St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre

Joseph F. Dumond

Isa 6:9-12 And He said, Go, and tell this people, You hear indeed, but do not understand; and seeing you see, but do not know. Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn back, and be healed. Then I said, Lord, how long? And He answered, Until the cities are wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land laid waste, a desolation, and until Jehovah has moved men far away, and the desolation in the midst of the land is great.
Published: Dec 8, 2019

News Letter 5855-039
The 3rd Year of the 4th Sabbatical Cycle
The 24th year of the 120th Jubilee Cycle
The 10th day of the 10th month 5855 years after the creation of Adam
The 10th Month in the Third year of the Fourth Sabbatical Cycle
The 4th Sabbatical Cycle after the 119th Jubilee Cycle
The Third Year Tithe for the Widows and Orphans and Levites
The Sabbatical Cycle of Sword, Famines, and Pestilence

December 7, 2019

Shabbat Shalom to the Royal Family of Yehovah,

“Pearl Harbor 1941”

On this date in 1941, the Japanese attacked by surprise the sleeping USA navy at Pearl Harbor.

The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise pre-emptive military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States (a neutral country at the time) against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941. The attack led to the United States’ formal entry into World War II the next day. The Japanese military leadership referred to the attack as the Hawaii Operation and Operation AI, and as Operation Z during its planning.

Japan intended the attack as a preventive action to keep the United States Pacific Fleet from interfering with its planned military actions in Southeast Asia against overseas territories of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the United States. Over the course of seven hours there were coordinated Japanese attacks on the U.S.-held Philippines, Guam and Wake Island and on the British Empire in Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong.

Photograph taken from a Japanese plane during the torpedo attack on ships moored on both sides of Ford Island. View looks about east, with the supply depot, submarine base and fuel tank farm in the right center distance. A torpedo has just hit USS West Virginia on the far side of Ford Island (center). Other battleships moored nearby are (from left): Nevada, Arizona, Tennessee (inboard of West Virginia), Oklahoma (torpedoed and listing) alongside Maryland, and California. On the near side of Ford Island, to the left, are light cruisers Detroit and Raleigh, target and training ship Utah and seaplane tender Tangier. Raleigh and Utah have been torpedoed, and Utah is listing sharply to port. Japanese planes are visible in the right center (over Ford Island) and over the Navy Yard at right. Japanese writing in the lower right states that the photograph was reproduced by authorization of the Navy Ministry. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph.

Photograph taken from a Japanese plane during the torpedo attack on ships moored on both sides of Ford Island. View looks about east, with the supply depot, submarine base and fuel tank farm in the right center distance. A torpedo has just hit USS West Virginia on the far side of Ford Island (center). Other battleships moored nearby are (from left): Nevada, Arizona, Tennessee (inboard of West Virginia), Oklahoma (torpedoed and listing) alongside Maryland, and California. On the near side of Ford Island, to the left, are light cruisers Detroit and Raleigh, target and training ship Utah and seaplane tender Tangier. Raleigh and Utah have been torpedoed, and Utah is listing sharply to port. Japanese planes are visible in the right center (over Ford Island) and over the Navy Yard at right. Japanese writing in the lower right states that the photograph was reproduced by authorization of the Navy Ministry. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph

The Exodus as an Example For Us

We have been talking to you in many of our recent Newsletters about the woman that rides the beast. She is also known as the star atop the Christmas tree and the great whore of Revelation. And we are told of the cup full of the blood of the Saints she has killed. We talked about the avenging of the Saints who had been martyred for the faith they kept as told to us in Revelation 6 in the 5th seal.
This week I have been thinking about the many questions people ask me about fleeing and our responses and also about the Philippines. How do we know for sure what I am saying is right? How do we know when to go? How do we know where to go? How do we survive when we get there? How do we get there with no money? These people understand it is going to be from 2020 to 2030. Ten long years of persecution.
I find myself more often than not saying I just do not know.
In light of this, I have been asking Yehovah these same questions. I have been doing so now for weeks, months and even years. I still do not know how it is all going to be worked out. I have been thinking about Moses who goes back to Egypt after 40 years absence and tells the people of Israel it is now time to go into the desert.
Who was Moses at that time that anyone should listen to him? He was about 80 years old and a shepherd from Midian. Why listen to him?

Exo 4:28  And Moses told Aaron all the words of Jehovah who had sent him, and all the signs which He had commanded him.
Exo 4:29  And Moses and Aaron went and gathered together all the elders of the sons of Israel.
Exo 4:30  And Aaron spoke all the words which Jehovah had spoken to Moses, and did the signs in the sight of the people.
Exo 4:31  And the people believed. And when they heard that Jehovah had visited the sons of Israel, and that He had looked upon their affliction, then they bowed and worshiped.

And that is all we are told, then in the next chapter Moses goes to Pharaoh and talks to him and then the persecution begins in earnest.

Exo 5:1  And afterward Moses and Aaron went in and told Pharaoh, Thus says Jehovah, the God of Israel: Let My people go, that they may hold a feast to Me in the wilderness.
Exo 5:2  And Pharaoh said, Who is Jehovah, that I should obey His voice to let Israel go? I do not know Jehovah, neither will I let Israel go.
Exo 5:15  And the overseers of the sons of Israel came and cried to Pharaoh, saying, Why do you deal so with your servants?
Exo 5:16  There is no straw given to your servants, and they say to us, Make bricks! And behold, your servants arebeaten, but the fault is in your own people.
Exo 5:17  But he said, You are idle! You are idle! Therefore you say, Let us go, let us sacrifice to Jehovah.
Exo 5:18  Therefore go now and work, for there shall be no straw given to you; yet you shall deliver the number of bricks.
Exo 5:19  And the overseers of the sons of Israel saw themselves in affliction, after it was said, You shall not take away from your bricks of your daily task.
Exo 5:20  And they met Moses and Aaron standing in the way, as they came forth from Pharaoh.
Exo 5:21  And they said to them, Jehovah look upon you and judge, because you have made our smell to stink in the eyes of Pharaoh, and in the eyes of his servants, to put a sword in their hands to kill us.
Exo 5:22  And Moses returned to Jehovah, and said, Lord, why have You treated this people ill? Why then have you sent me?
Exo 5:23  For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in Your name, he has done evil to this people. Neither have You delivered Your people at all.

Then we read how Israel would no longer listen to Moses after the above events.

Exo 6:9  And Moses said so to the sons of Israel. But they did not listen to Moses through anguish of spirit and through cruel bondage.
Exo 6:10  And Jehovah spoke to Moses, saying,
Exo 6:11  Go in, speak to Pharaoh king of Egypt, that he let the sons of Israel go out of his land.
Exo 6:12  And Moses spoke before Jehovah, saying, Behold, the sons of Israel have not listened to me. How then shall Pharaoh hear me, since I have lips that are not circumcised?
Exo 6:13  And Jehovah spoke to Moses and to Aaron, and gave them a charge to the sons of Israel, and to Pharaoh king of Egypt, to bring the sons of Israel out of the land of Egypt.

Even though Moses and Aaron’s rod turned into a serpent, the Egyptians could also do the same thing making this miracle not so great after all.

Exo 7:10  And Moses and Aaron went in to Pharaoh. And they did so, as Jehovah had commanded. And Aaron threw down his rod in front of Pharaoh and in front of his servants, and it became a snake.
Exo 7:11  Then Pharaoh also called the wise men and the sorcerers. And they, the magicians of Egypt, did the same with their secret arts.
Exo 7:12  For each man threw down his rod, and they became snakes. But Aaron’s rod swallowed up their rods.
Exo 7:13  And He hardened Pharaoh’s heart so that he did not listen to them, as Jehovah had said.

I am not pretending to be Moses. All I have done is show you what I have researched and learned about the Jubilee cycles and how they reveal the meaning of Daniel 9:24-27 and how the middle of the 70th Jubilee cycle since the Exodus is this year, 2020. I then showed you how the Isles of the Sea keep coming up as the Philippines. Each of you must then do your own research and prove what I am sharing to be true or false. It is that simple. Then pray Yehovah open your eyes to His truths.

As I think about all of these things, I began to reflect on my own family history and why they would have left the civilization of Europe to come to the New World and to come to Canada in 1651 when there was nothing here. The Pilgrims had only arrived at Plymouth in 1621.

Then as I begin to think on this subject, I again see my own personal family. My wife and kids hate my faith and have shunned me for it. There are times of hope such as when my daughter came to Israel with me or when my wife asks a religious question and I am allowed to answer. But at this time of year as we draw closer to that great “joyful season of lights” the hatred, the arguments, the derision and loneliness all take a toll. And I know many of you are in the same boat.

Mat 10:21  And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death.
Mat 10:22  And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved.
Mat 10:23  But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another: for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come.

Mic 7:1  Woe is me! For I am like the gatherings of summer fruits, like the grape-gleanings of the vintage. There is no cluster to eat; my soul desires the first-ripe fruit.
Mic 7:2  The pious has perished from the earth, and there is none upright among men. For they all lie in wait for blood; each one hunts his brother with a net.
Mic 7:3  Both hands are on evil, to do it well. The ruler asks for a bribe, and the judge also; and the great man speaks the evil desire of his soul. So they weave it together.
Mic 7:4  The best of them is like a briar; the most upright is sharper than a hedge of thorns. The day of your watchmen and your punishment comes; now their shame shall come.
Mic 7:5  Put no trust in a friend; put no hope in a guide; keep the door of your mouth from her who lies in your bosom.
Mic 7:6  For the son dishonors the father; the daughter rises up against her mother, the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A man’s enemies are the men of his own household.
Mic 7:7  Therefore I will look to Jehovah; I will wait for the God of my salvation. My God will hear me!

Luke 12:51  Do you suppose that I have come to give peace on earth? I tell you, no, but rather division.
52  For from now on, there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three.
53  The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.

Luke 21:16-17   (MKJV)
16  And you shall be betrayed also by parents and brothers and kinsmen and friends. And they will cause some of you to be put to death.
17  And you shall be hated by all for My name’s sake.

I think about my own family and how they will survive the coming horrors, if they do at all, and as I think about how Yehovah is going to keep us from the trial that is coming, I shudder.

Rev 3:7  And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: He who is holy, He who is true, He who has the key of David, He who opens and no one shuts; and shuts and no one opens, says these things:
Rev 3:8  I know your works. Behold, I have given before you an open door, and no one can shut it. For you have a little strength and have kept My Word and have not denied My name.
Rev 3:9  Behold, I give out of those of the synagogue of Satan, those saying themselves to be Jews and are not, but lie; behold, I will make them to come and worship before your feet, and to know that I have loved you.
Rev 3:10  Because you have kept the Word of My patience, I also will keep you from the hour of temptation which will come upon all the habitable world, to try those who dwell upon the earth.
Rev 3:11  Behold, I come quickly. Hold fast to that which you have, so that no one may take your crown.
Rev 3:12  Him who overcomes I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he will go out no more. And I will write upon him the name of My God, and the name of the city of My God, the New Jerusalem, which comes down out of Heaven from My God, and My new name.
Rev 3:13  He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

Again, as I think on all of this I begin to think about Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and then I began to look at my family name as it was in the 1500’s and how they survived that time. The family name at that time was Le Maistre and they were known as Huguenots.

