Grand Priory of Canada or the Knights Templar (OSMTH) Newsletters

[Alastair]

As some of you may know I'm the newsletter editor for the Grand Priory of Canada. We usually publish these newsletters each quarter where there is always a report from the Grand Prior along with reports from individual Priories within Canada which are currently Windsor, Toronto, Ottawa and a Commandery in Edmonton and a Preceptory in Nova Scotia.

Along with that we'll add a variety of articles to do with International work of OSMTH, the overall governing body, which is also an NGO of the UN. Added to this we'll do interesting articles on events in the Holy Land and try to make sense of some of the vicious attacks on Christians from Muslim extremists.

One of the questions we often ask is why the USA seems to be supporting muslims against Christians, For example in Syria we have the one Christian community that still speak the original language of Christ. Christian churches and communities are under major attack and yet people like John McCain want to attack the Asad regime who actually protect Christians.

Then in Egypt Mobarak also protected Christians yet the USA told him to resign in favour of the Muslim Brotherhood and as you note the Egyptians have thrown then out and they've got back to the old regime. Under the Muslim Brotherhood Christian churches were attacked and they did nothing to prevent these attacks. So what role is the US Government playing here?

In other words the world seems to be ignoring the great slaughter of Christians that is taking place throughout the Middle East and Africa. Why is that?

We also add to all this more serious stuff some lighter stories and humour. So all in all it makes an interesting read.

The OSMTJ order is a charitable organisation and NGO of the UN and works to support Christians in the Holy Land. Each Grand Priory in the various countries of the world are autonomous but each support International, national and local charities. Through the work they do with the UN they help to facilitate meetings with major players across the world.

The newsletters can be read at http://www.electriccanadian.com/Religion/kt.htm

Alastair

[Alastair]

Re: Grand Priory of Canada or the Knights Templar (OSMTH) Newsletters

Added the March 2015 newsletter which you can find at the above link.

Alastair

[Ranald]

Re: Grand Priory of Canada or the Knights Templar (OSMTH) Newsletters

Alastair, thank you for the links, very interesting, but the article about the present fighting is very depressing.

I can do no better than give the link from the Self Interpreting Bible, on your site.

http://www.electricscotland.com/bibl...ible%20051.jpg

In the second column under the line 1866 of 150 years from then.....

There are Bible reference, given to justify the comments. Well worth looking up these references.

That gives us 2016, and what do we have ongoing world wide ?

Ranald

[Alastair]

Re: Grand Priory of Canada or the Knights Templar (OSMTH) Newsletters

The comments mentioned in the Bible are...

About this time, or 150 years later, Christ’s witnesses, who have been much persecuted, and often reduced very low, will be almost utterly extirpated by Antichristian influence. But God,—who has already scourged the Antichristians by the wars of the Saracens, Seljukian and Ottoman Turks, and by the contests between the popes and emperors of Germany, or between rival popes, or by the Protestant reformation,—will, by terrible wars, or some other means, continued perhaps for thirty yenrs, pull down the Antichristian and Mahometan powers, and introduce the glorious thousand years of the saints; Ps.2.9.; 21.8...12;—110.5,6; Is.66.6,15,16; Dan.2.34,35, 44,45;—7.14,26,27;—11.45;—12, 11,22; Rev. 11.2, 7...19;—14.8...20;—17.14...17;—xvi. xviii.xix.—20.1...6; Eze. xxxvii. xlviii, &c.

Thanks for this Ranald... I think I'll do a wee editorial on this Bible in the next newsletter.

Alastair

[Alastair]

Re: Grand Priory of Canada or the Knights Templar (OSMTH) Newsletters

Got up the June 2015 edition of the newsletter which you can download from http://www.electriccanadian.com/Religion/kt.htm

Alastair

[1938 Observer]

Re: Grand Priory of Canada or the Knights Templar (OSMTH) Newsletters

Once again, this was an interesting and informative newsletter.

Gordon.

[Alastair]

Re: Grand Priory of Canada or the Knights Templar (OSMTH) Newsletters

Nothing about Australia though Gordon.

Alastair

[1938 Observer]

Re: Grand Priory of Canada or the Knights Templar (OSMTH) Newsletters

Nothing about Australia though Gordon.

