Ulf Ekman - A Journey to the Catholic Faith - 2015 Steubenville DFC

it's a real joy to be here this morning and to be able to give a testimony we must first thank has gotten him tymberlee horn that has invited us here it's been amazing these days for us to be in this environment so thank you Scott and Kimberly for for having us here so first we want to say a little bit about our background and we're from Sweden both of us and I came to a knowledge of the Lord when I was around 20 years old came from from a secular background and met Jesus as my savior which was an amazing experience for me and turned me totally upside down this was when I was starting to leave my hometown go to a university city of Uppsala I thought I was going to be there for about one or two semesters but I haven't left yet so so and and there I came into contact with a evangelical organization called The Navigators which is very good in Bible and Bible memorization Bible studies and evangelization which helped me a lot and stabilized my life tremendously after a couple years I started to study after taking a Bachelor of philosophy and started study theology and eventually ended up as one of the chaplains at the University which was a wonderful time to be able to evangelize among students in the meantime I made pick it up and we got married I think she will tell that story a little bit well yes I was born in India because my parents were missionaries there Methodist and missionaries and my father was a pastor so I grew up there until I was 10 years old and I really loved India very very much still and we have visited many many times and ministered there but when I was ten we came back to Sweden and and soon in my teenage years I I was involved in the youth group in the Lutheran Church and which was very much alive and centered around the Eucharist it was a sort of it could I say a revival church it was a high Church and the Lutheran Church in Sweden is so many different groups as high church as low church is very liberal parts too so I enjoyed the Eucharist so much as a teenager but then in my early 20s I I met the charismatic revival and and I was sort of yeah I live I lived in those circles for for some years and until I met earth and it was so wonderful to meet him and it was it was such a great blessing and we got married in 1976 yes so we as I became a chaplain at the University we were involved in the charismatic movement and eventually that led us to we saw the hunger especially among young people for the Word of God so we wanted to start a Bible School and as we did that we wanted to reach out a little bit further to Christians everywhere and in this environment which was the charismatic movement we eventually started a non-denominational charismatic church that church started to grow it's called word of life and the main emphasis was actually the Bible School people start to come from everywhere it was really a form of a Bible revival so step by step over the years there's been thousands of young people coming to this Bible School and this Bible School also reached out and through the students that went out evangelizing and eventually going into missions so many other Bible schools were planted this was in the 80s and we prayed a lot and sweden's always in praying a lot about Soviet Union and getting the gospel into the Soviet Union and then of course 1989 when the Wall fell the Lord gave us a wonderful golden opportunity and really challenged us to go into the Soviet Union we didn't have the means for it but we had the passion for it and the Lord provided the means and the and in a very short time we were able to go all over Soviet Union that eventually became Russia and all these different autonomous nations and preached and established churches and established Bible schools so after a number of years I do this to say this rather quickly now of course they it grew up we did not start all of these but it was a movement it was like an avalanche actually and a golden opportunity actually a Kairos moment to preach everywhere because they were so hungry after 70 years of communism it was a it was like a their hearts were just so open and so thousands and thousands came to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ it was amazing we had a train we actually rented a train from the KGB it was amazing yeah well this is amazing because we met a KGB officer and he hurt me preached and he said you know what what you have you should come and say this in Russia said I'd be happy to do it and and he said I have a train and it's a communist propaganda train excuse me from for the the consumer comes Mall which is the youth movement in the Communist Party in Russia and he said it's not going so well for us 80 people heard it says that I'd be happy to rent the train from you so we took it from st. Petersburg to Abakan in Siberia from AB Accountancy birth to Khabarovsk at the Japanese sea we did it in two summers and every place we stopped a church was planted every place we stopped there were thousands of people that came and listened and that received alone it was it was a overwhelming it was an overwhelming experience and this went on in of course in Eastern Europe and into Central Asia and eventually into the Middle East and eventually India China Taiwan so we have been very engaged in emission in many different ways as at the same time the local church in Uppsala that was the hub in all of this group and it became eventually the largest Sunday morning attendance for a local congregation in Sweden so these were this wonderful times and our wonderful times but in this something happened step by step and we were in Albania and this was before the the government the communist government