Thread: THE MURDER OF MICHAEL SERVETUS BY JEAN CAUVIN [the story Calvinists do not want men to know!]
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THE MURDER OF MICHAEL SERVETUS BY JEAN CAUVIN [the story Calvinists do not want men to know!]
Posted : 22 Nov, 2011 09:32 PM
THE MURDER OF MICHAEL SERVETUS BY JEAN CAUVIN
Let's begin with a scripture passage which proves that Jean Cauvin's having overseen the executions of 57 people at Geneva, were undoubtedly the acts of a mass-murderer.
"We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother[a] abides in death. 15 Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him." [I John 3:14-15]
Please read this last portion of verse 15 again, and know that according to the Word of God, Jean Cauvin was a murderer, and that he is not to experience eternal life.
"AND YOU KNOW THAT NO MURDERER HAS ETERNAL LIFE ABIDING IN HIM"
I remember when my Aunt and Uncle told me about Calvinism, and for years I struggled with the doctrines of Jean Cauvin. But what I found even harder to accept was the fact that Luther and Cauvin, in particular, were involved in mass-murder. Luther in the riots and killing of Catholics by Lutherans, and Cauvin for his personal involvement, not only in creating a religious government among men, but for his dictatorial stance that led ultimately to the deaths of 57 people during Cauvin's reign in Geneva.
I want to encourage you to do research on your own on Jean Cauvin, aka John Calvin, but for now I want to address the matter of Michael Servetus.
I have read where Donna tried to let Cauvin off, even pointing out that Cauvin tried to be lenient and see to it that Servetus was beheaded instead of being burned at the stake. Cauvin failed and Servetus was burned on a pile of his own books.
But what led to Servetus' death..?
Jean Cauvin and Michael Servetus came into contact through a common acquaintance, Jean Frellon of Lyon, sometime in 1546. They exchanged letters for a period of time debating doctrine, with Cauvin signing under the pseudonym Charles d' Espeville. Why Cauvin did this is not known to this day.
Servetus , a Spanish physician and Protestant theologian boldly criticised Cauvin's views of the doctrine of the Trinity and paedobaptism [infant baptism]. This obviously did not sit well with Cauvin, whose views of Christianity changed so much, that he eventually rewrote his Institutes of the Christian Religion, taking it from 21 chapters in the 1536 version, to 80 before his death [1564]. This demonstrated that Cauvin was a meglomaniac, suffering from a psycho-pathological condition which was characterized by his delusional fantasies of power, relevance, and/or omnipotence. It should be noted that although Cauvin had declared his 1558 revision of his Institutes to be "a new work", it was merely an in-depth exposition of the earlier work.
Eventually, Calvin lost patience with Servetus because he was unable to persuade him, and refused to respond any more. It is known that Michael Servetus wrote around thirty letters to Cauvin during this period.
Was this disagreement in doctrine mentioned during the trial of Michael Servetus? NO!
It appear that the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back, was when Servetus took a copy of Cauvin's Institutes and marked it up in the margins pointing to Cauvin's errors, and sent it to Cauvin in 1546. This caused Cauvin to explode. Cauvin sent a letter to his friend Ferel on February 13 1547 noting that if Servetus were to ever show his face in Geneva, he [Cauvin] would not allow him to leave alive:
"for if he came, as far as my authority goes, I would not let him leave alive."
Michael Servetus was no stranger to conflict, for he not only incurred the wrath of Jean Cauvin, but also of the Catholic Church.
In July of 1530 Servetus had disputed with Basel's Johannes Oecolampadius and was eventually expelled from the city, where he then went to Strasbourg, publishing a pamphlet against the doctrine of the Trinity, claiming that trinitarians had turned Christianity into a form of "tritheism", a belief in three separate gods.
Does anyone see anything worthy of death in this statement? And as for his views against the reformer's of paedobaptism. There is nothing in the scripture which states that infants are to be baptized. After all, even the Lord Jesus, the most wondrous example, was not baptized at birth!!
Where did Cauvin get this from? His belief was the infants were to be baptised upon the notion that the elect are born as the elect. But there is nothing in the scripture which supports such a church practice or doctrine.
Servetus believed that the divine Logos, was a manifestation of God in the flesh, and not a separate divine Person, He believed that the Divine Manifestation was incarnated into the human being, Jesus, when God's spirit overshadowed the Virgin Mary. Servetus taught that only from the moment of conception was the Son actually generated. And I have to agree!
Servetus believed that the Son was not eternal, but only the Logos from which He was formed. Which makes perfect sense; for the flesh is not eternal, but the Spirit in the Flesh which makes it live eternally. Thus Servetus refused to refer to Christ as "eternal Son of God" but preferred to call him "the Son of the eternal God."
