever title.

00:21:28.060 Yeah, so we've had one episode already.

00:21:29.680 People can check this out on the, how does Brian say it?

00:21:33.840 Notre Dame?

00:21:35.180 No, I can't even.

00:21:35.760 Notre Dame?

00:21:37.200 I can't even be that French.

00:21:39.500 Notre Dame.

00:21:40.760 Notre Dame.

00:21:41.720 You guys, no one knows how to roll their arms like a Frenchman.

00:21:43.760 Notre Dame.

00:21:44.200 And it offends me.

00:21:45.080 There you go, Notre Dame.

00:21:46.160 Everybody knows Notre Dame.

00:21:47.240 I'm picking Notre Dame to win the Super Bowl this year.

00:21:49.380 Okay, everybody knows Notre Dame is Irish, not French.

00:21:52.380 And also, I know, I know that Notre Dame's not in the Super Bowl, just for the record.

00:21:59.000 Okay, before someone says it.

00:22:00.580 He doesn't actually know that.

00:22:00.880 Yeah, he doesn't actually.

00:22:01.780 He's covering all bases right now.

00:22:03.180 I'm covering all bases.

00:22:04.520 No, The Day Who's Vault, this is a great little show that we're doing this year.

00:22:07.880 It's like anywhere from short, like 10 minutes up to longer episodes as well, telling stories that didn't make the main episodes, but we thought were really interesting nonetheless.

00:22:17.880 It was every week.

00:22:18.560 Yeah, so Deus Vault, the first one, we talked about burial versus cremation, why Christians are typically doing burial.

00:22:25.080 And we also, Dan, we talked about the catacombs under Paris.

00:22:28.740 I'm pitching hard for Haunted Cosmos to cover this, but I don't know if they're—

00:22:32.760 The catacombs?

00:22:33.620 Yeah, man enough to do it.

00:22:34.040 If they're man enough to do it?

00:22:35.140 Let me tell you.

00:22:36.140 Haunted.

00:22:36.840 We might be man enough.

00:22:37.760 The haunted catacombs.

00:22:38.820 So you can check that out in the Deus Vault.

00:22:40.660 The next one coming up, gentlemen, I'm really excited for.

00:22:43.160 Just want to give a quick teaser.

00:22:44.160 We are going to be talking about one hot topic in Christian nationalism is often, you hear this said, that change has to come from the bottom up.

00:22:52.280 We're going to be talking about instances in which maybe that's not the case.

00:22:55.640 Many instances.

00:22:56.800 Many, if not all.

00:22:59.320 Almost every major one, actually.

00:23:01.620 Change didn't start with the bottom.

00:23:03.340 That's right.

00:23:03.700 We're going to be talking about somebody that my friend Alex Petkus got us turned on to, which was the one and only Sulla.

00:23:10.600 Got Elon Musk's attention, so it's got my attention.

00:23:12.920 Yeah, absolutely.

00:23:13.680 We'll be talking about that in the next day of the fall.

00:23:15.340 So be sure to sign up, if you're not already, for Patreon.

00:23:18.340 Yes.

00:23:18.820 And you can get exclusive access to that show.

00:23:21.920 And make everything possible here that we do.

00:23:24.340 We put a lot of work into these shows, a lot of work researching, reading, writing, sound

00:23:28.400 designing, all that stuff goes into hopefully making this, edifying to you guys, because

00:23:32.560 we need to retake history.

00:23:34.080 We need to retake history as Christians.

00:23:35.600 That's a big thesis of the season.

00:23:37.420 In this episode, particularly, we're talking all about learning how to read history in a covenantal way, right? Learning how to read history the way a Christian ought to read history, especially to understand how to live our part in the story faithfully, right?

00:23:54.760 We're not just doing this as an academic exercise.

00:23:57.080 We want to learn from our brothers and sisters in the 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th

00:24:02.180 centuries and say, what lessons can we learn from them of their courage, of the battles

00:24:07.880 that they fought and won?

00:24:09.180 And also, how can we learn from the sin and how can we learn from the failures of our

00:24:13.700 forefathers?

00:24:14.880 And in this episode, particularly, we want you to make eye contact, if you will, with

00:24:20.880 with one of the more sobering parts of reading history,

00:24:24.420 which is learning how to see God's chastisement on his people.

00:24:28.980 When an enemy comes and routes us and we flee before him,

00:24:33.820 if we know our Bibles, if we know how to read the covenant,

00:24:37.700 we should be learning something then.

00:24:39.940 We should be asking some questions when we see that happening.

00:24:42.420 When a hundred cause a thousand to flee and we're the ones fleeing,

00:24:47.040 that should make us ask, why?

00:24:49.640 Why? Why did God let this happen? It's not as if his arm was short. It's not as if he couldn't

00:24:55.440 have prevented it. So this episode is about a significant battle. It is a very significant

00:25:00.280 battle in history, one of the most significant battles in the history of mankind, I would argue.

00:25:05.440 It's also about the rise of a great enemy. But underneath all of that, we really want to make

00:25:10.440 eye contact with sin and righteousness and repentance and discipline, because these have

00:25:13.740 a huge bearing, I think, you guys would agree, on our lives today and on the state of Christianity

00:25:21.280 today.

00:25:22.580 Yeah, absolutely.

00:25:23.300 I think the other thing, Brian, that you point out is it's just interesting, so much

00:25:27.600 of the history that we've been told, the history that we learned in public education, as we

00:25:32.300 said in the cold open, was that, you know, Christians were being good colonialists and

00:25:37.300 they invaded Muslim lands.

00:25:39.000 Oh, those poor Muslims.

00:25:40.160 Those poor Muslims.

00:25:40.800 There they were, just trying to invent the wheel.

00:25:42.460 There they were, inventing zero and the wheel.

00:25:45.260 Yeah, dang it.

00:25:46.360 Both round.

00:25:47.400 Both round.

00:25:48.500 They couldn't put two and two together.

00:25:51.100 And so here come the Christians, mean Christians.

00:25:53.540 Here come the mean Christians just to steal away all their stuff and ruin their utopic society.

00:25:59.540 But yeah, it really is interesting with Islam.

00:26:02.360 It comes on the scene really quickly.

00:26:04.660 Yeah.

00:26:04.740 I think that's one of the fascinating things about it.

00:26:06.660 It didn't take hundreds of years even for it to develop in power and scope and what it was able to conquer with Christendom.

00:26:14.780 I think we're reading this.

00:26:15.720 It's like three-fourths of the Christian empire is gone within 100 years of Islam.

00:26:19.800 It's just routed.

00:26:20.700 Coming on the scene.

00:26:21.780 And I think also as you're reading these stories, especially in Muslim chronicles, they are the ones telling the story of how brutal Islam is.

00:26:29.800 Oh, yeah.

00:26:30.080 They're proud of it.

00:26:30.640 And I think as we're reading this, we're researching for the season.

00:26:34.600 It's one of those things, Dan.

00:26:35.820 You just see the brutality, and it's overwhelming to us, I think, in our world.

00:26:40.840 And I've watched The Last Kingdom.

00:26:42.880 I've seen some brutality on TV, but the stuff of reality is so much more severe, it seems, than even fiction.

00:26:49.720 Yeah, with the scene of the Muslim invaders coming into Yarmouk with 4,000 heads on their spears.

00:26:59.600 Yeah.

00:26:59.820 And then lining up the remaining 1,000 Christian prisoners that they had and cutting off their heads.

00:27:05.820 to strike terror and fear into the Christian armies.

00:27:09.800 I mean, that is a minor glimpse of the brutalities that they commit.

00:27:15.460 It gets worse.

