The Crusades: Salvation or Exploitation? (Essay Sample)

The Crusades: Salvation or Exploitation?
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The Crusades: Salvation or Exploitation?
Phillips (2015), a professor of crusading history, wrote that most modern age religions have departed from the actual values that were adopted by their pioneers. In the same connection, some traditional religious practices such are crusades, by Christians, are slowly losing their purpose. Early Christian movements were voluntary gatherings aimed at sharing and spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, as explained by Madden (2013). The modern day Christian setup has, however, paved way for rascal preachers to take advantage of desperate believers. This paper takes a look into present age crusades in an attempt to establish whether they are still focus on salvation, or have diverted into exploiting innocent Christians.
Danforth (2014) explains that early Christians used crusades to spread their religion across different areas. These were moments when people would be converted from other religions, into Christianity. Powerful movements involved healing the sick and feeding the hungry. As explained by Madden, 2013), these early crusades were based on the teachings of Mathew 10:8, in the Bible, which commands Christians to share the joy of the Lord freely, because they also received it for free. Common struggles of life such as sickness, poverty, hunger and the quest for freedom led many people to attend these gatherings (Baumeister, 2010).
Rogue preachers started holding crusades when the demand for miracles became excessively high. Many false teachers of the word of God began holding crusades to benefit from Christians that were willing to pay for miracles. As Phillips (2015) explains, Christianity started getting flooded by false teachers as early as 1500. These preachers fabricate lies and fake miracles to attract hordes of humanity to their meetings. They go to the extent of grouping prayer services into various classes and selling them at different prices, according to the demand that they get. In that essence, Guard (2014) asserts that crusades have lost their initial purpose and have turned into dens of exploiting ignorant Christians for selfish gains.
There are some ministers who remained faithful to the word of God, despite the rising numbers of reprobate preachers (Baumeister, 2010). Unlike exploitative persons who are always looking for ways of asking for money from their followers, true ministers focus on sharing the word of salvation. A report by Madden (2013) indicates that Christians who have a good grip on the word of God cannot be exploited; only the ignorant fall prey to the gimmicks of rogue pastors. The irony if life is that most of the true preachers get fewer followers as compared to their reprobate counterparts. This clearly implies that many Christians prefer taking shortcuts such as buying miracles, rather than following the true doctrine and earn genuine blessings. In the end, many people end up being exploited, and only a few receive true salvation.
Crusades have certainly lost their real meaning, as revealed in this paper. It goes without question that selfish individuals are taking advantage of innocent ...