failed but the Culture Minister was open to us and we said we want to come and preach the gospel in Albania and he said no no no no you can't do that absolutely not I said can we have a cultural exchange program in Albania and he said of course no problem so we bring our choir and we sing Swedish Christian songs because we're Christians and can I speak he said yeah of course you can start the meeting as long as I can end it and and we said we want two hours of television and he said no television I don't know well we must have television is that we cannot do this we want the biggest Arena in Tirana the capital and we want television and he said okay and there was one channel in Albania at that time they had four hours of television per day we got two of those this was 1991 were able to preach the gospel there I would say before the Communist President fell he actually called in right in the middle of the television program and demanded that they would stop it and they didn't we were able to preach and we heard so many testimonies about people receiving Jesus Christ as their Savior one thing happened in Albania that that that shook me a man that was secretary to the next president came up happy and he said this is wonderful I am also a Catholic and this experience have not left me to this day because I was like I'm not a Catholic I'm a Protestant and and this in a split second this happened I'm a Protestant justification on Lutheran holiness our gays are Methodists that that baptism well I'm Baptist but I'm not really Baptist because I do believe you know the president whole spirit about it is raising in my mind but I'm also Pentecost I'll believe in there and Holy Spirit but I'm also charismatic because I do more than just believe one thing about the Holy Spirit and analysts and ns I was thinking is I saw this tree big tree and I saw this branch and I was like hanging way out here somewhere you know when you are in something so intensive you can think you're the center of the universe but you're not of course so in an instant I felt I'm somewhere on this tree but very far out so I didn't know what to say to this how can I explain to this person that I'm not a Catholic but I'm a Protestant but I'm this and this until I couldn't so I just said oh that's wonderful but this this stuck with me this Catholic thing just got in there and stayed it like a seat yeah there was 91 and then we started to be more engaged in unity we stood at least he and I we started to think that this is this is crazy how divided we are and by by the millennium shift a thousand two thousand two I started to read about st. bigot um you know it was her feast day two days ago the only swedish canonized saint and she lived in in the 1300 and because I have her name I I and because of the Jubilee that was coming up I was interested in getting to know her better and this was a trap from the Lord so so I read a big fat novel about her life in the Middle Ages in Sweden it was very interesting and hurt her if she moved to Rome and she did a lot of things she was a very very courageous woman and and she fascinated me but I also was very disturbed by she had a visions of the Lord and and he spoke to her very much but I was she also had visions of Mary and she spoke to him to her and this for me as a Protestant was very strange how can how can marry speak to her this is she must have gotten it wrong she must be a little bit confused it must have been the Holy Spirit right so so this this I couldn't understand but I kept reading more and more books about st. Peter and it was it taught me a lot anyway about her Catholic faith how strong it was and how she was very very how should I say I'm careful with her theology when she had these visions and and local and how do you say it no questions you know what I mean she heard and and she rushed to her confessor to check it out do you think this is from God or am I just making this up dreaming so I like that about her she was so so careful and maybe because she was a lawyers and the daughter of a very famous lawyer and judge you would say in Sweden at the time so so she had this mind very clear mind so this this I liked but I still couldn't understand this thing about Mary so this is about the time when we are planning to go away from our lever church to go to Israel for to start start a Study Center we sent out from the jail yeah we were sent out by the church to Jerusalem to start a Bible School and a Study Center so so I'm reading this about Paquita and and now I think I have to find out more about Mary now I'm very prejudiced I suppose I know how it is to be judged by other people in the society in Sweden we had been criticizing criticized heavily one could say as a free church and as a Bible believing Church you know we're doing missionary work and our Swedish society is not so impressed by that so anyway I where am I really you know something I will do as the Pope Francis always says please pray for me please pray for me so we you thought that we were we need to be objective here we need to go to the documents yes so so to really learn about Mary and to understand her and what the Church teaches about her this this intrigued me now and I read several book Catholic books now about Mary Scott on your book dr. Hahn came our way one of the first ones together with some other books and I loved your book and it explains so much to me and actually when I understood I wanted to understand two things the Immaculate Conception and the perpetual virginity it's never talked about in in the evangelical charismatic free church world so I had no idea about this and it's very very very important and I it's actually been a problem to me because I was thinking we know that