Upon returning to Basel, Servetus published Dialogorum de Trinitate libri duo [Two Books of Dialogues on the Trinity] which caused such an uproar among both the Reformers and Catholics, that an Inquisition in Spain resulted his arrest. Servetus fled and was sentenced to be burned to death, in absentia.
There is evidence that Cauvin tried to assist the Inquisition regarding Michael Servetus in 1553. Why would a "reformer", one who is "protesting" the doctrines of Catholicism, try to have a man killed by the Catholic Church, if he was not doing everything in his power to bring about the death of Michael Servetus?
Servetus, for some strange reason went to Geneva, and attended a sermon being preached by none other than Cauvin himself. Cauvin moved his secretary to bring a list of accusation against Michael Servetus.
Cauvin wrote a letter to his friend Ferel dated Aug 20th 1553 where he boasted that he has had Servetus arrested:
"We have now new business in hand with Servetus. He intended perhaps passing through this city; for it is not yet known with what design he came. But after he had been recognized, I thought that he should be detained. My friend Nicolas summoned him on a capital charge. ... I hope that sentence of death will at least be passed upon him"
It should be noted, as well, that Michael Servetus' request to have his case heard by the Council of the Two Hundred, which was a council with 25 members was denied by the magistrates. It is historically noted that this decision of the judges, as well as their refusal to allow Michael Servetus to be assisted by effective counsel, are but two examples of the irregularities of the Michael Servetus affair which reflect the strong influence that Cauvin exerted upon Geneva.
The most damning evidence that Jean Cauvin was a murderous man bent on employing murder to control others is taken from a letter written in 1561 by Cauvin, himself, to the Marquis Paet, in which he boasts of murder being a useful tool:
"Honour, glory, and riches shall be the reward of your pains; but above all, do not fail to rid the country of those scoundrels who stir up the people to revolt against us. SUCH MONSTERS SHOULD BE EXTERMINATED, AS I HAVE EXTERMINATED MICHAEL SERVETUS the Spaniard."
Michael Servetus' final words were:
"Jesu, thou Son of the eternal God, have compassion upon me!"
THE MURDER OF MICHAEL SERVETUS BY JEAN CAUVIN [the story Calvinists do not want men to know!]
Posted : 23 Nov, 2011 12:38 AM
I know nothing about this Michael Servetus, I went in search and found much... therefore, since this about church history, I thought I would post what I found...
Murderer And Heretic John Calvin Burned Michael Servetus At The Stake by Dan Corner
A sample from Calvin's Dark Side (Chapter 3 of The Believer's Conditional Security) You are about to read an important part of church history from the Reformation period that has been so concealed in our day that very few people know the facts. Brace yourself for a shock.
On October 27, 1553 John Calvin, the founder of Calvinism, had Michael Servetus, the Spanish physician, burned at the stake just outside of Geneva for his doctrinal heresies!(1) Hence, the originator of the popular doctrine of "once saved, always saved" (known in certain circles as "the perseverance of the saints") violated the cry of the Reformation -- "Sola Scriptura" -- by murdering a doctrinal heretic without Scriptural justification. This event was something Calvin had considered long before Servetus was even captured, for Calvin wrote his friend, Farel, on February 13, 1546 (seven years prior to Servetus' arrest) and went on record as saying: "If he [Servetus] comes [to Geneva], I shall never let him go out alive if my authority has weight."(2) Evidently, in that day Calvin's authority in Geneva, Switzerland had ultimate "weight."
This is why some referred to Geneva as the "Rome of Protestantism"(3) and to Calvin as the "Protestant 'Pope' of Geneva."(4) During Servetus' trial, Calvin wrote: "I hope that the verdict will call for the death penalty."(5) All this reveals a side of John Calvin that is not well-known or very appealing, to say the least! Obviously, he had a prolonged, murderous hate in his heart and was willing to violate Scripture to put another to death and in a most cruel way. Although Calvin consented to Servetus' request to be beheaded, he acquiesced to the mode of execution employed. But why did Calvin have a death wish for Servetus? "To rescue Servetus from his heresies, Calvin replied with the latest edition of his 'Institutes of the Christian Religion,' which Servetus promptly returned with insulting marginal comments. Despite Servetus's [sic] pleas, Calvin, who developed an intense dislike of Servetus during their correspondence, refused to return any of the incriminating material."(6) "Convicted of heresy by the Roman Catholic authorities, Servetus escaped the death penalty by a prison break. Heading for Italy, Servetus unaccountably stopped at Geneva, where he had been denounced by Calvin and the Reformers. He was seized the day after his arrival, condemned as a heretic when he refused to recant, and burned in 1553 with the apparent tacit approval of Calvin."(7)
In the course of his flight from Vienne, Servetus stopped in Geneva and made the mistake of attending a sermon by Calvin. He was recognized and arrested after the service.(8) "Calvin had him [Servetus] arrested as a heretic. Convicted and burned to death."(9) From the time that Calvin had him arrested on August 14th until his condemnation, Servetus spent his remaining days: " ... in an atrocious dungeon with no light or heat, little food, and no sanitary facilities."(10) Let it be noted that the Calvinists of Geneva put half-green wood around the feet of Servetus and a wreath strewn with sulfur on his head.
