American speaker Tim Staples is a former southern Baptist, an Assemblies of God Minister and a tough-talking US Marine. Before that, he was one of those aggressive atheists you meet at parties. Growing up, he and his brothers were on a first-name basis with the local police. Now he’s a Catholic apologist with a growing reputation as an inspiring speaker. The Record’s Deirdre Fleming condensed an entire talk, one of a marathon 18 he gave in Sydney for the World Youth Day anniversary celebrations in July. Thousands turned out to hear him. His U-turn conversion story is a thrill ride through roads signposted by God.
By Deridre Fleming
In the Southern Baptist tradition, everything revolves around that one day when you say the “sinner’s prayer” and accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Saviour. When that day came for ten-year-old Tim, he had an experience of the ‘Power of God’ that he never forgot. “I knew something real had happened to me. I remember I began to cry. Now I’m the youngest of four boys and my family – we were all athletes – you name it, we did it: football, baseball, basketball, boxing. One thing you didn’t do in my family was cry. But I knew something real happened because I started to cry and I didn’t care.”
But that was when he was ten, and like all too many others, Tim drifted away from God during his teenage years. “I went as far away from Christ as I could get; in fact, in my teen years, I even claimed to be agnostic. You know what’s funny about me is that I’ve always been an apologist.
When I was an atheist, I was an atheist apologist. I can remember being at parties trying to dissuade people from belief in God, saying ‘You believe in God; what a loser! What, you need a crutch? You can’t handle life on your own so you got this big God in the clouds to come help you, right?’ And of course, I had had at least a class or two on evolution, so I was an expert, and I had watched Carl Sagan on television. So I knew there was no God.”
Tim’s wayward teen years led him to drop out of high school, and move out of home so that by the age of sixteen he was living with one of his older brothers. While he doesn’t like to go into detail about this period, he goes as far as to say, “The policemen in Fairfax County, Virginia, knew me and my brothers on a first name basis.”
His return from agnosticism to faith was initiated by a visit from the Jehovah’s Witnesses. “Thanks be to God they got me to think about Jesus.” As it happened, his mother was working at a Chaplain’s office at the time, and after talking to a Catholic priest who gave her information on the Trinity she managed to steer Tim away from the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Instead, inspired by American televangelists, Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart, Tim turned to the local Assemblies of God church. “Everybody was involved in a house group … Would to God we had that kind of problem in the Catholic church – folks fighting over new people. We may have been a little bit off theologically, but boy we were excited about it.”
Soon he rededicated his life to Jesus and began to evangelise the friends with whom he had previously been living it up. Even his family returned to churchgoing. Tim recounts his mother’s reaction, ‘Yes, I’ll go to church with you – it’s better than picking you up at the police station!’
Those years of sin, however, had left me in a precarious position, because I had all this zeal, but I had no high school diploma, I had no money and I had no discipline in my life.” He opted for the one place that could provide him with an education, money and lashings of discipline: the United States Marine Corps.
Joining the Marines gave Tim the opportunity to travel the length and breadth of the United States, involving himself in local churches at every duty station. “I was youth leader, I was street evangelisation team leader, I was house group leader … At each church I got deeper and deeper into the scriptures and I began to develop a real love for apologetics.”
But one thing troubled him during this time: sharing his faith with different people gave him a need to know that the faith he was sharing was the truth. “You see, up until this time, everything had been emotion.” Now that he was becoming a man, he started asking himself how, for instance, Calvary Chapel could be the true church if it had only been around since 1965, and if Lutherans had been around for 460 years, where was the true church before that?
“One cult, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, I had a special love for, because I’d been to a Kingdom Hall and I almost became a Jehovah’s Witness.
“I needed to know why I believe what I believe.” He immersed himself in reading evangelical Protestant apologists such as Walter Martin, Josh McDowell and Norman Geisler, and as he did so, he developed a passion for going after particular cults.
