31/08/2026
An Aborted Fetus Turns into a Premature Apostle
By Simon Mweembela
This blog is a personal expression of the Love I have for my favorite theologians and evangelist of the 1st century, his missionary expeditions, writings, and thinking has shaped the theology of Christianity and separated it from the legalistic 1st century Judaism resulting into incorporation of gentiles unworthy to be called God's own but through this theologian's experience God calls everyone from a paganistic background to have an assurance that He is determined to do all things that they be fitted for salvation
1 Cor 15:8-9
"Last of all, he also appeared to me, I'm like an aborted fetus who was given life." - GOD'S WORD Copyright © 1995 by God's Word to the Nations Bible Society.
Fascinating is the conversion of the apostle Paul, I, Mweembela call him the Premature apostle, this does not suggest God was irrational in His call of the apostle but rather suggest that God saw a crisis no one among those He had walked with through Jesus' earthly ministry was ready to undertake, they were too Jewish to accept the gentile challenge, this needed a radical approach from God hence the radical premature birth of the Apostle Paul.
Medically speaking, a Fetus is a specific biological stage, in fact, Wikipedia gives us a simple definition and timeline of a Fetus, they say "A Fetus is the unborn offspring of a Live-bearing mammal that develops from an embryo. In humans, the embryonic stage ends and the fetal stage begins at the ninth week after fertilization, furthermore, this stage is marked by the presence of all major body organs, which continue to grow and mature until birth."
In the overview of this description my mind caught attention to the stages of development as elaborated by the Institute of Human Anatomy on their YouTube channel and this is my paraphrase of their presentation; the Fetal stage has three stages, First, Second, and Third trimester, the first that is where major organs systems form, the Second, organs near completion, movements become active and unique fingerprints form and the Latter, that is where rapid growth appears and the fetus prepares for life outside the womb.
This for me describes the apostolic birth of one of the most read on apostle in the New Testament, the apostle Paul. The route to Damascus as recorded in Acts 9:3 has impacted me for a year now, and this is due to the personal struggles to explain what he is as he defends his apostle conception, conversion and authority in 1 Corinthians 3, 9 and 15 also in 2 Corinthians 12. Oftentimes harmonizing what you were with what you are now and what you will become is difficult because it brings about a dilemma of showing people a purity of life while showing the animosity you lived previously.
I think the Damascus Road is the starting point of Premature apostle concept, Luke in acts 9:3 says "Suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven." the meaning of the verb 'shined around' him should not merely be reduced to a mere shinning because it carries image that the light did not merely appear before Paul, it broke into his world, surrounded him, overwhelmed his sight, and began the process of changing his understanding.
In an abstract defense of what happened to him personally on this Damascus Road Paul says the Light that incepted him brought about a miscarriage and it result in a premature birth, in fact he personally calls this a miscarriage, ektroma in Greek.
Ektroma in the ancient world was not a neutral medical term because it refered to a fetus or child whose development had been interrupted before a normal birth. So, Paul says that he was an abnormal or premature apostle, consequently for me this image applied to himself is intentionally a humiliating language because what Paul is effectively saying is that his apostolic experience was not like the normal pattern, he came late, unexpectedly and under extraordinary circumstances.
In contrast to the other apostles who had followed Jesus during his earthly ministry;this makes his apostleship look, from a human perspective almost out of place or perhaps out of sequence but that is what makes it relevant to Gentile salvation, Paul's difference meant that this revelation of Christ was not something that Paul discovered; It was something that suddenly confronted him, hence he could easily relate to the Pagan who were different from the Jews and their norms.
Paul was a premature apostle because the world expected to have in him a pharisee so powerful with a record of top imprisoner and persecutor of all time but the Light from God on that Road caused a miscarriage, an abortion of the fetus the world was pregnant with and where the world encountered the pain of loss, the kingdom of God gained massively, meaning your conversion equally resulted in the miscarriage of fetus the world expected to be birthed out, you are a premature Christian, the grace of God did not allow you to develop in fully mature baby because it could have been worse what you could have become if God did not intervene.
God used the first and second trimester stages to bring about the radical premature development of the vital themes of the gospel and opened his eyes as the light surrounded him like squeezing him in his own world to be about the transfiguration unexpected in character, God has to fix you at times squeeze you so that your uniqueness might come out, your footprints, fingerprints should develop here.
In the third stage the rapid growth happened abruptly, because the implication is if God didn't instantly turn Paul's world upside down in a split second, Paul would have matured in his advancement to kill and persecute but before he was fully birthed out, God had to rush the third stage and go directly to birth, it happened quickly suggesting that God is merciful and will not to allow his creatures destroy themselves irrationally, at times he does not need to consult you, He does it in his infinite wisdom, as for you will understand later.
You may not know how came into Christianity but God knows and coming into the church is not loss, what the world counts loss, God counts as a gain.
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