It took over thirty minutes to render him lifeless in such a fire, while the people of Geneva stood around to watch him suffer and slowly die! Just before this happened, the record shows:"Farel walked beside the condemned man, and kept up a constant barrage of words, in complete insensitivity to what Servetus might be feeling. All he had in mind was to extort from the prisoner an acknowledgement [sic] of his theological error -- a shocking example of the soulless cure of souls. After some minutes of this, Servetus ceased making any reply and prayed quietly to himself.
When they arrived at the place of execution, Farel announced to the watching crowd: 'Here you see what power Satan possesses when he has a man in his power. This man is a scholar of distinction, and he perhaps believed he was acting rightly. But now Satan possesses him completely, as he might possess you, should you fall into his traps.' When the executioner began his work, Servetus whispered with trembling voice: 'Oh God, Oh God!' The thwarted Farel snapped at him: 'Have you nothing else to say?' This time Servetus replied to him: 'What else might I do, but speak of God!' Thereupon he was lifted onto the pyre and chained to the stake. A wreath strewn with sulfur was placed on his head. When thefaggots were ignited, a piercing cry of horror broke from him. 'Mercy, mercy!' he cried. For more than half an hour the horrible agony continued, for the pyre had been made of half-green wood, which burned slowly. 'Jesus, Son of the eternal God, have mercy on me,' the tormented man cried from the midst of the flames ...."(11)
Although we essentially have the same in the conversion of the repentant thief (Lk. 23:42,43 cf. Lk. 18:13) and the Scripture, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved" (Acts 2:21; Rom. 10:13), Farel still reckoned Servetus an unsaved man at the end of his life:"Farel noted that Servetus might have been saved by shifting the position of the adjective and confessing Christ as the Eternal Son rather than as the Son of the Eternal God."(12) "Calvin had thus murdered his enemy, and there is nothing to suggest that he ever repented his crime [sic].
The next year he published a defence [sic] in which further insults were heaped upon his former adversary in most vindictive and intemperate language."(13) As the Roman Catholics of 1415 burned John Hus(14) at the stake over doctrine, John Calvin, likewise, had Michael Servetus burned at the stake. But was doctrine the only issue? Could there have been another reason, a political one? "As an 'obstinate heretic' he had all his property confiscated without more ado. He was badly treated in prison.
It is understandable, therefore, that Servetus was rude and insulting at his confrontation with Calvin. Unfortunately for him, at this time Calvin was fighting to maintain his weakening power in Geneva. Calvin's opponents used Servetus as a pretext for attacking the Geneva Reformer's theocratic government. It became a matter of prestige -- always the sore point for any dictatorial regime -- for Calvin to assert his power in this respect. He was forced to push the condemnation of Servetus with all the means at his command."(15) "Ironically enough, the execution of Servetus did not really bolster the strength of the Geneva Reformation. On the contrary, as Fritz Barth has indicated, it 'gravely compromised Calvinism and put into the hands of the Catholics, to whom Calvin wanted to demonstrate his Christian orthodoxy, the very best weapon for the persecution of the Huguenots, who were nothing but heretics in their eyes.'
The procedure against Servetus served as a model of a Protestant heretic trial .... it differed in no respect from the methods of the medieval Inquisition .... The victorious Reformation, too, was unable to resist the temptations of power."(16)
These are partial References and End Notes 1. "On only two counts, significantly, was Servetus condemned -- namely, anti-Trinitarianism and anti-paedobaptism." Roland H. Bainton, Hunted Heretic (The Beacon Press, 1953), p. 207. [Comment: While Servetus was wrong about the Trinity, regarding his rejection of infant baptism, Servetus said, "It is an invention of the devil, an infernal falsity for the destruction of all Christianity" (Ibid., p. 186.) Many Christians of our day could only give a hearty "Amen" to this statement made about infant baptism. However, this is why, in part, Servetus was condemned to death by the Calvinists!] (return) 2. Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (Baker Book House, 1950), p. 371. (return) 3. The Wycliffe Biographical Dictionary Of The Church (Moody Press, 1982), p. 73. (return) 4. Stephen Hole Fritchman, Men Of Liberty (Reissued, Kennikat Press, Inc., 1968), p. 8. (return) 5. Walter Nigg, The Heretics (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1962), p. 328. (return) 6. Steven Ozment, The Age Of Reformation 1250-1550 (New Haven and London Yale University Press, 1980), p. 370. (return) 7. Who's Who In Church History (Fleming H. Revell Company, 1969), p. 252. (return) For more reading of this article please visit this site @ www.evangelicaloutreach.org
THE MURDER OF MICHAEL SERVETUS BY JEAN CAUVIN [the story Calvinists do not want men to know!]
