I am so glad you came to know Christ through this series

Craziest thing about this story. I was indirectly converted thanks to an atheist.

I was an agnostic who was raised Roman Catholic and rejected Christianity in my teens when I realized the Roman Catholic Church was just making things up.

I had learned about the so-called "Immaculate Conception of Mary" which was declared doctrine by a Pope in 1954.

(As an aside, the Jesuits are proud of that one - https://jesuitonlinelibrary.bc.edu/?a=d&d=wlet19541101-01.2.6&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN------- )

I could find no evidence of that in my Bible, and I asked questions in my Religion class and the answers were not satisfactory. I became an agnostic due to this.

In college, I looked into other religions other than Christianity and smoked a lot of weed. Nothing I found in that research fulfilled me.

In 2007, I moved down to Georgia because the economy in Michigan had already collapsed, foreshadowing 2008 meltdown nationwide.

Got a job right away and started dating my future wife several months later. Due to her schedule, we often had to spend time together on Sundays.

She was attending a mega church and asked me if I wanted to attend just to see their band and then get lunch afterwards. The drummer was Phil Ehart from the rock band Kansas.

So I agreed.

She was in a Bible study sponsored by the megachurch and one of her friends joined us for lunch with her son and her ex-husband, the atheist, who was picking up the son for visitation. Her ex had dropped in near the end of the service and saw some bible verses on the screen.

At lunch, he asked me what NIV listed at the end of the bible verses stood for. I told him I knew it was a Bible version but wasn't exactly sure what the letters represented.

He immediately attacked me.

"What kind of Christian are you?"

When I replied, "I'm not", my future wife jumped in and explained everything, he immediately apologized and that was that.

Since this was 2007, I couldn't look up the answer on my smart phone, but now I was dying to know what it meant.

When I got home, I Googled it and found out it stood for the New International Version. I also discovered an entire world I didn't even know existed, where people were battling over which Bible version was correct.

I was always big into researching things I am exposed to and know nothing about, and I was hooked, mostly out of curiosity.

Ended up coming across this video of Veith's "Battle of the Bibles"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9cFmY5G3H0

I followed up by watching the next one on the playlist "Changing the Word" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzrC8eb21w8

I was in tears by the end of the video, and I was also angry. Many of the contradictions I had found in my Roman Catholic bible were due to these altered verses.

I bought a large print KJV bible and dug right in after this. Got baptized not long after.