Memorial Day 2025 Updates.

 

By 606 A.D., the Christian Church changed. The modern-day Roman Catholic Church existed when by 606 A.D. Pope Boniface III blasphemously claimed to be the Universal Pope overall Christians (when only the Lord Jesus Christ is the head of all Christians). Historically, the Pope called themselves titles reserved for God alone like Holy Father. There was one major religious change in the world by the 600s A.D. By the early 600's A.D, Islam was created by Muhammad. Islam is a monotheistic religion that believes in one God called Allah, denies God having a Son, follows works to gain salvation, refuses to allow its followers to eat pork, and requires all Muslims (who are able) to go to Mecca to have the hajj. Islam was a very rapidly growing religion with Muslims forming caliphates or public offices from the Middle East, North Africa, parts of India, and the Iberian Peninsula (in Spain and Portugal) from 632 A.D. to 750 A.D. Muslims embrace the Koran as their holy text, and some Muslims also support the Hadith. The Hadith is like the Early Church Fathers' documents to us Christians. The Hadith makes various interpretations of what the Koran says but isn't as authoritative to Muslims as the Koran.  Muslims take almsgiving seriously and view Jesus Christ as a prophet, not the Son of God. By this time, many urban Asian churches disappeared, because of the spread of Islam. Some churches survive. The Eastern Roman Empire, or the Byzantine Empire, promoted art and monasticism (or the existence of religious monks) persisted. Western Europe from 606 to the 8th century was filled with poverty, political fragmented, and they depended on the Catholic Church for literal survival. Some people wanted to merge or syncretize with local pagan traditions because of governmental neglect, invasion by many forces, and other issues. The monks promoted chastity, obedience, poverty, prayer, celibacy, fasting, manual labor, memorization of scripture, and almsgiving. Monasteries housed monks, orphanages, and inns for travelers. They gave food for people who need it. Many of these monks supported literacy and studied the classical arts and crafts. 

Many monks helped to preserve and pass down Western literature and other forms of Western culture passed down from generation to generation. Even some of the Islamic and Byzantine scholars did the exact same thing. The monks in the monasteries preserved ancient texts in their scriptoria and libraries. Dedicated monks created illuminated manuscripts. From the sixth to the eighth centuries, most schools were connected to monasteries, but methods of teaching an illiterate populace could also include mystery plays, vernacular sermons, saints' lives in epic form, and artwork.

This was an age of uncertainty, and the role of relics and holy men able to provide became increasingly important. Promoting that special access, church offers that donations would fund prayers for the dead (which is forbidden by Scripture), provided an ongoing source of wealth. Monasteries became increasingly organized, gradually establishing their own authority as separate from political and familial authorities, thereby revolutionizing social history. Medical practice was highly important, and medieval monasteries were best known for their public hospitals, hospices, and contributions to medicine. The sixth-century Rule of Saint Benedict has had extensive influence.

The East developed an approach to sacred art unknown in the West, adapting ancient portraiture in icons as intercessors between God and humankind (which is unscriptural too). In the 720s, the Byzantine Emperor Leo banned the pictorial representation of Christ, saints, and biblical scenes, and destroyed much early representational art. The West condemned the Byzantine iconoclasm of Leo and some of his successors. By the tenth and early eleventh centuries, Byzantine culture began to recover its artistic heritage. There were icon busters too back then who opposed the veneration of images. 

Eastern Europe had been exposed to Christianity during Roman rule, but it was Byzantine Christianity, brought by the ninth-century saints Cyril and Methodius, that was integral to the formation of its modern states. Dukes and kings used the new faith to solidify their position and promote unity, while some directly enforced it with new laws, building churches, and establishing monasteries. The brothers Cyril and Methodius developed the Glagolitic alphabet to translate the Bible into the local language. Their disciples then developed the Cyrillic script, which spread literacy and became the cultural and religious foundation for all Slavic nations.

In 635, the Church of the East brought Christianity to the Chinese Emperor Taizong whose decree to license the Christian faith was copied onto the Sianfu stele. It spread into northwestern China, Khotan, Turfan, and south of Lake Balkash in southeastern Kazakhstan, but its growth was halted in 845 by Emperor Wu-Tsung, who favored Taoism. The Church of the East evangelized all along the Silk Road and was instrumental in converting some of the Mongolic and Turkic peoples. After 700, when much of Christianity was declining, there were flourishing Christian societies along all the main trade routes of Asia, South India, the Nubian kingdoms, Ethiopia, and the Caucasus region.