Posted : 23 Nov, 2011 12:48 AM
Michael Servetus BIO
Michael Servetus (1509 or 1511-October 27, 1553), a Spaniard martyred in the Reformation for his criticism of the doctrine of the trinity and his opposition to infant baptism, has often been considered an early unitarian. Sharply critical though he was of the orthodox formulation of the trinity, Servetus is better described as a highly unorthodox trinitarian. Still, aspects of his theology�for example, his rejection of the doctrine of original sin�did influence those who later founded unitarian churches in Poland and Transylvania.
Public criticism of those responsible for his execution, the Reform Protestants in Geneva and their pastor, John Calvin, moreover, inspired unitarians and other groups on the radical left-wing of the Reformation to develop and institutionalize their own heretical views. Widespread aversion to Servetus' death has been taken as signaling the birth in Europe of religious tolerance, a principle now more important to modern Unitarian Universalists than antitrinitarianism. Servetus is also celebrated as a pioneering physician. He was the first to publish a description of the blood's circulation through the lungs.
Miguel Serveto grew up in Villanueva, Aragon, sixty miles north of Zaragossa. At age 14 he entered the service of Juan Quintana, a scholarly Franciscan monk. Even in his youth Servetus was struck by the fact that the doctrine of the trinity was a serious obtstacle to evangelization of the Moors and Jews. While studying law at the University of Toulouse in France, he read the Bible, which the invention of the printing press had made newly and dangerously available. He was surprised to find the trinity nowhere explicitly mentioned, much less defined, in the sacred text.
After two years at the University, Servetus was recalled, in late 1529, to the service of Quintana, who had been appointed confessor to Emperor Charles V. He was to accompany Quintana as he traveled with the imperial party to the coronation of the Emperor in Bologna, Italy. In Italy Servetus was horrified by riches of the church, the adoration accorded the Pope, and the worldliness of the priesthood. Some time in 1530 Servetus dropped out of the emperor's entourage and made his way to the Swiss city of Basel to join the Protestants. He stayed for months in the household of Oecolampadius, the local pastor and Reform leader.
Having worn out his welcome there with constant theological dispute, Servetus moved to more tolerant Strasburg. There, in 1531, he published De Trinitatis Erroribus (On the Errors of the Trinity). If Servetus hoped his book would persuade the new Protestant establishment to re-think orthodox trinitarian doctrine, as traditionally interpreted from the fourth century Council of Nicaea through the late mediaeval Scholastics, and replace it with his own formulation, he was quickly disappointed. T
hough Protestants admired some aspects of Servetus' thought, they deplored many others. Moreover, they were especially defensive concerning their trinitarian orthodoxy, having no desire to call upon themselves still more Roman Catholic denunciation. The Lutheran reformer Melanchthon, commenting on De Trinitatis Erroribus, lamented, "As for the Trinity you know I have always feared this would break out some day. Good God, what tragedies this question will excite among those who come after us!"
Servetus tried the effect of a more conciliatory volume, Dialogorum de Trinitate (Dialogues on the Trinity), published the following year. But in it he neither conceded anything important to his system, nor even softened the vituperation of his rhetoric. His second volume was neither intended nor received as a recantation. His books were confiscated, and he was warned out of several Protestant towns. Meanwhile, in 1532, the Supreme Council of the Inquisition in Spain began proceedings to summon him, or to apprehend him if he would not appear before the tribunal. His brother, Juan, a priest, was sent to persuade him to return to Spain for questioning. He was terrified. He later wrote of this period, "I was sought up and down to be snatched to my death." He fled to Paris and surfaced there with a new name, Michel de Villeneuve.
During his twelve-year residence in Vienne, living as the inoffensive Doctor of Medicine, Michel de Villeneuve, Servetus was busy in his spare time preparing his major theological treatise, Christianismi Restitutio (The Restoration of Christianity). He also began, in 1546, a fateful secret correspondence with his old acquaintance, John Calvin. By this time Calvin, author of Institutio Christianae Religionis (Institutions of Christian Religion), 1536, and pastor and chief reformer of Geneva, was the most prestigious figure in the Reform branch of Protestantism.
