From Catholicism to Christ: Dean’s Journey of Repentance and Rebirth

From Ray Comfort’s book, World Religions in a Nutshell.

Growing up in the Roman Catholic Church, Dean was sure that he believed all the right things about God, good deeds, and sacraments. That is, until he started to wonder about life after death and read the bible for himself. That is when he learned the seriousness of sin what it meant to become born again.

I was born and raised as a Roman Catholic. Out in North Dakota, there is very little gospel witness. I never had any Christian try to witness to me, and as far as I knew, I never had even met a Christian. We were not a religious family, but like most of my friends and the other families I knew, we went to church every Sunday, and Catechism classes on Wednesday nights. I was baptized as an infant into the church, and went through all the rituals throughout my childhood. I would have claimed to believe that Jesus Christ was God manifested in the flesh, and that the Bible was the Word of God. I would have claimed to believe in Heaven and Hell, I believed all that I was taught, intellectually. Nevertheless, I had never understood how sinful I really was in the sight of God, and I never understood the true gospel of Jesus Christ.

When I was around 16 years old, I began to get a little concerned about what would happen to me after I died. From learning about sin in church, and knowing that I was committing these sins every day, I became very concerned. So I began to read the Bible. As I read, and especially through the words of Jesus in the Gospels, I had a growing conviction over my sin. One day I came across Christian television and decided that I would tune in on a regular basis, to look for answers. As I began to listen to a certain preacher, and continued to read the Word of God, I learned that I needed to be “born again” in order to enter the kingdom of God. But one evening, I tuned into a program where men would go out and witness on the streets. They began to go through the Ten Commandments, and I could see myself as guilty of breaking all of them. I saw that I would be guilty on the Day of Judgment according to the Word of God, and would end up in Hell for all of eternity. But I also could see that Hell is exactly what I deserved for sinning against God.

These men went on to explain the good news of the gospel, and I finally understood why Jesus Christ gave His life on the cross and rose again from the dead. I saw my need to turn from my sins once and for all and put my faith in Him. I began to learn about the new birth, about a new heart with new desires that I would receive by God’s supernatural work in regeneration. Full atonement? Could it be? Because of my Roman Catholic background, I thought that my good deeds and participation in the sacraments were the only way I could receive grace. But then I learned that grace comes only through faith, and not in my own good works (Ephesians 2:8,9). I learned that my good works were like filthy rags in God’s sight (Isaiah 64:6). Over the passing months the Lord was convicting me of my sin, and by His grace I came to hate the sin that I had always loved, and desired the God that I had rebelled against and ignored my whole life. In the summer of 2004, God brought me to my knees, and saved my soul. I am still amazed in the miracle of the new birth, something that religious works could never bring. Just a short time later, a friend who had moved into the area a few months earlier invited me to a faithful Bible teaching church. As I grew more and more in the Word of God, I could see that the church I was raised in was not preaching the true gospel of Jesus Christ, and that as His follower, I should leave and go to a church that He wants me to attend and serve in. I was lost and wasn’t seeking God (Romans 3:11), but God sought me out and saved me, and I am forever thankful. I give all the glory to the Great and Sovereign God of the universe.

—Dean H.

This testimony can be found in the book World Religions in a Nutshell.