In Western Europe, canon law was instrumental in developing key norms concerning oaths of loyalty, homage, and fidelity. These norms were incorporated into civil law where traces remain. Within the tenets of feudalism, the church created a new model of consecrated kingship unknown in the East, and in 800, Clovis' descendant Charlemagne became its recipient when Pope Leo III crowned him emperor. Charlemagne engaged in a number of reforms which began the Carolingian Renaissance, a period of intellectual and cultural revival. His crowning set the precedent that only a pope could crown a Western emperor enabling popes to claim that emperors derived their power from God through them. We saw the Middle Ages with kings, knights, nobles, and other cultural representations in society. The Papacy became free from Byzantine control, and the former lands of the Exarchate became States of the church. However, the papacy was still in need of aid and protection, so the Holy Roman emperors often used that need to attempt domination of the Papacy and the Papal States. In Rome, the papacy came under the control of the city's aristocracy.

In Russia, the baptism of Vladimir of Kiev in 989 is traditionally associated with the conversion of the Kievan Rus'. Their new religious structure included dukes maintaining control of a financially dependent church. Monasticism was the dominant form of piety for both peasants and elites who identified as Christians, while retaining many pre-Christian practices.

Viking raids in the ninth and tenth centuries destroyed many churches and monasteries, inadvertently leading to reform. Patrons competed in rebuilding so that "by the mid-eleventh century, a wealthy, unified, better-organized, better-educated, more spiritually sensitive Latin Church" resulted. There was another rise in papal power in the tenth century when William IX, Duke of Aquitaine, and other powerful lay founders of monasteries, placed their institutions under the protection of the papacy. Independent churches and the Catholic Church existed. The Catholic Church, by the Middle Ages, baptized babies at birth, which is never found in the New Testament at all. The papacy allowed people to have some knowledge of the Apostles' Creed and the Lord's Prayer, to rest on Sunday and feast days, to attend mass, to fast at specific times, take communion on Easter, pay fees to the needs, and receive the last rites at death. The Medieval Papacy gained more power over the lives of Europeans, like a religious monarchy system. During that time (from 606 A.D. to 1500 A.D.), many people disagreed with the false doctrines of Roman Catholicism in Europe too.

The Catholic Church used canon law as a complex legal system to regulate the lives of Roman Catholic believers. By the High Middle Ages, the Catholic Church added the unscriptural seven sacraments being required for salvation. They enforced celibacy for priests, bishops, and popes which the Bible forbids as celibacy is voluntarily not mandatory for a bishop, priest, etc. The heresies of the Papacy went into another level when they made purgatory an official doctrine. In 1215, the Catholic church made confession required for all. The Catholic Church promoted the Rosary and the veneration of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Mary should be honored and respected as a holy woman who was chosen for a great purpose, but she shouldn't be worshiped or venerated. Romanesque architecture existed in 910 at Luny Abbey. Monastery schools lost influence by 1000 A.D. to be replaced by cathedral schools. Independent schools existed, and universities were being chartered by popes and kings. The Pope and kings had a union of church and state. Literacy improved in the world. Christianity in Africa and in Asia continued to grow from Nubia to China.   The further union of church and state was promoted by Pope Gregory VII in the 1000s. He promoted the Pope's temporal power to increase its wealth, consolidate territory, and form a bureaucracy. The Dictatus Papae of 1075 declared that the pope alone could invest bishops. Disobedience to the Pope became equated with heresy; when Henry IV rejected the decree, he was excommunicated, which contributed to a civil war. A similar controversy occurred in England. So, the Pope was gaining too much power by his decrees which wasn't sanctioned or condoned by God. 

The Church of the East had help from Byzantium to survive after the Chalcedon issue. At the height of its expansion in the thirteenth century, the Church of the East stretched from Syria to eastern China and from Siberia to southern India and southern Asia. The second separation between east and west took place in 1054 when the church within the Byzantine Empire formed Byzantine Eastern Orthodoxy, which thereafter remained in communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, not the Pope. There were the Albigenses. Many people view them as Bible believers or Gnostics. All mainstream sources prove that the majority of the Albigenses were Gnostic heretics, but still they shouldn't be murdered by many in the Vatican. The Waldensians in the 1100s were founded by Peter Waldo. The Waldensians believed in fundamental Christianity and opposed many of the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church. They rejected infant baptism, opposed the swearing of oaths, and disagreed with other heresies. Both the Waldensians and Albigenses were unjustly and viciously persecuted by the Catholic Church back then. 