‘Huguenot’ is a term that came into use around 1560 to describe members of the French Reformed (Protestant) Church. There are several theories about the origin of the term. Some believe that it morphed from the German Eidgenosse (‘confederates’ or ‘oath-fellows), while other posit a French etymological origin. Regardless, the term became (much like the words Christian and Puritan, a term both of derision and a badge of honor.
French Huguenots are simply a branch of the Reformation. For a time they were also known as “Lutherans,” since they broke from the Roman Catholic Church and followed the Scriptures as Martin Luther did likewise; but as the Reformation went on, those in France would give heed to the teachings of the Reformer John Calvin, as they diverged from Luther on points relating to the Lord’s Supper, church government, church-state relations, and worship. Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536-1559) laid out the theology of French Protestantism, and became a standard reference. The French Reformed Church, also with Calvin’s assistance, published the Gallic Confession of Faith (1559), which articulated the chief points of Huguenot theology.
Calvin, meanwhile, along with many other Protestants had to flee France for his own safety. Catholic France persecuted the Huguenots severely by outlawing the Protestant religion, executing many martyrs, and banning Reformed literature, the Bible in French, and even psalm-singing, which was a hallmark of the Huguenots. After the 1534 Affair of the Placards, Calvin ended up in francophone Geneva, Switzerland, where he would spend most of the rest of his life. Persecution of those Huguenots who remained in France was especially hot in the 1550s, and from 1562 to 1598, France was rent by eight Wars of Religion between the Catholics and Protestants. At the height of the persecution, thousands of Huguenots were slaughtered during the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572.

Let me now quote the rest of this article to give you an overall history of the Huguenots.
What motivated the Huguenots on the battlefields, as well as in their homes and hearths, was a fierce love of God, his laws, his worship, his church, and all of his institutions in society. Freedom of conscience to worship God according to the Scriptures was a principle that would be shared by the French Huguenots and Scottish Covenanters, who shed their blood to resist tyranny both in church and in state. John Calvin represented the Huguenot party historically, while his friend John Knox — who spent time in Geneva and called it “the most perfect school of Christ that was ever on earth since the days of the Apostles” — represented the Covenanters; both were often known as Reformed or Calvinists.

The Huguenots, were a people in awe of the holiness of God, and not a little comforted in their sufferings by the sovereignty of God. They looked to the Bible as the sole authority of faith, worship and life, and found in the Psalms a God-given “hymnal,” which Calvin was at great pains to versify for easier congregational singing, with help from Clement Marot, Theodore Beza, Louis Bourgeois, and others. Psalmody became such a badge of the Huguenots that John Quick writes:

This holy Ordinance charmed the Ears, Hearts and Affections of Court and City, Town and Country. They were sung in the Louvre, as well as in the Pres des Clerks, by the Ladies, Princes, yea and by Henry the Second himself. This one Ordinance only contributed mightily to the downfall of Popery, and the propagation of the Gospel. It took so much with the genius of the Nation, that all ranks and degrees of Men practiced it in the Temples [churches] and in their Families. No Gentleman professing the Reformed Religion, would sit down at his Table without praising God by singing. Yea it was a special part of their Morning and Evening Worship, in their several houses, to sing God’s Praises. (Synodicon in Gallia Reformata, Vol. 1, p. v.)

The Huguenots adhered to Presbyterian church government, but strives to maintain unity with all Reformed Churches. They were prohibited from attending the 1618-1619 Dutch Synod of Dort by the French King, but empty chairs were placed in their honor and they remained empty throughout the proceedings. The Huguenots received a measure of peace after the 1598 Edict of Nantes, but their limited religious liberties were eroded over time. Huguenots retreated to strongholds and enclaves, the greatest of which was the city of La Rochelle. However, King Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu found a pretext to launch a full-scale siege of the city (1627-1628). La Rochelle’s downfall was the beginning of the end of the French Huguenots in France.
Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685 causing thousands of Huguenots to flee the country. There was another period of resistance known as the War of the Camisards (French Huguenots who fought the king’s dragoons in the Cevennes area from 1702 to 1715). But the Huguenot Diaspora, which began in 1685, led to a mass emigration, draining France of many of its artisans and intellectuals. What was France’s loss became the world’s gain. Huguenots streamed into England, Ireland, Holland, Germany, America, South Africa and elsewhere, where they would become good citizens and valuable contributors to society (at one point there were more French Huguenots in Berlin than Germans, and elsewhere at one time a quarter of the population of New York City was French Huguenot). Indeed, many settled in Virginia, where a parish was set up with religious liberties for Huguenots (in an Anglican colony) near Richmond, called Manakintowne. New Rochelle and New Paltz, New York became centers of Huguenot immigration, as did coastal areas of North and South Carolina. French Huguenot-founded churches still exist today in New York City; Manakin, VA; and Charleston, SC.

French Huguenot blood flowed through many Presidents and heroes of American history. The legacy of the French Huguenot also remains in the witness of the Reformed Faith worldwide. There are still some Protestants in France who cherish their Huguenot heritage. But those who, as Calvin did, acknowledge that they live by the grace of God, and who also love the land of Calvin and the history of this race of noble people, nevertheless adhere to the words of Charles Spurgeon, who wrote, “Be not proud of race, face, place or grace.” It was a saying of the Scottish Covenanters they fought “For Christ’s Crown & Covenant.” The Huguenots of La Rochelle and elsewhere had their own saying: “Pro Christo et Pro Grege” (“For Christ and the Flock”).

The Reformation

I began this study by looking at the Waldenses to see what I could learn from their persecutions.

THE WALDENSES KEPT THE SABBATH

The Waldenses were a body of Christians who stood aloof from the church in its alliance with the secular power, and consequently remained free from many of the corruptions and Pagan notions which the heathens had incorporated into their religion when they came into the national church. Moshiem in his Church History, Vol.I, p. 352, says “They complained that the Roman Church had degenerated under Constantine the great, from its primitive purity and sanctity. They denied the supremacy of the Roman Pontiff.”
Robinson, in the History of Baptism, says, “They were called Sabbati and Sabbatati, so named from the Hebrew word Sabbath, because they kept Saturday for the Lord’s day.”
Jones, in his Church History, says that because they would not observe saints’ days, they were falsely supposed to neglect the Sabbath also.
A commissioner of Charles XII, of France, reported that he found among them none of the ceremonies, images, or signs, of the Romish Church, much less the crimes with which they were charged; on the contrary they kept the Sabbath-day, observed the ordinance of baptism according to the primitive church, and instructed their children in the articles of the Christian faith and commandments of God.

As I looked for more information about the Waldenses, I then began to learn all about the Reformation that was taking place at this time.

Reformation CHRISTIANITY WRITTEN BY: The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica LAST UPDATED: Nov 5, 2019 See Article History

There is a video about the start of the Reformation that you may want to watch at the following link. I was not able to find a copy to post here.

The Reformation: Age of Revolt
This 1973 video, produced by Encyclopedia Britannica Educational Corporation, discusses the Reformation and its leader Martin Luther, whose grievances against the Roman Catholic Church produced a chain of events that left a profound impact on religion and politics.

Reformation, also called Protestant Reformation, the religious revolution that took place in the Western church in the 16th century. Its greatest leaders undoubtedly were Martin Luther and John Calvin. Having far-reaching political, economic, and social effects, the Reformation became the basis for the founding of Protestantism, one of the three major branches of Christianity.

The world of the late medieval Roman Catholic Church from which the 16th-century reformers emerged was a complex one. Over the centuries the church, particularly in the office of the papacy, had become deeply involved in the political life of western Europe. The resulting intrigues and political manipulations, combined with the church’s increasing power and wealth, contributed to the bankrupting of the church as a spiritual force. Abuses such as the sale of indulgences (or spiritual privileges) by the clergy and other charges of corruption undermined the church’s spiritual authority. These instances must be seen as exceptions, however, no matter how much they were played up by polemicists. For most people, the church continued to offer spiritual comfort. There is some evidence of anti-clericalism, but the church at large enjoyed loyalty as it had before. One development is clear: the political authorities increasingly sought to curtail the public role of the church and thereby triggered tension.

The Reformation of the 16th century was not unprecedented. Reformers within the medieval church such as St. Francis of Assisi, Valdes (founder of the Waldensians), Jan Hus, and John Wycliffe addressed aspects in the life of the church in the centuries before 1517. In the 16th century Erasmus of Rotterdam, a great humanist scholar, was the chief proponent of liberal Catholic reform that attacked popular superstitions in the church and urged the imitation of Christ as the supreme moral teacher. These figures reveal an ongoing concern for renewal within the church in the years before Luther is said to have posted his Ninety-five Theses on the door of the Castle Church, Wittenberg, Germany, on October 31, 1517, the eve of All Saints’ Day—the traditional date for the beginning of the Reformation. (See Researcher’s Note.)

Martin Luther claimed that what distinguished him from previous reformers was that while they attacked corruption in the life of the church, he went to the theological root of the problem—the perversion of the church’s doctrine of redemption and grace. Luther, a pastor and professor at the University of Wittenberg, deplored the entanglement of God’s free gift of grace in a complex system of indulgences and good works. In his Ninety-five Theses, he attacked the indulgence system, insisting that the pope had no authority over purgatory and that the doctrine of the merits of the saints had no foundation in the gospel. Here lay the key to Luther’s concerns for the ethical and theological reform of the church: Scripture alone is authoritative (sola scriptura) and justification is by faith (sola fide), not by works. While he did not intend to break with the Catholic church, a confrontation with the papacy was not long in coming. In 1521 Luther was excommunicated; what began as an internal reform movement had become a fracture in western Christendom.

The Reformation movement within Germany diversified almost immediately, and other reform impulses arose independently of Luther. Huldrych Zwingli built a Christian theocracy in Zürich in which church and state joined for the service of God. Zwingli agreed with Luther in the centrality of the doctrine of justification by faith, but he espoused a different understanding of the Holy Communion. Luther had rejected the Catholic church’s doctrine of transubstantiation, according to which the bread and wine in Holy Communion became the actual body and blood of Christ. According to Luther’s notion, the body of Christ was physically present in the elements because Christ is present everywhere, while Zwingli claimed that entailed a spiritual presence of Christ and a declaration of faith by the recipients.
Another group of reformers, often though not altogether correctly referred to as “radical reformers,” insisted that baptism be performed not on infants but on adults who had professed their faith in Jesus. Called Anabaptists, they remained a marginal phenomenon in the 16th century but survived—despite fierce persecution—as Mennonites and Hutterites into the 21st century. Opponents of the ancient Trinitarian dogma made their appearance as well. Known as Socinians, after the name of their founder, they established flourishing congregations, especially in Poland.
Another important form of Protestantism (as those protesting against their suppressions were designated by the Diet of Speyer in 1529) is Calvinism, named for John Calvin, a French lawyer who fled France after his conversion to the Protestant cause. In Basel, Switzerland, Calvin brought out the first edition of his Institutes of the Christian Religion in 1536, the first systematic, theological treatise of the new reform movement. Calvin agreed with Luther’s teaching on justification by faith. However, he found a more positive place for law within the Christian community than did Luther. In Geneva, Calvin was able to experiment with his ideal of a disciplined community of the elect. Calvin also stressed the doctrine of predestination and interpreted Holy Communion as a spiritual partaking of the body and blood of Christ. Calvin’s tradition merged eventually with Zwingli’s into the Reformed tradition, which was given theological expression by the (second) Helvetic Confession of 1561.

The Reformation spread to other European countries over the course of the 16th century. By mid century, Lutheranism dominated northern Europe. Eastern Europe offered a seedbed for even more radical varieties of Protestantism, because kings were weak, nobles strong, and cities few, and because religious pluralism had long existed. Spain and Italy were to be the great centres of the Catholic Counter-Reformation, and Protestantism never gained a strong foothold there.

In England the Reformation’s roots were both political and religious. Henry VIII, incensed by Pope Clement VII’s refusal to grant him an annulment of his marriage, repudiated papal authority and in 1534 established the Anglican church with the king as the supreme head. In spite of its political implications, the reorganization of the church permitted the beginning of religious change in England, which included the preparation of a liturgy in English, the Book of Common Prayer. In Scotland, John Knox, who spent time in Geneva and was greatly influenced by John Calvin, led the establishment of Presbyterianism, which made possible the eventual union of Scotland with England. For further treatment of the Reformation, see Protestantism, history of. For a discussion of the religious doctrine, see Protestantism.

