“I used to be Catholic.” Usually after every service where we present the need for the gospel in Italy someone approaches me and says those words. I am always interested to hear their salvation testimony.
Three weekends ago we had the opportunity to share our desire of reaching Italian souls for Christ at a church in Emlenton, Pennsylvania. After the morning service a gentleman shared his testimony with me. He was raised Roman Catholic and had a great zeal and love for God. As he would sit and listen to his priest he knew there was something missing, some truth untold that would give him the assurance of a personal spiritual connection with God. He started watching a Baptist preacher on television and would weep as he heard the message of the gospel. His contrition never went any further than the tears on his cheek until one day his body lay broken alongside the road. He had been in an accident while riding his snowmobile and he felt the life going from him. Lying on his back fearing death and the darkness that was closing in around his soul he did what any good Catholic boy would do, he began to recite the Lord’s prayer. Rather than bring him peace, he said it felt as if the Lord was pushing his body along with his empty words further into the snow. In that instant he abandoned any hope of his own goodness meriting favor with his Maker and he cried out, “Lord Jesus, save me!” He had instant peace. In the quietness of that moment he felt as if the Lord was saying within his spirit, “I have saved you, and I will restore your health.”
During our conversation his joy in the Lord was evident as was his burden for Catholics who he said are blinded by Satan and have the gospel hid to them by the papacy and priests. As we were talking he made a concise statement about his former religion that I thought was profound. He said the Egyptian obelisk that sits in Saint Peter’s Square sums up the Roman Catholic Church… they have merely stuck a cross on the top of paganism.
“But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.” 2 Corinthians 4:3,4
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