Along with geographical separation, there had long been many cultural differences, geopolitical disagreements, and a lack of respect between east and west. Nevertheless, the Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos still asked Pope Urban II for help with the Seljuk Turks in 1081, and Urban asked European Christians to "go to the aid of their brethren in the Holy Land" in 1095. By this time, there was a massive amount of false doctrines and heresies in the Catholic Church like kissing the Pope's feet in 709 A.D., the usage of holy water by the priest in 850 A.D., the veneration of St. Joseph in 890 A.D., the canonization of dead saints done by Pope John XIV  in 995 A.D. when the Bible says that every believer and follower of Yeshua is a saint in Romans 1:7 and 1st Colossians 1:2, fasting on Fridays and during Lent in 998 A.D., the mandatory celibacy of priest done by Pope Hilderbrand, Boniface VII In 1079 A.D. (when Peter was married and bishops can be married), the Rosary in 1090 A.D, the Inquisition being formed in 1184 A.D. (by the Council of Verona when Jesus never taught the use of violence or force to spread the Gospel), the usages of indulgences in 1190 A.D, the dogma of transubstantiation in 1215 by Pope Innocent III, and the the doctrine of purgatory by Council of Florence in 1439 which has no basis of Scripture as the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses people from all sins (Romans 8:1). 

*It is important to note that independent believers lived during this time, as documented by the classic book Martyr's Mirror. Bishop Claudius of Turin taught iconoclasm or not supporting images used for religious purposes. Claudius believed that faith is only required for salvation, denies the supremacy of Peter, sees praying for the dead as useless, and attacked the practices of the Roman Catholic church. He held the church to be fallible. He opposed the veneration of the cross and said that we should bear our own cross instead of adoring the cross. He was right. Claudius lived from ca. early 800s to 827. He lived in Spain before. Many people oppose the baptism of infants and other heresies. According to the Martyr's Mirror book, Christus Taurinensus wrote and taught against the invocation of images, of the cross, relics, of the saints, and against the power of the Pope plus pilgrimages. Bruno and Berengarius spoke out against infant baptism and against transubstantiation. Arnold of Brescia, Italy preached against infant baptism and transubstantiation. His followers of the Arnoldists, in the 12th century, were burned at the stake by Papal guards. Henry of Toulouse didn't believe in transubstantiation, rejected infant baptism, and monks, including priests, should be married, and flesh or meat may be eaten on Sunday and other days. The remnant of God's church (in the Waldensians, Petrobussians, Arnoldists, etc.) spread from France and Italy to England and beyond. 

 

The Crusades were an important part of Christian history. The New Testament is clear to spread the gospel by peaceful means, but the Catholic Church readily wanted to use force to promote their theological views. The Crusades lasted for a long time from 1095 to 1717. The first era of the Crusades existed in the Holy Land from 1095 to 1291. The Crusades were a series of religious wars between Roman Catholics and Muslims over disputes over territories, the travels of pilgrims into the Holy Land, and other issues. By the end of the 11th century, the Muslim Arabic people ruled over the Middle East for centuries. Contact between Western Europe and the Muslim world was minimal except for the Iberian peninsula. The Byzantine Empire and the Islamic world had great wealth, culture, and military power. Then, disputes grew. Many Catholics promoted the doctrine of holy war after a distortion of what Augustine wrote. The Catholic Church promoted military attacks against Muslims. By the 1040s, the Turkish people migrated from central Asia to the Middle East to rule Persia, Armenia, and Iraq. They captured Baghdad. They ruled Jerusalem from the Fatimid dynasty of North Africa by 1070 A.D. The Crusades existed in phases. Later, the Fatimids ruled Jerusalem over the Seljuk Turkish people. Many Crusades massacred Jewish people in Europe during the Spring and Summer of 1096. 