John Calvin
Calvin's theology had included little mention of the trinitarian nature of the godhead until, in 1537, another reformer, Pierre Caroli, accused him of being an Arian. Although cleared by a synod at Lausanne, Calvin was afterwards on his guard and determined to deal severely with deviations in this area of orthodoxy. The subject, associated with unpleasant memories, was distasteful to him. Servetus, surely aware of Calvin's previous lack of clarity on the subject, bombarded him with letters insisting on unorthodox conceptions more radical than those he had presented a decade and more ago. Calvin replied with increasing impatience and asperity. Servetus sent Calvin a manuscript of his yet unpublished Restitutio. Calvin reciprocated by sending a copy of the Institutio. Servetus returned it with abusive annotations. On the day Calvin broke off the correspondence, he wrote to his colleague, Guillaume Farel, that should Servetus ever come to Geneva, "if my authority is of any avail I will not suffer him to get out alive."
When Servetus published the Restitutio in early 1553 he sent an advance copy to Geneva. The printed text included thirty of his letters to Calvin. Soon afterward, at Calvin's behest, the identity of "Villeneuve" was betrayed to the Catholic Inquisition in Vienne. After his arrest and interrogation Servetus managed to escape from the prison. On his way, perhaps, to northern Italy where, he believed, there were people receptive to his writings, he made his way across the border to Geneva. Recognized at a Geneva church service, he was arrested and tried for heresy by Protestant authorities.
The secular officials were unable to establish that Servetus was an immoral disturber of the public peace. Nevertheless, he made damaging theological statements in the course of a written debate with Calvin. The Council of Geneva, after receiving the advice of churches in four other Swiss cities, convicted Servetus of antitrinitarianism and opposition to child baptism. Calvin asked that Servetus be mercifully beheaded. The Council insisted he should be burned at the stake.
Spectators were impressed by the tenacity of Servetus' faith. Perishing in the flames, he is said to have cried out, "O Jesus, Son of the Eternal God, have pity on me!" Farel, who witnessed the execution, observed that Servetus, defiant to the last, might have been saved had he but called upon "Jesus, the Eternal Son." A few months later Servetus was again executed, this time in effigy, by the Catholic Inquisition in France.
Many Protestants approved the Genevan sentence. Others, especially in Basel, were not so sure that heretics ought to be put to death. In answer to critics, Calvin quickly put together and published, in 1554, a justification, Defensio orthodoxae fidei, contra prodigiosos errores Michaelis Serveti Hispani (Defense of Orthodox Faith against the Prodigious Errors of the Spaniard Michael Servetus). He argued that to spare Servetus would have been to endanger the souls of many.
In the same year Calvin was answered by Sebastian Castellio, in Contra libellum Calvini (Against Calvin's Booklet). Castellio declared that "to kill a man is not to protect a doctrine; it is but to kill a man. When the Genevans killed Servetus, they did not defend a doctrine; they but killed a man." He said that "if Servetus had wished to kill Calvin, the Magistrate would properly have defended Calvin. But when Servetus fought with reasons and writings, he should have been repulsed by reasons and writings."
Nearly all copies of Servetus' magnum opus, Christianismi Restitutio, were destroyed by the authorities. Only three have survived. Its peculiar, unorthodox trinitarian theology, which made Servetus a hunted man in nearly every country in Western Europe, cannot be summarized simply. Unitarian scholar Earle Morse Wilbur, who translated De Trinitatis Erroribus, found the Restitutio less to his liking and passed over coming to terms with it. John Godbey, a Unitarian Universalist scholar of the Reformation, wrote that "most persons lack sufficient understanding of his views to make defensible statements about him."
Servetus rejected the doctrine of original sin and the entire theory of salvation based upon it, including the doctrines of Christ's dual nature and the vicarious atonement effected by his death. He believed Jesus had one nature, at once fully human and divine, and that Jesus was not another being of the godhead separate from the Father, but God come to earth. Other human beings, touched by Christian grace, could overcome sin and themselves become progressively divine. He thought of the trinity as manifesting an "economy" of the forms of activity which God could bring into play. Christ did not always exist. Once but a shadow, he had been brought to substantial existence when God needed to exercise that form of activity. In some future time he would no longer be a distinct mode of divine expression. Servetus called the crude and popular conception of the trinity, considerably less subtle than his own, "a three headed Cerberus." (In Greek mythology Cerberus is a three-headed dog-like creature of the underworld.)
Servetus did not believe people are totally depraved, as Calvin's theology supposed. He thought all people, even non-Christians, susceptible to or capable of improvement and justification. He did not restrict the benefits of faith to a few recipients of God's parsimonious dispensation of grace, as did Calvin's doctrine of the elect. Rather, grace abounds and human beings need only the intelligence and free will, which all human beings possess, to grasp it. Nor did Servetus describe, as did Calvin, an infinite chasm between the divine and mortal worlds. He conceived the divine and material realms to be a continuum of more and less divine entities. He held that God was present in and constitutive of all creation. This feature of Servetus' theology was especially obnoxious to Calvin. At the Geneva trial he asked Servetus, "What, wretch! If one stamps the floor would one say that one stamped on your God?"