The Pilgrims Kept the Sabbath

I would like to start this teaching with this man. He was involved with my distant relatives in a number of ways.

Gaspard de Coligny, Seigneur de Châtillon (16 February 1519 – 24 August 1572), was a French nobleman and Admiral of France, best remembered as a disciplined Huguenot leader in the French Wars of Religion and a close friend of—and advisor to—the French king, Charles IX.

Judith Rigaud born 1631 is from a long line of Nobles of the Burgundian line, which has been traced back to 879 C.E. She is my 9th Great Grandmother. There are only three generations between Judith Rigaud and Gaspard de Coligny. Judith’s fathers name was Elizee which is a form of Elijah, which means God is Salvation. Again this is from Isaiah 12:2.

Coligny came of a noble family of Burgundy. His family traced their descent from the 11th century, and in the reign of Louis XI, were in the service of the King of France. His father, Gaspard I de Coligny, known as the ‘Marshal of Châtillon’, served in the Italian Wars from 1494 to 1516, married in 1514, and was created Marshal of France in 1516. By his wife, Louise de Montmorency, sister of the future constable, he had three sons, all of whom played an important part in the first period of the Wars of Religion: Odet, Gaspard and François.

Francois was the first to convert to the Calvinist Huguenot views and faith. He was a Colonel-General of the infantry. His other brother Odet was a Cardinal and he too converted to the Huguenot cause while a Catholic Cardinal. They both fought in the French Wars on Religion

The French Wars of Religion were a prolonged period of war and popular unrest between Catholics and Huguenots (Reformed/Calvinist Protestants) in the Kingdom of France between 1562 and 1598. It is estimated that three million people perished in this period from violence, famine, or disease in what is considered the second deadliest religious war in European history (surpassed only by the Thirty Years’ War, which took eight million lives). The Thirty Years wars was from 1618 and 1648.

 

Huguenots hung from the trees with just an accusation of heresy and not even a trial.

But before I get too far from my story, I want to focus on Gaspard for a bit. I want to share some of the lead up to his time.

The Massacre of Mérindol took place in 1545 when Francis I of France ordered the punishment of the Waldensians of the village of Mérindol. The Waldensians had recently affiliated with the Reformed tradition of Protestantism, participating in “dissident religious activities”. Historians estimate that Provençal troops killed hundreds to thousands of residents there and in the 22 to 28 nearby villages they destroyed. They captured hundreds of men and sent them to labor in the French galleys.

Francis I died on March 31, 1547 and was succeeded to the throne by his son Henry II, who continued the harsh religious policy that his father had followed during the last years of his reign. Indeed, Henry II was even more severe against the Protestants than Francis I had been. Henry II sincerely believed that the Protestants were heretics. On June 27, 1551, Henry II issued the Edict of Châteaubriant, which sharply curtailed Protestant rights to worship, assemble, or even to discuss religion at work, in the fields, or over a meal.

In the 1550s, the establishment of the Geneva church provided leadership to the disorganized French Calvinist (Huguenot) church.The French intensified the fight against heresy in the 1540s forcing Protestants to gather secretly to worship.[26] But by the middle of the century, the adherents to Protestantism in France had increased markedly in number and power, as the nobility in particular converted to Calvinism. Historians estimate that in the 1560’s more than half of the nobility were Calvinist (or Huguenot), and 1,200–1,250 Calvinist churches had been established; by the outbreak of war in 1562, there were perhaps two million Calvinists in France. The conversion of the nobility constituted a substantial threat to the monarchy.[27] Calvinism proved attractive to people from across the social hierarchy and occupational divides, and it was highly regionalized, with no coherent pattern of geographical spread.

Gaspard de Coligny secretly focused on protecting his co-religionists, by attempting to establish colonies abroad in which Huguenots could find a refuge. He organized the expedition of a colony of Huguenots to Brazil, under the leadership of his friend and navy colleague, Vice-Admiral Nicolas Durand de Villegaignon, who established the colony of France Antarctique in Rio de Janeiro, in 1555. They were afterwards expelled by the Portuguese, in 1567.
Coligny also was the leading patron for the failed French colony of Fort Caroline in Spanish Florida led by Jean Ribault in 1562.

In 1566 and 1570, Francisque and André d’Albaigne submitted to Coligny projects for establishing relations with the Austral lands. Although he gave favourable consideration to these initiatives, they came to naught when Coligny was killed in 1572 during the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacres.

Here are the events that took place long before Plymouth and the Pilgrims.

Ribault was born in the town of Dieppe in Normandy in 1520. He entered the French navy under the command of the great Huguenot admiral Gaspard de Coligny. In 1562 Coligny chose him to lead an expedition to the New World to found a colony. Leaving France on February 18 with a fleet of 150 colonists, he crossed the Atlantic Ocean and explored the mouth of the St. Johns River in modern-day Jacksonville, Florida. He named it the “River May”, as this was the month when he found it, and erected a stone column claiming the territory for France.[2] Ribault’s fleet then proceeded north, charting more of the coastline and noting several rivers. Eventually, they came to the Port Royal Sound in present-day South Carolina, and Ribault elected to establish a settlement on Parris Island, one of the Sea Islands off the coast. Ribault oversaw the layout of a small fort, which was named Charlesfort in honor of the French king Charles IX. Ribault left 27 men under the command of Albert de la Pierria to man the fort and soon set sail for France.

Ribault’s intention was to collect supplies for Charlesfort and return by the end of the year. When he arrived at Le Havre, however, he discovered the French Wars of Religion had broken out between the Roman Catholic majority and the Protestant Huguenots. Ribault assisted the Huguenots at Dieppe but was forced to flee to England when the city fell. While in England, he managed to gain an audience with Queen Elizabeth I and organized some backers for a plan to settle in America. However, despite this cordial welcome, he was soon arrested and detained in the Tower of London as a spy. During his time in England, and probably while imprisoned, Ribault wrote an account of the voyage, which survives only in English translation.

It is here at Dieppe that my 9th Great Grandfather, Francios Le Maistre’s family was from. This would have been three generations before them. They fled Dieppe for Holland as Huguenots and then in 1600 are found in Picardie France before fleeing to La Rochelle which we will talk about shortly.

The 1563 Peace of Amboise finally allowed Coligny to devote attention for a new voyage to North America. He appointed Ribault’s former lieutenant, René Goulaine de Laudonnière, to replace Ribault in the North American endeavors. During this time, however, Charlesfort had fallen into despair. Captain Albert de la Pierria’s heavy discipline led the soldiers to a mutiny in which he was deposed and killed at Florida on October 12, 1565. Afterward, a fire destroyed most of the settlement’s meager stores. The survivors elected to build a crude vessel and attempt to sail back to France. The trip was arduous, and most of the participants died before they finally reached the English coast, where they were rescued. News of this reached France just before Laudonnière had embarked on his voyage.

Laudonnière ultimately set sail on April 22, 1564 and arrived at Florida two months later. The plan for Ribault was to follow him in Spring 1565 with reinforcements and fresh supplies. As Charlesfort was now abandoned, the expedition decided to found a new colony on the banks of the St. Johns River in what is now Jacksonville, Florida, the same area Ribault and company had explored on the prior voyage. They christened the settlement Fort Caroline.

Fort Caroline sustained itself for the next year, but Ribault found himself caught up in the fresh outbreak of war in France and was unable to set sail at the appointed time. As a result, the colony experienced food shortages and deteriorating conditions, and some soldiers mutinied and became pirates, attacking Spanish vessels in the Caribbean. The situation was exacerbated by a clash with the Utina, a Timucua Indian tribe up the river to the south. Ribault finally organized his fleet in the summer of 1565, ultimately departing from France with 800 new settlers and five ships. He arrived in Florida on August 28, just as the despairing Laudonnière was preparing to sail home. Ribault promptly relieved Laudonnière as governor and assumed command of Fort Caroline.

In the meantime, the Spanish, who had long maintained a claim over Florida, had made preparations to find and oust the French from Fort Caroline. In early September Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, newly appointed adelantado of Florida, encountered Ribault’s ships at anchor off the River of May. After a brief naval skirmish, the French ships cut their anchor lines and fled, and Menéndez retreated to the next inlet to the south, landing his men on 7 September and establishing the settlement of St. Augustine.

The Spanish hastily threw up palm-log and earthworks around an existing Timucua Indian village at their newly founded settlement and began unloading their ships. Before all of the equipment and supplies could be unloaded, Menéndez sent his flagship San Pelayo away to Hispaniola, as it was too big to enter the St. Augustine Inlet and Menéndez expected an attack from Ribault. Jean Ribault did attack only hours later, and almost captured Menéndez who was on a smaller vessel offshore, but the Spaniard risked crossing the sandbar at the mouth of the inlet and made it to the harbor. As the French galleons were also too large to cross the inlet, Ribault took his fleet south to pursue San Pelayo when the hurricane struck on September 11, driving his ships further south to their destruction on the Canaveral coast. Assuming that the majority of the French men at arms were on board Ribault’s ships leaving Fort Caroline defenseless, Menéndez ordered his infantrymen to march 40 miles north to Fort Caroline, during the hurricane. On 20 September, the Spanish captured the now lightly defended French settlement; 140 men were immediately put to death. In the eyes of the king of Spain, the Protestant religion and acts of piracy committed from Fort Caroline made the entire settlement a dangerous nest of pirates, heretics, and trespassers on Spanish territory. Only about 60 women and children were spared. René Laudonnière and about 40 others escaped the wrath of the Spaniards, and eventually returned to Europe to tell their tales.

The same hurricane that masked the approach of Menéndez’s troops on Fort Caroline, utterly destroyed all of Ribault’s fleet, driving them up on the beach many miles south of their intended target. Several hundred soldiers and sailors made it ashore barely alive and then walked from near present-day Daytona Beach to Matanzas Inlet, 14 miles south of St. Augustine. The marooned sailors were soon tracked down by Menéndez and a patrol force of Spanish troops, probably under a hundred men. Ribault, believing his hungry men would be fed and decently treated, allowed himself to be bluffed into surrender. In batches of ten, the Frenchmen were rowed across to the mainland, hands tied behind their backs. Following the explicit orders of King Philip II of Spain, the prisoners were asked if they were professing Catholics. Those who were not were marched behind a dune and put to the knife by Menéndez’s Spanish soldiers. Only a handful of Catholics, young musicians and ship’s boys were spared their lives. A similar surrender and mass execution of a smaller group of Frenchmen followed a few days later. This time, a few Frenchmen, suspicious of their enemies, preferred to take their chances with the Native Americans. Altogether, Ribault and about 350 of his officers and men lost their lives in the two massacres. The location of this event still carries today the name “Matanzas”, the Spanish for “slaughters.” Menéndez had carried out his orders to wipe out the French incursion.

In 1568 French nobleman turned pirate Dominique de Gourgues avenged Ribault. He and 200 men attacked Spanish-held Fort Caroline, secured the garrison’s surrender and then put all his prisoners to death.

We have the following footnote in our family records.

Nicholas LeMaster was a seaman in Coligny’s 2nd expedition to Canada in St. John’s River Colony, sailed April 22, 1564 (the entire colony massacred by Indians)

We now know it was not Canada but St Augustine Florida and that it was not Indians but the Spanish that wiped them all out for being Huguenots.

Following the death of Henry II he placed himself with Louis, Prince of Condé, at the forefront of the Huguenot party, and demanded religious toleration and certain other reforms. In 1560, at the Assembly of Notables at Fontainebleau, the hostility between Coligny and François of Guise broke forth violently. When the civil wars began in 1562, Coligny decided to take arms only after long hesitation, and remained always ready to negotiate. In none of these wars did he show superior genius, but he acted throughout with great prudence and extraordinary tenacity; he was “le héros de la mauvaise fortune” (“hero of misfortune”)

In the “first war” of 1562-63 he commanded the cavalry at the Battle of Dreux, the first major engagement and, unlike both commanders in chief, managed to avoid being captured, and withdrew in good order from the defeat. He was blamed by the Guise faction for the assassination of Francis, Duke of Guise at Orléans in 1563.

