I was searching the internet for Viking history and the bible history ... this is what I found about a king in Russia a Viking.. The Testing of the Faiths From Vladimirs perspective, what good is it to be king of all Russia--with the worldly success of warfare, wealth, wine, and women--if your own seven-year-old son confronts you with a dagger in an attempt to defend his mother, who had tried to stab you to death in your sleep? Needless to say, Vladimir was troubled and began some genuine soul-searching about life, values--and God. He knew that his pagan idolatry was a lie, but who really was the true God? Vladimir ordered his court officers in Kiev to help him find the answer. Thus began a stranger-than-fiction episode in Russian history now known as the testing of the faiths.1 Soon, King Vladimir was interviewing representatives of the four monotheistic religions he knew of: Judaism, Islam, Christianity as institutionalized in the West (i.e., medieval Catholicism), and Christianity as it was institutionalized in the East (i.e., Greek Orthodoxy). Vladimir suspected that one of these could introduce him to God and the true religion. But he needed to test the faiths. Vladimirs interviews with the four representatives took days. This was a serious matter to him. The religion of the ruler would impact the people he ruled, so Vladimirs decision would impact all of Russia--and ultimately all nations that would interact with Russia, in one way or another. The emissaries tried to persuade Vladimir to adopt their respective faiths, but Vladimir did not hesitate to find faults where he perceived them. Vladimir rejected Judaism because it appeared, to him, that the Jews God had punished or forsaken them, as evidenced by their expulsion from their homeland. (Of course, Vladimir was not thinking of the Jews who recognized Jesus as their Messiah--such as Peter, Paul, John, Jude, and many others since!)2 Vladimir rejected Islams ambassadors for a combination of reasons, one being that Moslems failed to display joy in living, and another being that they disapproved of vodka! (Imagine if the Russian empire had embraced Islam about 1,000 ago--how would that have changed world history?)
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 05:56:51 +0000
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