00:27:16.600 Yeah, those people had it easy compared to some of the other victims of Muslim aggression later.

00:27:22.140 I mean, I would rather have been a soldier beheaded at Yarmouk than a slave of a caliph later in the story.

00:27:31.740 It's kind of interesting, too, when you think about the success of Islam.

00:27:35.820 I often think about reading the story of, like, the Comanche Indians.

00:27:40.920 Part of what made them so successful, their tribal, a lot of the way that they rode horses was actually very similar.

00:27:46.680 But the brutality was something that, like, the American settlers just weren't prepared to handle.

00:27:51.980 They thought you could march an army, and so it's a very different style of combat.

00:27:55.500 But there's some other factors, too, that I want to ask you guys.

00:27:57.940 Like, why was it so effective at spreading the way that it did?

00:28:01.800 What made it so dangerous and lethal?

00:28:03.440 Yeah. You see in the early history that we mentioned in the cold open where we have this period of time where Muhammad is proselytizing. He's attempting to spread his message, this claim that he had been visited by the angel Gabriel and that he was the prophet of Allah and had very little success.

00:28:22.580 I mean, there are cults today that, through similar means, just proselytizing and that sort of thing, have had more success than Muhammad did in that decade.

00:28:33.060 Jim Jones, you know, how many people were poisoned at Jonestown?

00:28:37.200 Way more than 100.

00:28:38.940 And he only gathered 100 people.

00:28:41.520 But then, all of a sudden, something happens where a decade later, he's got most of Arabia converted.

00:28:48.260 What was the change?

00:28:49.120 it's it's not there's no question what the change was the change was that all of a sudden he said

00:28:55.760 oh you know what actually god's telling me that what we really need and what he really desires

00:29:01.380 what his will is is that we would bring everybody into the tribe through raiding and through violent

00:29:06.200 means and so all of a sudden these tribal peoples are faced with the basically the idea of would you

00:29:14.680 like to die and have all of your family killed and everything you've ever worked for taken from

00:29:19.800 you or would you like to convert and follow this guy and they were like we'll follow that guy that

00:29:23.920 is the interesting thing people say that a converter die was a real thing and they're

00:29:28.120 actually right it's just that it was islam yeah doing most of the converter die um it you mentioned

00:29:33.060 jonestown 900 people yeah wow so yeah i thought it was a lot but that's actually higher than i

00:29:38.160 remembered yeah it's quite a few uh dan thoughts on that reaction well yeah actually we see the

00:29:43.480 same terror tactics used today in our polite society by our government overlords and by the

00:29:49.960 media. But I mean, seriously, though, fear is really powerful. And so right now, yeah, fear

00:29:56.440 and terror. So it's going to be we're always fed like a slow IV drip of this fear in order to

00:30:04.680 control people. And so you can see this with like the fear of global warming and acid rain and like

00:30:09.800 You could go back in time and see how people are manipulated through fear.

00:30:14.280 This is obviously like a horrifying tactic that they're using.

00:30:18.780 Where it's like, okay, we'll kill you, we'll take your possessions, and we'll enslave your wife and your children as sex slaves.

00:30:25.120 Or you can say the –

00:30:27.340 Shahada or whatever.

00:30:28.140 Shahada, yeah, yeah.

00:30:29.140 And you'll be one of us.

00:30:30.740 And then there's eternal rewards, by the way.

00:30:33.120 You get the 72 virgins.

00:30:34.780 Yeah.

00:30:35.060 And so there are other religions that actually mirror some of this.

00:30:39.800 Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.

00:30:41.620 Like what he does is it's not just the fear.

00:30:44.100 There's the fear, the stick, but the carrot.

00:30:47.400 You see this often with cultic false religions is that they valorize debauchery.

00:30:54.440 They actually make debauchery and sin and the flesh into rewards.

00:31:00.960 So instead of this Christian gospel, which includes the forgiveness of your sin,

00:31:06.420 but it also includes deny yourself, take up your cross and follow the crucified Lord.

00:31:10.360 Deny your flesh, crucify your passions and desires, have them rightly ordered, and stop being a lustful, greedy, selfish, vainly ambitious beast and be a true man again.

00:31:22.660 Whereas Islam comes in and basically says, no, to be a beast is to be a true man.

00:31:27.860 To be a beast is to be the disciple of Allah.

00:31:30.460 Here, let's give you multiple – any man can have as many women as he wants.

00:31:35.740 Let's say that take –

00:31:37.280 Like, what are the two basis urges of the male flesh?

00:31:41.340 Violence and sex.

00:31:43.440 And both of those are turned into the fruits of the spirit in Islam.

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00:36:07.640 Raiding and violence and sexual debauchery are both valorized in Islam.

00:36:16.240 And you see this in other religions too.

00:36:17.900 Mormonism in its early founding is very similar.

00:36:19.760 I think that's probably where I was going.

00:36:21.180 Take us there.

00:36:23.380 Well, no, I mean, so you have this actually a really similar pattern in many, many ways.

00:36:28.140 But just in the proselytizing and things like that, you have not as many early adherents.

00:36:33.760 But then as soon as you introduce polygamous sort of relationships, it's going to attract certain types of men and certain types of women to that sort of thing.

00:36:45.340 So, like you said, when you valorize or virtuize some form of debauchery, it becomes more attractive to the carnal man.

00:36:54.780 Yeah, you have Joseph Smith, the prophet, taking multiple wives, sometimes marrying sisters without the knowledge of the other sister, telling men that they needed to give him their wives because God had said.

00:37:05.980 And it's just very obvious and convenient that God just so happens to agree with the lusts of Joseph Smith.

00:37:11.340 Same thing with the lusts of Muhammad.

00:37:13.220 But Muhammad married, I think, a nine-year-old girl at one point, didn't consummate the marriage until she was a whopping 11 or something like that.

00:37:20.600 And so he married multiple, even very young girls.

00:37:24.300 You just see the play that's being run, even to the point where there's debate.

00:37:30.140 There's kind of – I see two possibilities with these sorts of things.

00:37:33.140 One, you just have a demon that's genuinely appearing to these men and then telling them, hey, by the way, God said this.

00:37:41.880 And, oh, guess what?

00:37:42.660 All of your wildest fantasies of your flesh can be played out.

00:37:46.640 Or they lied and made it up.

00:37:48.820 And they could have been different.

00:37:49.980 One could have lied and one could have had a genuine demonic encounter.

00:37:52.420 But it's hard to tell the difference because the world, the flesh, and the devil ultimately all preach the same false gospel, which is instead of my life for yours, it's everyone else's life for mine, right?

00:38:05.320 That's Islam.

00:38:06.520 That's Mormonism.

00:38:08.920 That's fill in the blank.

00:38:10.060 Well, I think one of the interesting connecting points, too, as you read kind of these pillars, I think this is Raymond Ibrahim is really good about this.

00:38:18.640 You'll hear his interview in the Patreon exclusive show.

00:38:22.200 But in connecting what Islam actually taught, teaches, and then, you know, what acts have been carried out throughout history.

00:38:29.820 So we're talking about the 7th century, but fast forward to 2013 in the United States, Jokhar Tsarniev and his brother, I believe, blow up a bomb at the Boston Marathon.

00:38:41.260 They're citing Islam.

00:38:42.500 They're quoting all these Islamic texts.

00:38:44.660 And so you see these same things are still on display.

00:38:47.500 That's why the terror tactics.

00:38:49.020 That's why they do what they do.

00:38:51.100 And so I think for us today, it's especially important as we're combating the narratives that we're told this is a religion of peace, right?

00:38:58.400 And so we need to know.

00:38:59.520 I think so much of this, if you read Sun Tzu and the Art of War, you need to know who your enemy is.

