In 1119, the French Knight Hugues de Payens, a veteran of the First Crusade, was in Jerusalem on a pilgrimage when he looked around him and saw the mounting carnage of Christian pilgrims routinely attacked, robbed, and killed on their way to worship at the holy sites. It was then that he approached King Baldwin II of Jerusalem and Warmund, Patriarch of Jerusalem, and proposed creating a monastic Catholic religious Order specifically for the protection of these Christian pilgrims. King Baldwin and Patriarch Warmund agreed to the request (most likely at the Council of Nablus in January 1120), and the king granted the Templars a wing of the royal palace on the Temple Mount in the captured Al-Aqsa Mosque for their headquarters.
These facts everyone knows well. But the lost history that unfolded in the following centuries – and its significance in the 21st century – is profound and, in many ways, convolutes current Holy Land realities.
In 637 AD, terms for the surrender of Jerusalem and surrounding lands to Muslim control were signed after the Holy Land was wrested from the Christian Byzantine Empire. The surrender of the holy city was relatively peaceful, negotiated by Christian Patriarch Sophronius with Caliph Umar, and became known as the Pact of Umar (Ahd Umar) or the Umariyya Covenant. The agreement outlined the rights and obligations of Christians (and Jews) as dhimmis (protected non-Muslims) under Muslim rule. Key provisions included Safety and Religious Freedom, allowing Christians to practice their faith, maintain churches, and perform religious rites, provided they did not build new churches or proselytize Muslims, and paid a jizyah tax. The pact was remarkably lenient for the 7th century, reflecting early Islamic principles of tolerance toward “People of the Book” (Christians and Jews).
Thus, in the more than four centuries of Muslim occupation of the Holy Land prior to the Crusades, there existed a tolerant stability.
However, after the Muslims seized the Holy Land from the Christian Byzantine Empire, the Islamic groups began to war among themselves and had reorganized into two major combative sects – the Sunnis and the Shias.
The region now known as modern-day Turkey (part of the Ottoman Empire from the 14th century) became a major bastion of Sunni Muslims, building on the Sunni legacy of the Seljuk Turks who controlled parts of Anatolia before the Crusades. It was the Seljuk Turks who captured Jerusalem from the Egyptian headquartered Shia Fatimid Caliphate in 1073–1077. The primarily Sunni Muslim Seljuk Turks were more intolerant, violent, and disruptive than the pre-sectarian Rashidun Muslims who conquered the Holy Land in 637 CE. Their violent seizing of Jerusalem-centered holy places from the previous more tolerant Muslims certainly justified the Christian Western world’s view of these Muslims being a threat to Christian desires to experience the Peace of God throughout the world and especially at pilgrimage sites.
But the 1073 conquest of Jerusalem was but a part of the Seljuks’ broader expansion in the Middle East, which included seizing control of much of Syria and Palestine from the Islamic Shia Fatimids and other local Muslim rulers. The transfer of Jerusalem from one Muslim sect to another, and the subsequent instability under Seljuk rule, contributed to the tensions that triggered the First Crusade (1096–1099).
Ironically, in the summer of 1098, the Shia Fatimid ruler of Egypt, Vizier al-Musta’li, ordered his commander Emir al-Afdal Shahinshah to take Jerusalem from the Sunni Seljuk Turks. After a 40-day siege, Jerusalem fell into the more tolerant hands of the Shia Fatimid Egyptian ruler – just months before the successful capture of Jerusalem on 15 July 1099 by the Crusaders.
That, brother and sister Templars, is how and why the world looked as it did on the day of our Order’s birth.
The political pressures on Christians who had been living among the pre-sectarian Muslims for more than 400 years was relatively stable. The Muslim occupiers exhibited tolerance, collaboration, and a structured existence under Islamic governance of the Holy Land.
In 1119, following the Christian victory and takeover of Jerusalem and surrounding lands, the Crusader Kingdom was arguably under a rather precarious Christian control, facing Muslim threats as well as internal challenges. After the First Crusade, some Muslim groups, particularly Sunni Seljuks, were still actively resisting Crusaders through raids and battles, but they lacked unity for a major counteroffensive.
But more to the point of the First Crusade itself, Christians once again ruled the land where Christ walked for the first time in nearly five centuries. Yet its Jewish citizens remained a mere remnant. The relatively insignificant, marginalized population of Jews there had virtually no political or social power – voiceless settlers in the land of their steeped and ancient ancestry.
How things would dramatically change for Templars and ethnic Jews in our own century, slightly less than one millennium later, is shown in the chart below.
Modern Israel and Modern Templars
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A Confusion of Covenants
If a 12th-century Templar suddenly awoke and reviewed the above chart, he would likely raise a very good question: What do I do now? In those five words, he would summarize his confusion of covenants. To whom is his 21st-century devotion due, and how should he express that devotion to the greatest advantage?
As far as to whom his devotion is due, he may ponder if he is now employed in the service of God’s Old Covenant “Holy Land” – or – for God’s New Covenant elect, the true Isreal of God, whom His Word clearly defines as the “Christians” (everyone, irrespective of nationality, who has proclaimed Jesus Lord Master of their life) in that Holy Land.