The First Crusade was an unexpected event for contemporary chroniclers, but historical analysis demonstrates it had its roots in earlier developments with both clerics and laity recognizing Jerusalem's role in Christianity as worthy of penitential pilgrimage. In 1071, Jerusalem was captured by the Turkish warlord Atsiz, who seized most of Syria and Palestine as part of the expansion of the Seljuks throughout the Middle East. The Seljuk hold on the city was weak, and returning pilgrims reported difficulties and the oppression of Christians. Byzantine Empire leaders desire for military aid converged with increasing willingness of the western nobility to accept papal military direction. In 1095, Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos requested military aid from Pope Urban II at the Council of Piacenza. He was probably expecting a small number of mercenaries he could direct. Alexios had restored the Empire's finances and authority but still faced numerous foreign enemies. Later that year, at the Council of Clermont, Urban raised the issue again and preached a crusade. Almost immediately, the French priest Peter the Hermit gathered thousands of mostly poor in the People's Crusade. Traveling through Germany, German bands massacred Jewish communities in the Rhineland massacres during wide-ranging anti-Jewish activities. The Crusades attacked in Turkey and then in Jerusalem by 1099. The European Crusades temporarily ruled Jerusalem and other places in the Middle East. When the Crusades ruled Jerusalem on July 15, 1099, they sacked the city, massacred Muslims, Eastern Christians, and Jewish people. Godfrey was elected ruler of Jerusalem. Future Crusades would cause the Catholics to be defeated consistently by Muslim forces. 

They or the Catholic military armies had some rule in the Middle East until the fall of Acre in 1291. The Crusader states existed in Edessa, Antioch, Jerusalem, and the County of Tripoli. This time saw the Knights Templar and the Teutonic Order. 

Other church-sanctioned campaigns include crusades against Christians not obeying papal rulings and heretics, those against the Ottoman Empire, and ones for political reasons. The struggle against the Moors in the Iberian Peninsula–the Reconquista–ended in 1492 with the Fall of Granada. From 1147, the Northern Crusades were fought against pagan tribes in Northern Europe. Crusades against Christians began with the Albigensian Crusade (Albigensians were Gnostics, but they should never have been murdered because of their religious views) in the 13th century and continued through the Hussite Wars in the early 15th century. Crusades against the Ottomans began in the late 14th century and include the Crusade of Varna. Popular crusades, including the Children's Crusade of 1212, were generated by the masses and were unsanctioned by the Church.

 

Before the OKC Bombing took place, America was in a unique space. After the Vietnam War, the Austrian economists advocated the push for more laissez-faire capitalism. Many people exploited their economic experiences to scapegoat black people, Jewish people, and other minorities in a bigoted, illogical fashion. The cause of the economic dislocation is not caused by black people, women, immigrants, etc. but by the one percent who benefit from massive deindustrialization, massive wealth transfer to the super wealthy, and other social complications. There has been a massive polarization of wealth and poverty in America. Also, there has been massive racism, sexism, xenophobia, and anti-Semitism in America for centuries. The Klan, the Neo-Nazis, and other white nationalist groups have differences, but they desire one goal which is the domination of the Earth by white racist people. Timothy McVeigh made a voluntary decision to embrace racist and anti-Semitic views. Now, Timothy McVeigh was raised in Upstate rural New York state near the Rust Belt. McVeigh turned to racism as an excuse to justify his insecurities and his feelings of inadequacy. McVeigh's far right views haven't been in a vacuum. For decades, corporate media, fascist propagandists, and other extremists have shown television, radio, film, and social media to promote far-right views. The massive glorification of militarism, the sexism, the attacks on progressive views, and the attack on diversity have had an impact to convince some people to gravitate towards hatred of human beings with certain differences. Timothy McVeigh was a Persian Gulf War veteran who had a low wage job. He fought in Iraq and recited for television cameras the words of "Blood makes the grass grow. Kill! Kill! Kill!." He was part of the militia movement too. Not all militia members are racists, but many of them were. The Republicans had Newt Gingrich who promoted austerity measures. Many Republicans had active ties to militia groups and far right extremists back in the 1990s and today. The living standards being low, the American reality of America being the most unequal of all the industrialized countries on Earth, and big business strips the dreams of many Americans will cause some to embrace the evil of terrorism, unfortunately. McVeigh was born in April 1968 in Lockport, New York, which was near Buffalo. It had massive economic issues. He embraced far-right propaganda and was obsessed with survivalism. He did it in 1983 when he was 14 years old. 

McVeigh grew up to be a racist and a sexist who blamed working mothers and two-income families for the problems in America which isn't true. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was a huge backlash against the social reforms from the Great Society and the War on Poverty of the early to mid-1960s. He met Terry Nicholas in the U.S. Army. Nichols is just as guilty as McVeigh, as he was a co-conspirator in the Oklahoma City bombing. Tim McVeigh was gung-ho about war and talked about the UN-dominated world government views. He knew about the events at Ruby Ridge in August 1992 (when an FBI sniper shot and killed the wife of a white racist in Idaho) and Waco back in 1993. McVeigh was a far-right extremist who hated socialism. 

