A Testimony of a Change of Heart...and of Faith
- ifibeme
- Nov 7, 2014
- 3 min read
I'm Brad Tarr, and I was raised in a name-only Christian home. You know the kind, right? "My grandparents are Wesleyan, so my mom is, and my dad joined my mom's church." Well, I can take it a step further. My parents are ex-Wesleyans, because when they went through their ugly divorce when I was five, they stopped going to church. Now, 15 years later, they still don't. They say they have lost faith in "organized church."
So, I was raised with vaguely Wesleyan beliefs, but I only went to church once every few months with my grandmother. I joined a Church of the Brethren when I was 14, and stayed there til I was 18, reading the Bible every day and going to church every week. I was taught there that Jesus indeed founded a visible church, but the church He started became corrupt, and full of false teachings. I was told that Martin Luther straightened all of that out in the "Reformation."
However, as I read chapters of the Bible intensely, such as John 3, John 6, 1Corinthians 11, James 2, John 20, James 5, Matthew 25, Matthew 16, and others, I slowly but surely began to realize that on point after point, doctrine after doctrine, the Catholic Faith was built on, and taken straight from, scripture. John 3 teaches that baptism is salvific. John 6 and 1Corinthians 11 teach the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist (Communion). James 2 teaches that good works are necessary for our justification and salvation. John 20 and James 5 teach the sacrament of Confession. Jesus teaches in Matthew 25 that He will judge us at judgment day not by mere faith alone, but based on what we do, on how we treat others. And finally, Matthew 16 and the first half of Acts clearly display the Primacy of Peter over the Church, and therefore his successors through the laying on of hands.
Purgatory, I found, was taught by Paul the Apostle in 1Corinthians chapter 3. I was finding by studying the Epistles in the New Testament that the Apostles believed that doctrine was indeed important, not debatable, and to avoid people who persist in spreading untruths about the faith.
I found the very Roman Catholic Mass, the method of worship, laid out in pristine view in the Book of Revelation. I found that Malachi in the Old Testament prophesied that a pure offering would be given to God one day from East to West, the rising of the Sun to its setting, and that everywhere incense would be offered in the name of God. I saw that only one Church fulfills that prophecy, the Catholic Church, with the Sacrifice of the Mass. Jesus' very flesh and blood, the Passover Lamb that Catholics partake of. We are all a holy priesthood PRECISELY because we are permitted to partake of the sacrifice, that only the priests in the Old Testament could partake of.
I found that the Church in the book of Acts had a clearly defined Hierarchy of Overseers (Bishops), Presbyters (Priests), and Deacons. This was the Bride of Christ I had been longing for so long to find! I was exhilarated!
I am now in RCIA. I can hardly wait to partake of the Most Blessed Sacrament, and be brought into full communion with the Church, the Body that Christ Himself founded, and that the gates of hell have not prevailed against.
Sixty years after Martin Luther revolted against the authority of the Church, there was a book published which can still be found today. It is entitled "200 Interpretations of the Words, 'This is my Body.'" God is not a God of confusion, division, or contradiction. There is but one Fullness of the Gospel, and that is the Gospel handed down from the Apostles themselves, and maintained in Christ's One Body. There cannot be many churches, for there is only one Christ, and He is the head of the Church He founded. For there to be many churches would mean that God has many Brides, making Him an adulterer. The Holy Spirit has always taught only one true faith, and has preserved it through the successors to the Apostle, the Bishops.
The writings of Justin Martyr, Ignatius of Antioch, Iranaeus of Lyons, and Clement of Rome, all written within 150 years of Pentecost, all attest to the validity of the Catholic Church being the One True Church. That is far from being a "Medieval Invention."