In the “third war” of 1569 the defeat and death of the Prince of Condé at the Battle of Jarnac left Coligny the sole leader of the Protestant armies. Victorious at the Battle of La Roche-l’Abeille, but defeated in the Battle of Moncontour on 3 October, he entered into the negotiations for what became the Peace of Saint-Germain (1570). Marrying Jacqueline de Montbel d’Entremont, and returning to court in 1571, he grew rapidly in favour with Charles IX, becoming a close mentor to the weak, easily manipulated King.

As a means of emancipating the king from the tutelage of his mother and the faction of the Guises, the admiral proposed to him a descent on Spanish Flanders, with an army drawn from both faiths and commanded by Charles in person. The king’s regard for the admiral and the increasingly bold demands of the Huguenots alarmed Catherine de’ Medici, the Queen Mother.
The wedding of the Protestant Henry, King of Navarre, and Marguerite de Valois, the King’s sister, brought a great number of Huguenot notables to Paris, and political and religious tensions were running extremely high. On 22 August 1572, the day after the end of the wedding festivities, Coligny was shot in the street by a man called Maurevert from a house belonging to de Guise. However, the bullets only tore a finger from his right hand and shattered his left elbow. The would-be assassin escaped.

It never became clear who, if anyone, had hired or encouraged Maurevert to carry out the attempt but historians generally centre on three possibilities: the Guise family, Catherine de Medici, or the duke of Alba on behalf of Philip II of Spain.[2] The King sent his own physician to treat Coligny and even visited him, but the queen mother prevented all private discourse between them.
The Catholics now feared Huguenot retaliation for the attempt on Coligny’s life, and it was decided to pre-emptively assassinate their leadership, in what became known as the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre. As one of the main targets, on the night of 24 August, Coligny was attacked in his lodgings by a group led by Guise. After several of his entourage had been killed, a servant of the new Duke of Guise, Charles Danowitz or Jean Charles D´Ianowitz (Karel z Janovic), who was generally known as Besme or Bême, plunged a sword through Coligny’s breast and threw his body out of a window to his master’s feet. Coligny finally died when another of Guise’s associates chopped off his head.

Historian Barbara B. Diefendorf wrote that Simon Vigor had “said if the King ordered the Admiral (Coligny) killed, ‘it would be wicked not to kill him’. With these words, the most popular preacher in Paris legitimised in advance the events of St. Bartholomew’s Day.”


“Death of Admiral de Coligny” from an 1887 edition of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs illustrated by Kronheim
Coligny’s papers were seized and burned by the queen mother; among them, according to Brantôme, was a history of the civil war, “very fair and well-written, and worthy of publication”.

The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre

An unacceptable peace and an unacceptable marriage

The Peace of Saint-Germain put an end to three years of terrible civil war between Catholics and Protestants. This peace, however, was precarious since the more intransigent Catholics refused to accept it. The Guise family (strongly Catholic) was out of favour at the French court; the Huguenot leader, Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, was readmitted into the king’s council in September 1571. Staunch Catholics were shocked by the return of Protestants to the court, but the queen mother, Catherine de’ Medici, and her son, Charles IX, were practical in their support of peace and Coligny, as they were conscious of the kingdom’s financial difficulties and the Huguenots’ strong defensive position: they controlled the fortified towns of La Rochelle, La Charité-sur-Loire, Cognac, and Montauban.

To cement the peace between the two religious parties, Catherine planned to marry her daughter Margaret to the Protestant, Henry of Navarre (the future King Henry IV), son of the Huguenot leader Queen Jeanne d’Albret. The royal marriage was arranged for 18 August 1572. It was not accepted by traditionalist Catholics or by the Pope. Both the Pope and King Philip II of Spain strongly condemned Catherine’s Huguenot policy as well.

Tension in Paris

The impending marriage led to the gathering of a large number of well-born Protestants in Paris. But Paris was a violently anti-Huguenot city, and Parisians, who tended to be extreme Catholics, found their presence unacceptable. Encouraged by Catholic preachers, they were horrified at the marriage of a princess of France to a Protestant. The Parliament’s opposition and the court’s absence from the wedding led to increased political tension.

Compounding this bad feeling was the fact that the harvests had been poor and taxes had risen. The rise in food prices and the luxury displayed on the occasion of the royal wedding increased tensions among the common people. A particular point of tension was an open-air cross erected on the site of the house of Philippe de Gastines, a Huguenot who had been executed in 1569. The mob had torn down his house and erected a large wooden cross on a stone base. Under the terms of the peace, and after considerable popular resistance, this had been removed in December 1571 (and re-erected in a cemetery), which had already led to about 50 deaths in riots, as well as mob destruction of property. In the massacres of August, the relatives of the Gastines family were among the first to be killed by the mob.

The court itself was extremely divided. Catherine had not obtained Pope Gregory XIII’s permission to celebrate this irregular marriage; consequently, the French prelates hesitated over which attitude to adopt. It took all the queen mother’s skill to convince the Cardinal de Bourbon (paternal uncle of the Protestant groom, but himself a Catholic clergyman) to marry the couple. Beside this, the rivalries between the leading families re-emerged. The Guises were not prepared to make way for their rivals, the House of Montmorency. François, Duke of Montmorency and governor of Paris, was unable to control the disturbances in the city. On August 20, he left the capital and retired to Chantilly.

Shift in Huguenot thought

In the years preceding the massacre, Huguenot “political rhetoric” had for the first time taken a tone against not just the policies of a particular monarch of France, but monarchy in general. In part this was led by an apparent change in stance by John Calvin in his Readings on the Prophet Daniel, a book of 1561, in which he had argued that when kings disobey God, they “automatically abdicate their worldly power” – a change from his views in earlier works that even ungodly kings should be obeyed. This change was soon picked up by Huguenot writers, who began to expand on Calvin and promote the idea of the sovereignty of the people, ideas to which Catholic writers and preachers responded fiercely.

Nevertheless, it was only in the aftermath of the massacre that anti-monarchical ideas found widespread support from Huguenots, among the “Monarchomachs” and others. “Huguenot writers, who had previously, for the most part, paraded their loyalty to the Crown, now called for the deposition or assassination of a Godless king who had either authorised or permitted the slaughter”.[12] Thus, the massacre “marked the beginning of a new form of French Protestantism: one that was openly at war with the crown. This was much more than a war against the policies of the crown, as in the first three civil wars; it was a campaign against the very existence of the Gallican monarchy itself”.

Huguenot intervention in the Netherlands

Tensions were further raised when in May 1572 the news reached Paris that a French Huguenot army under Louis of Nassau had crossed from France to the Netherlandish province of Hainaut and captured the Catholic strongholds of Mons and Valenciennes (now in Belgium and France, respectively). Louis governed the Principality of Orange around Avignon in southern France for his brother William the Silent, who was leading the Dutch Revolt against the Spanish. This intervention threatened to involve France in that war; many Catholics believed that Coligny had again persuaded the king to intervene on the side of the Dutch, as he had managed to do the previous October, before Catherine had got the decision reversed.

The attempted assassination of Admiral de Coligny

After the wedding on 18 August 1572, Coligny and the leading Huguenots remained in Paris to discuss some outstanding grievances about the Peace of St. Germain with the king. On 22 August, an attempt was made on Coligny’s life as he made his way back to his house from the Louvre. He was shot from an upstairs window, and seriously wounded. The would-be assassin, probably Charles de Louviers, Lord of Maurevert (c. 1505-1583), escaped in the ensuing confusion, and it is still difficult today to decide who was ultimately responsible for the attack. History records three possible candidates:

-The Guises: the Cardinal of Lorraine (who was in fact in Rome at the time), and his nephews, the Dukes of Guise and Aumale, are the most likely suspects. The leaders of the Catholic party, they wanted to avenge the death of the two dukes’ father Francis, Duke of Guise, whose assassination ten years earlier they believed to have been ordered by Coligny. The shot aimed at Admiral de Coligny came from a house belonging to the Guises.

-The Duke of Alba: he governed the Netherlands on behalf of Philip II. Coligny planned to lead a campaign in the Netherlands to participate in the Dutch Revolt to free the region from Spanish control. During the summer, Coligny had secretly dispatched a number of troops to help the Protestants in Mons, who were now besieged by the Duke of Alba. So Admiral de Coligny was a real threat to the latter.
-Catherine de’ Medici: according to tradition, the Queen Mother had been worried that the king was increasingly becoming dominated by Coligny. Amongst other things, Catherine reportedly feared that Coligny’s influence would drag France into a war with Spain over the Netherlands.

This popular print by Frans Hogenberg shows the attempted assassination of Coligny at left, his subsequent murder at right, and scenes of the general massacre in the streets.

Massacres Paris

The attempted assassination of Coligny triggered the crisis that led to the massacre. Admiral de Coligny was the most respected Huguenot leader and enjoyed a close relationship with the king, although he was distrusted by the king’s mother. Aware of the danger of reprisals from the Protestants, the king and his court visited Coligny on his sickbed and promised him that the culprits would be punished. While the Queen Mother was eating dinner, Protestants burst in to demand justice, some talking in menacing terms.[17] Fears of Huguenot reprisals grew. Coligny’s brother-in-law led a 4,000-strong army camped just outside Paris[14] and, although there is no evidence it was planning to attack, Catholics in the city feared it might take revenge on the Guises or the city populace itself.

That evening, Catherine held a meeting at the Tuileries Palace with her Italian advisers, including Albert de Gondi, Comte de Retz. On the evening of 23 August, Catherine went to see the king to discuss the crisis. Though no details of the meeting survive, Charles IX and his mother apparently made the decision to eliminate the Protestant leaders. Holt speculated this entailed “between two and three dozen noblemen” who were still in Paris.[18] Other historians are reluctant to speculate on the composition or size of the group leaders targeted at this point, beyond the few obvious heads. (Like Coligny, most potential candidates were accompanied by groups of gentlemen as staff and bodyguards; so each killing of a leader could have been expected to involve killing these as well.)

Shortly after this decision, the municipal authorities of Paris were summoned. They were ordered to shut the city gates and arm the citizenry to prevent any attempt at a Protestant uprising. The king’s Swiss mercenaries were given the task of killing a list of leading Protestants. It is difficult today to determine the exact chronology of events and to know the moment the killing began. It seems probable that a signal was given by ringing bells for matins (between midnight and dawn) at the church of Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois, near the Louvre, which was the parish church of the kings of France. The Swiss mercenaries expelled the Protestant nobles from the Louvre castle and then slaughtered them in the streets.

A group led by Guise in person dragged Admiral Coligny from his bed, killed him, and threw his body out of a window. Huguenot nobles in the building first put up a fight, as they were terrified for the life of their leader,[19] but Coligny himself seemed unperturbed. One of Coligny’s murderers recognized this calm regarding his fate by stating that “he never saw anyone less afraid in so great a peril, nor die more steadfastly” (Dethou).[20] The tension that had been building since the Peace of St. Germain now exploded in a wave of popular violence. The common people began to hunt Protestants throughout the city, including women and children. Chains were used to block streets so that Protestants could not escape from their houses. The bodies of the dead were collected in carts and thrown into the Seine. The massacre in Paris lasted three days despite the king’s attempts to stop it. Holt concludes that “while the general massacre might have been prevented, there is no evidence that it was intended by any of the elites at court”, listing a number of cases where Catholic courtiers intervened to save individual Protestants who were not in the leadership.