“One cult, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, I had a special love for, because I’d been to a Kingdom Hall and I almost became a Jehovah’s Witness. But there was one cult in particular that I really felt that God was calling me to – and this cult was the largest cult; it was the most massive cult, the most evil cult, the most insidious.
In fact I used to call it Satan’s greatest masterpiece, the whore of Babylon, of Revelation 17. And that, of course, was the Catholic church. And to me it was the most evil, deceiving the masses – why? Because those Catholics teach a works doctrine – you’re justified by works – whereas we taught justification by faith alone.”
Tim describes how at that time he led many Catholics out of the Catholic Church. Unfortunately, he found it all too easy: “For the first 23 years of my life, I never met a single Catholic who was either willing or able to defend his or her faith when I approached them.
“You know, I felt like God was calling me to Catholics – everywhere I went there were Catholics. I’d check into a duty station – three roommates – all Catholic! It got to be so I could sniff ‘em out. And normally you’d know they’re Catholics, because all you’d have to do would be to ask them one question about Scripture … and this look of panic ebbs across their face!”
But God had other plans for Tim. Previously stationed on the USS Ranger, an aircraft carrier, he received orders in his last year in the Marine Corps to go stateside, to his hometown, Quantico, Virginia, the showplace of the Marine Corps.
A couple of weeks later, he was joined by US Marine Matt Dula who had just completed a tour of duty in Iwakuni, Japan. “As my gunnery sergeant was introducing us, I reached out and shook his hand and the first thing out of my mouth was ‘Are you a Christian?’
With Catholics, normally I could tell who the Catholics were, because all you have to do is ask that question, ‘Are you a Christian?’ and they panic – it’s like you can see the wheels turning in their head. Wait a sec …hold on a sec …let me think. And often the response is, “No, I’m not Christian, I’m Catholic!” But this time, Matt Dula responds, ‘Yes, I’m Christian. I’m Catholic.’ Thinking, “Hmm … he’s a bit bold,” Tim began to drool at the thought of converting another Catholic. “And I launched into a diatribe that lasted one year straight. I would love to be able to tell you that we just talked in Christian love, but there were times we almost came to blows.”
These arguments about faith ministered to Tim. “This was the first time I had met a Catholic who was passionate about his faith. He was passionate about Our Lord. I sensed the presence of God, and you know what, it made me mad because Catholics aren’t supposed to be Christians. But I could not deny there was something real in this guy.”
One of their disputes targeted the Catholic practice of calling priests “Father”. “So you say you’re a Christian. Well, aren’t Christians supposed to do what the Christ said? Does not the Christ say in Matthew 23: 9, ‘Call no man on this earth, Father, for you have one Father and he is in heaven?’ How can you call yourself a Christian?”
To Tim’s surprise, Matt had an answer ready: “Well Tim, that’s interesting, but have you considered Luke 16:24?” “And I went, wait a second … isn’t there a canon law against lay people reading the Bible or something?” The story in Luke 16:24 where Jesus tells a story with the words, ‘Father Abraham, pity me and send Lazarus …’ Matt says, “Well, what’s up, Tim? Is Jesus confused, because here’s Jesus calling him Father Abraham?” “And you know he didn’t stop there, but Matthew proceeded to pummel me with Scripture. He goes to Romans 4:1-18: seven times Abraham is called Father Abraham by Saint Paul; Acts 7:1-2, St Stephen calls the elders to whom he is speaking Father, and Abraham Father twice; 1 John 2:13, John the apostle speaking to the elders of Ephesus calls them Fathers. I’m going ‘Oh, my goodness. I’ve read these things a million times. Where was I …?’ 1 Corinthians 4:14-15, St Paul says, ‘You have 10 000 instructors in the Lord Jesus Christ. You have not many fathers. I am your father, for I have begotten you through the gospel.’ So by that time I was ticked! Do you know what, I never let on and Matt will tell you to this day, he never knew he was getting through.”
