peace and hotep,

rasi, these points by yan seem very clear and consistant withe masonic history :

"Selassie and the biblical Solomonic line.

Some also record several visits of the Knights Templar who established links with Ethiopian monarchs.

What I am really trying to establish here, are the ancient links between the Ethiopian monarchy, nobility and Europe.

It should really be of no surprise to anyone that Selassie was involved in European-type Masonic lodges.

Ethiopia was used by European Christian crusaders to put an ancient spin on their own political agenda and certainly the Ethiopian monarchies appeared to have little problem with this agenda either.

Selassie’s strong Christianity was no front or no disguise. It was part of a long legacy of a Christian monarchy with strong links with European nobility.

The Ethiopian monarchy’s historical links with the European nobility and the Christian church meant, in my view, that Selassie could not have(initially) understood the ill effects of Christianization on colonized blacks.

It also meant that he could not really feel the urgent need for African development completely separate and apart from European intervention of paternalism.

In many instances Ethiopian monarchs including Selassie did court the favour of these European kings to further their own endeavours."

rasi, i would only add that, in regards to 'ethiopian christinsanity', after centuries of beating and manipulating christianity into the african's mentality, the african's mind finally, by physical and mental force, accepted it as factually legititimate. the christian missionaries (sensors, advocates, recruiters and murderers) who were sent south to ethiopia and to west africa, had the particular responsibility of making sure that christianity was practiced by the african offsprings, even if that meant killing their "non-believing" parents. after centuries of systematically killing the adults and system-mentally poisoning the offsprings, the cycle went full circle where as the poisoned children grew into adulthood. then the african was primed and ready to promote and teach christianity :

"After their defeat by Ahmoses I, the defeated semitic aryan Hyksos congregated in the sinai valley where moses had received their 10 (of 42) commandments from the burning bush.

During the reign of Decius (249-251) a bloody persecution was directed against all Christians in the empire, but particularly in Egypt under the Prefect Sabinus. A large number of Christians abandoned the world and went to lead the monastic life on Mount Sinai. Subject to God alone, they lived on wild herbs. The devil's hatred excited against them the savage tribe of the Blemmyes, nomads along the banks of the Red Sea from Arabia to Egypt, who, impelled by the lure of booty, came on several occasions to plunder the monks; the first time under Diocletian in 305, a second time under Valerian, on December 28, 370, and finally in 400 under Arcadius. Finding only straw mats and monks dressed in hair-shirts, these exasperated nomads prayed there to the monks whom they had massacred at Sinai and at Raitho. The Fathers have handed down to us a collective feast for all these monks on January 14. In order to protect the monks against the Blemmyes and other barbarians, the pious Emperor Justinian built there in 527 the famous monastery of the holy mountain of Sinai, called since the Ninth century: the Monastery of Saint Catherine.

The Monastery of St. Catherine is one of the well-known monasteries in the world - a Greek Orthodox holy place connected with the Prophet Moses and the exodus of the Jews from Egypt.

St. Catherine of Alexandria, a virgin and martyr whose feast is celebrated in the Latin Church and in the various Oriental churches on 25 November, and who for almost six centuries was the object of a very popular devotion.

Of noble birth and learned in the sciences, when only eighteen years old, Catherine presented herself to the Emperor Maximinus who was violently persecuting the Christians, upbraided him for his cruelty and endeavoured to prove how iniquitous was the worship of false gods. Astounded at the young girl's audacity, but incompetent to vie with her in point of learning the tyrant detained her in his palace and summoned numerous scholars whom he commanded to use all their skill in specious reasoning that thereby Catherine might be led to apostatize. But she emerged from the debate victorious. Several of her adversaries, conquered by her eloquence, declared themselves Christians and were at once put to death. Furious at being baffled, Maximinus had Catherine scourged and then imprisoned. Meanwhile the empress, eager to see so extraordinary a young woman, went with Porphyry, the head of the troops, to visit her in her dungeon, when they in turn yielded to Catherine's exhortations, believed, were baptized, and immediately won the martyr's crown. Soon afterwards the saint, who far from forsaking her Faith, effected so many conversions, was condemned to die on the wheel, but, at her touch, this instrument of torture was miraculously destroyed. The emperor, enraged beyond control, then had her beheaded and angels carried her body to Mount Sinai where later a church and monastery were built in her honour. So far the Acts of St. Catherine.