The two leading Huguenots, Henry of Navarre and his cousin the Prince of Condé (respectively aged 19 and 20), were spared as they pledged to convert to Catholicism; both renounced their conversions after they escaped Paris. According to some interpretations, the survival of these Huguenots was a key point in Catherine’s overall scheme, to prevent the House of Guise from becoming too powerful.
On August 26, the king and court established the official version of events by going to the Paris Parlement. “Holding a lit de justice, Charles declared that he had ordered the massacre in order to thwart a Huguenot plot against the royal family.” A jubilee celebration, including a procession, was then held, while the killings continued in parts of the city.

In the provinces

Although Charles had dispatched orders to his provincial governors on August 24 to prevent violence and maintain the terms of the 1570 edict,[24] from August to October, similar massacres of Huguenots took place in a total of twelve other cities: Toulouse, Bordeaux, Lyon, Bourges, Rouen,[25] Orléans, Meaux, Angers, La Charité, Saumur, Gaillac and Troyes. In most of them, the killings swiftly followed the arrival of the news of the Paris massacre, but in some places there was a delay of more than a month. According to Mack P. Holt: “All twelve cities where provincial massacres occurred had one striking feature in common; they were all cities with Catholic majorities where there had once been significant Protestant minorities…. All of them had also experienced serious religious division… during the first three civil wars… Moreover seven of them shared a previous experience … [they] had actually been taken over by Protestant minorities during the first civil war…”

In several cases the Catholic party in the city believed they had received orders from the king to begin the massacre, some conveyed by visitors to the city, and in other cases apparently coming from a local nobleman or his agent. It seems unlikely any such orders came from the king, although the Guise faction may have desired the massacres. Apparently genuine letters from the Duke of Anjou, the king’s younger brother, did urge massacres in the king’s name; in Nantes the mayor fortunately held on to his without publicizing it until a week later when contrary orders from the king had arrived. In some cities the massacres were led by the mob, while the city authorities tried to suppress them, and in others small groups of soldiers and officials began rounding up Protestants with little mob involvement. In Bordeaux the inflammatory sermon on September 29 of a Jesuit, Edmond Auger, encouraged the massacre that was to occur a few days later.

In the cities affected, the loss to the Huguenot communities after the massacres was numerically far larger than those actually killed; in the following weeks there were mass conversions to Catholicism, apparently in response to the threatening atmosphere for Huguenots in these cities. In Rouen, where some hundreds were killed, the Huguenot community shrank from 16,500 to fewer than 3,000 mainly as a result of conversions and emigration to safer cities or countries. Some cities unaffected by the violence nevertheless witnessed a sharp decline in their Huguenot population.[32] It has been claimed that the Huguenot community represented as much as 10% of the French population on the eve of the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre, declining to 7-8% by the end of the 16th century, and further after heavy persecution began once again during the reign of Louis XIV, culminating with the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

Soon afterward both sides prepared for a fourth civil war, which began before the end of the year.


The pope ordered a Te Deum to be sung as a special thanksgiving (a practice continued for many years after) and had a medal struck with the motto Ugonottorum strages 1572 (Latin: “Overthrow (or slaughter) of the Huguenots 1572”) showing an angel bearing a cross and a sword before which are the felled Protestants.

Pope Gregory XIII also commissioned the artist Giorgio Vasari to paint three frescos in the Sala Regia depicting the wounding of Coligny, his death, and Charles IX before Parliament, matching those commemorating the defeat of the Turks at the Battle of Lepanto (1571). “The massacre was interpreted as an act of divine retribution; Coligny was considered a threat to Christendom and thus Pope Gregory XIII designated 11 September 1572 as a joint commemoration of the Battle of Lepanto and the massacre of the Huguenots.”

 

La Rochelle

With this history of the massacre now covered and how my family members were being affected at this time in various places, I am now going to continue with LaRochelle. This is where Judith Rigaud and Francois LeMaistre would both flee France to go to Trois Riviere Quebec in 1650. They would be amongst the first to be married in Trois Riviere on May 1 1654. I have estimated both their births around 1600. For the record, Judith was born in 1633 to Elizee Rigaud and Marie Suzzanne DuGast an hours drive from LaRochelle in St Jean d’Angely, Saintes, Saintonge, Charente France

Since 1568, La Rochelle had been the main base of the Huguenots in France. A city of 20,000 inhabitants and a port of strategic importance with historic links to England, La Rochelle benefited from administrative autonomy (lack of seigneur, bishop or parlement) and had become overwhelmingly Huguenot (Calvinist).
After the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre and other massacres across France in the fall of 1572, numerous Huguenots fled to the city of La Rochelle as a last refuge. The city was well fortified, with access to the sea.

The conflict started in November 1572 when inhabitants of the city refused to receive Armand de Gontaut, baron de Biron as royal governor. Charles IX ordered the city to be besieged. In the middle of November, François de la Noue, sent by Charles IX to negotiate with the city, was invited by the inhabitants to take up their defense. With the king’s acceptance, La Noue joined the besieged city, but was unable to effect a solution to the crisis, and on 12 March 1573 he left the city, to watch the subsequent events from the royal camp.

On 11 February 1573, the Duke of Anjou arrived to take command of the siege with 28,000 men. His massive resources – munitions, cannons, gunpowder, cannonballs, food – were gathered from Paris, Picardy, Normandy, Poitou, Saintonge and Angoumois. The army included the Duke’s brother François d’Alençon; the two former leaders of the Huguenots, Henry of Navarre and Henri I de Bourbon, prince de Condé (both recently converted to Catholicism); members of the Guise family, Charles of Lorraine, Duke of Mayenne, Claude, Duke of Aumale (killed on 21 February), Henry I, Duke of Guise; and other nobles including: Louis IV de Nevers, Guillaume de Thoré, Henri de la Tour d’Auvergne, Filippo di Piero Strozzi, Albert de Gondi, Blaise de Monluc, Artus de Cossé-Brissac, Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de Brantôme, Armand de Gontaut. Among these nobles were some who remained suspicious of Royal intentions and deplored the violence of the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre, and some who were sympathetic to the Protestant cause; political intrigues traversed the royal camp.

Eight assaults on the city were waged from February to June. These attacks, along with cold winter, resulted in large losses on the royal army’s side. (Brantôme, who participated in the siege, exaggerated the death toll as 22,000 men; records show that of 155 commanders, 66 were killed and 47 were wounded.) On 26 March 1573, 150 attackers were killed in an accidental explosion of a mine intended to destroy the ramparts. The Duke of Anjou was himself wounded several times during the siege. On 23 May 1573, 6,000 Swiss guard mercenaries arrived as reinforcements for the royal army, but the attack three days later was a disaster for the royal troops.

The inhabitants of the city sent an ambassador to Queen Elizabeth I of England seeking her assistance, but Elizabeth – still bound by her 1572 treaty with France (the Treaty of Blois) – was only able to send a limited number of ships led by Gabriel, comte de Montgomery. Seven ships arrived in February 1573, but a larger group of ships were forced to turn back by the French navy in April 1573 (retreating to Belle Île and then Jersey). The majority of the city’s dwindling resources were supplied through small naval raids on Catholic (principally Spanish) ships (which were also being attacked by the Dutch gueux de mer corsairs). To block La Rochelle’s ships’ access to the sea, the Duke of Nevers sank a large barge, with no effect. (Later, in the siege of 1627-28, Cardinal Richelieu constructed a massive sea barricade to block the city.)

At the end of May 1573, Henry of Anjou learned that he had been elected King of Poland, a country with Protestant minority – prompted him to ensue an end of the assault on La Rochelle. An agreement was reached on 24 June 1573 and Catholic troops ended the siege on 6 July 1573.
The fourth phase of the Wars of Religion was brought to a close by the Edict of Boulogne signed in July 1573. La Rochelle was designated as one of the three cities in France where the Protestant faith was permitted, but only under strict conditions.

We now come to the Thirty Years War time period and we have the following records:

The Siege of Saint-Jean-d’Angély (French: Siège de Saint-Jean-d’Angély) was a siege, (military blockade), accomplished by the young French king Louis XIII in 1621, against the Protestant stronghold of Saint-Jean-d’Angély led by Rohan’s brother Benjamin de Rohan, duc de Soubise. Saint-Jean-d’Angély was a strategic city controlling the approach to the Huguenot stronghold of La Rochelle.
The city was captured after only 26 days, on 24 June 1621.

Louis XIII then sent a small army for the Blockade of La Rochelle, and continued to the south to lead the Siege of Montauban, in which he abandoned after 2 months. After a lull, Louis XIII resumed his campaign with the Siege of Montpellier, which ended in stalemate, leading to the 1622 Peace of Montpellier, which temporarily confirmed the right of the Huguenots in France.
The Blockade of La Rochelle (French: Blocus de La Rochelle) took place in 1621-1622 during the repression of the Huguenot rebellion by the French king Louis XIII.
In June 1621, Louis XIII besieged and captured Saint-Jean d’Angély, a strategic city controlling the approaches to the Huguenot stronghold of La Rochelle. Louis XIII chose however to move south with his main force for the Siege of Montauban.

The Blockade

Meanwhile, Louis XIII ordered the Duke of Épernon to blockade La Rochelle by sea as well as by land.[1] On the sea, however, efforts were ineffective, as many small ships could easily go through ships of the Royal Navy and the Huguenots generally had mastery of the sea. At one point they attacked the harbour of Brouage and attempted to block it by sinking ships filled with stones at its entrance.
In July 1621, d’Épernon established his headquarters on land in La Jarrie, in the vicinity of La Rochelle. In August, the shipowner Jean Guiton was named by the City Council as Admiral of the fleet of La Rochelle, with 16 sails and 90 cannons.

The fleet of La Rochelle under Guiton made at least four sorties against the Royal fleet, commanded by the Count of Soissons, the Duke of Guise, M. de Saint-Luc and Isaac de Razilly, and somewhat managed to hold its own.

In October, Razilly, leading a French fleet of 13 ships with 124 cannons, stationed seaward in the Pertuis Breton, and Jean Guiton managed to force them to disengage in two encounters on 6 October. Jean Guiton then managed to capture the Island of Oléron.

On 6 November Jean Guiton attacked Brouage, where 25 royal ships were stationed, and blocked the entrance of the harbour by sinking ships in it.
The Huguenots met with defeat however when Soubise was vanquished by Royal troops at the Riez marches on 16 April 1622.
By that time the nearby Siege of Royan was also going on. The blockade of La Rochelle was strengthened under the leadership of the Count of Soissons. He started the building of the Fort Louis just outside La Rochelle in order to obtain a commanding position over the approaches to La Rochelle.

The Naval battle of Saint-Martin-de-Ré in front of Île de Ré in October 1622, in which the fleet of La Rochelle fought against Charles de Guise.
Another major encounter was the Naval battle of Saint-Martin-de-Ré in October 1622. As the conflict lengthened into a stalemate, however, the King and the Huguenots agreed to the 1622 Treaty of Montpellier, which maintained Huguenot privileges. Although La Rochelle demanded the destruction of Fort Louis, Louis XIII temporized and managed to maintain it.
This constant threat to the city would be instrumental in encouraging later conflicts, especially the Capture of Ré island by Royal troops in 1625, and the 1627-1628 Siege of La Rochelle.

This now brings us to the year 1627-1628 and the next siege of LaRochelle

The Siege of La Rochelle (French: Le Siège de La Rochelle, or sometimes Le Grand Siège de La Rochelle) was a result of a war between the French royal forces of Louis XIII of France and the Huguenots of La Rochelle in 1627–28. The siege marked the height of the struggle between the Catholics and the Protestants in France, and ended with a complete victory for King Louis XIII and the Catholics.
In 1598, with the Edict of Nantes, Henry IV of France had given the French Huguenots extensive rights. La Rochelle had become their stronghold, under its own governance. It was the main port for Huguenot seapower, and the strongest centre of resistance against the Catholic royal government. The city was, at this time, the second or third largest in France, with over 30,000 inhabitants.
The assassination of Henry IV in 1610, and the advent of Louis XIII under the regency of Marie de’ Medici, marked a return to pro-Catholic politics and a weakening of the position of the Protestants. The Duke Henri de Rohan and his brother Soubise started to organize Protestant resistance from that time, which ultimately exploded into a Huguenot rebellion. In 1621, Louis XIII besieged and captured Saint-Jean d’Angély, and a blockade of La Rochelle was attempted in 1621-1622, ending with a stalemate and the Treaty of Montpellier.