When outmanoeuvred on one argument, Tim would move to another, for example, justification: “The Bible says – and it doesn’t get any plainer than Ephesians 2:8-9 – ‘For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not by works, lest any man should boast.’ Now let’s hear a comeback on that!” And Matt responded, “Interesting …all right, let’s check out James 2:19. ‘You believe there is one God? You do, well the devil also believes … faith without works is dead.’ I remember Matt making me read verse 24 where it says, ‘You see how that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone.’ And then Matthew closed my Bible and he said, ‘Tim, I want you to look me in the eye and I want you to be honest with me. You believe in Sola Scriptura, right?’ I said, ‘Absolutely, Jack. Bible alone, baby. I don’t need no church.’ ‘OK, well I want you to look me dead in the eye and I want you to tell me that you’re going to read this verse, where the Bible says we are justified by works and not by faith alone. Close your Bible and say, well gee, we must be justified by faith alone, ‘cos the Bible says we’re justified not by faith alone. Can you honestly tell me that, Tim?’ Of course, I came back with the response, ‘Well, you know works, if you’re truly born again, works are going to be coming out.’ and I gave the Protestant line. And he said, ‘Tim, that’s not what that scripture says. It says we’re justified by works and not by faith alone. And then it goes on to say, ‘Just as the body without the soul or the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead.’ What does that imply? It implies that faith can be alive with works and all that good stuff, but what happens if faith dies and there’s an ontological change and that faith becomes dead and it’s no longer a justifying faith?’
“If I asked Matt something, I would quote 400 scriptures at once. And he would say, ‘Slow down, one at a time.’ But if I asked him something that he didn’t know, you know what he would say: ‘I don’t know.’ You know that can be the apologist’s best answer sometimes. And I’d go, ‘See, I got you, man.’
“But then do you know what he would say? ‘But I’m going to find out.’ I knew Matt loved me, because sometimes it would be months later, but Matt went home and he got the answers. In fact he went to a priest who would later become my spiritual director, an Opus Dei priest back in Washington D.C. And he’d get answers and books. Matt would come running into the office and say, ‘Tim, remember what you asked about this. Here’s the answer!’ And bam, there it was.”
During this year Tim had poured himself into his local Assemblies of God Church as Street Evangelisation Team Leader, Detention Centre Ministry Team Leader, Singles Ministry Leader and interim Youth Pastor. But so confused did he become by the mental conflict between what he was hearing from Matt and his own church’s teachings that when he was approached to take over as Youth Pastor, he had to turn it down. So what does a good AOG minister do when he wants to get rid of “all those Catholic thoughts”? Tim decided to enroll for the Jimmy Swaggart Bible College (JSBC) in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. “He had an ex-priest teaching theology and history there, so I thought, ‘Yeah, I’m going to get the dirt on Catholicism.”
Arriving at JSBC, he felt God had confirmed that he had made the right decision when he met and started going out with a girl who would have made an ideal AOG minister’s wife – not only was she beautiful but she could also play the piano and sing! But a funny thing happened at JSBC.
It wasn’t long before he witnessed in his lectures assaults on the Catholic Church.
“Some professor would say this or that against the Church and my arm would just go up. I tell you, it had a mind of its own. And I would say, ‘Excuse me, you know that’s not what the Catholic Church teaches… If you want to read Session 21 and 22 of the Council of Trent, On the Sacrifice of the Mass it’s not a resacrifice of Christ … And the more I started talking about it, the more I started believing it.”
It was Tim’s girlfriend who gave him the courage to take a stand on what he believed to be true. It was at this time that Tim felt most alone, knowing that if he became a Catholic he would be thrown out of college, he would lose his girlfriend because they would be unable to continue with different beliefs, and he would break his mother’s heart if he abandoned his plans to become a preacher.
