How I went from protestantism to Catholicism (sedevacantism.)

I thought that I would write about my journey into the Catholic Church, hoping to show how hard it is to find truth today, even when you seek it as hard as you can, and I hope my testimony would encourage others to seek God as well.. (This story does not include the complete theological reasoning behind my conversion, but anyone who is interested can look at the links on the bottom of the page for more information..I would also like to say that even though I mention a few dreams, I strongly believe that it is important to learn the Catholic Faith. Dreams can be one of Gods means for drawing people to Him, but dreams can also mislead people, and should not be given authority in themselves..) The reason why I have chosen to focus a lot on the emotional aspects in this conversion story, is that I am a woman, and as most women I am a very emotional being. The founder of protestantism, Martin Luther, was also very controlled by his emotions, and because his feelings were irrational and corrupted they led him to abandon the teachings of the Church to start a religion of his own. Protestantism in more intens and carismatic forms tend to appeal a lot to women, while more liturgical and theological religions and sects have more men in them, like f.ex the Scandinavian SSPX, where the vast majority are men. While the emotions that run so deep in women often lead them into accepting heresies just because they feel good, emotions can also be a strength, as we can see during Christs passion. With the exception of St. John, the people who stayed close to Jesus during His last sufferings were women. Their emotional commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ was so strong that they overcame all rational fear for the Jewish mob and the Roman soldiers, and they openly showed their grief for a convicted "criminal" on His way to His execution. And so I begin my winding journey.

Being a former zealous protestant, I was abroad on my third year for a protestant mission, trying to convert people to my religion in any way I could, when the grace that eventually led me into the Catholic Church started entering my life in a more tangible way. I had adopted a black and white world-view already in my teens, meaning that I understood that there must be only one truth, not many, and that you need to know and follow that truth in order not to perish. I also had a strong sense, even as a child, that human beings are eternal creatures, and this, together with my Lutheran upbringing, gave me a longing to know God. This had led me, after 3 years in a Lutheran boarding-school and 1 year in a private, Lutheran Bible school, out on the mission-field, where my goal was to convert as many as possible to my religion. I firmly believed that people would surely go to hell if they did not "accept Jesus into their hearts as their personal Lord and Saviour" before it was too late.

So what happened? Well, several things. Firstly, a passage in the New Testament really uneased me. It was 1 John 1:9 "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just, to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all iniquity." It was the "IF" that bothered me so much. It seemed to me that there was a condition of confessing my sins first, in order to be forgiven. And my past sins haunted my conscience. There was my involvement in the occult as a child, when I used to read a lot of occult litterature and play occult games with friends, there was disrespect towards my parents, then there were sins of the flesh and a lot of despair, and the list would just go on and on. And then there was a passage in the Bible indicating that we were to confess our sins to one another.. James 5:16 "Confess therefore your sins one to another: and pray one for another, that you may be saved. For the continual prayer of a just man availeth much." As a protestant I was confused. How could I know that God had forgiven all my sins, and could I even remember all of them? (Remember, protestants do not have the opportunity of confessing their sins to a Priest and to get absolution.) I spent some days prayerfully trying to think of all my sins, writing them down as they came up. I even called some people that I knew that I had sinned against, to confess my faults and ask for their forgiveness. I then took the peaces of paper where all my sins were written down and burned them on the balcony, hoping that to watch them burn would make me feel forgiven, and that God would be more pleased to listen to my prayers from now on.

I think this was a turningpoint in my life, and being a musician, I made a song that I kept singing over and over again in my appartement. It was the result of a longing and fear that God must have put into my heart, inspite of the fact that I was constantly trying to convert people to a false, heretical gospel message. I started to worry that maybe I was not seeing God the way He wanted me to see Him, and maybe there were things in the Bible that I was just not understanding in the right way. I wished that I had an interpretation of the Bible that I knew I could trust, but it always came down to the personal understanding of Scripture. And there were several Bible-teachers that I respected who had very different views on very serious matters, like baptism. It confused me, and this is why I had tried infant baptism, adult baptism and "baptism in the spirit" with the mumble jumble tounges that carismatics are so fascinated by..I also worried that I was not as holy as God wanted me to be, aspecially in my thoughts. This was the song:

Give me the joy of Your salvation
and the strength to live this life.
And if I don't know what to say, Lord,
let them see Jesus in my smile.
Give me a burning heart to pray, Lord.
Teach me how to lean on You.
And the patience just to wait, Lord,
for great things that You will do.