Again, Rohan and Soubise would take arms in 1625, ending with the capture of the Île de Ré in 1625 by Louis XIII. After these events, Louis XIII resolved to subdue the Huguenots, and Louis’ Chief Minister Cardinal Richelieu declared this his first priority.

The Anglo-French conflict followed the failure of the their alliance of 1624, in which England had tried to find an ally in France against the power of the Habsburgs. In 1626, France under Richelieu concluded a secret peace with Spain, and disputes arose around Henrietta Maria’s household. Furthermore, France was building the power of its Navy, leading the English to be convinced that France must be opposed “for reasons of state”.

In June 1626, Walter Montagu was sent to France to contact dissident noblemen, and from March 1627 attempted to organize a French rebellion. The plan was to send an English fleet to encourage rebellion, triggering a new Huguenot revolt by Duke Henri de Rohan and his brother Soubise.

First La Rochelle expedition
Main article: Siege of Saint-Martin-de-Ré (1627)
Left image: Landing of Buckingham in Sablanceau .
Right image: English forces in the Siege of Saint-Martin-de-Ré.

On the first expedition, the English king Charles I sent a fleet of 80 ships, under his favourite George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, to encourage a major rebellion in La Rochelle. In June 1627, Buckingham organised a landing on the nearby island of Île de Ré with 6,000 men in order to help the Huguenots, thus starting the Anglo-French War of 1627, with the objectives being to control the approaches to La Rochelle and to encourage the rebellion in the city.

The city of La Rochelle initially refused to declare itself an ally of Buckingham against the crown of France and effectively denied access to its harbour to Buckingham’s fleet. An open alliance would be declared only in September, during the first fights between La Rochelle and royal troops.
Although a Protestant stronghold, Île de Ré had not directly joined the rebellion against the king. On Île de Ré, the English under Buckingham tried to take the fortified city of Saint-Martin in the Siege of Saint-Martin-de-Ré (1627) but were repulsed after three months. Small French royal boats managed to supply St Martin in spite of the English blockade. Buckingham ultimately ran out of money and support, and his army was weakened by disease. After a last attack on Saint-Martin, they were repulsed with heavy casualties and left with their ships.

Siege

Meanwhile, in August 1627 French royal forces started to surround La Rochelle, with an army of 7,000 soldiers, 600 horses and 24 cannons, led by Charles of Angoulême. They started to reinforce fortifications at Bongraine (modern Les Minimes), and at the Fort Louis.

On September 10, the first cannon shots were fired by La Rochelle against royal troops at Fort Louis, starting the third Huguenot rebellion. La Rochelle was the greatest stronghold among the Huguenot cities of France, and the centre of Huguenot resistance. Cardinal Richelieu acted as commander of the besiegers when the King was absent.

Once hostilities started, French engineers isolated the city with entrenchments 12 kilometers (7.5 mi) long, fortified by 11 forts and 18 redoubts. The surrounding fortifications were completed in April 1628, manned with an army of 30,000.

Four thousand workmen also built a 1,400 meters (0.9 mi) long seawall to block the seaward access between the city and harbor, stopping all supplies. The initial idea for blocking the channel came from the Italian engineer Pompeo Targone, but his structure was broken by winter weather, before the idea was taken up by the royal architect Clément Métezeau (or Metzeau) in November 1627. The wall was built on a foundation of sunken hulks filled with rubble. French artillery battered English ships trying to supply the city.

Meanwhile, in southern France, Henri de Rohan vainly attempted to raise a rebellion to relieve La Rochelle. Until February, some ships were able to go through the seawall under construction, but after March this became impossible. The city was completely blockaded, with the only hope coming from possible intervention by an English fleet.
Foreign support for the French Crown
Louis XIII at the Siege of La Rochelle.

Dutch support

Altogether, the Roman Catholic government of France rented ships from the Protestant city of Amsterdam to conquer the Protestant city of La Rochelle. This resulted in a debate in the city council of Amsterdam as to whether the French soldiers should be allowed to have a Roman Catholic sermon on board of the Protestant Dutch ships. The result of the debate was that it was not allowed. The Dutch ships transported the French soldiers to La Rochelle. France was a Dutch ally in the war against the Habsburgs.

Spanish alliance

In the occasion of the Siege of La Rochelle, Spain manoeuvered towards the formation of a Franco-Spanish alliance against the common enemies that were the English, the Huguenots and the Dutch.[4] Richelieu accepted Spanish help, and a Spanish fleet of 30 to 40 warships was sent from Cadiz to the Gulf of Morbihan as an affirmation of strategic support,[4] arriving three weeks after the departure of Buckingham from Île de Ré. At one point, the Spanish fleet anchored in front of La Rochelle, but did not engage in actual operations against the city.

English relief efforts

England attempted to send two more fleets to relieve La Rochelle.
Second La Rochelle expedition

A naval force led by William Feilding, Earl of Denbigh, left on April 1628, but returned without a fight to Portsmouth, as Denbigh said that he had no commission to hazard the king’s ships in a fight, and returned shamefully to Portsmouth.
Third La Rochelle expedition

A third fleet was dispatched under the Admiral of the Fleet, the Earl of Lindsey in August 1628, consisting of 29 warships and 31 merchantmen.[6] In September 1628, the English fleet tried to relieve the city. After bombarding French positions and failing to force the sea wall, the English fleet had to withdraw. Following this last disappointment, the city surrendered on 28 October 1628.
Residents of La Rochelle had resisted for 14 months, under the leadership of the mayor Jean Guitton and with gradually diminishing help from England. During the siege, the population of La Rochelle decreased from 27,000 to 5,000 due to casualties, famine, and disease.

Surrender was unconditional. By the terms of the Peace of Alais, the Huguenots lost their territorial, political and military rights, but retained the religious freedom granted by the Edict of Nantes. However, they were left at the mercy of the monarchy, unable to resist later when Louis XIV abolished the Edict of Nantes altogether and embarked on active persecution.

The Pilgrims Kept the Sabbath

With the American Thanks Giving taking place last week, I thought the following short article appropriate as it gives us a first-hand report of the Pilgrims, Huguenots, keeping the Sabbath even during their trials.

The Pilgrims’ First Sabbath on Shore

J.S. Clark, “The Pilgrims’ First Sabbath on Shore,” in The Illustrated Pilgrim Memorial (1872), p. 8:

Why has no painter immortalized his name by transferring to canvass this Sabbath scene [on Clark’s Island], the first ever witnessed on the shores of New England? As an illustration of the true Pilgrim spirit, nothing can exceed it. We see them now, in imagination, grouped in devout posture around a forest fire, while “Deacon Carver,” the newly elected governor, reads from his pocket Bible an appropriate chapter, and “lines” a favorite psalm, which gives vent to full-hearted and high-sounding praise. We hear the fervent prayers and earnest prophesyings of Bradford and Winslow, who, though yet young, are much experienced in these exercises. We behold the solemnity that rests even on the sailor’s countenance, as, silently musing on perils recently passed, he participates in the service, while not a rising cloud, nor breaking wave, nor frightened sea-gull escapes his ever watchful eye.

But why are they there, under the open canopy of heaven, on that raw December day? Because it was just there that the Sabbath overtook them, while searching to find a place of settlement for themselves and their little ones, whom they left four days ago at the end of Cape Cod, on board the May-Flower, in charge of a captain who begins to talk of setting them all ashore on the sand, unless they find a place soon.* But how is it that, under such a pressing necessity they can spare the time for so much psalm-singing, and prayer, and prophesying? Do they not know that works of “necessity and mercy” are lawful on that day? Yes, but they do not believe that their present necessities are sufficient to justify a suspense of the Sabbath law in the sight of God. They are even more scrupulous than that; rather than approach the Lord’s Day under such bodily exhaustion as will unfit them for religious worship (an essential part of their Sabbath observance), they would spend the whole of Saturday in recovering tired nature from extra fatigue, and in preparing for the Sabbath, — as they actually did.

Here we have the Pilgrim Sabbath, not as discussed in a learned treatise, not as explained in a catechism; not as enforced in a sermon, but as actually kept, and that, too, under circumstances which exclude all suspicion of any sham observance — any mere pretence of religious strictness.

* In Bradford’s Journal, lately discovered in the Fallhane library, England, and printed by the Massachusetts Historical Society, the account is given thus, immediately after the record of their perilous escape to Clark’s Island on that stormy Friday night. “But though this had been a day and night of much trouble and danger unto them, yet God gave them a morning of comfort and refreshing (as usually he doth to his children), for the next day was a fair sunshining day, and they found themselves to be on an island secure from the Indians, where they might dry their stuff, fix their pieces and rest themselves, and give God thanks for his mercies and their manifold deliverances. And this being the last day of the week, they prepared to keep the Sabbath.”

 

And What About Now?

We are now about to begin the year 2020. The infamous year that we have been warning you about since 2005. This current Jubilee Cycle began in 1995 and it ends in 2044. We have proven this beyond all doubt and shown this to skeptics and believers alike and to date no one can disprove the 89 Sabbatical Year proofs we have discovered.
We have shown you that this current Jubilee Cycle is the 120th one since the creation of Adam and Yehovah said He would only give us 120 Shanah, cycles of time.

Gen 6:3  And Jehovah said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, in his erring; he is flesh. Yet his days shall be a hundred and twenty years.

We have also shown you that this current Jubilee Cycle is the 70th Jubilee Cycle since the Exodus, which is the 70 X 49s that Daniel was told about in the book of Daniel.

Dan 9:24  Seventy weeks are decreed as to your people and as to your holy city, to finish the transgression and to make an end of sins, and to make atonement for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy.
Dan 9:25  Know therefore and understand, that from the going out of the command to restore and to build Jerusalem, to Messiah the Prince, shall be seven weeks, and sixty-two weeks. The street shall be built again, and the wall, even in times of affliction.
Dan 9:26  And after sixty-two weeks Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself. And the people of the ruler who shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. And the end of it shall be with the flood, and ruins are determined, until the end shall be war.

Messiah the Prince, King David, came after 7 Jubilee Cycles starting from the Exodus. Then 62 Jubilee Cycles later just as the prophesy says brings us to 1995 and the start of the 70th, and final Jubilee Cycle, for the 12 tribes of Israel, Yehovah’s Anointed, which has been misinterpreted to be The Messiah.
We have also shown you that in the year 1972 The UN created the UNEP, The United Nations Environmental Program. Here is the history of this UNEP since 1972 and the various names it has adopted and the causes it promoted and the fears they have created.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP, UN Environment) is a programme of the United Nations that coordinates the organization’s environmental activities and assists developing countries in implementing environmentally sound policies and practices. It was founded by Maurice Strong, its first director, as a result of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (Stockholm Conference) in June 1972.
1987 Montreal Protocol for limiting emissions of gases blamed for thinning the planet’s protective ozone layer
1992 The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is an international environmental treaty adopted on 9 May 1992 and opened for signature at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro from 3 to 14 June 1992. The UNFCCC has 197 parties as of December 2015
1992 Agenda 21
The 1997 Kyoto Protocol
2012 – The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD), also known as Rio 2012, Rio+20 (Portuguese pronunciation: [??i.u ?maj? ?v?t?i]), or Earth Summit 2012 was the third international conference on sustainable development aimed at reconciling the economic and environmental goals of the global community.
The Paris Accord on Climate Change 2016
UNEP in 1989, 30 years ago, predicted “entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.”[21][22]
UNEP in 2005, 14 years ago, predicted “50 million people could become environmental refugees by 2010, fleeing the effects of climate change.”‘[23]

That one week spoken of in Daniel goes from June 1972 until June 2020. Read Daniel 9:27 to understand that one week is a 49 year period which is exactly what the UNEP is, a covenant made with many nations, in fact all nations around the world.