As well as that, his classmates were constantly bombarding him with counter-arguments and the only support he had was from books: no priest and no other Catholics to turn to, and no Eucharist. Eventually a fellow student went to Brother Swaggart and told him that there was someone who was confusing the other students because he was thinking about becoming Catholic.
“So he sent me to his right hand man, a man named Andrew Caradagas. I’m thinking that this man is going to chew me up and twist me up into a pretzel. He’s probably had 150,000 years of seminary and here I am, a kid that’s read a few books. I was scared to death. Brother Caradagas was pacing in front of me like this, looking at me and he said, “I understand you’re thinking about becoming Catholic.”
“My voice cracked, I was so nervous. I’m shaking, my palms are sweating. I’m sure this guy has to see I’m scared to death. ‘Yes, actually, I’m thinking about becoming Catholic; I’m seeing a lot of truth … Uuh.’ And he says, ‘You realise, the first Pope did not exist until 476AD.’
“I remember thinking, my goodness, 476AD! I mean, I’ve heard better from Jack Chick! But I had read about this. I started on Matthew 16; I started letting him have it. And then of course I started quoting St Ignatius of Antioch and his epistle to the Romans of 110AD.
“And I’ll tell you what happened: when I started sharing and he realised I’d read what I’d read, his face turned colours and he went to another subject. It shocked me. He didn’t respond. ‘Well you realise transubstantiation was never taught, was an invention of the 13th century; never taught before.’ And I said, and I’ll never forget this, I said, “Brother Caradagas, you know better than to say that. Yes, transubstantiation, the word, was defined at the fourth Lateran Council in 1215 AD.” I had read this. God had given me the right stuff, even then. We went from doctrine to doctrine and I’ll tell you what happened. Brother Caradagas exploded in anger at me. And it startled me – you know why? And this is why I ask you to pray for him. Because I knew he knew better than to say the things he was saying. And I looked Brother Caradagas in the eye and I said, ‘Brother Caradagas, please do not leave Peter because of Judas.’
“And that didn’t help things. He actually got more angry. There are so many that have left the church for various reasons because of the pain in their hearts – they’ve had a bad experience with Father or a bad experience with Sister so-and-so. We need to get out and minister to people. After I left that office, I remember Brother Caradagas saying on the way out, ‘Let me tell you something, Tim Staples. You’re not going to be Catholic. You are Catholic.’ And at that point, man, I didn’t know whether to thank him or what, because I still didn’t want to be Catholic.
“But you know when I walked out of that room I knew. It’s like my heart sank and I hurt for him, but I knew – I realised the Catholic Church was the true church, but I’ll tell you it was still a struggle of the will. I didn’t want it, because I knew I was going to lose everything. One night, I came back to my room and I was absolutely exhausted after arguing all day. I had gone into the prayer room and cried and prayed and said, ‘God, please help me.’ I came back to my room, and my roommate was out; I remember just collapsing on my bed and I slid down to my knees, looked up to the ceiling and for the first time in my life I prayed to a saint. I knew intellectually about praying to saints – from Heb. 12:1, Matt. 17:1-3, Rev.5, Rev.6 – it’s all over the New Testament – but I had never done it. I knelt in exhaustion and I looked up to the ceiling and I said, ‘Mary, I don’t know if I’m doing this right. I don’t know what I’m supposed to say. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do,’ but I said ‘Please, Mary, help me.’
“And that was it. And by her prayers in that Marian Year of 1987-88 – our Blessed Mother prayed me home. And you know what? I have never doubted the Catholic faith since that moment.”
Tim goes on to describe the difficulties of facing his family with the news that he was becoming Catholic, something that to them seemed a heresy.
A powerful testimony to his decision and the power of the Holy Spirit, though, is the fact that five years later, all of his family and many of his friends had converted and his brother Terry became a Catholic priest.
Tim Staples’ talk “The Bible Made Me Catholic” is available as a download from St Joseph Communications: www.saintjoemp3.com/servlet/Categories?category=Tim+Staples