Alastair

Alastair,

There are some references if you "Google", 'Knights Templar Australia' ,however they do not seem to give a great deal of detail as do all your newsletters and publications, so at this stage I am at a loss to see if they meet the standards/objectives of your Order of Knights Templar.

Here is just a reference................ Members of the Order of Knights Templar gather in Australia for ‘Malta Festival’
Posted on February 13, 2012 https://aftermathnews.wordpress.com/...alta-festival/

and

Welcome to the official website for
The Ancient and Noble Order of The Knights Templar
http://www.theknightstemplar.info/


then of course there is this one which is a free-for-all of everything .......


http://au.ask.com/web?q=templar%20kn...&date=20150518

[Alastair]

Re: Grand Priory of Canada or the Knights Templar (OSMTH) Newsletters

Our order is part of OSMTH and we're not associated with the Masons. Through OSMTH we are an NGO of the United Nations and do offer valuable help to them and actually chair a couple of committees.

There are many military people at the top of the order... Generals and Admiral for example. We are very active in the Middle East conflict as part of our missions is helping Christians.

We are not that communicative pubiically as an order but you can see some of the work we do at http://www.osmth.org Here is an article we have up on that site right now...

The Cries of the Messiah


Rabbi Jonathan Cahn, The New York Times best-selling author of The Harbinger and The Mystery of the Shemitah, addressed the United Nations on Friday about the worsening persecution of Christians in the Middle East and other parts of the world.

Cahn, the senior rabbi at the Beth Israel Worship Center in Wayne, New Jersey, was invited along with other Jewish and Christian leaders, businessmen and high-ranking military officials, to speak at the conference entitled, "The Persecution of Christians Globally: A Threat to International Peace and Security."

Here is the text of Cahn's speech:

The Cries of the Messiah

It is April, 2015. Seventy years ago, this spring, the concentration camps of the Third Reich were liberated. In their liberation, the allies forced the nearby townsfolk to walk through the camps to face the unimaginable depths of horror that Nazism had led to.

But for most of those who lived in those towns by the camps and, for that matter, throughout Germany, it was not unexpected. It was well-known that the Jews were being hunted down and taken in cattle cars to concentration camps where horror and likely death awaited them. They knew it, but did nothing to stop it. They themselves weren't in danger. Why should they have risked their comfort, their safety, their well-being for those who were?

But when they walked through those camps in the spring of 1945 they were forced to not only to confront the evil of Hitler and the evil of Nazism—but the evil of their own. For in the end, it was their guilt that was the critical and decisive factor. Without their silent complicity, without their sin of omission and self-interest, the mass murder of six million Jewish men, women and children, could never have taken place.

In 1964, in the city in which this gathering has convened, a young woman named Kitty Genovese was approaching her apartment door when she was attacked by a man wielding a knife. The young woman was brutalized over the course of approximately one half-hour. At least 12 people heard her screams or saw parts of the attack during those 30 minutes. But the majority did nothing to help her.

Some weren't sure what the screams outside their closed windows were. But they never bothered to find out. It was cold outside and they were comfortable inside the warmth of their apartments. One neighbor, who actually saw the attack pondered whether he should even bother to ask another neighbor to call the police. His explanation, "I didn't want to get involved." As a result of the bystanders of this city, the life of Kitty Genovese was violently snuffed outside her apartment door.

And now as we meet in the city of the bystanders of that crime, another crime is taking place outside our closed windows. Seventy years after the bystanders of Nazi Germany walked through the death camps of the holocaust, another stream of victims are being led to their deaths.

Again it involves a satanic evil of hatred, violence, and sadistic cruelty. And again it involves an innocent people marked for destruction—the followers of Jesus, known throughout the world as "Christians," those who are taught, when struck, to turn the other cheek, when cursed, to bless, and when persecuted, to forgive those who oppress them. These constitute, by far, the most persecuted religious group on earth, oppressed, afflicted, hunted down and killed—men, women and children—the sacrificial lambs of the modern world.