Dan 9:27  And he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week. And in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the offering to cease, and on a corner of the altar desolating abominations, even until the end. And that which was decreed shall be poured on the desolator.

Daniel 9:26 tells us that the Anointed, which is Israel and not Yehshua, will be cut off after the 69th week or 1996. After 1996 we can plan on Israel, all 12 tribes being cut off. Daniel 9:27 says in the midst of the 49 year period which is the year 2020, that he will cause the daily offerings to cease.
I have focused on about a 100 year period of time in my family’s history. A history about the Huguenots who were lumped in with the Baptists, Calvinists and Lutherans. Many in each of these groups were Sabbath-keepers. My family were amongst the Huguenots and known as Huguenots and kept the Sabbath. They were forced to flee from city to city and to other countries. They were also tortured and raped and slaughtered when some of them were captured in those places they fled to. But some were able to flee before the trouble arrived.
The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre was a surprise attack that came after they all had gathered for a wedding.

Luk 17:26  And as it was in the days of Noah, so it also shall be in the days of the Son of Man.
Luk 17:27  They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark; and the flood came and destroyed them all.

Today we have the UN sponsoring and promoting the LGBT rights as a bargaining chip to receive their funds for climate change.

Luk 17:28  So also as it was in the days of Lot: they ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built;
Luk 17:29  but the day Lot went out of Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone from the heaven and destroyed them all.

In 2014 and 2015 millions of “Syrian Refugees” fled the Middle East to come to Europe. 75 % of them men under the age of 50, few women and few children. With ISIS in control of most of Syria and Iraq you would have expected to have millions of Christians fleeing the Middle East. But most are Muslim and they came from all parts of the Middle East and North Africa. The majority were Muslims and a minuscule number of Christians.
Now for some unknown reason, and maybe you can figure it out, the news is saying it is no longer safe for Jews in Europe or the UK. I have no idea why.

Jewish Agency head to Euro Parliament: Jews no longer safe on streets of Europe
‘Anti-Semitism in Europe is now a raging crisis,’ says Isaac Herzog, warning continent is facing one of the ‘darkest periods’ of recent Jewish history
Anti-Semitism on the rise in the EU
Research clearly shows that anti-Semitic abuse and violence is increasing in the EU. Following last week’s anti-Semitic attack in Halle, Germany, the EU has urged decisive action.
The UK Labour Party’s Antisemitism Is No Longer Deniable

The BBC is routinely disparaged by Israeli and British Jews for its political bias and hostile attitude towards Israel. But such accusations are not always warranted.
Last week, the current affairs program BBC Panorama fixed its spotlight on the phenomenon of antisemitism in the ranks of the British Labour Party. Under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, who regularly denies the phenomenon’s existence, one of Britain’s most important political parties has been cultivating an antisemitic atmosphere.
Anti-Semitism is rising in the U.S. — and many Jews blame Trump
BY AARON KEYAK | OCTOBER 28, 2019

Oct. 27 marked the one-year anniversary of the horrific shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. A lone gunman, armed with an AR-15, entered the sanctuary shouting anti-Semitic slurs, killing 11 congregants and injuring many others. The incident marked the deadliest assault on the Jewish community in the history of America.
Unfortunately, this act did not occur in isolation. Anti-Semitism is not only alive and dangerous in the United States, but it is on the rise.

On Oct. 12, a Jewish man in the Crown Heights neighborhood of New York was slapped across the face and called “a dirty Jew” — the latest in a growing series of violent assaults targeting Jews around Brooklyn.
Also in October, anti-Semitic posters were plastered to the doors of a synagogue in Grand Rapids, Michigan, featuring the head of Hitler with the caption “Did you forget about me?” and the slogan that it’s time for a “crusade against Semite-led subhumans.” (Additionally, J. recently reported on anti-Semitic hate flyers that were posted at a Modesto church; see tinyurl.com/jweekly-modestohate.)
In a just-released survey by the American Jewish Committee, more than 80 percent of Jewish respondents say they have witnessed an increase in anti-Semitic incidents in the United States over the past five years, with 43 percent indicating that the increase has been significant.

That anti-Semitism is spiking is not only a matter of perception, however. The Anti-Defamation League reported a 150 percent increase in recorded incidents comparing 2013 with 2018.

In the years leading up to WW II which began Sept 1, 1939, there were many signs that the Jews were in trouble.

The term “Final Solution” was a euphemism used by the Nazis to refer to their plan for the annihilation of the Jewish people.[4] Historians have shown that the usual tendency of the German leadership was to be extremely guarded when discussing the Final Solution. Euphemisms were, in Mark Roseman’s words, “their normal mode of communicating about murder”.[10]

From gaining power in January 1933 until the outbreak of war in September 1939, the Nazi persecution of the Jews in Germany was focused on intimidation, expropriating their money and property, and encouraging them to emigrate.[11] According to the Nazi Party policy statement, the Jews and Gypsies (although numerically fewer),[12] were the only “alien people in Europe”.[13] In 1936, the Bureau of Romani Affairs in Munich was taken over by Interpol and renamed The Center for Combating the Gypsy Menace.[13] Introduced at the end of 1937,[12] the “final solution of the Gypsy Question” entailed round-ups, expulsions, and incarceration of Romani in concentration camps built at, until this point in time, Dachau, Buchenwald, Flossenbürg, Mauthausen, Natzweiler, Ravensbruck, Taucha, and Westerbork. After the Anschluss with Austria in 1938, special offices were established in Vienna and Berlin to “facilitate” Jewish emigration, without covert plans for their forthcoming annihilation.[11]

The outbreak of war and the invasion of Poland brought a population of 3.5 million Polish Jews under the control of the Nazi and Soviet security forces,[14] and marked the start of a far more savage persecution, including mass killings.[6] In the German-occupied zone of Poland, Jews were forced into hundreds of makeshift ghettos, pending other arrangements.[15] Two years later, with the launch of Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, the German top echelon began to pursue Hitler’s new anti-Semitic plan to eradicate, rather than expel, Jews.[16] Hitler’s earlier ideas about forcible removal of Jews from the German-controlled territories in order to achieve Lebensraum were abandoned after the failure of the air campaign against Britain, initiating a naval blockade of Germany.[7] Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler became the chief architect of a new plan, which came to be called The Final Solution to the Jewish question.[17] On 31 July 1941, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring wrote to Reinhard Heydrich (Himmler’s deputy and chief of the RSHA),[18][19] authorising him to make the “necessary preparations” for a “total solution of the Jewish question” and coordinate with all affected organizations. Göring also instructed Heydrich to submit concrete proposals for the implementation of the new projected goal.[20][21]

Broadly speaking, the extermination of Jews was carried out in two major operations. With the onset of Operation Barbarossa, mobile killing units of the SS, the Einsatzgruppen, and Order Police battalions were dispatched to the occupied Soviet Union for the express purpose of killing all Jews. During the early stages of the invasion, Himmler himself visited Bia?ystok in the beginning of July 1941, and requested that, “as a matter of principle, any Jew” behind the German-Soviet frontier was to be “regarded as a partisan”. His new orders gave the SS and police leaders full authority for the mass murder behind the front lines. By August 1941, all Jewish men, women, and children were shot.[22] In the second phase of annihilation, the Jewish inhabitants of central, western, and south-eastern Europe were transported by Holocaust trains to camps with newly-built gassing facilities. Raul Hilberg wrote: “In essence, the killers of the occupied USSR moved to the victims, whereas outside this arena, the victims were brought to the killers. The two operations constitute an evolution not only chronologically, but also in complexity.”[9] Massacres of about one million Jews occurred before plans for the Final Solution were fully implemented in 1942, but it was only with the decision to annihilate the entire Jewish population that extermination camps such as Auschwitz II Birkenau and Treblinka were fitted with permanent gas chambers to kill large numbers of Jews in a relatively short period of time.[23][24]

Brethren, we all know that Satan seeks to destroy those who keep the Torah and those who keep the Sabbath and Holy Days. It is not just the Jews that will be slaughtered next time but all of the 12 tribes of Israel, whether or not they keep the Sabbath or Holy Days.

With the invasion of Europe by millions of Muslim men posing as refugees, and many of them going to Germany itself at the invitation of Chancellor Merkel, you are witnessing the end-time prophecy of Daniel. The Iron is Germany and the clay Islam which does not mix with the iron.

Dan 2:40  And the fourth kingdom shall be as strong as iron. Since iron crushes and smashes all things; and as the iron that shatters all these, it will crush and shatter.
Dan 2:41  And as to that which you saw: the feet and toes, part of potters’ clay and part of iron; the kingdom shall be divided. But there shall be in it the strength of the iron, because you saw the iron mixed with miry clay.
Dan 2:42  And as the toes of the feet were part of iron and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly brittle.
Dan 2:43  And as you saw iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mix themselves with the seed of men. But they shall not cling to one another, even as iron is not mixed with clay.
Dan 2:44  And in the days of these kings, the God of Heaven shall set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed. And the kingdom shall not be left to other peoples, but it shall crush and destroy all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever.
Dan 2:45  Because you saw that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it crushes the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold, the great God has made known to the king what shall occur after this. And the dream is certain, and its meaning is sure.

It is my belief that those of you who believe, will be tucked away in the skirt of this prophecy in Ezekiel, and even then some of you will be martyred.

Eze 5:1  And you, son of man, take a sharp sword to yourself, take a barber’s razor also, and cause it to pass on your head and on your beard. Then take scales to weigh, and divide the hair.
Eze 5:2  You shall burn a third part with fire in the middle of the city, when the days of the siege are fulfilled; and you shall take a third part and beat around it with a sword; and you shall scatter a third part in the wind, and I will draw out a sword after them.
Eze 5:3  Also you shall take a few of them in number, and tie them up in your skirts.
Eze 5:4  Then take of them again, and throw them into the middle of the fire, and burn them in the fire; for a fire shall come forth from them into all the house of Israel.
Eze 5:5  So says the Lord Jehovah: This is Jerusalem. I have set it in the middle of the nations, and all around her are the lands.
Eze 5:6  And she has changed My judgments into wickedness more than the nations, and defiled My Laws more than the countries that are all around her; for they have rejected My judgments and My Laws; they have not walked in them.
Eze 5:7  Therefore so says the Lord Jehovah: Because you multiplied more than the nations that are all around you, and have not walked in My Laws, neither have kept My judgments, nor have done according to the judgments of the nations all around you;
Eze 5:8  therefore so says the Lord Jehovah; Behold, I, even I, am against you, and will carry out judgments in your midst before the nations.
Eze 5:9  And I will do in you that which I have not done, and the like of which I will never do again, because of all your abominations.
Eze 5:10  So the fathers shall eat the sons in your midst, and the sons shall eat their fathers. And I will execute judgments in you, and I will scatter the whole remnant of you into all the winds.
Eze 5:11  Therefore, as I live, says the Lord Jehovah, surely, because you have defiled My sanctuary with all your detestable things, and with all your abominations, therefore I will also withdraw; nor shall My eye spare you, nor will I have any pity.
Eze 5:12  A third part of you shall die with the plague, and shall be consumed with the famine in your midst. And a third part shall fall by the sword all around you; and I will scatter a third part into all the winds, and I will draw out a sword after them.
Eze 5:13  So My anger shall be fulfilled, and I will cause My fury to rest on them, and I will be comforted. And they shall know that I Jehovah have spoken it in My zeal, when I have fulfilled My fury in them.
Eze 5:14  And I will make you a waste and a curse among the nations that are all around you, in the sight of all who pass by.
Eze 5:15  So it shall be a reproach and a taunt, a chastening and a horror to the nations which are all around you, when I shall execute judgments against you in anger and in fury and in rebukes among them. I Jehovah have spoken it.
Eze 5:16  When I shall send on them the evil arrows of famine, which shall be for their ruin, which I will send to destroy you; even I will increase the famine on you, and break your staff of bread;
Eze 5:17  yea, I will send on you famine and evil beasts, and you will be bereaved. And pestilence and blood shall pass among you; and I shall bring a sword on you. I Jehovah have spoken.

