Opened Logos and like usual I scroll through the home page, sometimes they have good sales posted, and I see 5 things you don't know about John Calvin. So curiosity got the best of me so I opened it and this struck me as a common theme among the christian community.


So both Calvin and Luther claimed to have a sudden conversion experience. This is a common theme that I have heard among christians as well, especially among their clergy. I have herd numerous stories of the pastors who lived a life of sin, seeking pleasures of the flesh, who all of a sudden have this experience and then they knew Jesus and dedicated their life to him. I could be wrong but in my view if you are not seeking God you will not find Him, it's the whole purpose of free will, we have to make the first move to come to know Yahowah, He does not impose himself on us.

So I am sure most know where I am going with this. Paul's story was similar to this. This is one of the other things about Paul's story that has troubled me for some time. His "conversion" account has Yah violating free will. Paul was not seeking Yah when he was on the road to Damascus, he was steeped in the religion of Judaism, and persecuting and executing those who were trying to follow Yah. In this his story is similar to that of Constantine, who claimed a miraculous conversion. I could be wrong but I do not buy these miraculous conversion stories be they Paul, Constantine, Luther or Calvin. If they said they were studying Scripture and something finally clicked and they understood it perhaps I would put some credibility into their conversion, depending upon what they teach and rather it correlates with what Yah taught us.

Sorry if I went off on a tangent here, I just read that and had to share.

Wow!!! Didn't realize how many "church leaders" had Pauline conversions. As I think about the many testimonies I have had, I do realize many conversion stories I hear amongst Christians are similar.
In fact, the "alter call" of my churches is basically "come down here and get saved or burn in hell", pretty much creating more forced conversions. I have seen them go as far as "what if you die today, do you want to burn in hell forever".

I also found out something striking about Calvin - he had a hand in the death sentence of Michael Servetus on the grounds of "heresy". Yup, the Calvin that was himself almost a victim of being burned alive by the RCC himself testified against a man and in fact influenced the trial so that another person he disagreed with on doctrine killed for disagreeing. Guess what the charge was? Servetus had issues with the concept of the "Trinity" and said that it wasn't consistent with scripture and was actual pagan. He stated that the word "Trinity" should be removed from Christian teachings because it wasn't found in the scriptures. For that, John Calvin participated fully in the trial against this man knowing full well the man would be burned on a steak. The story is quite amazing and Wikipedia has a pretty good write up about the affair that can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Servetus

Hearing about his conversion story, I am even more convinced that Christianity is a religion of Paul, not of Yahoshua, YHWH, or even "Jesus Christ".

Yes, the dialog that took place between Moshe and YHWH was the most interesting exchange I have found in all of Scripture thus far! Contrary to everything I had been "taught" about interacting with God (basically, He talks and you do what He says or He will kill you), Moshe and YHWH actually negotiated. In fact, Moshe was able to get YHWH to change His plans a bit - allowing Moshe to have Aahron speak on his behalf. It wasn't at all a one sided conversation in which Moshe had no say and no choices.

In fact, the entire story of Moshe infers that Moshe had a heart for the children of Israel, knowing they were his brothers and sisters (thus, the killing of the Egyptian). Moshe didn't leave because he didn't want to be in Egypt, he left because he was scared about the murder he had committed. So, sending Moshe back to Egypt wasn't completely an "against his will" sort of conversion. For instance, Paul's conversion made him completely change - he was on a mission of hate of the Jews and had the stuffing beat out of him by the "lighted messenger". Not so for Moshe, he wasn't inherently against the children of Israel. On the contrary, he left Egypt because he had tried to defend Israel in his own strength. YHWH simply helped Moshe understand his greater mission and that it wouldn't be completed in Moshe own strength, but in the awesome and perfect strength from YHWH. So, when we look at the entire story of Moshe in context, while his conversion experience was unique, it wasn't really against his will or completely out of his character. He was also allowed to negotiate a bit on how the mission would be completed.

Also, unlike Paul - when Moshe returned the people he had been sent to help accepted him and the help his was offering. They accepted what he required and did as he ask. Not so for Paul, most of the places he went to "help" people - they often ended up running him out of town. Even contrast that with Yahoshua - while the religious leaders rejected Him - the people he came to relieve from bondage did accept him. It was the rabbinical leadership that hated Yahoshua - but He didn't come for them, in fact He told them that their father was Satan. There were thousands of people that came to sit and hear Yahoshua speak and none of them tried to kill him. Paul was always running for his life, not so much from the rabbinical leaders only - but from everyone.

You are also correct in that the concept of forced conversions is readily accepted in the Christian religion. In fact, the more someone says that "didn't" want to be "saved", yet God made them by some sort of intervention (usually by almost killing them or having something else quite terrible happen) the more fame they have within the Christian church. The concept is, they must be "so important" that God couldn't wait for them to find Him - He had to step out of heaven and do a mini Paul experience.

I would concur. Yahowah dictated the Towrah to Moshe so certainly in the instance of Abraham Yahowah wanted us to read that conversation, and I think the same is true for the instance of Moshe, Yah wanted us to read that conversation because it exemplifies the relationship He wishes to have with us.

To be precise it doesn't go straight from 9 to 27, it's just that the verses in between are not extant. I only say this because there are areas in the older text DSS and Greek Manuscripts where verses are not just not extant, but the evidence is that they were never there. So for example the 6th verse is instantly followed by say the 9th verse, so we know that 7 and 8 were not in the text at that time. With Exodus 4 this is not the case, we have verse 9 and then we don't have anything until verse 27.

Just trying to clarify I would hate for someone to get the impression that these verse never existed, they did we may not be positive that what we have is exactly what was written, but they where here. And since what is written is consistent with Scripture and Yahowah I see no reason to doubt it.