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Let us follow the pope
Dear readers, in this article, we are talking about the pope visit in Turkey. You see, today the Roman Catholic leader Pope Francis is visiting Turkey, so, let us follow the pope while he visits Turkey. Now, we have written and published this article in Hub Pages, at this address, Let us follow the pope, so, you can view it if you click on the link. Anyhow, this article is a long article, so, we have split it in two in Blogger.
Pope Francis a risk taker
Welcome to our article, let us follow the pope, (part one.)
Anyhow, I believe
that the Pope is taking a calculated risk, because what the Pope is doing, is risky,
since negative things can emerge. Today, I am looking at Pope Francis visit to
Turkey and I am concerned, because something nasty can happen over there. We
have seen it happen before with other popes when they have visited Turkey, so,
it is possible that it can happen again.
You see, we have to
remember that a Turk named, Mehmet Ali Agca shot Pope John Paul 2nd
in Saint Peter’s Square in 1981, therefore, we Roman Catholic have to be
careful, when we deal with Turks about religions, since most of them are
Muslims, and most Muslims hate Roman Catholic.
Here we need to say
that religions must not be like that, because religions are made to help
people, and give hope to those people that need hope most. I know about
religions because, I have written a religious theory called ‘Reconciliation of
the universe’.
Anyhow, today to
continue to write my religious articles, I am writing this important religious
happening, which is the Pope visit to Turkey.
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Pope visits to religious buildings
Now let us look at
the main historic religious buildings that the pope visited in Turkey, it will
give us an idea of their importance, and the importance that Turkey has played
in the religious world; it is necessary that we talk about Turkey and its
Geographic position, to see the reasons why most of the western religions have
gone through Turkey back and forward. You see, Turkey is the country that links
most religions and civilizations together, it is its geographical position that
involves Turkey, you see, even today a lot of things happen in Turkey.
Here we want to
paste a video link that talks about Istanbul’s Blue Mosque and other things
that are important to know, in order to understand what has been going on over
there for a long time; Istanbul's Blue
Mosque - National Geographic, there are also other things in this
video, but you can ignore them if you like.
Here under are some
photos of the religious building that the pope has visited; we will say a bit
more about Turkey history, because it is important to know, that in this part
of the world have happened religious and other historic things, so, we are
going to talk about a few of them, starting from this city of Istanbul that
joins two continents.
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Joining two continents
Istanbul also known
as Constantinople and Byzantium is the city that joins two continents together,
look at the map above and you will see that it is half in Europe and the
other half is in Asia; their boundary is marked from the Bosporus Strait that
not only divides the two continents, but it divides the city of Istanbul in
half. The city of Istanbul has been important in history and continues to be
important even today, a lot of things have happened in this corner of the
world.
Having said that,
we can say that the city of Istanbul is the place where East meets West; but
what we are talking here, is about Turkey and the surrounding countries that
have problems that can affect the entire world, and that is the main reason why
Pope Francis went there to talk to them, whether his visit and his discourse is
going to do any good remains to be seen, we can only hope for the best outcome.
While we are
talking about this pope visit to Turkey, we can say that this corner of Turkey
is one of the most strategic points in the world, it has had that position for
a long time in history; so, to understand these important things, it is
necessary that we talk about the history of Turkey and geographical position of
turkey, and mention some mythology just to make it a bit more interesting:
We can go back as
far as the flood mentioned in the Bible at the times of Noah; you see people
believe that Noah’s Ark after the flood stopped on Mount Ararat Turkey, of
course, there is no proof about it, just as there is no proof that the flood
affected the entire world, but anyhow this is what people like to believe. So, Turkey
is where everything restarted after the flood, according to the Bible.
Now let us look at
its geographical position; you see the Bosporus Strait that separates the two
continents and the city of Istanbul in half is supposed to be the strait that
‘Jason and the Argonaut’ went through when they went in search of the Golden
Fleece, this is the first time that this place has been described in history;
there is also the myth of the city of Troy and the Trojan war and the Trojan
horse that even today means that there is an hidden danger inside something
that is presented in a friendly way. In fact, we can say that this place is
full of mysterious stories.
We can start from early
in times; there are reasons to believe that the first notable civilization was
in the Middle East. So, when we think of civilization and how the human race
started to emigrate from this Middle East to Europe, Turkey has always played a
major role, because people were forced to go through Turkey, and this has
continued throughout history and continues even today.