00:39:04.480 So when I read a lot of the early history about Islam and how they took over, to me, it's a warning to know thy enemy.

00:39:11.120 I mean, and it could be that we're dealing not just with Islam, but with wokeness and CRT and stuff like that.

00:39:17.920 But I think a lot of times Christians can be very naive about not taking their enemies seriously.

00:39:23.300 So correct me if I'm wrong, but that would be one of the key things to learn from this.

00:39:27.380 Huge lesson here.

00:39:28.560 Before Yarmouk, Christians had viewed the Muslim problem as kind of a nuisance.

00:39:35.580 It's a border problem.

00:39:36.920 We've got these backwards tribesmen with their tribalistic tactics that are inferior to our military tactics.

00:39:44.680 And they're just kind of a nuisance.

00:39:47.000 It's kind of like the equivalent of maybe drug smuggling at the Mexican border.

00:39:50.520 Yeah.

00:39:50.900 But no one thinks that Mexicans are invading America.

00:39:54.380 Wait, that's a different episode.

00:39:56.020 Okay.

00:39:56.500 Okay, so Dan's looking at me like, I hope they delete that.

00:40:00.280 No.

00:40:01.280 No, I hope you say more.

00:40:03.640 Actually, there might be an analog there.

00:40:05.740 So they looked at it.

00:40:07.320 They've got this real serious enemy with the Persians, ancient enemy.

00:40:10.460 It's called the Last Great War of Antiquity for a reason.

00:40:13.020 Because here's this enemy they'd been fighting for centuries and centuries, similar tactics, big armies, big phalanx of soldiers, professional militaries, et cetera.

00:40:22.960 And then all of a sudden, the next thing they know, their big, scary army has been completely wiped out. And now too late, they realize that they're about to get put to flight for quite a while and routed.

00:40:37.000 Similar thing happens to us all the time where the enemies come in and we, we think that I think we underestimate the effectiveness of the, of the shrewd worldly tactics that they will take.

00:40:51.360 And we think that we're going to be able to kind of kumbaya them away and just be like, well, you know, good Christians don't, don't fight.

00:40:59.220 We're, we're, we're just, you know, Christ said to turn the other cheek.

00:41:03.060 And so and what what they do is they infiltrate us and then they they weaponize our softness and porousness to being conquered.

00:41:15.080 And then all of a sudden, the next thing, you know, behind the lines in your ranks, you have just an army that's already occupying you and they've they've conquered you.

00:41:26.120 They've taken all this ground from you.

00:41:27.800 They've won and you're now put to flight.

00:41:30.460 I think similar things have happened.

00:41:31.600 The Muslims, obviously, it was literal military conquest, whereas in our case, it was much more like propaganda war and war for the mind and defeating us without a shot.

00:41:46.520 In many ways, even more impressive today, the infiltration of, I think, some of modernism and leftism into the Christian ranks and Christian nations and things like that.

00:41:55.280 But I absolutely agree with you.

00:41:56.980 I think that's a huge lesson from Yarmouk and from the early Islamic history is like Christians need to be shrewd.

00:42:04.580 They need to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.

00:42:07.580 And they need to be willing to present strength and fight hard against these enemies and understand that the same things are at stake today that were at stake then, our children.

00:42:21.820 Yeah, I think it's also interesting because you'll have – even in the modern day, guys like – I think it was like Richard Dawkins.

00:42:27.100 I could be wrong about this, but it was – I'm almost positive it was an atheist who said this.

00:42:31.860 There was a video that was floating around and he was talking about – he said, just remember the first people who always open the gates to the barbarians are people on your team at the gates.

00:42:41.200 Like that's who's going to let this stuff in.

00:42:42.940 And so I think being aware of that, being aware of church leaders who are actually the last couple of years encouraging us not to fight, that sort of thing, that would make me very leery.

00:42:53.340 And then saying, okay, who is going to fight?

00:42:55.960 Typically speaking, as we've pointed out, you'll see that God defends his people by raising up leaders who are fighters.

00:43:02.920 And so those are some things that we're looking for.

00:43:05.500 One of the other things that's really interesting about Yarmouk, Dan, is the – Brian mentioned this, but maybe the most pivotal battle in Western history.

00:43:16.860 That seems like a big statement.

00:43:18.980 But I think – and help me do this, but I think we can actually substantiate that claim.

00:43:24.540 So three-quarters of Christendom is lost would be one of the arguments.

00:43:29.660 But why was this battle so pivotal?

00:43:31.740 Well, this was the gate that you're talking about.

00:43:33.760 Yeah.

00:43:33.960 The Yarmouk was the gate.

00:43:35.900 This was the battle because this was the substantial part of the Muslim army.

00:43:43.020 And so if the Christians had defeated them there at Yarmouk, the advance – well, who knows what would have happened.

00:43:50.500 But at that point, the advance would have stopped.

00:43:52.320 Yeah. There would not have been the absolute route that had happened with the continuing pursuit that the Islam forces continued throughout all of Christendom, really. I mean, almost all of it, all the way into Europe, into Central Europe.

00:44:07.360 Yeah.

00:44:07.580 And so I think that's why it's one of the most pivotal battles in Western civilization is because this battle decided the trajectory of Islam in Christendom.

00:44:20.500 Yeah. And like world history.

00:44:22.860 Oh, yes. And world history to the point where, like you said, in the cold open, Christendom and Islam defined the Middle Ages, the battle between them.

00:44:34.360 In fact, their identities became intricately entwined because of the outcome of this battle.

00:44:42.100 Yeah. And what happened as well, along with that conquering, and this is important to understand the Crusades as well, is that they didn't just conquer these Christian territories, period. They also conquered and then enslaved the Christian inhabitants.

00:44:55.520 Yeah.

00:44:55.620 So they were – one of the narratives you'll hear frequently is that, wow, the Muslims were so advanced.

00:45:02.020 They were religiously pluralistic.

00:45:04.360 They would allow other religions to practice in their area.

00:45:07.600 You could be a Christian and a Jew, and you would have legal protection as a Demi under these Islamic regimes.

00:45:14.100 Wasn't that great?

00:45:15.680 And it was like, yeah, but keep going.

00:45:19.040 Keep going.

00:45:20.620 What was it like to be a Demi?

00:45:22.020 and it was like you could not really practice your faith openly couldn't build your churches

00:45:27.460 or maintain your properties and they were functionally slaves wasn't the guy that made

00:45:32.860 christians wear like eight pound crosses around their necks i mean they there was many instances

00:45:38.580 like that yeah randomly you would just get slaughtered like your entire family would just

00:45:44.680 get wiped out all of a sudden wow dimmies would they would have to pay a heavy tax the jizya

00:45:50.100 They would have to basically be subservient and they would have this kind of loyalty oaths to their overlords.

00:45:59.700 But what happened was often if Christians came and attempted to liberate or reconquer a Christian area that had been taken, they would just slaughter all the Christian inhabitants very quickly.

00:46:09.060 And so when you're talking about the conquering of Christian lands, we're talking about areas where for centuries, longer than the history of America, Christians had, and I mean, the only part of American history that matters, 1776.

00:46:24.860 I'm just kidding.

00:46:26.460 I feel like a boomer right now with one of those shirts with the crazy font that's like.

00:46:31.000 You know, most of our listeners own one of those, right?

00:46:33.720 Oh, sorry, guys.

00:46:36.080 Sorry, guys.

00:46:37.580 No.

00:46:37.980 Eric, do you want one of those?

00:46:38.980 I'm wearing one right now.

00:46:40.140 I'm wearing one right now.

00:46:42.440 So we're talking about well-established Christian societies that were now, you can think about what it would be like if your brothers and sisters were enslaved and being destroyed under wicked and oppressive enemies.