We meet in the world's most revered gathering place of nations. And as kings, leaders, ambassadors and delegates convene here to discuss international issues, within the borders of over 60 of those nations, Christians are being persecuted by their own governments or by those in whose midst they live—from North Korea, to Iran, to Afghanistan, to Syria, Nigeria, Iraq, Pakistan, Vietnam and Indonesia, and many, many more. In North Korea, Christians are imprisoned, sent to labor camps, tortured, and killed, for the crime of owning a Bible. In Nigeria entire Christian village populations have been massacred. In Orissa India, 70,000 Christians have been forced to flee their homes. In Syria, 80,000 Christians have been quote 'cleansed' from their homes." In Indonesia, Muslims have put 10,000 Christians to death.

And now, after almost 2,000 years, some of the most ancient Christian communities, from the Copts of Egypt, to the Nestorians and Assyrian believers of Syria, to the Chaldean and Assyrian believers of Iraq are in danger of extermination, genocide. As the evil of Isis and its allies sweeps across the Middle East, an ancient civilization is being annihilated, its people perishing, crucified, decapitated and buried alive in their ancestral soil. The Vicar of Baghdad recounted this year how Isis ordered four Christian children to renounce Jesus and follow Mohammed. "No," they said, "We love Yeshua ... He has always been with us." These were the last words the children ever spoke on this earth as Isis beheaded them.

We hear the accounts of the early Christians being led into Roman arenas to be torn apart by wild beasts. And we ponder how savage and barbaric those days were. We wonder what we would have done had we been there. If we had lived in those days and could have saved the lives of the innocent, would we have saved them?

But the truth is we do live in those days. More Christians have been persecuted, brutalized and killed in the modern age, than in any other. Every year, tens of thousands of Christians are dehumanized, tortured or killed, and over 100 million Christians live under the darkness of persecution. It is the modern age that holds the most savage and barbaric of days. And what are we doing as Christians are being led away to be devoured?

This very body, the United Nations, adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which declares that everyone has the right to "manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance."

In the World Summit Outcome Document of September 2005, paragraph 139, the United Nations declared that the international community has the responsibility to protect populations from genocide, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. So the question must be asked, 'Where are all the resolutions?' "Where are all the troops?' 'Where are all the actions taken to protect the most persecuted people on earth?' 'And where's the universal outcry?' It's a strange and immoral silence, the same strange and immoral silence that allowed 6 million Jews to be delivered to their deaths.

We must not repeat the mistake of the last century. Evil never stays put. The same darkness that destroyed 6 million Jewish lives would end up destroying over 60 million lives throughout the world. The evil that first warred against the Jewish people was a harbinger of what would soon overcome the earth. In the days when coal miners were dying of black lung disease, an answer was found in the caged canary. The canary was brought deep into the mines. If it grew sick and died, it would be the sign and the alarm that the air inside the mine was toxic. What happened to the caged canary was a harbinger of danger. The persecuted Christian is the caged canary of the modern world. The Christian is the first target of evil, and so the sign and the alarm of a toxic evil in the world and a growing danger. And if we don't deal with that evil when it targets others on distant shores, we will surely deal with it when it targets us on our own shores.

No civilization can call itself moral if it fails to defend its most defenseless against that which seeks to devour them. No nation can call itself good if it sits back and does nothing of effect as the forces of evil murder the innocent. And no people can call themselves "Christian" if they watch passively on the sidelines as those who share the name of Messiah are oppressed and killed for their faith.

If our faith consists of how comfortable and prosperous God can make us in this world, as we deafen our ears to the cries of those who are in this world neither comfortable nor prosperous, our brothers and sisters imprisoned and tortured for their faith, how can we bear the name "Christian?" On the Day of Judgment we will be asked, "Why did you do nothing to save them?" And what will our answer be?

It is written in the book of Hebrews, "Remember those who are in chains as in chains with them." So as we sit on our couches in front of our television sets in our air-conditioned homes, are we remembering our brothers who sit on the stone floors of prison camps as they suffer for their faith? They would say to us now, "Do not forget us in our suffering." "Remember us." "Remember us as our enemies come to take our lives." "Do not forget that we once lived and that we once gave our lives for our faith and His namesake."

We cannot forget them. We must remember them. And we must help them.

