The first real indications that the Catholic Church was who they say they were occurred to me when I was attending a non-denominational church just out of college. At the time I was travelling out of town 5 days a week. My life consisted of travelling, sleeping and going to this church on Sunday. I had recently gotten involved in their Ministry 101 course which was geared towards getting you active in a particular ministry in their church. During that time the church, which had been around for 25 years, had gone through a great deal of growing pains about "doctrine". Nobody could seem to agree on what the church stood for as far as core doctrine went and a movement had come about to at least specify a small statement of what was considered required beliefs by the members of the church. The reason for this is because some dissent was arising amongst the members of the church. Some of the elders wanted to clarify which particular beliefs were in line with what the church was teaching and what beliefs were not. Now this is what Catholics, Orthodox and mainline Protestants call a creed. Creeds are very tradition based and many, particularly in the Evangelical movement of Protestantism are so opposed to tradition that the idea of a creed is itself creepy and "unbiblical". Still this church discovered from its own growth that it was necessary to minimze dissent and to foster unity within the church. The Apostles creed has verbage that can be traced back to at least Tertullian in the early 3rd century with some evidence to support the idea that the creed traces back to the 12 apostles themselves. This seed would uproot my holding of the doctrine of sola scriptura and it was planted here. While it was a slight doubt at this point, it would eventually grow into the single issue that caused me most to question Protestantism.

But this is just the beginning of my journey. The issue that really set me off on the path towards Rome was different but it came up right around the same time period. Usually at this church, every so often, a missionary would come in and give a talk about their ministry and then an offering would be taken up for them. One week an offering was being taken up for a new ministry that the church was going to fund. This ministry was going to send people to Rome in order to convert Catholics at the Millenium Jubilee who were going to walk through a gate "to have their sins forgiven" through an indulgence. Naturally, it was apparently well known at this church that Catholics do not hold to the true biblical doctrine of the blood of Christ being the sole source of redemption of sins. Catholics had ways to buy and earn redemption through works and indulgences. The problem I had with this was two-fold. 1) I knew through discussions with my parents that the doctrine of salvation by works alone (Pelagianism) was a historical heresy in the Church. 2) I knew that Catholics did not believe that sins could be forgiven by some approved actions other than our repentance, confession and penance. To me the problem here was clearly one of misinformation. All throughout the presentation there was an underlying air of hatred for this unbiblical Church that has misled many and something needed to be done about it. Countless many had been rescued from Catholicism and this was their way of advancing the cause. The problem is, as was clear to me early in my conversion process, was that they were attacking a Church that did not exist. As Bishop Fulton Sheen once said:

There are not 100 people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church. There are however, millions who hate what they think is the Catholic Church.

I was foruntate in my conversion process that I did not have to get over bias founded on thick layers of lies about what Catholicism actually is. I could see clearly that lies were being propogated as truth by good, honest and sincere people. If lies about the Catholic Church could inflitrate the church I was CHOOSING to attend, how bad could it be elsewhere where virulent Catholic hatred had been apparent from my youth?

I cannot finish this story without pointing out something very valuable that I took from this time in my life. The zeal for the scriptures that I saw in this church allowed me to develop a deep desire to want Christ and to seek him fervently within the scriptures. The doctrine of sola scriptura had been mentioned to me by my brother and my parents (each with opposing viewpoints) and it seemed logical on the surface and it was all I had to go with. Grace got me closer through another wonderous avenue in my life but clearly the problems I was seeing with this church were readily apparent and I had to leave.