I was raised as a Roman Catholic, and I was taught all the traditions that go along with that religious system. Those traditions included their teachings on mortal and venial sins and all the sacraments also. The Catholic Mass was at the center of everything where they believe the priest can turn the bread and the wine into the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ. That is the teaching of transubstantiation which you will not find within the scriptures nor any other true Christian church that emphasizes the preaching of the word. (Mark 16:15-16, 2 Timothy 4:1-5) I learned that it was a mortal sin to miss Mass on Sunday and I had already done that numerous times, so I became a little concerned about my soul. I was taught that there was a heaven, a hell, and another place called purgatory. Purgatory was described as a temporary place of punishment where the Catholic would stay until their love for God was perfect, and then they would proceed to heaven. Even at that young age there was enough conviction within my own heart to block out any thought of going to heaven, and even purgatory looked like a longshot to me. As a young man I was an altar boy and I attended many Roman Catholic masses including weddings and funerals, but I always had a nagging question in the back of my mind as to where I would go after I died. During the 1970s I had an insatiable desire deep inside my heart to know the truth. I felt spiritually dead inside, and I knew that there had to be more to life than what I had already experienced. I began making regular trips to a shopping mall on Long Island, because there were two large bookstores in the mall. I would head straight to the same sections in these stores which included religion, spirituality, philosophy meditation, self-improvement, and other things. I would browse through those books going from shelf to shelf, and from bookcase to bookcase. After the first bookstore I would head to the other bookstore and repeat the same process over again. I wanted to know the truth and I eventually filled a large box with books on a variety of topics. I read books from all those categories including some of which were best sellers at the time. You name it, I bought it and I read it. I had such a desire for truth in those days but that same empty void remained inside me, no matter how many books I read.

I met my wife Cathy in late 1980 and we were married in July of 1981, and I still had the same desire and interest to seek out the truth. During the mid 1980′s Cathy and I became aware of the Catholic Charismatic movement, and we participated in two different charismatic prayer groups in the local area. We attended Catholic Charismatic healing masses which focused on healing and praying the rosary. The rosary contains prayers which are mostly Hail Mary prayers. The charismatic Mass was also livelier than a regular Catholic Mass, and many of the songs were like those sung in Christian churches. At that time, we became aware of what was known as the Marian apparitions at Medjugorje. The Virgin Mary was allegedly appearing before some young men and women and bringing forth a monthly message. We came to know the people within those charismatic prayer groups who were sold out to Mary and the apparitions at Medjugorje. We listened intently as they told us stories of how they visited that place, and how the metal chain holding the beads on their rosaries miraculously changed from a silver color to a gold color. One of the ladies who went to Medjugorje told of how she looked up and saw beautiful streams of liquid gold and other colors coming out from the Sun. We were enthralled by what we heard found it very exciting.

During this same period, we began visiting a church in New York City we heard testimonies of how people’s lives were being changed by the power of Jesus Christ. This fascinated us also because we were so accustomed to the rituals and rote prayers, we said every Sunday at the Catholic Mass. As time went on, we would attend Mass in the morning and visit the other church in the evening, and the power of God’s Word was bringing us into the knowledge of the truth. Later, there was a Christian lady who witnessed to Cathy about those apparitions and told her that the devil comes disguised as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14) and Cathy never forgot that. That caused Cathy to dig into the scriptures even more, and she began to compare the messages from this Marian apparition with the scriptures themselves and found that they clearly contradicted each other. Cathy began to talk with me about her research and she was convinced that the apparitions could not be from God. At that point in time, I would not listen to her reasoning, and I was not convinced that she was right. She continued trying to convince me for several weeks until one day with tears in her eyes she said listen to me, as she cradled four pages of scriptures in her hand. Something inside my heart caused me to listen to her and I told her that I would pray about it.

I realized that I had a decision to make regarding the messages that were coming forth from this alleged apparition of Mary at Medjugorje. Either the messages from that apparition were true or the Bible was true. I knew enough that they both could not be true because they contradicted each other. It was at that point that I made the decision to stick with the Bible as the only source of truth, and it was not long after that point that we left the Roman Catholic Church and never looked back. We took our Catholic religious trinkets which included our rosary beads, religious medals, crucifixes etc. and put them in large trash bags and to be put outside on the curb. That is what is known as repentance. In the book of Acts, you can read about a group of people who burned their religious books which dealt with sorcery, magical arts and divination, even though those religious books were worth a lot of money. That happened after they saw the power of God at work when he wrought special miracles through the apostle Paul. (Acts 19:11-20)