00:46:59.680 You start to understand some even more of the motivation later for the Crusades.

00:47:04.520 when they come up a few centuries later,

00:47:07.960 the stories that are coming out of these areas

00:47:09.920 and the types of things that were happening.

00:47:12.460 So Yarmouk, yes, a gate led to the conquering

00:47:15.840 of huge swaths of Christian territory,

00:47:18.840 but even humanly speaking,

00:47:20.700 absolute oppression of a horrible scale

00:47:25.400 of the Christians who had lived there.

00:47:28.040 Yeah, I think one of the other points

00:47:29.020 we might make about this is,

00:47:30.760 we talked about the War of Antiquity,

00:47:32.500 last Great War of Antiquity

00:47:33.620 with the persians it's interesting um i know uh with heraclius he has a lot of success during

00:47:41.400 that campaign feels a lot of what might be the globe victory yeah and then maybe it has a blind

00:47:47.900 spot over this one i mean yeah starts to see that it's a real problem but they get annihilated um

00:47:54.320 and then they say you know for a good portion of the rest of his career he's kind of wounded by

00:47:57.920 this. Yeah. Cause he wasn't there. I think he was ill or he had some kind of sickness or

00:48:03.260 injury that he was healing. Correct. Behind, you know, in another area that was in friendly forces

00:48:09.060 and he had avoided for a long time, basically waging, what's the word, risking his entire

00:48:17.340 army on one battle. He had attempted as a good general tactically to, you know, keep his force

00:48:25.360 intact and wage smaller battles and defensive battles and kind of hold the line and not make

00:48:30.840 it so simple where one battle could decide at all because because you never know sometimes in

00:48:36.660 history battles with five to one odds have turned against the five in favor of the one and he knew

00:48:44.420 this he wasn't a fool um but got outmaneuvered and ended up having to risk his whole army and

00:48:50.200 And history tells us it did not go well.

00:48:54.800 It did not go well.

00:48:56.040 Yeah, and I think the natural question that arises is why did God allow this to happen?

00:49:02.840 Yeah.

00:49:04.320 Because of the ruthless devastation Islam wrought, Christians often referred to them as demonic forces and described their works in apocalyptic language unhearkening to see the severe judgments doled out in the Old Testament and in the book of Revelation.

00:49:20.200 The vast majority of Christians at the time described Muslims not even as men,

00:49:25.000 but as godless savages, come to destroy all that is sacred.

00:49:29.460 They were barbarous, tribal, and bloodthirsty.

00:49:33.320 Likewise, the widespread Muslim practice was to target and destroy churches,

00:49:38.320 crosses, and Christian symbols and sacraments.

00:49:41.740 Anastasius of Sinai said that the Saracens were perhaps worse than the demons.

00:49:47.620 After all, the demons are frequently much afraid of the mysteries of Christ.

00:49:51.980 I mean, his holy body, the Eucharist, the cross.

00:49:54.620 But these demons of flesh trample all under their feet, mock it, set fire to it, and destroy it, end quote.

00:50:03.500 Interestingly, even the oldest Muslim sources say that Christians saw these Arabs as demons.

00:50:11.720 A natural question arose in the minds of Christians.

00:50:14.580 after the sorrow they endured at the Battle of Yarmouk?

00:50:18.240 Why did God allow Islam to have such success against the cause of Christ?

00:50:23.940 Christian philosophers, leaders, and priests at the time of the Muslim victories

00:50:27.720 all wrestled with that question.

00:50:29.680 Beyond the military defeats that Christians endured,

00:50:32.300 there had also been radical destruction of households, infrastructure, and institutions

00:50:38.520 at every level of society following the battle.

00:50:42.640 Many Christian men had died in vain to defend their homes, while their women and children were raped and enslaved.

00:50:50.060 Many of the once great churches of the Eastern Empire had been flung down and trampled.

00:50:55.140 Some converted into Muslim mosques, and the natural question was, why?

00:51:01.180 The influential Greek patriarch Sophronius, who lived during this upheaval, raised these same questions in a sermon shortly after the Battle of Yarmouk.

00:51:11.240 He clearly recognized how pivotal and devastating the moment was for Christendom.

00:51:16.820 His questions illustrate how devastating the Muslim victories and barbarous conquests had been.

00:51:23.500 Why are the troops of the Saracens attacking us?

00:51:27.380 Why has there been so much destruction and plunder?

00:51:30.340 Why are there incessant outpourings of human blood?

00:51:33.480 Why are the birds of the sky devouring human bodies?

00:51:36.980 Why have the churches been pulled down?

00:51:38.680 why is the cross mocked? Why is Christ blasphemed by pagan mouths, the vengeful and God-hating

00:51:45.940 Saracens? The abomination of desolation clearly foretold to us by the prophets overrun the places

00:51:52.780 which are not allowed to them. Plunder cities, devastate fields, burn down villages, and set

00:51:59.300 fire to the holy churches. Overturn the sacred monasteries, oppose the Byzantine armies arrayed

00:52:05.520 against them, and in fighting, raise up the trophies of war and add victory to victory,

00:52:11.540 end quote. Among Christians, including Siphonoras, there was one central explanation as to why

00:52:18.440 devastation had come. God was judging the church for its toleration of vile practices. Just as he

00:52:24.680 had used pagan cultures to punish the Hebrew tribes, when they went astray in the Old Testament,

00:52:29.520 God was now using Islam to punish them for their sins, which raises another important question.

00:52:35.520 which sins were to blame, which sins would warrant God bringing this level of devastation

00:52:42.000 and judgment upon his people. If the book Apocalypse is to be believed, it was a severe

00:52:47.600 set of sins written in the late 7th century and for hundreds of years to believe to be prophetic.

00:52:53.940 The Apocalypse details the sin that was thought to have caused the dramatic Christian fall,

00:52:59.840 That document says,

00:53:29.840 one. Likewise, women did the same things as the men had done. Father, son, and brother had

00:53:36.460 intercourse with one woman who touched every kinsman. For this reason, God delivered them

00:53:41.240 into the hands of the barbarians, that is, because of their sin and stench. The women will pollute

00:53:46.960 themselves through the men who are already polluted, and the sons of Ishmael will cast

00:53:52.060 lots for them." As the apocalypse describes, many Christians believe the cause of their downfall

00:53:58.200 was the toleration of sexual sin in their midst,

00:54:00.960 which was a mix of cross-dressing, homosexuality,

00:54:04.100 prostitution, and yes, what we today call transgenderism.

00:54:08.560 Men would dress as female whores

00:54:10.280 and perform lewd acts with men.

00:54:12.680 Women dressed up as men

00:54:13.800 and committed sexually indecent acts with women.

00:54:17.340 Siphoneros and others recognized

00:54:18.820 that such practices were forbidden in Deuteronomy 22.5,

00:54:22.140 which says,

00:54:23.300 a woman shall not wear a man's garment,

00:54:26.400 nor shall a man put on a woman's cloak.

00:54:28.960 For whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God.

00:54:33.140 It was a natural conclusion at the time for Christians to assume that God was punishing

00:54:37.420 them for the atrocious sins they had allowed to go on in their own camp.

00:54:41.300 Such evil was seen as the sole reason behind the Arab conquest.

00:54:45.800 Arabs also believed God to be on their side, but for different reasons.

00:54:48.880 They believed that the Christian religion had committed the sin of polytheism by teaching

00:54:54.400 Trinitarian doctrine. Muhammad had rejected the teaching that Christ died and rose from the grave.