Jesus is the god second person in the in the Trinity and he was born of a woman but how if there's not something special with Mary how can he actually take human form and be without sin if she is contaminated by sin original sin how couldn't it didn't go together and and you were you were thinking about this for years yeah I had I have been thinking of this for years because I never heard anybody including you my dear husband had never I had never heard well I had other subjects to talk about so so actually when I read the words that explain her Immaculate Conception I have I have it written down over here and it was so good it helped me to find it because it's it's somewhere in here just say it because just say it because a bit I can't say it because it's so good okay oh yeah I can't find it but you know it I read it in the Pope John Paul's little book about it was it called in Latin AB redemptoris mater you know it yeah there he explained it with with a very pregnant words very strong words and when I saw it and I had thought about it I I could understand it I could see it and I could believe it and it was it was very very big blessing to me and I was so happy the puzzle that had a missing piece came together finally and I was very very thankful to Jesus look she was happy for 14 days and sit happy yeah she's still happy but I mean it was it was such a every kamemon such a you know and she talked about it all the time but it's Immaculate Conception all the time and and it really really made sense what happened when in the end the end of the 90s we started to come into contact of course in the mission fields there was two things that happen first we saw some deficiencies in our own work how to handle different problems and we felt we lacked some of the tools the other we've started to come in contact with in Catholics living Catholics they were charismatic Catholics but also others that really impressed us and as we move to Jerusalem to start this study sandy we started to meet Catholics everywhere I mean you Jerusalem you walk around the corner you go around the corner and there's a Catholic there I mean that there and you have to understand we come from is not like Steubenville we come from Sweden you don't find Catholics everywhere in Sweden I don't think I've ever seen a monk for example before I went to Jerusalem I told her Nana said I've only seen you on postcards so this is the background and and and now we are in Jerusalem we do in our work but at the same time we have free time and we feel this drawing from the Lord closer to the Catholic Church first we a little bit frightened me and frightened about it but there's some irresistible here that we cannot deny and Vegeta is kind of charging on and so she starts with Mary and I'm like can't you start with something else like you know she was the for a Protestant couple like a rule for me she was the big in hindrance so to speak to understand the Catholic belief yeah so we had to conquer that mountain first yes it's true and and and because I've heard many testimonies from Protestants that had become Catholics that that Mary was the last thing that they were able to cope with for us it was the first thing and it was a big big blessing for us we came in through Mary in this sense it was an extra blessing forward for me when we lived in Jerusalem we lived in an kerim that if you have been to the Holy Land you know that is the place of the birth of John the Baptist it's a small suburb of Jerusalem a very pretty wonderful place so here we are in Ankara the place that Mary rushed up to to help her her relative Elizabeth and we had our office just next to Mary's well in this in this village and we could all the time hear the church bells and an affront from the visitation visitation church is the place of visitation yeah and it became so for us because this is where we understood and and started to really love Mary so and now have I found the place I was looking for okay this is what was written in Pope John Paul's book the Virgin Mary in the first instance of her conception by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God in view of the merits of jesus christ the savior of the human race was preserved free from all stain of original sin this was so logical to me and so good so I wanted to read it to you you know it all by heart I'm sure so we were reading a lot studying a lot and many things started to make really sense I must admit that I mean I understood this about Mary but I was a little bit as a Protestant with the background that we have in Sweden has been astonished Lee Protestant now secularized but it's been so we we had a lot of anti-catholicism in us just by breathing the air and and and and the culture and and the sentiments that are there that we didn't really understand how deep it was so the thing about Mary Mary of course mother Jesus no problem with that but there are other things that there are more problematic and one night I was just laying in my bed resting this I didn't tell Bagheera that I was wrestling this but I was and so I don't get anywhere with this Mary thing so I well I read the Bible I just took the Bible and and and it opened up so as good charismatic you know you just take the verse you see shouldn't do that but in this cell in this case it really worked so so it opened up to Matthew 1 and here I I hear this is I read about the angel saying to Joseph do not fear to take Mary to yourself unto yourself and I like okay yes praise God praise God it was was exciting days there in Jerusalem for three years and I when we started to understand this we also asked ourselves why have we never heard this before in Sweden in our in our Christian years and I thought it is because