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Jim Bramlett
Aug 18, 2004
Interesting facts discovered about the Olympics:
1896: Theodore Herzl's pamphlet Der Judenstaat, The Jewish State, was published. It heralded the coming of age of Zionism. The first Zionist Congress was held the next year.
1896: The very same year, the very first modern Olympic Games opened in Athens, Greece during the first week of April. (Connection? God's end-time clock for Israel begins ticking the same year as the beginning of what was originally a Zeus-honoring movement to bring together the nations of the world in a human effort at peace, without the Prince of Peace.)
1936: 40 years later at the games in Berlin, Adolph Hitler introduced the "torch relay" for the very first time. The torch relay culminates ceremonial lighting of the flame at the Olympic stadium.
Hitler also popularized the five interlocking rings as the symbol of the games.
Hitler tried to turn the 1936 Berlin Games into a celebration of the Third Reich. At noon on July 20, 1936, two weeks before the start of the Berlin Games, a Greek "high priestess" and fourteen girls wearing classical robes gathered in the ancient Stadium of Olympia, and used parabolic mirrors to focus the sun's rays on a wand until it burst into flame. As a torch was kindled, a chant went up - "Oh fire, lit in an ancient and sacred place, begin your race" followed by a ceremony where one of Pindar's Pythian odes was sung to ancient instruments. The so-called Olympic flame was then carried by 3,075 relay runners from Greece, passed from magnesium torch to torch (each one bearing the logo of the German arms manufacturer Krupp), until it finally lit a colossal brazier in the Berlin stadium before the Führer's approving gaze. The Opening Ceremony was presided over by Adolph Hitler who formally opened the Games. The huge Bell tolled while thousands of carrier pigeons were released. The airship Hindenburg flew over the stadium, adorned with Olympic rings and swastikas, as the German team began their march past. The 1896 marathon winner, Spyros Louis, presented Hitler with an olive branch from Olympia as a symbol of peace and friendship.
The true reality of the 1936 German Olympics is that six Olympic winners would not survive the War and be put to death by the Germans.
The Olympic Games were established over 2,500 years ago in Olympia, southern Greece, to honor Zeus, following a tradition created by Hercules, who competed there for the prize of an olive branch. Centuries later all Greek cities honored a truce every four years in order for their best athletes to compete at Olympia. It is estimated that the first formal Olympics were held in 776 B.C. The Games were banned as pagan rituals in 396 A.D. by Roman emperor Theodosius. 15 centuries later, in 1896, the Olympic Games were brought back to life in Athens - then a small, poor country of around 130,000 people - by French sportsman, Pierre de Coubertin.
Jim
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