"More than three thousand two hundred and fifty years after Buddha entered Nirvana, many evil kings were born and caused suffering to all living things.  In order to suppress them, Buddha gave the order and Genghis Khan was born."
     So said Lubsang-Danzin in The Golden Chronicle, which he composed around the year 1651.  One of the remarkable dimensions of the story of Genghis Khan, the Mongolian warlord and king who amassed the greatest land empire the world has ever seen, is the hold he exercised on the global imagination.  For many European Christians of his time, Genghis Khan appeared to be the incarnation of a long prophesied "Christian king of the East" who would come to liberate the world from the grip of Islam.  On the other hand, as we see in this observation from Lubsang-Danzin, Genghis Khan was revered by Buddhists, too, that for some Buddhists, Genghis Khan was born to set the world right.
     Throughout human history, many people have longed for a king who come to save the world as they know it.  Realizing the extent of the world's flaws and problems, they have longed for one who would come to eliminate them altogether.  One of the central tenets of Judaism, one which found its way into Christianity, is that one day, a day no one knows, God will come.  One day, God will come to the earth to restore it to its original wonder, the pristine and unimaginable harmony it enjoyed before human transgression. Though at Christmas we celebrate God's coming to the planet as savior and Messiah, the God-man, God and human being, we do so understanding that one day he will come again, as king, human no more, undisputed God of all creation.
     Although many admired and longed for him, Genghis Khan is but a faint shadow of what real human longing can be, the inescapable longing for and dreaming of God.