we have lost sort of an Iron Curtain between Rome and Scandinavia we we just don't look that way in the churches you and in the media you never hear anything about the Catholic world so we will just do we we have been afraid actually of the of the Catholic Church we have been afraid of it was foreign it is foreign to so many Swedes and it was to us but now we're getting healed from that so of course we started to come across the Saints so the first one that we came in in contact with was st. Faustina and I had no idea who st. Faustina was at all and but I living in Jerusalem we I had to go over here to Seattle and preach for a weekend and then back again I was a long journey but so with some friends I went to a bookstore and just looking for something it was a secular bookstore just looking for something to read on the way back and I'm passing this religious section and this this one book is jumping out now it's not physically jumping out but it's it starts like this so I pull it out it's a brown and and I'd look and it says the life of sound Saint Faustina as opposed that so I put it back and just went on and then and I could just sense beep-beep Sasa Allah and these agrees with two very evangelical friends so I didn't want to buy that book I went around one more time and passed it and and there was again saying by me and I looked at it again ma and then I looked at them and they were over there by the counter and I don't do it so then I went to the counter to go out and that was it though you can go outside I forgot something so go to the car then I went back bought the book put it in a brown bag serious and back in Jerusalem we both read the book and were so impressed by so many things actually thinks that we understood things that we have experienced things that we from our background really made sense and resonated in our inward being in our hearts and that was quite amazing so st. palestina john paul ii made an amazing impression on us and a journalist in sweden asked me you know about our church life and ministry is there something an interview is there something you regret he said this was a little bit later when we were back in sweden but i interject this and so he said i said if there's anything i reject and he was anything that i regret and he was thinking about your mistakes in the ministry may possibly a scandal something like that and I said no well there's one thing that I regret and he said what is that journalists are very curious I said yeah one thing I regret that all these years up until now I never discovered the pope john paul ii and he said what but i regret that it was like we were living in parallel universes but in Jerusalem through books and through other people's stories we started to to understand both the Catholic Church dogmas and also Saints and personalities and not the least saint john paul ii which was an amazing discovery but then we move back to Sweden again after three years not quite I have a story here now and it's a very important one because when we moved to Jerusalem one of the first days we lived there we took a walk in the old city in the Christian quarters and I saw a little statuette of Mary in a window and it was different from everything else it it to me it wasn't as you say kitschy you know yeah you know the word it to plastic it was a sweet statue of of Mary with a jar of water in her left hand and little Jesus a boy on her right side and it was so nice so so Swedish wasn't it I thought its wee dish so so I I bought it and and scribbled in the clay you could see the word Bethlehem so I figured and the man in the shop said yeah these are made by nuns okay I so if you get nuns in Bethlehem and we really wanted I really really wanted to go and see more of their things but I could never figure out where they were and she talked a lot about this she wanted to go every week she talked about it she's more interested in ceramics than I am but but but it was there was something there was something there was a tool it was and in many ways you have been leading the way like this there's something yes yes yes absolutely something that gets stuck in you and then you just go for it until you find it yeah and then I found it but it was just a few months before we left in Israel in Tuesday 2005 I saw in Jerusalem was a big article about nuns in Beit Shemesh another town and not so far from Jerusalem and they had a monastery there and they were making things in pottery in you know pottery and chocolate and marmalades and and and they had a picture that I realized these are these are the nuns and they don't live in Bethlehem I they live in Beit Shemesh and their name is sisters of Bethlehem so that's why it was scribble Bethlem okay so immediately we may arrange it for a picnic with our staff we went there one day and Sabbath the Jewish people the Israelis loved to go actually many of their love to go to Catholic churches out in the countryside it's like a trip to another world for them they'll and it's nice I think it's it's a chance for reaching out to them that the church must not miss when all these Israelis come on Saturdays so so anyway we we went there and it started to rain and we our picnic sort of we didn't know what to do and then we met the sisters and they said come come come in and then use our little room here and we sat down and had our picnic and they joined us and we we were absolutely surrounded by angels and these three sisters and they were so so nice and said please let us show you our little church and we were we liked them so much and yeah we wanted to see their church so we worked up on the roof and then back in the back of the church and stood on a small balcony looking into their church the limestone