The year after high school was a very hard year in my life. My younger brother, Myke, died from cancer. Many of my friends had joined the military service or were attending college. I was attending a local technical school while waiting to see if my number came up in the military draft. I was lonely, depressed, and searching for answers about the meaning of life.

During this time, I was helping my neighbors remodel their house when I noticed a chart in their home entitled "Articles of Faith." The writings on that chart seemed interesting to me and became the starting point for a discussion with my neighbors about the Mormon Church.

At the invitation of my neighbors I attended a few Church social activities, then firesides, and finally a Sacrament meeting. I was not planning on joining this group at first, but everyone was so friendly and so excited about their religion; I was used to people who were conservative in the expression of their faith. I began to think that these people must have something special which was missing in my church.

I began to talk to the missionaries and other LDS Church members about their beliefs. I listened to their testimonies about Joseph Smith and about how we could become gods and live with our families forever in heaven.

The missionaries asked me to pray to receive a testimony from the Holy Ghost. The Book of Mormon promised that if I prayed God would confirm the truth of all the missionaries had been telling me through the power of the Holy Ghost. So I prayed, but when I did not receive an answer I was told that I did not have enough faith. So I prayed again and again, gradually accepting the fact that they must be right; my faith was lacking. At this point I agreed to be baptized. I still had many unanswered questions, but assumed that they would be answered as I studied and learned more about the gospel from within the Church.

As the years went by--in the Air Force, at Brigham Young University, and then in my career--I gained a great deal of knowledge about the Church. I progressed in the Priesthood and was married in the temple. I was sure that I was on my way to becoming a god.

Yet, I was still unable to find answers to some of my original questions: Why was the published account of the First Vision not written until twenty years after the fact? Why were the conversion stories of the first LDS converts lacking any mention of Joseph Smith seeing both the Father and the Son? Where were the historical records from the early 1800's that would confirm Joseph's claims of his First Vision; namely, that there were great religious revivals near his home, that he was severely persecuted due to his assertions that he had conversed with God, etc.? In fact, the longer I was a member of the LDS Church the more unanswered questions I had. Why didn't the Book of Mormon contain information on many of the important doctrines of the Church? Why did the Book of Mormon contradict other important doctrines of the Church? Why did Joseph Smith clearly state in the Lectures on Faith that God did not have a body if he himself saw God's body in 1820? Why did the Church remove the Lectures on Faith from their canon of scripture? These were just a few of the many questions I was trying to sort through.

I could not find any answers within the Church, so I had to turn to books written by Anti-Mormons and Apostates. I found much more than I bargained for. Not only did I find answers to the questions I was troubled over, but I found questions I didn't even know existed. And alongside those questions were more answers.

I found that the Church I was involved in had rewritten its history and changed its doctrine. Yet more disturbing, I found that I had been deceived and the foundation of the Mormon Church was not Jesus and his prophet, but ever changing sands. I felt cheated. Even worse, I blamed Jesus for letting me be deceived.

I left the LDS Church after being a member for 20 years--and left Jesus--and started a search for something else. After several years of fruitless searching into such things as the New Age Movement, the Lord caused my path to cross that of one of His faithful servants. This started me on the path that led to my Savior.

When I accepted Jesus as my Savior I was filled with a joy that I had never experienced before. I came to realize that it wasn't the fault of Jesus that I had followed a false prophet; I had let myself be deceived. If I would have based my study and search for God on the Bible instead of what other people told me and led me to believe, I never would have fallen into Satan's snare.

Acts 17:11 states: "…They received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so." Today I live by these words. They were revealed to me by the infinite grace of God, who in His mercy, brought me out of darkness and into the light of Christ.

[Bill lives in Red Wing, Minnesota. He is actively challenging the LDS people with whom he formerly worshiped to re-examine their faith in light of the facts he found while searching for answers.]