Chorus: Give me a new desire.
Create in me a new mind
and fill this cup, Lord- from the inside.
I know that I'm all Yours,
so strip me from all mine
And clean this cup, Lord- cleanse it from the inside.

Help me to love You more than "self", Lord
so I can love my neighbour too.
open my ears to hear, send grace, Lord,
TO SEE ALL THINGS THE WAY YOU DO!
Give me a willingness to drink
even the last drop of my cup.
And as I learn to run the race, Lord,
teach me even how to stop- and just be with You.
Chorus: give me..

Give me a song to sing Your praise, Lord
'cause I'm not called to sing the blues.
And a heart to share my faith, Lord,
every time I tie my shoes
I want to be proud of the Gospel
so free me from the fear of man.
You've called me to Yourself, Lord
even if they don't understand.

I firmly believe that even though protestants pray to a false God, this time the true God answered my prayer, because I had started to question my own understanding of the One, True God. And the true God started pouring graces into my life.

One night I had a vision. I wasn't normally asleep, but not fully awake either, like caught into another world while still seeing my livingroom. I was lying on a mattress on the floor with my guitar in my hands, when I suddenly saw a sneaking, black and white cat slowly moving towards me. It had the most intens, big yellow eyes and while it was staring at me, I felt its hypnotizing coldness fill my heart and soul with fear and terror. The beast came closer and closer, and I just could not move at all. When it came up close, it changed its form and turned into a black and white serpent. The serpent crawled over my lap and I could even feel that it was moist and cold and hard, like wet wood. It then crawled over my guitar and suddenly, it dissappeared into the guitar's woodwork and became one with my guitar. I snapped out of the vision and jumped up from the mattress, convinced that the serpent was still there.. The evil and cold presence I felt made me think that the devil himself had been on my mattress, or at least a terrible demon of some kind. And the thing had entered my guitar!! Was my job as a "worship-leader" not pleasing to God? I did not have a good relationship with my guitar for a long, long time after that, I can tell you that. And I seriously started to question whether or not I was doing the right thing, whether or not I was in the right place.

I then had a couple of vivid dreams that really stayed with me, and that will make more sence when you have red the rest of the testimony. I think these dreams were given to me, because there were just no Catholics around to push me in the right direction:

One was that I was to meet a man, and while we were standing together in a room with many other young men, they all suddenly left the room, and as soon as they had left us, we were filled with the Spirit together.

The second dream was that I was walking over a green meadow, when suddenly a flying creature that I never got to see, lifted me up from the ground and placed me on a giant rock that was so high, solid and above all other things that there was just no way to get down from it.

I decided to leave my mission for a while and just be alone in a new place to find some answers for myself. I felt that the mission was taking up too much space in my life, and that maybe, just maybe it was actually preventing me from making spiritual progress? I asked God to show me what to do and felt led to take a break and study some Biblical Hebrew, so I applied for a University in a city I believed God was directing me to, where I did not know anyone back in the Nordic region, to start over, and to seek God and pray. People were surprised at this sudden turning-point in my life, but I felt convinced that it was the will of God and was not worried, just excited and full of expectations. 

One day shortly after, at my new University, I looked up and I saw a man. I instantly felt an unusual connection with him, that's all I can say. It has never happened to me before, but my heart was just burning. I thought that he looked so kind, and I also noticed that he was reading his Bible during breaks and he even made the sign of the Cross before he finished reading. When we talked, I discovered that he had been baptized in the "Catholic Church" (novus ordo) as a baby. He had then been raised in the "Jehovas Witnesses", but now he had decided to return to the Catholic Church, which he had rediscovered through studies of theology and history, to get confirmed. I was confused. I thought that Catholics were unspiritual and without knowledge of the Bible, since the only "Catholics" I had ever encountered were aggressive salesmen abroad, trying to get me to buy ridiculously overcharged holy-water bottles, tourist rosaries and Greek icons. But not this guy. He knew much more than I did about the Bible and about Church-history, and he seemed on fire for God. I started remembering my dream, and I could not forget about him.