Calvin asked if the devil was part of God. Servetus laughed and replied, "Can you doubt it? This is my fundamental principle that all things are a part and portion of God and the nature of things is the substantial spirit of God."
The devil was an important factor in Servetian theology. Servetus was a dualist. He thought God and the devil were engaged in a great cosmic battle. The fate of humanity was just a small skirmish in salvation history. He charged orthodox trinitarians with creating their doctrine of the trinity, not to describe God, but to puff themselves up as central to God's concern. Because they defined God to suit their own purposes, he called them atheists.
Servetus' demonology included the notion that the devil had created the papacy as an effective countermeasure to Christ's coming to earth. Through the popes the devil had taken over the church. Infant baptism was a diabolic rite, instituted by Satan, who in ancient days had presided over pagan infant sacrifices. He calculated that the Archangel Michael would soon come to bring deliverance and the end of the world, probably in 1585.
Dualism, millenarianism, and modal trinitarianism are not elements of the Servetian legacy which Unitarian Universalists today celebrate. Nor were they affirmed by those of Servetus' contemporaries most in sympathy with his thought, the Italians�later known as Socinians�who developed and spread an early form of Unitarianism in Poland. They took heart from some aspects of Servetus' doctrine and ignored or rejected the rest. Nevertheless, although Michael Servetus has now no real disciples and never had any, his pioneering life and the tragedy of his death did inaugurate, in a sense, the history of modern liberal religion.
It is one of the ironies of history that all the modern Unitarian churches and movements hold the memory of Michael Servetus in special honour�for every one of them developed historically from the Reformed tradition of John Calvin.
To read the complete Bio please visit this site: http://www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/michaelservetus.html
THE MURDER OF MICHAEL SERVETUS BY JEAN CAUVIN [the story Calvinists do not want men to know!]
Posted : 23 Nov, 2011 07:57 AM
Okay, I REALLY think you need to change your handle now.
You are doing what EVERY Arminian does!
I have seen this a HUNDRED TIMES.
First, the Arminian gets shown a TON of Scriptures...
They freak out because they have never seen those verses, or never thought them through. They are not preached on in their church, and they could go there for 50 years and those verses would NEVER be mentioned.
Then, about 20% of them just contradict the verses.
Jesus says no one can come to Him, and they turn right around and say EVERYONE CAN COME TO HIM.
Then, just like AWM, which now stands for "A Wacko Man", they trot off and find the articles that are character assassinations of John Calvin.
These articles are full of LIES written by Arminians, and even though they have been REFUTED MANY TIMES, it does not matter.
I know AWM thinks the article he found is the first one ever posted on this group, because when PJ did it, and Jude did it, and ET and ALL THE OTHER Arminians did it, they thought the same thing!
So, here are some FACTS left out of the article:
Servetus was captured, was about to go to trial, and he escaped from a prison. It was the ROMAN Catholic church, who put him on trial, and they convicted him and gave him the death penalty, but he escaped. So he already had the death penalty on him. He COULD have escaped to several countries but he went to Geneva for some stupid reason.
He COULD have kept a low profile, but he went straight to church and sat IN THE FRONT!
John Calvin had NO AUTHORITY to do ANYTHING to Servetus, so the VERY TITLE OF THIS POST IS A LIE.
Shockingly, CALVIN WAS THE PASTOR AND NOT THE POLICE OR A JUDGE!
He was a preacher and Bible teacher and theologian and he did not even have the right to vote!
THE TOWN COUNCIL CAPTURED AND TRIED SERVETUS AND PUT HIM TO DEATH.
John Calvin asked the council for a lesser penalty, and THE COUNCIL REJECTED CALVIN'S REQUEST.
CALVIN PRAYED WITH SERVETUS IN HIS JAIL CELL BEFORE HE WAS EXECUTED.
Now, SEE how a few FACTS LEFT OUT CAN CHANGE THE STORY?
And for the 100 TIME.......
Calvinism is a NICKNAME FOR FIVE POINTS OF DOCTRINE, and this nickname was not even invented until AFTER John Calvin was dead!
And there would not even BE a nickname if it were not for the ARMINIANS!!!
AWM, you need to HUMBLE yourself and quite acting like you have some secret fountain of knowledge no one else does.
I have seen twenty people just like you, and YOU have a LOT to learn, and some BAD attitudes that need correcting.
THE MURDER OF MICHAEL SERVETUS BY JEAN CAUVIN [the story Calvinists do not want men to know!]
