Transcription
Well, it was less than a year after I left Aleppo, uh, that on a humanitarian mission, uh, Metropolitan Bulos and his driver were stopped, uh, by Sunni jihadis. They pulled his deacon out of the driver's seat. They shot him in the head right in front of him, and we have never seen our Metropolitan Archbishop since. We prayed for him every day in our churches for over 10 years, meaning he was kidnapped. He was kidnapped and presumably killed.
You know, as long as we treat Christianity like some sort of self-help thing that's going to make your life better, you know, you can be richer, happier, more sexually fulfilled. But what does it have to do with Christianity? Forgive me. I don't know that it has anything to do with our faith at all. Christianity is about literally being joined to the son of God and being established in his kingdom. We're not trying to hold on to this place for us. We love this earth because our father made it. But our real home is in the next life. Our real home is where Jesus is.
Are you in are you in touch with Christians in Syria at all right now? Yes, I am. And I have lots of Syrians in my parish and Palestinians and they're both uh in great sorrow. Once the war broke out, uh, Christians have been, what shall I say, uh, brutally decimated the political power at that time. And for the war recently, the war uh, 2011 and which, just for folks listening, what is what is that war? Yeah, this is the um the outbreak of what we would know as the successors to al-Qaeda, uh, what are called ISIS. These are Sunni um jihadis who view the murder of Christians uh who resist conversion to to Islam as an imperative.
I think there's a lot of people who look at the Middle East and they just see constant from their, you know, western vantage point, maybe American vantage point, maybe constant turmoil, dictators that get deposed, new regimes that, you know, come to power, waring between sects of Islam, you know, radical Islamists, you know, ISIS, al-Qaeda emerging, different sects fighting, and then there's Christians who are kind of caught up in the middle of the firestorm.
You know, Islam is the most disruptive historical development in the history of Christianity. Muhammad was born in 570 in what is now Saudi Arabia. And by the time he finished, by 6:30 or so, he had led 25 raids against Jewish and Christian tribes. Uh unprovoked, he established a worldview in Islam that divides the whole world into two. You know, we do this too as Christians, right? We view the whole world in two parts. the area that has been evangelized, that has heard the good news and has had an opportunity to believe in Jesus and to enter into the kingdom of God and those parts of the world that have not yet been evangelized. For us, that's how Christians are always looking at it. Islam views the world in two parts. What they call the house of Islam. The house of Islam is where not just there are predominants of Muslims, but where Sharia or Muslim law is in force. If it's not enforced, there may be a majority of Muslims, but they don't consider that truly the house of Islam. The rest of the world, you know what they call the rest of the world? The house of war. That's how a Muslim divides. That's that's the Quran.
So, you can imagine what that means for Christians. what that means for Christians and has meant for Christians since 634 when the Muslims came into Jerusalem and then into Damascus and then into all of our major cities in North Africa and then started their jihad across the Mediterranean Sea coming into the southern parts of France and Spain. What that has meant for us is several things. One, if you want to maintain your freedom, you want to maintain your rights, you have to convert to Islam. If you do that as a Christian, you've lost your soul. You've betrayed God. You've become what the church calls an apostate. God forbid most of our people didn't do that. Some did.
You mean you're saying historically or you're saying recently? Uh I'm saying since the seventh century. Since the seventh century until today. Until today. Right. Absolutely. Until today. This is Islam. It's not a type of Islam. It's the idea of this, you know, how did the early church win souls? Martyrdom and poverty. You know, you say and the influ and love of course. Absolutely. And then how did Islam win its first? Jesus said, "No greater witness do we have, no greater potency than this, that we love one another." He said, "By this all men will know that you're my disciples." What's the ultimate apologetic? If you love one another the way I loved you, this is how we won the world.
Catholics and Orthodox have to get together. But that's a that's a whole other We do love each other. Of course. Yes, I think we do. We do. Of course. But with Islam, it's it was a a religion with its early uh you know uh centuries marked in violence. There are overlay there's a hundred in my count. I used to teach a class at the local Christian university called Cal Baptist in my town called the cross and the crescent history of Christian Muslim relations. When I was teaching that class, I read through the Quran many times in preparation for class. And I noted how many direct commands to violence Muhammad gave. My count 123. 123 explicit commands to do violence to those who resisted the advance of Islam and particularly to Christians, including details on how to kill us, stab them in the neck. I mean, this is one of his commands. It it's not uh it's not uh a coincidence that many people for instance in England who have suffered Islamic violence have been stabbed in the neck. People go, "Oh, they got stabbed in the neck because the person was crazy." Actually, he was just following Muhammad's commandments.