It was during this time and the scriptures became alive to me like never before. There is a huge difference between having a head knowledge and a heart knowledge regarding the person of Jesus Christ. Even though I would attend my Catholic Mass on Sunday and recite the apostle’s creed I did it all by rote. I was as bored as could be and everyone else around me looked just as bored as I was. The big difference was that now I knew that the scriptures were true, and I knew that by the power of the Holy Spirit. (John 16:13) I knew that Jesus Christ was certainly God in the flesh, and that he created all things just as the Bible tells us in the Gospel of John. A true believer will experience a spiritual birth when they turn to the Lord Jesus Christ and receive him by faith. (John 1:1-3, 10-14) I never got that revelation by reciting the apostle’s creed week after week after week in the Catholic church. Jesus spoke about our physical birth in the flesh as opposed to the spiritual birth in the spirit and that is what it means to be born again. (John 3:1-8) The following passage hit me like a thunderbolt, and it is still one of my favorite passages in the Bible:

“For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.” (Romans 5:6-10)

The scripture passage tells us that the believer has already been justified and reconciled back to God and that is the point when I knew that I had been hoodwinked by the devil my entire life. I knew that there was no need for a Roman Catholic priest to offer up a “sacrifice of the Mass” for me or anybody else either. I knew that I did not need to run into a confessional booth to confess my sins to a priest as Rome teaches, because anyone can go straight to God through Jesus Christ our only mediator. (1 Timothy 2:5) I have been translated (transferred) into the kingdom of God by way of the new birth (spiritual) and delivered out of Satan’s kingdom of darkness. I have already received redemption because of the blood that Jesus shed for me on the cross.

“Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son: In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins:” (Colossians 1:12-14)

It was not too long after Cathy and I were saved that we met a Christian woman in the lobby of the Christian church that we were attending in Manhattan in New York City. We got to share our testimonies with her and how the Lord delivered us out from the Roman Catholic system including the charismatic movement. The woman listened intently to us, and it was a pleasant conversation. We never saw her after that until almost one year later and we met her in almost the exact same spot in the lobby. We started another conversation with her, and she told us that she was regularly praying with a group of charismatic Catholics. I told her to be careful because it would not be long before they would have her praying the rosary with them. The woman looked at me and said I feel sick, they already have me praying the rosary with them. I know a divine appointment when I see one, and I knew that this was a setup made in Heaven. God is a loving and merciful God, but he is also a God of truth, and he warns his children when he sees the devil making inroads with his great deception. I cannot remember the rest of the conversation, but I think that the woman received what I told her.

Up until the point where I came to know the Lord Jesus Christ in truth, I was one of those people who knew a lot of facts about him, but I did not know him. I was as lost, and hell bound as any other sinner on the face of the earth. I can also say that after I was truly born again of the Spirit, there was absolutely no doubt that if had I died before that time, that I would have ended up in an eternal Hell. I can also testify to you today that I knew then, and now, that most people in the world are in a lost spiritual condition and as hell bound as I was before I got saved. That was riveted within my heart from that day and that has never left me either. When I came out of the darkness and deception that had me bound, I felt as if the devil himself was looking over me and that he knew that I did not belong to him anymore. The revelation of who the real Jesus Christ is must come from above as Jesus taught Peter and the rest of the disciples. (Matthew 16:13-17) It is a personal thing, and it is something that you know to be true by the Spirit of God within you. When a person comes to know the Lord, that same person can testify assuredly that the Lord has saved their soul, and that is something that they know inwardly as is spoken by the Jewish apostle Paul.

The true born-again believer has been set free from bondage and in my case, it was the the bondage of Roman Catholicism, and their man-made traditions. The Holy Spirit will bear witness with the spirit of the believer that they are a child of God, and obviously saved. The scriptures tell us that the believer is a joint heir with Jesus Christ himself. I was not hearing scriptures like this being read during my Catholic Mass each week, but I can only blame myself for not searching out the truth sooner. The church of Rome teaches that you need the Pope’s interpretation of the scriptures and they put their own false teachings (traditions) on an equal level with the scriptures themselves. There is a huge difference between the gospel of the church of Rome and the gospel of Jesus Christ. I remind you that I am writing from the perspective of a former Roman Catholic who came from inside the Roman Catholic system. If you are currently a Roman Catholic, it is my hope that the Lord will minister through the truth of his word, and that you will leave the church as I did many years ago. If you are a Bible believing born again Christian, it is my hope that you will gain a better understanding of the doctrines of Rome and see for yourself that they are diametrically opposed to the truth of the scriptures.

“For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.” (Romans 8:15-17)