Flight To Pella

The fourth-century church fathers Eusebius and Epiphanius of Salamis cite a tradition that before the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 the Jerusalem Christians had been miraculously warned to flee to Pella (Tabaquat Fahil) in the region of the Decapolis across the Jordan River.

The people of the Church in Jerusalem were commanded by an oracle given by revelation before the war to those in the city who were worthy of it to depart and dwell in one of the cities of Perea which they called Pella. To it those who believed on Christ traveled from Jerusalem, so that when holy men had altogether deserted the royal capital of the Jews and the whole land of Judaea…”
—Eusebius, Church History 3, 5, 3

This heresy of the Nazoraeans exists in Beroea in the neighbourhood of Coele Syria and the Decapolis in the region of Pella and in Basanitis in the so-called Kokaba (Chochabe in Hebrew). From there it took its beginning after the exodus from Jerusalem when all the disciples went to live in Pella because Christ had told them to leave Jerusalem and to go away since it would undergo a siege. Because of this advice they lived in Perea after having moved to that place, as I said.”
—Epiphanius, Panarion 29,7,7-8

For after all those who believed in Christ had generally come to live in Perea, in a city called Pella of the Decapolis of which it is written in the Gospel that it is situated in the neighbourhood of the region of Batanaea and Basanitis, Ebion’s preaching originated here after they had moved to this place and had lived there.”
—Epiphanius, Panarion 30, 2, 7

So Aquila, while he was in Jerusalem, also saw the disciples of the disciples of the apostles flourishing in the faith and working great signs, healings, and other miracles. For they were such as had come back from the city of Pella to Jerusalem and were living there and teaching. For when the city was about to be taken and destroyed by the Romans, it was revealed in advance to all the disciples by an angel of God that they should remove from the city, as it was going to be completely destroyed. They sojourned as emigrants in Pella, the city above mentioned in Transjordania. And this city is said to be of the Decapolis.”
—Epiphanius, On Weights and Measures 15

Brethren, You have been warned.

Pro 22:3  A prudent one foresees the evil and hides himself, but the simple pass on and are punished.
Proverbs 27:12  A sensible one foresees the evil and hides himself, but the simple pass on and are punished.
Proverbs 14:16  A wise one fears and departs from evil, but the fool rages and is sure.
Exodus 9:20  He that feared the Word of Jehovah among the servants of Pharaoh made his servants and his cattle to flee into the houses.
21  And he that did not regard the Word of Jehovah left his servants and his cattle in the field.

Isaiah 26:20  Come, my people, enter into your rooms and shut your doors around you; hide for a little moment, until the fury has passed by.
21  For behold, Jehovah comes out of His place to punish the people of the earth for their iniquity; the earth also shall reveal her blood, and shall no more cover her dead.

1 Thessalonians 5:2  For you yourselves know accurately that the day of the Lord comes like a thief in the night.
3  For when they shall say, Peace and safety! Then sudden destruction comes on them, as travail upon a woman with child. And they shall not escape.
4  But you, brothers, are not in darkness, that the Day should overtake you like a thief.
5  You are all the sons of light and the sons of the day. We are not of the night, or of darkness.
6  Therefore let us not sleep as the rest do, but let us watch and be calm.
Hebrews 11:7  By faith Noah, having been warned by God of things not yet seen, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house, by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.

My Prayer-Our Prayers

I would like to close out this week’s newsletter with my personal prayer to Yehovah. Some think I am a mean old hard ass and they may be right. I want to share my prayer this week and the one I often say so that many of you can know I do empathize with your situation. I struggle with many of the same problems.

My Father, Yehovah, my King, and my Husband, my Messiah and Redeemer, please hear my prayer and forgive me for those sins I do against you. ( I then list the ones I know about). And show me my sins I do not know I do. Help me to become perfect as you want me to be.

I thank you, Father, for this calling that you have called me to do. I thank you for revealing to me your many truths about the Sabbath and Holy Days and the Sabbatical and Jubilee years. You called me when I was not looking for you. You called me when I hated all religions and wanted nothing to do with the Bible. You called me and you did so in such a way that I would respond and begin to search for you. Even though I was heading for the bottom of the barrel and loving every moment as I was on my way down to the bottom.
You called me!
Why?

You have shown me that the end is about to begin and in fact, has begun in this 120th Jubilee Cycle. You have shown me about the 70 Jubilee Cycles of Daniel 9 and how they too, end in this 120th Jubilee Cycle. Thank you for showing me these truths and blessing me with the task to share these truths. I am sorry I am not able to do more. I am sorry that I could not reach more. I am sorry that I have turned some people off and hardened their hearts against knowing your truths. I am sorry.
I am sorry for my doubts about whether these things are true or not. I find it so hard to believe that of all people you have shown me these things and have had me speak out about them. Why did you not choose someone with more support or a better speaker or much more money? Why have you seemingly hemmed us in and prevented us from reaching the masses with this message? Why?
My Father, my Wife has broken her arm and is going to be off work for about a year. She needs me to help her in so many ways. Dressing her and helping her in at night as she sleeps on the recliner to keep her arm in the proper position. She cannot sleep in bed with me due to her arm. And then this week my son moved back home. He too now needs my help while he struggles to get back on his feet; to get ahead. Both my wife working again and my son getting ahead really do not matter if the things you have shown me come to pass this coming Shavuot 2020. But their dependency upon me is great at this time, as I prepare for the Philippines. Is this a test for me?

You Father, you who can do anything, anything at all, why have you not removed the veil that blinds my wife and my children and their spouses from seeing these truths? Why have you made me walk this walk all these past 38 years alone and with many fights? I know it was so that I would prove things to justify why I was following you. I know, I get that. But now here we are, at the doors of all hell are coming loose. Women being raped and murdered. My beautiful daughter and daughter in law and my beautiful granddaughter who just turned 9 weigh on my mind constantly. My two sons and son in law and my four grandsons, when I think about the famine that is coming and the sword and the many horrors you have described, I cry for my family. I grieve for my family and how they have rejected you.
Yehshua said no one, NO ONE can come to you unless you call them. No one. You decide whom you are going to call and then you remove the veil from their eyes. No matter how great an orator I am, I can not save one person. Not one. Not even my own family. Not my parents or any of my relatives. NONE! They all come only when you allow it and only when you remove the veil from their eyes.
Father, I beg you please do not send me into the coming time of trouble knowing my family is being brutalized and killed. Please perform a miracle on each one of them and remove the veil from their eyes so they can be with me and help do this work in the Philippines and to the rest of the world. Everything I may think I have done for you is as nothing before you. I have nothing to barter with you for them. I am already yours and you own me. What can I do or what can I give you to save them?

When I pray this to you, as I have so many times, the salt stings my eyes from the tears I have shed as I drive back and forth to work. And even now they run down my face as I beg you for mercy on my family’s behalf. I know millions of others will die and they too will be shedding tears and living in fear and terror. So why should my family get a pass? I understand. I know that many must die. I know. But I still ask on their behalf.

When I go and do the work you have shown me to be done, at the end of that day, to whom will I come home to? Who will I be able to share the events of that day with? Who will hug me when everything is being destroyed? My tears have filled many bottles, please do not ignore them. I know you are angry and are about to unleash your fury. I know it will be very bad and I have no idea how bad it will be. So I plead for my family to you, the only one who can save them.

Father, there are many others just like me. Their loved ones do not walk this walk with them. Others do not have the means to flee nor to take care of themselves while they are gone. How do we do this? How?
Father, we are not looking back yearning for the comforts of Sodom as Lots wife did. We are looking forward and seeing that the events about to take place are unprecedented and our fear and trepidation is real and you have said that this exodus will cause everyone to forget the first one, it will be so big. Yet even in that Exodus, they brought all their families with them. Then they died over the 42 years in the wilderness.

But they had their families.

Father, I beg you for mercy on my family. And not them alone but the families of all the brethren you are calling at this time. Please have mercy on us. Let the world rejoice in the name of Yehovah and how He saved us in this most dreadful time and how You, Yehovah, even saved our families and how they too believed once you opened their eyes to all these end-time events. Yes, Father let them rejoice in your GREAT NAME as I do. Let my voice sing praises to you with them together and no longer alone.

You hardened Pharaoh’s heart so that you could bring Glory to your name throughout the world. For the sake of those, you have now called, perform an even greater miracle and soften the hearts of our families so that they will now give glory to you. Do the opposite of what you did to Pharaoh and call our families. Have mercy on us. Please.

But know this, my Father. If what I ask is not your will, then let your will be done, and I will do the task you have set in front me until you take my breath away. Thank you, Father, for hearing my prayer and for all you have already done for me and giving me such riches in knowing you; the little that I do know. Thank you, Yehovah for all you do for all of us.

 

1 Comment

  1. Jan

    Your review of your ancestry sent me on a hunt again looking for updates since my last search several years ago. My Father’s line is from Netherlands and they are from Dutch Reformed church. I have a Maternal great grandmother who is full blooded German and one branch all came to America roughly the same time. Again, the German Reformed church as well as the German Lutheran church.
    A group of families from this branch came to America to escape the Catholic Church persecutions. Most of their children married within these families. One daughter however marries Benjamin Frye, the son of Heinrich Frey. Now I also read of Mennonites in the same grouping as these families, but couldn’t tell if that was what they were. It described the Mennonites as refusing to accept Christian holidays and other things too.
    Upon looking at some history on Heinrich Frey, I found this:
    NOTE: Anna Catharine (nee Levering) and her husband Heinrich “Henry” Frey were honored in 1910 by their descendents as pioneering HUGUENOTS with a memorial in the cemetery where they are buried with some of their family history upon it.
    WOW…. I’ve got some Huguenots in me too!
    They are buried at Bertolet’s Mennonite Church Cemetery, Frederick, Montgomery Co., PA.
    So, some Huguenots came to Pennsylvania and became part of my line. Apparently Huguenots and Mennonites are the same or similar??? A memorial as pioneering Huguenots, but in a Mennonite cemetery. Actually, I see these faiths merged at some point as they lived in same communities.
    I found this on a google search: “Some Huguenot immigrants settled in Central Pennsylvania. There, they assimilated with the predominately Pennsylvania German settlers.”
    So I continued to trace this Frye line and I find a linkage back to Norman ancestry:
    “Rosier’s parents were natives of England and of Norman Ancestry. They removed from (Scrooby) England with the Puritans because of religious principles. Rosier and probably his father, were of the Purists or Separatists of England and religious refugees.”
    I also traced one line of these German families back to the 1500’s and their Prussia Coat of Arms has the Lion of Judah in it. That is really cool.
    I also found an in-depth genealogical book that I have no time to analyze, but it speaks of prior to the year 1113 the power of the pope has increased and the kaiser has decreased. It speaks of great slaughterings from that time on.
    And to top it off, 2 ½ years ago we moved to a little town that is ½ Amish and ½ Mennonite. I love it here. Seems like home. So now I’m going to need to visit the Mennonite historical building to look into any Huguenot connection.
    I see this definition: Huguenots were a religious group of French Protestants. Huguenots were French Protestants who held to the Reformed tradition of Protestantism.
    So I have now found two lines extending into France. Many more I’m sure yet to be uncovered and just no time to do so.
    Great newsletter Joe.

    Reply

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