What would you do if in your neighborhood, a band of criminals had taken over the house next door and were holding your neighbors hostage? What if every day, they oppressed them, humiliated them, beat them, abused them, tortured them and began planning their deaths, father, mother and children?

What if through your windows at night you could hear their muted screams for help, but did nothing? You didn't try to save them yourself. You didn't tell your other neighbors and gather them together to help. You didn't even bother to call the police. In the end, how would you be judged? The answer is unavoidable: You would be judged as guilty, as immoral; you would be judged as evil.

And what if they didn't live next door, but down the block. What if they lived a town away, a nation away, or an ocean away? Would it make any difference? Does geography in any way alter or lessen the charge and requirement of morality? It does not. So if men, women and children, across the world are now being held captive, beaten, tortured and put in danger of death, and we know about it, if we hear their distant screams, but choose to do nothing, then how will we, in the end, be judged? We will be judged likewise as guilty and immoral. We will be judged as evil.

It is written that on the Day of Judgment, we will be either upheld or condemned by the good or bad we did or did not do to God, to Messiah. And when we ask Him, "When was it that did we do good to You?" Or "When was it that we sinned against You?" He will answer, "When you did it to the least of these my brothers, you did it to Me."

Therefore, if we refuse to get involved and help these, the least of His brothers, what are we doing? We are refusing to help the Messiah. If we turn a deaf ear to their cries, we are turning a deaf ear to the cries of the Messiah.

And on that day, He will say to us, "When my village was burned down in Nigeria, why did you do nothing to help Me? When I was imprisoned inside a labor camp in North Korea, why did you forgot Me? When Isis came to kill my family, why did you not help us? And when I was tortured, when I was beheaded, when I was buried alive, when I was crucified, why did you ignore my cries for your help? Why did you let Me perish? Now depart from me, for I never knew you."

When that day comes, let it not be said of us that we heard the cries of God and did nothing to help Him. In the time it takes us to hold this session more people will be brutalized, more lives snuffed out. If it was your family about to be destroyed, if it was your life about to be taken, if it was your little child about to be beheaded, and others could have helped but chose not to, what would you think? Then let us do the only right and moral thing we can do. As it is written in the Scriptures: "Deliver those who are being delivered to death."

Do not go down in the annals of history and in the judgment of God as the bystander who saw the evil but did nothing to stop it, who heard the screams of the Kitty Genoveses of this world but chose to let them die outside your door, who watched the cattle cars deliver the innocent to their deaths but chose to stay silent. Do not be guilty of another holocaust.

Open up your windows and hear their cries. Open up your doors and step outside your dwelling. Open up your heart and your life and do whatever you have to do to save them. Messiah is screaming! Messiah is being buried alive! Messiah is being beheaded. Messiah is being crucified ... again! Save Him! Save the Messiah! Deliver those who are being delivered to death! For God's sake ... do the right thing!

Thank you.

[Alastair]

Re: Grand Priory of Canada or the Knights Templar (OSMTH) Newsletters

OSMTH OVERVIEW

Preamble
The following provides a general overview of OSMTH - the Knights Templar International.

Organisation and Purpose

OSMTH is a Swiss Registered (CH-660.1972999-4) Ecumenical Christian Confraternal
Order, whose primary work is charitable and humanitarian in nature, focusing on all peoples afflicted by poverty, injustice, conflict and disaster.

Our national entities - Grand Priories - concentrate on humanitarian efforts and charitable projects, whilst OSMTH International - utilising personnel drawn from these national entities - represents the Order at the international diplomatic level to sovereign nations, regional and supranational bodies. At all levels such work is often carried out in partnership with and for the benefit of all peoples regardless of faith, creed or ethnic background.

OSMTH holds accreditation as a United Nations ECOSOC Non-Governmental Organisation (in Special Consultative Status, No.19885) maintaining:

• permanent missions in New York, Geneva and Vienna; and
• permanent delegations to the Department of Public Information (DPI); Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR); High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR); Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC); Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking (UN.GIFT); the Convention on Women; and the Convention on Bio-Diversity.