Posted : 23 Nov, 2011 08:41 AM
WOW !!! James...that rebutle is reformation at its Peek...:rolleyes:...Name Calling...Beat Down...Submit or Quit Attitude...The persons here posted articles of Historical FACT about a mans ( Calvin ) character...He was as History states and no matter how many pieces of Documented History of any good he did when ya compare them side by side...there is more BAD than GOOD...T
The One GOOD along with other people (was) to getting the Ball Rolling on making the Bible acessable to people and out of the hands of the Catholic Church...Thank you Father GOD...:bow:...not thank you John Calvin for finding Augustines (deemed) Heretical Teachings and running with them during the Protestant Reform...
This is ONE of the Many Reasons Calvinism leaves a Bad Taste in the Heart of people...Christian or not...I love you James...truely...I just dont Buy the Holier than Thou...Reform...Be Blessed and hava Great Thanksgiving...xo
THE MURDER OF MICHAEL SERVETUS BY JEAN CAUVIN [the story Calvinists do not want men to know!]
Posted : 23 Nov, 2011 12:07 PM
Sir James writes:
"Then, just like AWM, which now stands for "A Wacko Man", they trot off and find the articles that are character assassinations of John Calvin."
Look at the venom of this heretical Calvinism, this Satanism veiled as faith in Christ, insulting men by calling them names..!
"A Wacko Man"..? [the same was said of Jesus and Michael Servetus; I am in excellent company!]
I was once a Calvinist, and defended the faith as staunchly as any ever, with the exception of the butchers of Geneva.
I KNOW that your denomination is vile and filled with the poisonous doctrines of hell. For such as seeks to use immature name calling, and murder, are obviously not of the Lord Jesus Christ. I have been delivered from the doctrines of men who seek to utilize dialectics to deceive men and connivingly convince other that "intellectual belief" is all that it takes, hence Cauvin's Damnable Request that Servetus repent, even in the flames..
If Feral, that demon walking in the flesh, truly believed that Servetus was damned, why did he constantly seek albeit most cruelly, a word of repentence from one that, by their own views, was to have been incapable of repentance..?
Servetus' calling out to God for mercy is all the true church of Jesus Christ needs to see where Servetus stood in those moment in the flames.
Men that know in their hearts that they may have wronged the Lord of Glory do not stand in their moment of greatest agony, and deny their error.
Michael Servetus' refusal to be cadjoled by Farel, that serpent's seed, proves that Cauvin was a heretic, instead.
Try as you hypocrites might to wash away the blood of that saint, you will never do it.
I do believe in eternal salvation and the election by grace, but I also believe that no true child of God should seek to use murder, which you so desperately desire to cover up, as your type has for centuries, blaming the repeated telling of this man's horrible death on "Aminianism".
I do not believe in Calvinism or Arminianism, I believe both are dialectical tools of Satan and his seed.
Thus your efforts to manipulate me will not avail you anything, so you can cease in your attempts to beguile me.
Please read and tell me where you read where I have insulted another?
I have stood as insult after insult has been heaved at me, and did not disgrace my Lord.
Now, I know that at least for the moment, you are filled with that foul spirit of hell; for none other would attempt to bend a man with childish insults to seeing things their way.
Oh, as a man I have been tempted, but restrained by the Holy Spirit, that same Spirit which is not in you, else you would not attempt to employ the same "Trauma-Based Mind Control" techniques as the Cauvin's and the Ferel's attempted to utliize in establishing what amounted to a demonic religious enterprise masquerading as being of Christ.
Oh, yes, I was once a Calvinist, too; but thank God I was delivered from all cursed religion that calls men names, and murders them, when dialectics doesn't work in bending them to someone's control!
The ONLY proof that is needed to verify that Jean Cauvin, aka John Calvin, was truly not a righteous man but a hypocrite, a wolf in sheep's clothing, is that Cauvin had no biblical authority to be in Geneva in the first place! If he was a true child of God, he would not have been there trying to set up a government among men, and resorting to the same means of controlling those men, as do other ungodly and worldly men, which is VIOLENCE.
True believers do not resort to violence!
The Word of God is very clear. We are to obey the word of God. This is reason why Jesus said, "Why do you call me Lord, and do not the things that I say?"
Why would anyone who claims to be a true disciple of Jesus Christ, think that Cauvin was right in being at Geneva, and in trying to set up a government of men, when the Lord Jesus, Himself, told the world, that we are to have no thought of a kingdom in this world:
"Pilate answered, �I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests delivered You to me; what have You done?� Jesus answered, �My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.�
'Pilate answered, �I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests delivered You to me; what have You done?� Jesus answered, �My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.� [John 18: 35-36]
As the Chief Priest was a hypocrite pretending to represent the Living God in bringing an accusation against the Lord of Glory, so Cauvin was a hypocrite in allegedly defending the faith when he sentenced Michael Servetus to death.