church very simple very beautiful and our secretary then her name was Abigail and she was from America she was we saw something happened with her children she she just been leaned over the rail and looked down in the church because they're set at one sister in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament and and we didn't know if Abigail knew what this was so soulful whisper to her this is this is adoration I know she said and and tit and tears were streaming down her face and we we thought looked at each other that Wow can she know this yeah and God is really touching her and you know that moment abigail was called back to the Catholic Church something we didn't understand and no she to us she was a word of life you know we had been to our Bible School in Sweden she also was Baptist we knew that she also was a Jewess because in her family she also had Jewish heritage and this was the reason why she was in Israel yeah that's why she lived now in Israel she had emigrated and then she still says no I grew up as a Catholic what we didn't know that she had been very um she she she had seen our development these years did to become more and more positive - let me tell her this is funny because because Pickett has started to bided lichens and little pictures of Mary and little things and she was giving them to Abigail all the time like this and she said oh she just like my mother stop this yeah and then this happens to her God is so good she had left the church in rebellion and in her teenage years she had left everything and not until she was over 30 she had come back to the Lord but then through the Baptist's in New York I think it was so and then she had come to us and then then she had this drawing here and so she started to go down every Sabbath she wanted to go there to just pray and be with the sisters and one day she went to the Pires and she said I want to become a nun and listen this and the and and the Prairie said well that's wonderful but first you must be a Catholic here and she said yes but but I am in my background okay okay so you're coming back yes so here's a former Catholic Baptist charismatic Messianic Jew that now wants to become a Catholic nun and so she said do you have anybody that recommends you yes my Protestant pastor Oh so this is prairies which we now know and we have a wonderful context and these Bethlem sisters have meant so much to us over the years she looked at her and said so you mean that a Protestant pastors recommending a Messianic Jew to become a Catholic nun yes yes and and and then she said then the prior said then there must be a God in heaven the olive tree okay okay so we go back to Sweden and and he goes back to his job as a pastor and we were warmly welcomed back by our church there but we have all these new experiences that we just want to share of course with everybody and so one thing we did was to take colleagues pastors and other Christian leaders that used to come for seminars - and listen to tools we started to invite invite them to come with us to Rome for for a sort of a educational purposes so to speak and and one but first we had a private trip to Rome and we went to with an American lady the Catholic one of the first Catholics that we got to befriend she took us to Rome to introduce us to the Pontifical Council of Christian unity and we met some Monsignors there and it was a nice little talk we felt rather awkward we didn't know really if they and what its language different yeah we were we were very you know still very Protestant and we felt to be were prodigious anyway it was it was good to meet these wonderful men but then we she had gotten our tickets to the scurvy if you know the excavation below a st. Peter's Church and then it's a that's something everybody should go and see and we go down there and we in the first century sort of walking among the graves of the Roman time and slowly we get closer and closer to the center of this excavation and and we come to the place where with where we see the relics of Saint Peter and what is believed to be him and I think it is and we stand there and look and we're totally totally amazed shocked shocked in a positive way and they tell us the story how they noticed and and Peter is very dear to us in Peter we have read so much with Wolfe has preached so much about feature and his boldness both boldness and and the courage so it was a great moment for us and as we go out of the church we come up with just by the altar and this is also spoke very strongly to us jesus said you're Peter and upon this rock I would be by church and here we come up with the middle of this huge church by the altar and we know that is built right on top of of the tomb of st. Peter it's amazing it really shook us so we go out and we stand between these huge pillars looking out on the square st. Peter's Square together with our American friend and something happened that is so unusual so so crazy really you see the sky a big sky over Rome and there's like thousands of birds always flying in big flocks back and forth and in one instant all of these birds come together and make a big exclamation mark what do you say we were so touched down by the grave and and just looking in there and a and as I walked out this what beginners said this about Peter and I was thinking you know is this is this true is it it is Peter and if he's Peter and and and then what Jesus said is true of course he's the rock and here the church is built on him and I was full of this but with it with the Christians so we're walking out and all three of us instantly together see this for a couple seconds huge I mean the whole sky huge exclamation mark like this and it's like the Lord is saying didn't I tell