00:54:59.640 They thought that Allah was pleased with them and so would deliver the Christian infidels to

00:55:06.040 their scimitar. As to the practical reasons why Islam was successful, there are at least three

00:55:11.440 plausible reasons given by Raymond Ibrahim. First, he notes that Islam was notorious for

00:55:17.500 and quite successful with his employment of terror-driven tactics. Muhammad specifically

00:55:23.100 gave instructions to his commanders to instill fear in the enemy through the use of decapitation

00:55:28.480 as seen at the Battle of Yarmouk. They were brutal and beastly in their devices. Such

00:55:34.220 things are known to cause fear, and fear is detrimentally paralyzing to humans. This seems

00:55:39.860 to have worked. The second reason Islam was successful is because of its employment of

00:55:45.140 trickery and deceit, the Chronicle of 754 says. Saracens, influenced by their leader Muhammad,

00:55:52.840 conquered and devastated Syria, Arabia, and Mesopotamia more by stealth than manliness,

00:55:59.640 and not so much by open invasion as by persisting in stealthy raids. Thus, with cleverness and

00:56:06.360 deceit and not by manliness, they attacked all of the adjacent cities of the empire. End quote.

00:56:12.420 The third reason for Islam's success is the religious zeal they possessed, aided by the

00:56:17.160 promise of sensual pleasures and described at length in the cold open. Is it unrealistic to

00:56:23.480 think that Christianity was judged by God for allowing heinous sexual sins in its midst?

00:56:29.420 And thus, as he did with the Assyrians in Jeremiah and Isaiah's day, he raised up an enemy to

00:56:35.120 chastise them. And if that is possible, we might ask in our own day, is God going to bring similar

00:56:41.500 judgments against us. Is that judgment already upon us? However we answer these questions,

00:56:47.880 this much about the historical record is clear. The Islamic Jihad had taken Christendom by storm

00:56:54.440 and would remain a thorn in Western civilization's side for centuries.

00:57:04.000 Well, gentlemen, I think we can all agree the main culprit here is the trannies.

00:57:08.780 Look, look, let's be honest.

00:57:11.080 Actually, were you not a little surprised when I read that in – so this is from Sword and Scimiter in Ibrahim's book.

00:57:16.660 But I was like, wait, what am – I mean it always seems to come back to these like Sodom and Gomorrah type situations.

00:57:22.760 Gibeah in the Book of Judges is identical where God is bringing fiery judgment and there's always like some vile sexual sin.

00:57:30.960 And trannyism seems to be in the mix in the – even pre-Crusade times in Yarmouk.

00:57:37.220 surprised uh what was your reaction yeah i read that and i had to reread it again when i was going

00:57:42.860 through ibrahim's book because i was like is that am i reading this right is he saying back then in

00:57:47.560 christendom this is happening yeah i mean oh yeah it's it was it is uh just it doesn't fit in with

00:57:56.520 my presuppositions that's why it's so shocking it's the classic cycle that nicotine men create

00:58:01.740 good times good times create weed men and weed men create hard times it's very true you know

00:58:07.440 what i'm saying i know what you're saying i'm saying no it is it is real though that you see

00:58:15.120 this this striking rhyme scheme that happens through history we were just talking about this

00:58:20.620 at lunch today that historical cycles they're not identical but they do rhyme where you have

00:58:25.960 this kind of like tendency in late stages of civilizations to see rampant sexual promiscuity

00:58:34.200 and not just promiscuity, but really strange sexual deviances. Well, this was even true of

00:58:39.720 Rome, like the decadence. Yeah. You know, you get a decadent society and then you start having

00:58:44.920 really weird sexual sins, you know, Epstein Island type, you know, guys in wheelchairs

00:58:51.020 on jet skis weird stuff you know if you catch my drift dan do you catch my drift i don't know i

00:58:56.820 don't know what you're talking about we have like weird stuff going on right now like do you guys

00:58:59.820 want to go to the island lol are you talking i don't even talking steven hawking typing on his

00:59:05.560 okay okay all right i'm following yeah okay we've got you super gross super but one of the things

00:59:11.860 you know we can look at that i'm not downplaying it but we can also look at history and we can say

00:59:16.360 we don't necessarily need to go the route of things are worse than they've ever been.

00:59:22.220 Right.

00:59:22.940 There's always these cycles of societal downturns.

00:59:26.420 Right.

00:59:26.980 And, you know, one of the things we do need to be aware of, though, is God definitely brings judgment.

00:59:31.500 Yes.

00:59:32.040 And the Muslims were a fierce, I think, a fierce judgment.

00:59:34.580 Well, that is one question that I did have, though, is that we look back at the Old Testament and we see, like, in the section I just read,

00:59:42.100 as I stumbled, bumbled my way through it, but Ray will make it sound real nice.

00:59:45.420 If I don't have to reread it.

00:59:47.200 You're going to sound flawless by the time he's done with it.

00:59:48.760 Is that you see like in Jeremiah, in other places, it's a pattern in the Old Testament

00:59:53.520 is that you see God's people stray, adopt foreign gods and, you know, crazy, weird sexual

01:00:03.060 stuff, like all those things, child sacrifice.

01:00:05.620 And then God brings an enemy in to destroy them, to defeat them as a judgment from God.

01:00:12.560 And so we know that happens in the Old Testament because God says it happens.

01:00:16.700 Yeah, right.

01:00:17.180 And he said it would happen.

01:00:18.300 And then it did happen.

01:00:19.460 And then we see it happen.

01:00:21.100 What about today, though?

01:00:22.220 But we're in the new covenant era.

01:00:23.260 Oh, we're in the new covenant.

01:00:24.900 No, no.

01:00:25.440 I think it's important to ask, when you see societal destruction happening in Christian

01:00:31.040 societies, when you see a place that is dominantly Christian, and then you see decline and you

01:00:36.600 start to see internal fracturing, but then especially external enemies coming in and

01:00:42.320 successfully routing it, routing that Christian culture, you need to understand that you're

01:00:47.840 seeing the same covenantal pattern unfolding because this is one of those things that it's

01:00:52.460 like a law of reality in the same sense that you have economic laws and you have physical

01:00:59.740 laws and scientific laws and mathematical laws. There are simply covenantal laws that are at play

01:01:07.680 in the world all the time in the sense that if a people blaspheme God, particularly if a people

01:01:14.820 outwardly name God and say, yes, he's our God. We love him. We worship him. Elaborate external

01:01:22.100 displays of religion and worship, but internally their hands are full of blood. They're committing

01:01:28.720 gross sexual sins. They're harboring lies and filth and they're not inwardly regenerate.

01:01:35.820 God hates that. I mean, God hates, God will not tolerate that. It's one of the things that I found

01:01:41.760 really interesting about the history of the Islamic conquering of the East and then of

01:01:48.380 many Christian lands is that when they took an area, the Muslims would go to great, great lengths

01:01:53.980 to sacrilegiously destroy any vestige of Christian symbolism,

01:01:58.180 which makes total sense because they're coming in and they're saying,

01:02:01.140 we're getting rid of all these infidels and we're setting up our society.

01:02:03.700 So they would destroy altars, churches, iconography, communion,

01:02:07.580 like the Eucharist, religious leaders.

01:02:10.000 They would rape nuns and priests, murder them on the altar.

01:02:14.020 They would stable horses in churches.

01:02:16.100 They would even say, like, I won't be satisfied until I see churches

01:02:19.460 stabled in this basilica or in this Christian church.

01:02:24.940 And that, to me, sparked a few thoughts that if God is chastising his people and he often

01:02:32.420 says, and he's chastising his people that he hates their worship, he hates their external

01:02:37.520 display while they inwardly harbor idolatry and sin.