 

Later, by the Fall of 1994, Timothy McVeigh decided to blow up a federal building. He has been inspired by the racist Turner Diaries Book. Timothy McVeigh believed in extreme individualism and misanthropic views. He didn't want humanity liberated from economic and social oppression. He hated the federal government because many in the federal government protected the rights of immigrants, women, minorities, and other people. Timothy McVeigh telephoned Elohim City two weeks before the bombing of the Murrah Building took place. Elohim City is a center where white racists and far right extremists lived at. Timothy McVeigh told Fortier about his plans to blow up a federal building, and Fortier declined to participate. Fortier told his wife about the plans. McVeigh and Nichols constructed an ANFO explosive device at a lakeside campground near McVeigh's old Army post. They mounted the bomb on the back of a rented Ryder truck. The bomb consisted of about 5,000 pounds (2,300 kg) of ammonium nitrate and nitromethane. On April 19, 1995, McVeigh drove the truck to the front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building just as its offices opened for the day. Timothy McVeigh wrote letters cursing out the ATF and government officials. He was a paranoid, evil person. He ignored the truth that many people in the government have helped people for generations. There is a distinction between corrupt people in government, and righteous, hardworking people saving lives in the government. He wanted an assassination of members of the Clinton administration over the actions in Waco and the Rudy Ridge incident. He left his friend Michael Fortier in Arizona because of Fortier's drug habits. McVeigh was a fascist who hated government and socialism. 

 

On April 19, 1995, on 9:02 am, he stopped at a place to a light a two-minute fuse. Then, a large explosion destroyed the north part of the Alfred P. Murray Federal Building. The bombing killed 168 people, including 19 children in the daycare center on the second floor, and injured 684 people. The murderer McVeigh said that he might have chosen a different location if he had known there was a daycare center on the second floor. Yet, that coward McVeigh should never have murdered innocent people in the first place. Terry Nichols said that McVeigh did know about the daycare center in the building, and they didn't care. According to the Oklahoma City Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT), more than 3000 buildings in the city were damaged. More than 12,000 volunteers and rescue workers took part in the rescue, recovery, and support operations after the bombing. 

 

My 3rd cousin Tia Marie Harris was born on December 2, 1972, at Hampton, Virginia. Her parents are James Nelson Harris (1935-2015) and Ruth Marie Taylor (b. 1936). Tia Harris came to Bethel High School in Hampton, Virginia. Hampton, Virginia, is in the 757 or Hampton Roads in the Peninsula region of Hampton Roads. She was a cheerleader in high school. Later, she married Ronald McKinely Lee Jr. (b. 1977) on October 22, 2005. The couple had 2 children, including Jaelyn Lee (b. 2007). James Nelson Harris's parents are Nelson Harris Jr. (1902-1975) and Rosa Harris (b. 1910). The parents of my 1st cousin Nelson Harris Jr. were Nelson Harris (b. 1861) and Susanna Sarah M. Hill (b. 1867). The parents of my 3rd great-grandaunt Susanna Sarah M. Hill were Sarah Claud (1842-1892) and Tom Hill (1838-1915). The mother of my 4th great-grandmother Sarah Claud was my fifth great-grandmother Zilphy Claud (1820-1892). 

 

One century and three score years ago, the American Civil War ended in a victory for the Union, black people, and freedom-loving people of every background. It was a brutal war filled with violence, brutality, and massive deaths (ranging to almost one million human beings who passed away). Also, the Civil War was filled with courageous people like Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and others who freed slaves, led armies to defeat the Confederate enemy, called for Union soldiers to keep the fight going for justice, and aided the sick and wounded. We live in the age of paradoxes, ironies, and new realities (i.e. book bans, a GOP bill proposing massive cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, and a tyrant in the White House promoting executive order which are against the Constitution in 2025), but we have the same august inspiration for human liberty just like yesteryear. President Abraham Lincoln went from an Illinois Whig party lawyer to the President of the United States who expressed total opposition to slavery. Lincoln evolved to see the American Civil War as a moral crusade to allow black people to be free from slavery and allow America to have a new birth of freedom, wherefore our God-given rights are preserved for all people. Today, we have a very long way to go, but we don't fear this challenge. We embrace it, and we shall use all legitimate, moral means necessary to cultivate a better, progressive world when true human freedom exists for all human beings triumphantly. On this Memorial Day on May 26, 2025, we remember those who paid the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom indeed. 

By Timothy