I began reading about Catholicism, and when I through my Hebrew studies learned that Luther had removed 7 books out of the Bible, I looked for them and started to read them. I dug up some information in the library about the ancient Church (written by protestants, but still interesting). In the evenings I would send text-messages with my phone to my new "Catholic" friend, mostly Bible verses about God's grace and blessings, including John 3:16, a verse protestants more or less build their whole religion upon, and he would respond with verses about faith and works. It annoyed me that it was so easy for him to use Old Testament verses to back up his doctrines, while I had a lot of New Testament verses. I was used to defending my protestant faith through Bible verses, and I could prove that Jesus was the Messiah through Old Testament Scripture, but now I was struggling to win the discussion. I had not been aware that the Bible distinguishes between works of the Old Testament Law and other works of charity and obedience to the faith. 

I went to the local novus ordo church and asked a nun if she would talk to me about her religion. She seemed to think that it was okay for a protestant to marry a Catholic, and she came across as a bit liberal to me, but I decided to go to the novus ordo mass with the man that I met at the university. We became a couple, and I quite liked the things that I red about Catholicism. Suddenly verses in the Bible that had never made any sence to me became clearer. Like when Jesus says to Peter that He is giving him the keys to the kingdom of heaven (the papacy). I had never known that anyone claimed to believe that the Apostle Peter actually was the first Pope. The verses about binding and loosing also started to make more sence (the power of the Papacy), how a woman is saved during child birth (obedience and penance), and of course all the verses about faith and works, like James 2:24. I red about Mary and the Saints, and discovered that even Luther had believed Mary to be without sin and to have remained a virgin all her life, something protestants today reject. He even believed in purgatory, not in a traditional way, but still.. On my spare-time I was reading a lot of deep and interesting writings, like old and modern Catholic apologetics, Golden Legends about the early Saints, the Didache, writings by St.Ireaneus and so on..Catholicism just made sence.

The things that were not making any sence, were the things that I heard and saw in the novus ordo church that I had started attending. My boyfriend felt the same frustration. They were saying things like: "We have to believe that hell is empty", "purgatory is not a real place", "eastern-orthodox people are our spiritual cousins, and protestants are our spiritual second-cousins.." They were just not making any sence. They invited muslims to our student-group, saying that we worshipped the same God, and when I claimed that this could not be true, they mocked me, and called me a "protestant".And! they were against missionary-activities.. As a former missionary, it all seemed quite absurd to me, and I kept in contact with my protestant mission, thinking that "after all, they are concidered spiritual cousins and at least they share their faith with others.."

A nother frustration was how they kept all spiritual teaching on a very basic level. We were asked to attend a course for new believers, where they first had a short lesson that would be led by a priest, followed by discussion-groups where you could ask questions. These groups were led by women who had just converted from Lutheranism them selves, and if you ask me, they still seemed very protestant and they did not know much about anything really. We asked deeper questions and they never answered them in a satisfactionary way, but kept repeating the basics, like "in baptism you become a child of God..", "God created the world" and "God wants all men to be united with Him.." But we already knew that. They also used a simplified Catechism for children.. In stead of going deep in the Christian faith, they would hand out creation-myths from strange indian religions and compare them with the Christian one, to find "elements of truth" that they could compare with each other. At first we thought that we had just found some unusually liberal priests, and my poor boyfriend was struggling to convince me that the Catholic Church was still the One true Church, and how these people were just twisting things. But after reading in the new Catechism, it dawned on my boyfriend that the problems were higher up in the hierarchy, the question was just how high up?..

Eventually, my boyfriend was confirmed. I was still waiting to be received into the church, and no-one seemed to think that there was any hurry. I was despairing. It worried me that I was not in a position to receive the Eucharist, and felt spiritually dry. When I (confused as I was) claimed that protestants and Catholics have the same view on the Eucharist, no one bothered to correct me. And when they saw the tears in my eyes, I think they just thought that I was mad for thinking so much about "bread and wine." I actually cried every night. From studies of my own, and together with my boyfriend, my protestant ground had crumbled completely under me, and there was just no return. But the novus ordo did not seem to want me, and I think they concidered me a bit rebellious with all my questions and my claims to know things that I obviously did not understand. I also grieved my past, wasted years in a protestant mission, and I grieved for my family and friends whom I had concidered to be Christians, and who now were reduced to "spiritual second cousins!" And what did that mean anyway? Were they in or were they out? Surely they could not be both.. If protestants were to enter Heaven when they died, it just did not make any sence that we could not worship with them now, concidering that we would do so in eternity. And why should anyone even bother converting to Catholicism if being protestant was enough? After all, being a protestant is much easier than being a Catholic. But if they were out, then the term "spiritual second-cousin" just seemed even more ridiculous. How could I concider people who were going to hell spiritual family-members?