No such dilemma existed in 1119. There is no evidence of such deliberate or circumstantial expulsion or depopulation of Christians from the Holy Land before the Templars’ time. The Christians were fairly accommodated by their Muslim occupiers – a surprising expression of peaceful coexistence compared to the extraordinarily violent reality of the 21st century Muslim – Christian coexistence.
The Templar Knight’s covenant, code, and Oath were, and still are, unambiguously Christian. He awoke each morning to defend the land made holy because it was where his Savior and King had walked, with a particular emphasis on defending the Christians at risk there.
But the deceptions and distractions of the enemy are prevalent in the 21st century. The Old and New Covenants have been ambiguated and morphed into a social and contemporary quasi-religious dogma that no one understands because it is logical nonsense. Even the mere attempt to separate the covenants for discussion and clarity can and typically do lead easily to accusations of antisemitism.
When Biblical Patriarch Jacob, son of Abraham – aka Israel – wound up in Egypt under the watchful eye of his favorite son, Joseph, he secured the promise that after his death, his body would be returned to Canaan, where he had already prepared his burial place. (Genesis 50:5). The Patriarch Israel embodied the covenant of God with His people forever, and Joseph-Israel knew Canaan (the Holy Land) to be the only acceptable location for his final resting place.
God Himself has never equivocated anywhere in the Old or New Covenants whether Jerusalem will eventually become the seat of world power at the end of all things and the arrival of the New Jerusalem. Further, the sovereignty of the true Israel of God will be lifted to an eternal permanence when all other world powers bow the knee to Jerusalem’s eternal King, Jesus the Christ.
Yet, in Western Christianity, the stand-alone petition is often lifted to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem” (Psalm 122:6) with pledges of nearly unlimited support to the modern Jewish state. Meanwhile, the few Christians who still live in the land of the Holy One are all but completely ignored, as if the New Covenant itself does not exist on the ground where Christ walked, was crucified, and was resurrected, because to the other 98.1% it does not!
But God has made it clear in His Word that, since the fulfilment of the Law by Jesus, salvation only comes through His sacrifice on behalf of the believer. All unbelieving branches of the natural root (the original Israel) are broken off because of their unbelief. Believing non-Jews, as joint heirs with Christ, are adopted into the tribe of Judah. Now a part of the Israel of God, they are grafted into the natural root. And if the broken off unbelieving branches do not continue in their unbelief but receive Jesus as their Lord and Christ, God will graft them back into the Israel of God. (Romans 11:11-36) This is the doctrine of the Israel of God today – just as it was to the 13th century Templar clergy.
Outside of the Templars, I have yet to meet any Western Christian who knows anything at all about the decline of our Christian family in the Holy Land to near-extinction levels. While waving high the flag of the Old Covenant and daily praying for the peace of modern-day Jerusalem, they have absolutely forgotten the perils and daily dangers of their spiritual family residing as Christians there in the New Covenant.
The peace of our brothers and sisters in Christ living in the land of the Holy One is in grave danger each day as the light of Christ’s people is threatened with being extinguished in the geography where the birth, ministry, death, and resurrection of our Lord Master were accomplished on our eternal behalf. The personal Lordship of Jesus Christ defines the New Covenant of Christianity and the true Israel of God.
The Modern Templar’s Daily Task
Thus, the daily task in the life of every modern Templar is quite basic. We are still clearly called to protect our Christian family at risk in the Holy Land – our unaltered prime objective for nearly 1,000 years. We just accomplish that mission in a very different way.
Always keeping in mind that we know the details of the end of the story, there is no need to taint what we do with wasted emotions, accusations, finger-pointing, or the common aggressive response of our 21st-century world. As did our forefathers, we choose to innovate and create solutions with a purely faith-driven, intellectual approach. Added to that, in this century, we also incorporate a methodology based entirely on Jesus’ commands for the preeminence of love in all that we do. Our swords are now used as symbols of the greater spiritual battles ongoing each day in the background.
We choose to love our Christian family there. In the Priory of The Temple Church, we focus our greatest efforts and endeavors on assisting the Christians at risk in the Holy Land with our contributions for their scholarships and through the Jerusalem Mite to help meet needs and support struggling families. Their danger, their sorrow, and their difficulties have become ours to focus on and to resolve. Imagine what we can accomplish with the combined efforts of all the Priories of the Grand Priory of the United States poured out on their behalf!
Finally, do I ever worry that our extended Christian family will ever disappear from the Holy Land? Never! Because, as the passage from Paul’s letter to the Romans states below, God has promised that He would always keep a small but faithful remnant in His Chosen Land. Therefore, our daily task is to protect, shield, encourage, and pray for them as we work to give them a reason and a financial foundation to stay.
“I say then, has God cast away His people? Certainly not! For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not cast away His people whom He foreknew. Or do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel, saying, ‘Lord, they have killed Your prophets and torn down Your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life’? But what does the divine response say to him? ‘I have reserved for Myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.’ Even so then, at this present time there is a remnant according to the election of grace.” (Romans 11:1-5)