you now let's play sometimes you need signs in in mind but you need some signs as well so anyway back in Sweden we wanted to educate our people really not try to drag the church into the Catholic Church we at all but to be more open because the years of being occupied of talking about unity in the need of for unity we wanted our people to understand that the body of Christ is big it's rich and the Catholic Church definitely not just belonged to the body across but in the center of the body of Christ so we did seminars we did tours to it to Rome and we've had over the years a number of pastor seminars with hundreds of pastors that we have brought together from our networks and we taught them about this and they were very very open it was actually a wonderful time in there and there were four things that we felt the Lord told us in this time and it was number one that we should discover this that we really should discover what God has in the Catholic Church the second was that we should appreciate it not be so skeptical and negative the third thing was that we should draw closer to it and the fourth was that we should unite with it not this fourth I didn't page sorry to say so much attention to this fourth I put it back because this is too much but too help our people to discover to help our people to appreciate that work that we felt that was necessary had a experience in Israel that was quite remarkable and I'll tell it real quick we were walking down the valley Yemenite Valley where we lived and there was an olive tree and as a as an evangelical and as a charismatic and preaching faith and so on you can you know you have to watch it you can be arrogant and there were times when I was arrogant no question about it and the Lord dealt with that in this very instant there is a as almost like a replacement theology where where the news movement says that everything we have replaced everybody else and this is something that goes on in Protestant Christianity quite a bit which is a form of CS Lewis causes chronological snobbery so the like the latest is the best and so on to be on the cutting edge all the time so we were walking down this little Valley and there's a old old olive tree it's old that you can look right through it it holes right through it and I hear this little voice on the inside as I passed this tree is dead isn't it so I looked at her glanced at it and and Canon ordered ya guys dead and then I heard very distinctly look again so I looked again and I saw this green leaves on this dry branches and his old trunk and very strongly the Holy Spirit rebuked me right there you never again call it anything dead because that's what we had done sometimes in arrogance and pride you know old churches they're dead you know they're God's not moving there he's moving here and so on and and the Lord dealt with me and with us with this arrogance to open our hearts to be more humble and to appreciate what is not just has happened in the historic churches but what is going on in the body of Christ and in the Catholic Church and this was something that I had to share back home and it opened the hearts of many not to have this attitude and we were very happy as I was very happy to be a happy and unity preacher and commandingly inclined the pastor but obviously that was not enough for the Lord no and by this time I'm totally convinced that the Catholic Church is the church that Jesus founded and that it has been standing here for 2,000 years and now it's waiting for us I felt that if I have now found the truth to the truth is what we were searching all the time the truth and here it is we have seen it we have understood it and we know it and we believe it then really you can't say no thank you lord we can't come we have other obligations we felt we had a lot of obligations of course because the ministry over the years had grown and and we were working not just in Scandinavia but in many nations and also because in our environment there were this anti-catholic or the suspicions about Catholicism that was that was going on so I was wondering and I came to the point that even if I wanted to I can't so I drag my feet a little bit because of the responsibility we were helped graciously by the Bishop of Sweden a wonderful Carmelite Monken and Bishop that is the first Catholic Swedish Catholic bishop since the Reformation so the things are picking up in Sweden it's it's things are changing he was a wonderful wonderful man that understood us very well and that were able to help us in in in many ways but I was still dragging my feet until one night two o'clock at night I just woke up just absolutely woke up I usually don't so when I do many times it is the Lord kind of nodding me as I woke up this was now now we were in November 2 2014 somewhere in that word 13 13 I'm sorry 13 and I woke up and I heard this voice just saying it's time to jump into the water and then there's two ways you can go into the water you can go by the way of Jonah or you can go by the way a Peter one way or the other is time to get into the water and I kind of figured what that meant I said okay so the next morning I said I told me good I think I think it's about time for us to do it so step by step leading up to the 9th of March 2014 where we caused quite a story in our nation when we publicly declared that we inner in our church Sunday morning service that we were going to be Catholics but that was also quite a relief and now we know that this what we wanted to do this is what the Lord wanted us to do and 21st of May 2014 we were received by Bishop and us into the

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Length: 47min 30sec (2850 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 01 2016