The same thing has
happened when the Christian religions developed in the Middle East, they went
through Turkey and then Greece and to Europe, now you may start to think that
humanity moves from east to west only, but this does not happen all the time, because
other civilizations went through this place the other way around; the main one
is the Roman Empire and it lasted a very long time in this part of the world.
Here we can add a
bit of the modern history, that everybody still things about today, you see
Gallipoli the Dardanelles WW1 Australia went to war in this part of the world,
so again Turkey writes another chapter of its modern history.
Now let us go back
to the old history; because of the Roman Empire influence, this part of the
world became a major religious centre, today it is still an important religious
centre, for the Christian as it has the Patriarch of Constantinople residing
there, and that is another reason for the pope to go there, in the hope of
mending some of their religious differences.
Of course, this
part of the world today is more Muslim that anything else, but that is just
another religion that we the people of this world believe in, and some
religious leaders have described them as our brothers, as we are all children
of God and we believe in the same God.
Now let us look at
some historical and religious facts to see the changes that they brought with
them.
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Historic and religious facts
Anyhow, we want to
talk about historic and religious facts, that have happened in Turkey, because
Turkey situated partly in Europe and partly in Asia gets a large amount of
people traffic, as they move from East to West and the other way around.
The most important
things that come to my mind are two old military events; First military event,
Alexander the Great army in 334 BC, starts his military expansion plans, and
from Greece marches east to conquer his Empire. Before his time there had been
many wars from the Persian kings who wanted to occupy Greece, but with
Alexander the trend was reversed; and it was Greece and the Macedonian people
that were the aggressors’, follow this link, Alexander the Great - Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia
The second military
movement was the Roman Empire. History tells us that the Roman domination in
the old world lasted an exceptionally long time. Anyhow here we are talking
about only those things that affected the Middle East and Turkey, and some of
the old religions, as they changed with the passing of time.
What is important
to note here is that the Romans were the ruler in the Middle East, when Jesus
was born and for a long time after that. But, as it happened in the third
century the Roman Empire had become so vast that the Emperor Diocletian decided
to split the Roman Empire in two, while Rome remained still the capital of the
western empire, Byzantium (later called Constantinople) became the capital of
the Eastern Roman Empire, this splitting of the empire that began in the year
of 285 AD weakened the Empire and did not help Rome, even though Rome had ruled
most of the known world for a very long time.
So, a couple of
centuries later the Western Roman Empire had completely crumbled, but the
Eastern Roman Empire called the Byzantine Empire went on for another thousand
years, until the year 1453 when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Empire.
Above we have
talked about the military domination of the old times; now let us talk about
the religious part that went on as well during those times. Let us start from
year zero, which marks our current era and the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ.
At the beginning of
this current era, there were many old religions, but the most important one’s
were three religious groups: the Romans were polytheist like the Greek and
other religions of their time, they went under the name of pagans; the Jews
were monotheists had their Mosaic Law with Yahweh being their only God, all
this is written in the Bible as everybody knows; and then there were the Indus
religions with their many gods and goddesses, but the Indus don’t interest us
here, so, we will leave them behind and talk about the other two religious
groups.
It is a well-known
fact that the Romans were polytheists and all religious were the same to them,
so, wherever they went and conquered not only they took slaves from those
places, but they also took their gods statues, so that the slave people could
still use their own gods and religions; one can only imagine when they made
Byzantium the capital of the Eastern Empire, how many gods and religions were
there, since people were free to believe anything at all; this is the Roman
side of old religions and now let us look at the Jews side of religions.
The Jews on the
other hand were monotheist and their only God is Yahweh, so, they do not agree
with any religions, it has got to be their way, they have had this way since
Abraham had a covenant with God, and they continue to worship their God Yahweh
and no other gods, so, everything was run according to Abraham or Mosaic Laws,
but even this was about to change, because of the coming to earth of our Lord
Jesus Christ.
For the Jews Jesus
Christ was supposed to be their messiah, therefore, they wanted to see this new
religious leader to free them from the Roman invasion of their country, but
Jesus was only a spiritual religious leader, so, when the Jews realized that,
they found an excuse how to get rid of him and they did just that.
As we all know after the death of Jesus Christ the follower of Jesus separated from the Jews and they became a religion of their own, this is how Christianity started to form and subsequently it became the largest religion in the world.
I believe that this blog is becoming too long; so, we will write another blog later called, Let us follow the pope part two. Where we will explain and describe some of the consequences that followed in ‘Early Christianity’ in the world and in Byzantium. (Today called Istanbul)
See you soon.
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If you believe in god
Let us follow the pope, part one
Some of my personal links; because I believe that all my articles need to be connected
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