He Found the Truth

born again testimony of Luc Bedard

Dateline: Keflavik Naval Station, January 1980.

I had just finished viewing the movie The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsay. I saw the movie with some friends and it had gotten us all wondering and talking about the end of the age. Later on, while alone in my room and alone with my thoughts another aspect of the movie haunted my mind. The movie had gotten me thinking, as bible prophecy ought to, about God’s plan for his creation and about judgment day and about my own status with the Lord. These thoughts troubled me for I knew that I was not ready to face Him should I be called at that hour.

As a child I was taught that to practice religion and to be a good boy would be sufficient to please the Lord and get me into heaven. I did both to the best of my ability and was convinced in my own mind that I was good enough to make it. I felt I was better than most of the children I went to school with and as we got older and most of them got into things like smoking, drinking, illicit sex, and drugs, it was easier and easier to compare myself favorably against my peers, It is easy to make a case to be self righteous when we compare ourselves to other people because we can always find someone who seems to be in worse shape than we ourselves. God, however, does not compare us with one another. It doesn’t matter to Him whether I behave a hundred times better than Johnnie because His unit of measure compares us with His Son, Jesus Christ.

Now, at the age of 21 and thousands of miles from home I was convicted and felt alone. I felt convicted because I knew that bible prophecy was real and that judgment day was fast approaching, I felt alone because I knew I wasn’t ready to face that day. My own righteousness was petty and corrupt and melted like wax in the light of Jesus’ righteousness and sacrifice. God began to show me that I was no better (and even worse in many ways) than those peers against whom I compared myself, My sins were hidden deep in my heart but would lead to destruction in the same way that smoking will cause cancer in many of its participants. Mercifully, God began to show me that my heart was full of the sins of pride and self-righteousness, hatred and lust, fear and manipulation etc. Mercifully I say because He did not show me this all at once that night alone in my room, but only a little at a time so that I might begin to know the truth about who I was and where I stood with Him. God only shows you enough of the truth about yourself to get the task at hand done and the task at hand this night was my salvation,

The conclusion of the movie had offered a way of escaping the judgments pronounced for the earth. That Way was by receiving Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, Up until this night I had heard about Jesus and even believed in Him, but most of what I had heard was only half-truths, rumors and propaganda. My religion had taught me about Jesus Christ but it had not introduced me to Him. My religion had taught me that Jesus had died on the cross for my sins but it had not taught me how to receive it by faith and how to hold on to that faith. My religion taught me that God loved righteousness but it did not teach me that the only righteousness that He receives is Jesus Christ. That night, alone in my room, I put my religion aside for a moment and introduced myself to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ as the sinner that I truly am. That night, alone in my room without my own righteousness and without my religion, Jesus Christ received me into His Kingdom and reassured me that from that moment on I was ready for the judgment. Should I die that night He would meet me on the other side to take me home. I had just one other request that night in my short and simple prayer and that was that He would put me in places with other Christians where I could learn about His ways and grow in Him. I will just say here that He was faithful to answer that prayer even more than I could have ever imagined.

As I walked with Him and got to know Jesus more and more, I kept running into inconsistencies between His revelations and my religion. Too many things could not be reconciled, like the truth about the Holy Ghost. Roman Catholicism did teach me that there was a Holy Spirit but they never told me what his mission is or how to receive him and yield my will to him. They never taught me about prophecy, God’s plan of the ages, and how it serves as a lamp to light my path in a dark and treacherous world. And they never taught me about the hope that can make me pure, Jesus’ return for a bride that is without spot or wrinkle, known to the believers as the Rapture of the saints. These are just the tip of the iceberg of the things the Lord was beginning to school me in that my religion had kept me in the dark about. After about nine months of trying to practice my religion and walk with Jesus I came to a point where I began to realize it was going to be one or the other. Jesus Christ or Roman Catholicism. If I continued in the church I was faced with having to keep my experience to myself and keeping rank. There was no one I could share my faith with for there was no one there with the same faith. Even if there was, there was no forum to share and express these things, The church had other priorities and I did not have the faith to go in the same direction and so I left in the fall of 1980. The Lord made that transition easy for me by having already prepared a place to receive and encourage me in my new-found faith. He had sent His Holy Spirit on the flight line I worked on and caused a revival. Men I had hated a short time ago were being born again and transformed just as 1 had been a few short months before. These young men became more than friends to me, they became family. (The Holy Ghost also used these experiences to show me how unrighteous my judgment of others was and to deliver me from that evil.) We were brothers in the Lord and we became inseparable. Through one of these men I found a church where the word was not just read but preached and taught. The Word became alive to me like never before and my faith grew more and more, nourished on it day by day. Although I had reservations about leaving the Catholic Church at first, all doubts were soon dispelled as the Holy Ghost himself, through the Word, made Jesus more and more a reality in my walk of faith every day.

Although I had intended this to be just a testimony of my salvation 1 felt impressed to continue on to my deliverance from the religion of my upbringing. This is not meant to be an attack on Catholics, It is meant to show that God is bigger than anybody and any church and has more to give to us than we can possibly imagine. Growing up a Roman Catholic I was taught that we had a corner on the truth and that all others who called themselves Christian did not know the full truth otherwise they would be Catholic. Since my walk, which began over fifteen years ago (now near 30 years) I have come to find that no one, no church and especially no denomination has a corner on the truth. But the Holy Ghost does and He will reveal it to whomsoever He will. His only requirement is that we really want to know the real truth and not what we think the truth is (which is always slanted to elevate ourselves above others). The truth begins with Jesus Christ and the truth ends with Jesus Christ and in between the truth contains only Jesus Christ. That is what the Holy Ghost will show us if we really want to know the truth regardless of what church we are in. The truth is not the church. The truth is not the Pope. The truth is not the Bishop of Canterbury. The truth is not some televangelist. But once the Holy Ghost shows us the truth and we look at everything else in the Light that is the Truth, Jesus Christ then let us cast away everything, everything, EVERYTHING that is not the truth. We will not be alone and without fellowship for there are others that are also willing to sacrifice for the Truth, and the Holy Ghost will join us to them. We only have to have faith for it and be willing to sacrifice everything for His promises of which “I will never leave you nor forsake you” Heb 13:5 is only one example of an offer no one
can ever match.

I know that the Catholic church is part of the body of Christ. I believe her faith corresponds to the letter to Thyatira in the book of Revelation. I was brought up in her and was a full-fledged member but the Spirit spoke to me and I decided I needed to heed. I was given the faith to leave her and I did. I now aspire to the faith of the church at Philadelphia. I hope to meet you on that straight and narrow path.

All glory and honor be Christ’s!

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