The emotions which overwhelmed me when I was deprived of my protestant believes were enormous and hard to cope with. This religion had been my everything; my joy, my fuel and fire, my hope, my job, my hobby and my social life. I had been walking, talking and thinking protestantism. And my experiences were still very real and vivid to me. I have had some massive answers to prayer, both material and with healing, I have been delivered from dangers, I have had complete strangers come over to me and "profecy" out loud my most inner, secret thoughts, I have seen an Indian woman and two men who stood behind her actually fly through the air on a Benny Hinn conferance (This really scared me. On TV it had looked like they were being pushed to the ground but live it was a completely different thing.), I have experienced such strong bonds of love with other protestants and such joyful extacies from protestant praise-conferences that the feeling just lasted and lasted.. Earlier I would have given my life for the protestant Jesus and I knew many protestants who often had risked their lives, their families, their jobs or their citizenships, and even endured torture for their religion, and to spread their faith and distribute Bibles. Some of them lived very simple lives for their "god", eating only once a day, some even fasted on liquids only 40 days in a row, stood in the streets for hours, day or night, preaching.. To come to the novus ordo was the biggest contrast to these experiences ever! There was no zeal, no personal sacrifices, no love, no Bible knowledge and no missionary activities.. But I still could not return to protestantism. It just showes the power of the True Gospel. The evidence were indisputable. All early Christian writings showed a totally Catholic mentality and practice amongst Christians. And then there was the fact that the canonizing of the Bible had happened so late, almost 400 years A.D. and by no other than the Catholic Church! I was forced to admit that I needed an authority outside the Bible to prove that it was the Inspired Word of God, and that authority was the Catholic Church.

Looking back at my protestant experiences, I could only conclude that I had been fooled by "an angel of light", and that Lucifer had actually managed to make me feel great and happy in my heresies, something that has been a real eye-opener to me; the ability the devil has to make us feel good and spiritual, as long as it keeps us away from the truth. And that all of my supernatural experiences had been demonic activities, my own imagination and from time to time probably God who through His providence protected me from dangers, knowing that I would convert in the future. But even though I intellectually was beginning to see the truth, my emotions were not keeping up with me. It took me a long time to grieve through my past. I was grieving protestantism like a loved one who had betrayed me. Mostly because the "church" that I was attending was so dead, and it just did not make any sence. And at the same time, many of my protestant friends were still standing there with their ecumenical arms open wide, all willing to accept me and continue to love me. It was I who had to say "convert or loose your souls, you are worshipping a false Jesus, I will not pray with you or work with you anymore.." This was all bringing me down, together with the burden of not having eternal security in "once saved, always saved" and I also learned about Purgatory, and it frightened me. But let me jump back a few steps again in the story:

Even though I was not yet allowed to be received into the "Church", the "priest" was not against that we wanted to get married. He even offered to write to the local bishop and get a special permit for me to receive the Eucharist during the wedding-ceremony. We were a bit surprised over his suggestion, but since we really wanted our marriage to be a sacrament(!), we accepted.

One day my husband discovered a video online made by the Dimond brothers about creation and miracles. They called themselves "sedevacantists" and they were the first people claiming to be Catholics we had encountered that seemed to keep a more traditional Catholic faith. We now understood why the Catholic litterature we had been reading was not practised or believed in the local church. Realizing that the Second Vatican Council was not Catholic, we stopped going to the novus ordo. I was still too confused to understand all the differences, but I understood that we were not going to a Catholic Church. My husband was "seeing the light". We had earlier listened to lectures online by a man called Steven Ray, a convert from the protestant "baptist church" to novus ordo. But the ancient Church that he described to have discovered just did not exist today. So what was he really talking about?