01:02:42.560 So he hates their singing, he hates their sacrificing, he hates their external displays

01:02:46.380 in the Old Testament.

01:02:47.500 God hates, this has not changed.

01:02:50.540 God hates hypocritical externalism.

01:02:53.100 And so it makes total sense to me that God would, as he did in the Old Testament, when he allowed all the gold to be stripped away from the temple and the temple knocked down and the priest to be sent into exile, that he would permit an enemy to utterly desecrate all of their external displays.

01:03:10.260 To me, that just makes total sense.

01:03:12.560 And I read the history and I say that is a one-to-one similarity in my mind as I read those two things.

01:03:21.020 Yeah.

01:03:21.720 And do you guys agree?

01:03:23.080 Do you think the new covenant has fundamentally changed that reality or removed it?

01:03:26.880 Or am I misreading?

01:03:28.100 Because it was immediate in my mind as I'm reading this.

01:03:29.940 I'm like, look, the exact things you would expect for God to go and knock down with an

01:03:34.960 enemy, he knocked down.

01:03:36.760 Yeah.

01:03:36.960 I mean, the events that led to God's judgment at beginning at Yarmouk were surprising, but

01:03:44.300 the, the action that God allowed the Muslims to overtake Christendom in that, in that portion

01:03:51.560 of the world did not surprise me knowing the sins that they were committing, you know,

01:03:55.400 and, and, and as you were going through the list of all the things that the Muslims did

01:03:59.000 to different churches and, and everything, it, it reminded me so much of like some of

01:04:05.080 the beautiful church buildings, even, even here in, in Utah, as you drive by them and

01:04:11.080 they're being desecrated by pagan idolaters and being destroyed as places of, you know,

01:04:18.160 they've got their gay flags and they've got a gay priest or priestess.

01:04:22.760 You might as well have an altar to Molech.

01:04:25.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:04:25.860 Exactly.

01:04:26.360 And so the infiltration into the holy places, I mean, you know, churches, building, whatever,

01:04:31.480 whatever, but you're right though, it's happening.

01:04:34.880 You're right.

01:04:35.540 And it's important to see here, we tend to take shelter in the external solidity of the

01:04:41.860 cultures we build.

01:04:43.660 You have to understand that God won't be mocked.

01:04:46.540 No.

01:04:46.840 Like if you, I don't care if you build a cathedral with a graveyard and you build a Christian

01:04:51.180 society, if the soul of that Christian society is eaten away in apostasy, unbelief, and idolatry,

01:04:57.080 God will not hesitate.

01:04:58.980 If that's what he needs to do to chastise his people, he chastises his true sons, right?

01:05:04.560 If he loves his people, he will chastise them.

01:05:07.000 God will not hesitate to knock it all down, to give it to the gays, to give it to whoever and say, I would rather them have it.

01:05:12.760 I would rather the gays have it than to let the hypocritical externalism continue.

01:05:17.540 I think that's a very sobering warning that we always have to remember is that you'd fundamentally, you better worship the true and living God in spirit and truth.

01:05:28.680 Well, I think a big part of that, Brian, I totally agree with you, I think is repenting.

01:05:32.920 So this is sort of like the – I'm thinking of like the conservative movement in America.

01:05:37.120 We're like, oh, the woke people, they suck.

01:05:39.020 The left sucks.

01:05:40.520 And the tranny flag people, we don't like them.

01:05:43.600 But seldom do we actually see true repentance.

01:05:47.160 I think that's – Doug Wilson pointed this out years ago.

01:05:49.560 I thought it was really helpful.

01:05:50.900 He said you can tell what a nation worships when catastrophe comes.

01:05:54.320 So catastrophe came to America and you'd have a hurricane or something and the people all say, the government.

01:05:59.680 Oh, FEMA.

01:06:00.540 FEMA needs to do more.

01:06:01.420 Save us, FEMA.

01:06:02.140 Save us, Tom Cruise.

01:06:03.120 You know, even now, like, how many people are, like, crying out to the true and living God?

01:06:08.540 How many people are falling on their faces and saying, why do we have all the training pastors?

01:06:14.980 The judgment is already here.

01:06:16.720 Yeah.

01:06:17.660 But are we repenting?

01:06:19.020 Right.

01:06:19.260 And I think it's so pivotal.

01:06:20.620 You know, all these, you know, our podcast, we're talking about rebuilding Christendom.

01:06:24.680 When God raised up Gideon, the first thing he had him do is go to your father's house.

01:06:28.960 Yeah, your father's house.

01:06:29.680 And go destroy that idol.

01:06:31.160 Yeah.

01:06:31.340 and there were other idols the one in your house yeah go start there so i think a good lesson for

01:06:36.800 all of us is i can't repent of all the sins that our society has committed but i can sure as heck

01:06:41.940 repent to the ones in my own home and this is so important this this this means if it means

01:06:47.880 anything it means that uh you know based christians who post about the trannies and then go look at

01:06:55.440 porn, beware, beware. You need to repent. You need to turn from that sin. How did we get

01:07:04.000 transgenderism and gay marriage and all these things? Well, sexual sin that was much less

01:07:10.180 egregious to start with. It was a very long road to get to those places. It was fornication. It

01:07:16.560 was pornography. It was the decline of sexed piety in society. A million different small

01:07:23.500 sins harbored that grow up and turn gangrenous. And so lesson one, and this is why this is

01:07:29.100 actually really practical for us. You know, it's not just interesting history.

01:07:33.640 Who would have thought Yarmouk was practical?

01:07:35.360 It's practical.

01:07:36.340 I did.

01:07:36.740 It's deeply practical. There's another lesson though here that I think is important to note.

01:07:40.600 And it's kind of on the other side of the issue. And it's that Christians often get played

01:07:48.640 in a way that I think Jesus laments

01:07:51.460 when he talks about the sons of the age,

01:07:53.960 this age being wiser than the sons of life.

01:07:56.000 You guys are just dumb.

01:07:56.720 He's like, you guys are just dumb.

01:07:57.900 Like you get played constantly.

01:07:59.880 One thing the Muslims understood

01:08:01.620 is that if they were going to win,

01:08:03.560 they had to get rid of all of those symbols of worship,

01:08:07.160 that those were powerful.

01:08:08.700 And here we are,

01:08:10.520 Christians will unironically defend

01:08:12.380 religious pluralism today

01:08:13.720 and think that we're being good Christians by saying,

01:08:17.340 well of course we should defend the muslims right to the first amendment do whatever they want

01:08:22.100 and and to me any society that allows the free exercise of islamic worship is foolish in the

01:08:27.620 extreme particularly one that's that's the in any way desires to not ultimately be conquered by it

01:08:34.660 but it seems like the and i agree with you or any and fill in the blank islam just convenient fill

01:08:39.500 in the blank with any virulent false religion it seems like part of this is is it's tied to

01:08:45.560 Christian nationalism, that whole debate.

01:08:47.640 Yeah.

01:08:47.920 But it's really the question, is society, particularly society organized in a nation,

01:08:52.980 is that covenantal?

01:08:54.280 And is it permitted to draw boundaries around things like the first table of the Ten Commandments?

01:09:00.120 And I think the answer is obviously yes.

01:09:02.900 I think it's obviously yes.

01:09:04.280 Like blasphemy laws, I think obviously ought to be enforced by a Christian government.

01:09:11.160 Obviously.