Towards the end of the 5th century nine monks arrived, probably from Syria, though perhaps from Egypt, and introduced monasticism into Ethiopia. Monasticism has remained a dominant feature of the Ethiopian church to this day.

The nine monks also encouraged the translation of the Bible into Ge’ez, which was the language of the people at the time. The Ethiopian church continues to use Ge’ez as its liturgical language, though it is no longer a living language.

According to heritage traditions and reliable information, Fathers of the Monastery asked Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) to protect Sinai people as well as Christians and Jews of the neighboring cities, Elat and Al-Tor.

Prophet Mohammed answered their request in all generosity and tolerance and gave them his “covenant”, known as “Document of Mohammed”. According to that Document, Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) ordered his followers to provide protection for the monks in Sinai Monastery.

Ethiopians date the coming of Christianity to Ethiopia to the fourth century AD, when a Christian philosopher from Tyre named Meropius was shipwrecked on his way to India. Meropius died but his two wards, Frumentius and Aedesius were washed ashore and taken to the royal palace. Eventually they became king Ella Amida’s private secretary and royal cupbearer respectively. They served the king well, and Frumentius became regent for the infant prince Ezana when Ella Amida died. Frumentius and Aedesius were also permitted to prosyletize the new religion in Aksum (as modern Ethiopia was then known). After some time, Frumentius and Aedesius returned to the Mediterranean, travelling down the Nile through Egypt to do so. When they reached Egypt, Frumentius contacted bishop Athanasius of Alexandria and begged him to send missionaries back to Aksum, since the people there had proved so ready to receive the gospel.

Athanasius likely consecrated Frumentius ca. 347 A.D. The Ethiopic Church was orthodox in most ways, it subscribed to most of the Church Councils in early Christianity, it vigorously held to the concept of the Trinity as described by the Council of Nicea (325 A.D.), but it was heretical in the sense that it rejected the conclusions of the Council of Chalcedon (451 A.D.), it rejected the view of two distinct natures in Christ, human and divine, and it affirmed the single nature of Christ, the fusion of the divine and the human in Christ.

In the 4th century AD the Ethiopian King Ezana made Christianity the kingdom's official religion. In 312 Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.

The link between the Ethiopian church and the Patriarch of Alexandria was not broken until the 20th century, since the Coptic Patriarch of Alexandria has sent Ethiopia each of its suceeding Abunas. This has meant that the Ethiopian church has been ruled by Egyptians for sixteen centuries.

The Ethiopian Orthodox Church, along with the Coptic Church of Egypt, and smaller churches in Syria,Turkey and Arminia, have remained non-Chalcedonian.. These non-Chalcedonian churches have formed a distinctively Southern branch of the worldwide church.

Orthodox Christianity lost considerable ground in ninetheenth century Ethiopia, in part due to the expansion of the pagan or Muslim Galla, especially in the southern regions of Ethiopia, which had been a Christian stronghold. Many of the monastaries survived, because they were so inaccessable, but as pockets within a greater Muslim or pagan whole. Ethiopian Orthodoxy, which had very little by way of evangelistic impetus, had little appeal to the newcomers, who found Orthodox fasts odd an onerous and who no more understood the Ge’ez of the liturgy than their Christian neighbours did. The Church also suffered from the lack of leadership and ordiantions for much of the nineteenth century, since the Coptic Patriarch of Alexandria, himself in deep difficulties, did not provide the Ethiopian church with its abuna, and when he did the abuna found himself powerless in the face of the distintegration of the Ethiopian state. Without a strong king to hold it together and direct the abuna, the church was essentially rudderless.

The fortunes of the church turned in the latter half of the century, when Egypt provided a new abuna, and when Ethiopia was once again centralized by a succession of kings who were genuinely devout and looked after the interests of the church. The most important of these kings was Menelik II, who succeeded in holding off and defeating the Italian attempts to colonize Ethiopia. His efforts and skills meant that Ethiopia was the only African state whose full sovereignty continued to be recognized by the European powers throughout the Scramble for Africa.

In the 20th century Ethiopia has seen the influx of Roman Catholic and Protestant missionaries and the foundation of a number of Protestant churches. Internally, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church won the right to appoint their own Abuna, rather than have the Abuna always be an Egyptian Copt appointed by the Patriarch of Alexandria. "

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