It was first some months after our wedding that curiosity led us to visit the SSPX-sect. We did not want to join them, but we thought it would be nice to see what a traditional Mass looked liked. (We would of course never have gone to a SSPX-gathering today, but at the time we did not know any better. For more information, I would recommend the book "Communicatio in sacris" by William J. DeTucci.) That night I heard for the first time that protestantism was an entirely different religion of its own, and I was starting to fear that I would die and go to hell and loose my soul, something my husband had understood some time before I did. The novus ordo had, for a while there, completely ship-wrecked the faith that I had, and I had committed several mortal sins. At home, I cried and could not be comforted. On top of everything I was pregnant and worried about the childs well-being and salvation, and it dawned on us that the validity of our marriage was questionable as well. It might be a legal contract, but not a sacramental marriage. But now things were happening really fast. Not being able to comfort me, my husband went online and contacted a sedevacantist preast that he had heard about in Belgium. This priest had been consecrated prior to the Second Vatican council and even had jurisdiction from that time. He said that we were more than welcome to visit, and we asked if we could come that same weekend? His answer was something like "wow, you guys really mean it when you say you want to come some time soon.." And so we booked a flight and went to Belgium. The priest questioned us about the faith and in one weekend we did an abjuration of our heresies, I was received into the Church, we were sacramentally married and we visited a close by bishop and were confirmed together. I remember how the baby kicked inside of me while I did the abjuration..

Today we have been married for a few years. We know much more about the faith than we did back then, and we keep learning and studying. I also understand the dreams that I had in retrospective way. How God showed me that He was going to lift me up from the bottomless pit that I was in, and place me on the Rock, which is His Catholic Church. Or my second dream, where my husband and I were in a room full of young men (there were more or less only boys in the student group of the novus ordo church we first attended) and when we left them, we were filled with the Holy Spirit together, something that also came true the day we were confirmed in Belgium together. And of course, the vision of the devil in my guitar, as God revealed to me how I was not really worshipping Him, but demons and their father, the devil.. 

I still have a constrained relationship with that guitar, and it has caused me to fall into sin a few times. I have even had an argument with my husband over it, and eventually it could not even be tuned properly. I believe that God helped me step by step, even through dreams and a vision, because there were just no one else around to help me. Still, it is important to remember that no dream or vision should be trusted unless it fully agrees with the Teachings of the Catholic Church. All actions and believes must be in unity with Her doctrines and Tradition and the Bible. My feelings also caught up with me, and the Catholic truths filled me up with joy, hope and gratitude. I have found new and deeper joy in the True Gospel, and thankfully God has given me a husband with a unique ability to distance himself from his emotions in order to correct people that he loves when they are sinning or mistaken in matters of faith and morals. His rational mindset in contrast to my emotional one has helped me to get out of any self-pitty and despair that sometimes would attack me, aspecially in the beginning, when I would miss old friends and the false joys of protestantism. 

The biggest surprise that I have had after becoming Catholic is actually The Blessed Virgin Mary's ability to draw me closer to God. Contemplating on her sorrows, and praying the Rosary has really brought me to places that I never dared to hope for. And as a woman, it is great to discover such a great woman and Queen in Heaven to turn to. After confirmation we also realized that my husband had been healed from continual heart pain after a permanent injury to the heart.

I thank God that He helped me to overcome my corrupted emotions in order to appreciate doctrines as well. I no longer grieve protstantism, only the years wasted in idol-worship of a false, non-existing version of "Jesus." Today this heresy just makes me angry. I am glad that He put into my heart, even as a protestant, the appreciation for solitude, which is a key to a lot of things. Those who always need action around them and never can sit down and just contemplate in quietness will not hear God when He calls on them. I hope that my testimony will inspire others to seek God as well. There is no salvation outside the Catholic Church, and the Novus Ordo is NOT Catholicism. For more information, I would like to recommend the site http://www.seminatseminare.com/ and www.vaticancatholic.com (but this last site encourages Catholics to visit heretical Churches to receive the Sacraments, and this is also heresy!) For all who understand the Norwegian language, I would recommend my blog http://www.kvitekristkvinne.blogspot.com/. My Norwegian blog has a lot more information about true Catholicism and about the sedevacantist position than this blog does..So does this Swedish site, which has resources in English, Swedish and Latin: http://www.adoremus.info/