What do you make of moderate Muslims? Because obviously, you know, we had Billy on the show recently. He's a California assemblyman. You know, he's not Riverside County. He's adjacent. But, uh, you know, really solid guy. He's quoting Mother Teresa, you know, in the in our interview. Good man, you know, and he's fighting for pro-life. He's fighting for marriage. And, you know, here he is raised born and raised a Muslim and still, you know, I I don't get into the details of his faith practice, but you have a lot of Muslims like this who or or a country like Jordan where you presumably have, you know, Muslims, Christians, Jew, Jewish people, or Israel, Muslims, Christians, and Jewish people living together in largely harmony. Obviously, there's can be some friction around the edges.
I'm not sure I would describe the coexistence of Christians, Muslims, and Jews in the Middle East as largely in harmony. I'm I'm playing a devil's advocate to say in some cultures it seems that there can be, you know, if we had a Muslim here to get kind of say, hey, I'm a moderity. The majority there there are forms there are forms of Muslims, right? The the majority is the are the Sunni and the Sunni have given us the hardest time. So I I mentioned traveling in Syria in 2010. 2011 the war broke out and now we don't have 2 million Christians in Syria anymore. Maybe maybe we have three or 4 hundred thousand. Incredible. There used to be how many? 2 million Christians in Syria. That was just in 2010. It used to be a lot more than that. 2010. 2010 and now it's down to a few majority are gone. Absolutely. And and they've fled or they've been killed. Both. Incredible. Hundreds of thousands.
give you an example. Over a million killed when I was there, I stayed in the ancient city of Aleppo. It's the largest city in Syria in the north. I'd love to visit one day. Incredible town, an incredible town. Literally going back to the time of the apostles. So, I I met there. I was hosted by the Metropolitan Archbishop Bulosi, uh who was a man of incredible talents and gave us a wide tour of his uh metropolis there and all the ministries that were going on. He had an internet cafe for the young people. I played basketball with his uh with the young people there at his metropolis. He had a monastery in his on the third I think it was a seven floor. It's a seventh floor uh like arch the oson bishop and on one of the floors were the nuns. It was just an unbelievable an unbelievable place. We went across into Turkey. We got to see so many churches there and uh of course our ancient cathedral in Antioch which is the home of St. John where he was born and raised. Just to the north of there, there's a mountain uh in which 300 monks lived in caves. At the time that St. John, who was born in 347, when he was growing up, I mean, that's like what they went to see on feast days, they would just walk, you know, a mile and a half to the mountain and have a conversation with the Syrian aesthetic who had been there for 20 years in a cave. I mean, this is how they live. This is the potency of Christianity.
Well, it was less than a year after I left Aleppo, uh, that on a humanitarian mission, uh, Metropolitan Bulos and his driver were stopped, uh, by Sunni jihadis. They pulled his deacon out of the driver's seat. They shot him in the head right in front of him, and we have never seen our Metropolitan Archbishop since. We prayed for him every day in our churches for over 10 years, meaning he was kidnapped. He was kidnapped and presumably killed.
But you've never had been able to find the body. Patriarch John the 10th is blood brothers with Metropolitan Paul. Metropolitan Bulos means Paul. Metropolitan Paul and Patriarch John are literal brothers. They have a sister, a third sister who's a nun in Syria from one of our monasteries. So you know that he the deacon he was with was shot. That's Lord of mercy. But you don't know what happened to We have never been able to find our patriarch has literally with the collaboration of uh of the pope with the collaboration of presidents of countries have put pressure on the Turkish government. Some people in Turkey uh say a judge revealed that he punished some uh jihadis who claimed to have murdered him and buried him in the sand. But we don't know. We just don't know. Uh but this what do you think happened? Do you have a sense of what you think might happen? don't know. But this is this was 2013. This is 12 years ago. That's a long time not to hear from him, huh? It's a long time not to hear from him.
[Music] [Music] A blessed Lord's Day to all of you, brothers and sisters. for November 17th on which we commemorate St. Gregory of tours as we begin this new course in the St. John Christopher School now available on both Apple and Google Play stores. [Music]