The Church that I am belong right now has lot of struggles that being experienced before and I am thankful to those people and their lives that being sacrifice in order that this Church will survive. Yes, our God is powerful and He can sustain His Church without this experienced that no one Christian will die in a cruel way but we as human has a limited mind and we cannot read the plan of God why He allow this to happen in His Church. The thing that we are blessed right now is that, He sustain it even lot of lives die and we know that all this things are works together for the good to those who love Him.
Crusade is not a good experience of the Church. Their purpose is good and we know that. The purpose which is to control the Holy Land which is the Jerusalem and it is good because the one who controlled the Holy Land this time is the Muslims. Many civilian died because of this desire especially the peasants who are untrained for war unlike the knights who have better training for the war. But even if the peasants are not trained, they are willing to sacrifice their live to fight for it. Even if they get the Holy Land, they will not enjoy it because they died in war.
Even the Church experienced all of this, the Church persevered, not because of the strength of the people who fought for it but because God sustain it. The true Church is the body of Christ. Despite of hardship because of God providence, the Church thrived.
As what I learned from this, there are lot of leaders of Christian group that are very cruel that sometimes I can said that evil but God used their lives to maintained the Church. I cannot judge those leaders by what I have learned because I don’t know what is in their hearts. That is only God know and He is the only one can judge. Dark time of the Church seemed that Church will not survived but by the grace and miraculous way of God, until now, as a latest Church of God, stand still because of his providence.