01:09:11.740 It's interesting, too, because when you go back to the era of the founders

01:09:14.420 and you have you know this the constitution everything's written um if you know today

01:09:20.880 people are saying well they were defending religious pluralism like these are the same

01:09:24.800 people who wrote this that are in favor of sabbath laws and you're trying to tell me they were in

01:09:30.080 favor of religious pluralism yeah and even even to the extent that some of them were in favor of

01:09:35.100 some kinds of religious pluralism they had to do so by appealing to some of the the root

01:09:40.860 philosophical ideas politically that ultimately ate out the soul of our entire society right they

01:09:46.660 had to point to pagan philosophers from from it pains me from france they're like oh yeah yeah

01:09:53.120 let's talk about this french french philosophy political philosophers and let's say like maybe

01:09:57.480 they were right and maybe that's what's going to yeah they're like reading rousseau right like as

01:10:02.220 if rousseau knew anything at all about any the rousseau i mean he did write a book on parenting

01:10:07.560 and he was like the biggest.

01:10:10.120 I know, we can't,

01:10:11.600 he would have to censor it.

01:10:12.680 Yeah.

01:10:13.160 In the words of Glenn Sunshine,

01:10:15.240 Dr. Glenn Sunshine,

01:10:16.720 if Rousseau, Hitler, and Stalin

01:10:19.480 were in a room

01:10:20.180 and I had a gun with two bullets,

01:10:22.560 I'd shoot Rousseau twice.

01:10:25.200 Something like that.

01:10:27.020 Incorrect.

01:10:27.640 And I am not,

01:10:28.480 I can't get in trouble for that

01:10:29.500 because I said in the words of

01:10:30.920 Dr. Glenn Sunshine.

01:10:32.580 You didn't say it.

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01:12:32.300 Thank you.

01:12:36.280 But that's the kind of stupidity I think that we're faced with.

01:12:40.040 This idea that you can have a politically neutral or a religiously neutral public square and ultimately have that not end up with one God winning the fight.

01:12:53.360 One God is going to win.

01:12:55.380 Well, and that's what is interesting to me.

01:12:57.000 So you read Sophronius and you read these guys who were Christian leaders at the time, any of the leaders of any of the Christian areas.

01:13:04.960 They all assumed that life was covenantal and society was covenantal.

01:13:08.880 they assumed a just war theory a place for christian violence but they also all assumed

01:13:14.080 fundamentally that it was right for christian nations to be christian yeah i mean there was

01:13:19.940 like i don't think that they would have been asking questions like christians pietist christians

01:13:24.340 today do yeah and say like no no no we want this thing called democracy and you know i think

01:13:29.960 democracy is written on the back of the constitution i don't think you would be the back of the ten

01:13:34.480 commandments both okay i thought you yeah like as if democracy came down with moses he's like

01:13:42.060 here's the 10 commandments and then also the 11th 12th and 13th is like you know but anybody can do

01:13:47.320 whatever they want didn't happen that way we're gonna vote and let everybody kind of decide

01:13:52.600 whatever like how many of the 10 commandments they really want to care about let's just kind

01:13:56.820 of vote a little bit and come on guys come on guys come on don't i'm just curious do you guys

01:14:01.420 get upset with this like with i was thinking through all of this like with the pietists and

01:14:06.600 with the invasion from the the pagan gods into the churches i mean like scale one to ten what's

01:14:14.080 which side is rage ten i'm like a 13 it depends on the moment but yeah like a calm 13 the thing

01:14:22.420 that really inflames me you know when you look back at like yarmouk and in the crusades is that

01:14:28.780 you actually had a united Christian front. I think this is probably something we'll get into

01:14:32.340 in the future. So I'm going to jump the gun on this one. But when you see the judgment of God

01:14:37.100 come, we'll actually discuss this next episode with Alfred. When you have sensuality in the

01:14:46.220 churches and in the Christian populace as they continue to name the name of Christ and then

01:14:52.280 commit all sorts of debauchery. And like God says, you pay lip service to me, but your hearts

01:14:59.540 are far from me. And so enemies come in as a judgment on God's people, and then everybody

01:15:06.640 unites, right? The Christians unite. Yeah, often. I don't see that. I mean, and I don't know what

01:15:14.240 stage we're in because, I mean, the Crusades happened. If you backdate the Crusades and say

01:15:19.560 Yarmouk was actually the beginning of this battle.

01:15:22.920 I mean, it's been 1400 years, you know, that this has been going on.

01:15:28.340 And so I can't say where we are in the battle, but what's really frustrating to me is the,

01:15:33.540 I would say the vast majority of Christians are blind to and refuse to fight these sorts

01:15:42.200 of battles that are happening.

01:15:43.820 And a lot of the time we spend.

01:15:45.180 Or to repent.

01:15:46.000 This genuinely is going to be, I don't want to shoot all of our shot here.

01:15:48.440 this genuinely is going to be something we discuss at length, probably at least in one

01:15:51.360 whole episode. But one of the problems that you have is that many Christians are inclined

01:15:55.940 to spend their greatest vigor fighting other Christians on minutiae, comparative minutiae.

01:16:04.520 Right. I think that's a good thing to, to, uh, as an asterisk is because most of the fighting

01:16:11.020 will be in the church to the degree. Yeah. We must fight in the church, but we have to understand

01:16:15.340 what kind of fighting we're doing in the church right and it shouldn't be the kind of fighting

01:16:19.720 where the pedo-baptists are you know the covenanters are fighting against the the other you know the

01:16:25.380 opc-ers are fighting against the pca-ers who are all conservative presbyterians and then they're

01:16:31.300 all fighting against the reformed baptists who are these things matter the fighting that needs

01:16:36.220 to be done in the church though is like hey yeah you can't homosexual sexual attraction is a sin

01:16:41.220 in itself. Like, yes. And by, by the way, we can't just openly flaunt God's law and say lady pastors

01:16:48.460 and all the, like, those are the, the fighting we need to do. You can't do your vision casting at

01:16:52.580 the world economic forum and then, you know, bring it back into the church. It's a problem.

01:16:57.360 That's a problem. Believe it or not. Wow. Okay. That's a thing that happens. The world economic

01:17:01.340 forum. It sounds good though. Did you see George Soros have like a stroke during his, anyway,

01:17:05.900 that was a different subject for a different day. It was horrible. Yeah. I mean, known lizard person,

01:17:10.500 not really that i mean let's face it wasn't that horrible but you did say though like uh you know

01:17:15.740 the american church you see people who aren't fighting and um i think a couple things are

01:17:19.520 important number one identify what the the beachheads are of our day yeah sexual sin is

01:17:24.080 certainly one absolutely um and so being really clear like to brian's point those are the fights

01:17:28.380 to fight yeah when it's about sexual stuff um and then number two i would say is um the church today

01:17:34.900 and all those things in america is a reflection of its leadership so the problem is you have

01:17:39.820 leaders who have gone really soft on wokeism and CRT, and then they end up on the pages of a,

01:17:46.480 you know, let's say like a New York fashion magazine looking pretty gay. Well, those two

01:17:50.700 things are tied together. So you have bad theology that is speed racing off a cliff with sexual sin.

01:17:58.240 So I think when you look at that, one of the things that I pray for is we need courageous men.

01:18:03.520 Yeah. And, you know, we need men who are not effeminate. They're not gay. They're not prone

01:18:07.660 to those sins. They're putting those sins to death. And we need to, again, it's, to me,

01:18:12.980 it's a thing of what are the issues of the day? We need to make sure that we're fighting at that

01:18:16.320 beachhead. Yes. Identify the beachheads, band together, fight at those beachheads and do so

01:18:23.560 in a way that you're willing to link arms where we have Armenians and like, I didn't say Armenian

01:18:29.060 there. I'm actually referring to the constitution of the armies at Yarmouk. Armenia. Armenians.

01:18:33.620 And they had many different nationalities and kingdoms represented there.

01:18:39.420 Later in the Crusades history, we'll see that much of the Christian energy went into infighting between Christian regimes in Europe and to a larger extent, the East West between Byzantine and European forces.