The fact that Cauvin was a religious hypocrite was manifested by the Father through this horrible event involving the death of a true saint, at the hands of "the Heretic of Geneva", as he was pretending that Jesus' kingdom is of this world.
There we have it once and for all. The Word of God proves that Cauvin was merely just another heretic trying to gather men unto himself and his fictitious corporatist entity, aka "the Alleged Body of Christ at Geneva!"
I will refrain from labeling you, SirJames, and instead of seeking vengeance myself, allow the Lord to tell you on Judgment Day what He knows of you..
Will you be there? Only the grace of God shall tell it..
It is not my place to say who shall be saved and who shall not be!
I am not the Father, and only He has that right, as it is His Sovereignly!
THE MURDER OF MICHAEL SERVETUS BY JEAN CAUVIN [the story Calvinists do not want men to know!]
Posted : 23 Nov, 2011 12:21 PM
Calvin is a fine example of how there is no relation between being an extraordinary student of the mysterious of the Word and having a Christian character. History will continue to recognise his abilities as the first systematic theologian and condemn him for hating a man so much that we wanted him death and never expressed anything but hatred and contempt for him even after his terrible sadistic execution.
THE MURDER OF MICHAEL SERVETUS BY JEAN CAUVIN [the story Calvinists do not want men to know!]
Posted : 23 Nov, 2011 12:23 PM
In 1540 Michael opened a correspondence with John Calvin of Geneva, asking the reformer what it meant for Jesus to be the Son of God and how a man was to be born again. He criticized Calvin's replies and stated that those who believed in the Trinity believed in the spirit of the dragon, the priests and the false prophets who make war on the lamb. He implied that he was the Michael, referred to in Revelation 12:7 and Daniel 12:1, the one who was to fight the antichrist. Both John Calvin and the Pope were antichrists in Servetus' eyes. Calvin wrote to a friend that if Servetus ever fell into his hands, he would not allow him to get away alive.
In 1553 Michael anonymously published The Restitution of Christianity which he saw as an attempt to restore Christianity to its primitive purity. In that work he boldly--or rashly--continued to deny the Trinity despite the danger it brought him. Denying the Trinity and the incarnation of Christ were still capital offenses as they had been throughout the middle ages. Michael said Jesus was the Son of the eternal God but not the eternal Son of God. Contrary to the reformers, he also taught that both faith and works were necessary for salvation. He sent Calvin a portion of the work.
Roman Catholic authorities in Vienne discovered the name of the Restitution's author because Calvin collaborated in denouncing him to the Inquisition, and they arrested Michael for heresy. He escaped, however, and fled toward Naples by way of Calvin's Geneva. Vienne's authorities burned him in effigy. He entered a church where Calvin was preaching, was recognized, and arrested on charges of blasphemy and heresy, although he was not a citizen and was just passing through town. Was it legal for them to arrest him?
Nonetheless, Michael was tried for heresy, this time by a Protestant city council. He continued in an attitude of superior knowledge and called John Calvin "Simon Magus" an "impostor," and more. Servetus shocked the Genevans with his pantheistic or gnostic claim that everything emanated from God, even the devil. Like the Anabaptists, he declared infant baptism a great error. Geneva unfairly refused him legal council although he was a stranger to its law system, saying he could lie well enough without a lawyer to assist him.
The Geneva Council voted to condemn Servetus for heresy and called for his execution. The Swiss churches of Berne, Zurich, Basle, and Schaffhausen encouraged this move. Although Calvin insisted with the rest that Servetus must die, he urged that in mercy Servetus be executed by the sword, not by burning, but the Council rejected the suggestion. It was quarreling with Calvin at that time over the city government. Calvin and reformer William Farel spent hours with Servetus trying to turn him back from his lapses from commonly accepted Christian doctrine, but Servetus stood fast to his principles.
On this day, October 27, 1553, Geneva burned Michael Servetus at the stake for blasphemy and heresy. In the flames, Michael called repeatedly on Jesus, the Son of God for mercy.
Geneva's action led to an immediate controversy among reformers whether it is right for a reformation church to execute heretics. Most said it was not. Calvin took a lot of heat for his role in the denunciation, trial and execution of Servetus and was not always honest in his account of what had happened.
Bibliography:
Adapted from an earlier Christian History Institute story by Diana Severance, Ph.D.
Bainton, Roland. Hunted Heretic; the life and death of Michael Servetus. Boston: Beacon Press, 1953.
Fulton, John F. Michael Servetus, Humanist and Martyr. New York: Herbert Reichner, 1953.
Hunt, Dave. What Love Is This? : Calvinism's misrepresentation of God. Bend, Oregon: Berean Call, c2004.
"Servetus, Michael." Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, edited by F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone. Oxford, 1997.
"Servetus, Michael." Encyclopedia Americana. Chicago: American Corp., 1956.