Furthermore, the Order is an active partner of:

• the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (EU FRA);
• NATO Confederation of Interallied Reserve Officers (NATO-CIOR);
• Conference of Non-Governmental Organizations in Consultative Relationship with the United Nations (CoNGO);
• the International Peace Bureau (member), through which OSMTH serves as a nominating body to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee; and
• the International Centre for Religion and Diplomacy (through SMOTJ).

Approach

Although a Christian Order, OSMTH is not a church, fundamentalist group or missionary organisation - we do not give spiritual guidance nor judge those who follow another path of faith. We are not modern day "Crusaders". We express our Christian belief through our works.

As a modern-day Order we achieve these works through our "four pillars":

1. Peacemaking, Peacebuilding and Justice: mediation, facilitation, diplomacy, humanitarian relief, capacity building and development;
2. Clergy: close and active working relations with all Christian denominations, plus interfaith dialogue and bridge-building;
3. Membership: high-level membership with regards to professional expertise, motivation, and networks;
4. Tradition: expressed as a Chivalric Order through our Ecclesiastic protection and Royal patronage, the Regula Moderna, ethical code of conduct, academic and historical discourse.

However four other factors are crucial to the approach and governance of our Order:

democracy, transparency, equality, and non-political activity or allegiance.

The Brussels Declaration: “Aiding Humanity on the Pilgrimage through Life”

OSMTH’s raison d’etre is expressed through our -

1. Vision and Commitment
• Christian Ethos, Spirituality and Chivalric Values
• Domestic Charity and International Humanitarian Aid
• Human Rights and the respect for Human Diversity
• Interfaith Dialogue and Bridge-Building

2. Mission
• Provide humanitarian aid to Christians and all peoples in need around the world, through physical, financial, and moral support.
• Continue programmes that aid Christians around the world, especially in the Holy Land.
• Promote a dialogue based on the principles of peace and justice amongst and between the faiths of the Sons of Abraham and the other great religions of the world, to establish better understanding and greater tolerance.
• Mitigate human suffering by actively participating in activities associated with disaster relief, humanitarian aid, human rights, peace building and sustainable development, and the respect of human diversity.
• Facilitate, mediate and advocate conflict-prevention and resolution by providing subject matter experts and supporting organizations in the fields of religious and international diplomacy.

Being a voluntary organisation, the Order’s works are carried out pro bono by our membership as subject matter specialists within their given professions as advisors, facilitators and catalysts, furthered by effectively utilizing their related networks.

Structure

The Order is currently composed of 21 member nations (based throughout Europe and the Americas) and their associated areas of jurisdiction and operation (Asia, Continental India, Oceania, Africa and the Middle-East), with a combined full membership exceeding 6000 men and women, with an estimated thousand novices and associate members.

OSMTH International is the umbrella organisation, serving as the centralised executive and legislative government of the Order.

History and Tradition

Today’s Order of the Temple was founded in France, 1705, officially reconstituted in 1804, and recognised as an Order of Chivalry by its patron Napoleon Bonaparte in 1805; this recognition was later ratified by Emperor Louis Napoleon III.

OSMTH does not claim direct descent or continuation from the Medieval Order founded by Hugues de Payens in 1118 and dissolved by Pope Clement V in 1312, merely inspiration. Contrary to popular belief the Order is not a Masonic Organisation nor maintains links - official or otherwise - with the aforesaid organisation.

OSMTH enjoys the Religious Protection of His Beatitude the Most Blessed Theodosius, Metropolitan (ret.) of the United States and Canada; and the Royal Patronage of HRH Princess Elisabeth zu Ysenburg und Büdingen, Princess zu Schleswig-Holstein-SonderburgGlucksburg.

Closing Statement

In summary, OSMTH is an active and modern Ecumenical Christian Confraternal Order that seeks to address the very real humanitarian needs of today's world.

[Alastair]

Re: Grand Priory of Canada or the Knights Templar (OSMTH) Newsletters

Just got an email in Gordon to tell me that there is an Australian Preceptory and there web site is at http://www.osmth.com.au/

Alastair

[Alastair]

Re: Grand Priory of Canada or the Knights Templar (OSMTH) Newsletters

i should have mentioned that the September 2015 edition is now up at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/reli...teSept2015.pdf

Alastair