01:18:55.200 And we have issues like that where we have analogs to that today.

01:18:58.740 And you're right.

01:18:59.420 We need to understand what are the real beachheads where we need to gather and fight and defend and win back.

01:19:04.660 And then, and the most important one, I think, for today, as we sort of come to the end of this episode, is to remember back, the first beachhead to win is your own heart, your own home, your own church, your own worship before God, internally, in secret, in truth, and then go from there.

01:19:27.740 All right, so let's close it out

01:19:29.200 and let's actually just answer the question

01:19:30.760 of what happened in the aftermath of Yarmouk.

01:19:33.660 Here's this big battle, what happened in the aftermath?

01:19:36.520 So we're gonna tell that story

01:19:38.500 and then draw things to a close

01:19:40.200 with a conclusion here for you to consider.

01:19:44.220 After the battle of Yarmouk,

01:19:46.360 Christians as a whole were depressed and fearful

01:19:48.660 while the victory only added to the confidence

01:19:51.260 of the Muslim invaders.

01:19:53.180 Islam swept through the old Christendom

01:19:55.000 like a plague of locusts,

01:19:56.600 devouring civilization in its wake. After Yarmouk, Islam consumed 3,700 miles of Christian

01:20:03.820 territory in just 73 years. It's estimated that two-thirds of Christendom fell to the Islamic

01:20:09.460 conquests in those 73 years. Jerusalem was besieged and captured by Muslims in 636 AD.

01:20:17.420 Within a score of years from the first assault in 634, the Christian Levant had gone. Syria,

01:20:23.940 the cradle of the faith, and Egypt with Alexandria, the mighty Christian sea, end quote.

01:20:28.880 All the important centers of Christianity had fallen, Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria,

01:20:33.800 and Caesarea, to name a few. Never before had an invading army moved so swiftly and efficiently,

01:20:39.440 and so permanently. Cities that once used to be a bastion of Christian faith and learning,

01:20:44.240 places like Carthage, which gave birth to Augustine of Hippo, were reduced to no more

01:20:48.760 than rubble by the unlearned and barbaric Muslims. Elsewhere, Christians were martyred, as in Gaza.

01:20:55.840 After 60 Christian soldiers fought valiantly against the Saracens, they were eventually

01:20:59.960 captured. Amir bin Alaz was the Saracen commander who, though impressed by their valor, tried to

01:21:05.940 force them to submit to Islam and renounce Christ. When they wouldn't, Amir sent them to dungeon

01:21:10.700 prisons in Jerusalem. After 10 months still refusing to submit to Islam, Amir had their

01:21:16.440 commander and nine others brutally beheaded before their fellow soldiers. Amir confronted

01:21:21.240 the remaining 50 soldiers, exasperated that they would not say the shahada. After charging them

01:21:27.140 one final time to submit and hearing their indignant refusal, an enraged commander ordered

01:21:32.200 the men to be wickedly killed by means of various tortures on account of their faith in Christ.

01:21:38.420 As Ibrahim records, despite the popular claim that Islam bans forced conversions,

01:21:43.480 the martyrdom of early Christians who refused to convert to Islam permeates both Muslim and

01:21:48.740 Christian sources. It is still a very real phenomenon today, and was one of the chief

01:21:53.360 reasons that pre-modern Christians saw only the spirit of Antichrist in Islam.

01:21:58.440 When Islam invaded North Africa, it was firmly Christian. North Africa was as firmly Christian

01:22:03.540 as any other area of the empire. Cities and countryside were adorned with graceful churches.

01:22:09.240 The Muslims subdued Tunisia and the rest of North Africa with a force of about 10,000 men,

01:22:14.960 slaughtering Berbers and Christians and destroying churches en masse.

01:22:18.920 They ravaged cities and countries like Libya and Algeria,

01:22:22.380 the evidence of which lies in the crumbling ruins which can still be found today.

01:22:26.100 The Muslim historians of the time were very proud of their exploits

01:22:29.980 and made sure that their readers understood that fact.

01:22:33.320 One historian said he, that is, Ukba, went to Africa

01:22:37.820 and besieged its cities, conquering them by force and putting the people to the sword.

01:22:42.700 A number of Berbers converted to Islam at his hand,

01:22:45.840 and Islam spread among them until it reached the lands of Sudan.

01:22:49.240 Then Uqba gathered his companions and addressed them, saying,

01:22:53.120 The people of this country are a worthless lot.

01:22:55.540 If you lay into them with the sword, they become Muslims.

01:22:58.000 But the moment your back is turned, they revert to their old habit and religion.

01:23:01.560 end quote. Contrary to popular opinion, Muslims were not at all tolerant of other religions.

01:23:08.760 They forced conversion on Christians and Jews. If a Christian declined to convert to Islam,

01:23:13.560 they were either killed or forced to pay jizya, which was a tax imposed on non-Muslims in the

01:23:18.500 Islamic world that acted as a source of revenue and a tool of oppression for non-Muslims.

01:23:24.200 Thus, the Battle of Yarmouk is considered by almost all historians as one of,

01:23:27.900 if not the most, consequential battles in world history. If the Eastern Roman Greek Empire had

01:23:34.260 defeated the Islamic army at Yarmouk, the history of the world would look quite differently than

01:23:38.540 it does. The consequences of the battle were immense. Mass destruction of the church was

01:23:43.660 followed by the rape of women and often young boys, and many children were enslaved. After

01:23:49.020 their victory at Yarmouk, the Muslims immediately burned the cities of Palestine, Caesarea, and

01:23:54.120 Jerusalem. Actions like these, including the Muslim tradition of burning libraries, committing

01:23:59.580 profane, sexually immoral acts in churches, and their desire of white-skinned women for the

01:24:04.700 purpose of sex slavery, only further demonized Islamic people in the eyes of Christians.

01:24:10.080 The Christian loss at Yarmouk opened the door for all of these atrocities,

01:24:13.880 and the world has never recovered. Christians must strive to be like the men of Issachar,

01:24:19.640 men who understand the times. One of the surest ways to fall short of this kind of wisdom

01:24:24.780 is to fail to understand the times that led to our time, to fail to read the story of history

01:24:30.060 rightly. What lessons can we draw from the rise of Islam? What must we learn from the destruction

01:24:35.720 of so much Christian progress? What sins within the camp allow the enemies of God

01:24:40.600 such devastating effectiveness in their wicked onslaught? Are we repeating the errors of the

01:24:46.140 past? One thing is sure, no sin is safe. Start with your own soul, your own hands, your own heart,

01:24:53.300 your own homes, your own churches, schools, and communities. What sins are given free reign?

01:24:58.860 Put them to death. Give your sin no quarter. Daily bear the cross of our Lord. Daily trust

01:25:05.000 in his grace to cleanse, forgive, and protect. There will be other lessons as we continue telling

01:25:10.400 the story of Christendom, certainly, but it seems fitting that the first and gravest lesson be one

01:25:15.340 not pointed outward at the enemies at the gate, but inward at the enemies within.

01:25:20.140 Make no peace treaties with that which will only destroy.

01:25:23.700 Make no friendship with the world, the flesh, and the devil.

01:25:27.260 And remember, Winkit Quisa Winkit, he conquers who conquers himself.

01:25:31.900 And so in the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit,

01:25:34.240 fight the good fight of the faith with courage and watchfulness.

01:25:37.760 Until next time, we hope you've enjoyed this visit to the King's Hall.

01:25:41.300 And we'll see you then.

01:25:45.340 We'll see you next time.

The King's Hall - January 26, 2024

Yarmuk： The Most Pivotal Battle in Western History

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