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I Hated the Idea of Becoming Catholic
Aleteia ^ | JUNE 20, 2014 | ANTHONY BARATTA

Posted on 11/28/2014 2:33:31 PM PST by NYer

It was the day after Ash Wednesday in 2012 when I called my mom from my dorm room at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and told her I thought I was going to become Catholic.

“You’re not going to become Catholic, you just know you’re not Southern Baptist,” she said.

“No, I don’t think so.”

A pause. “Oh boy,” she sighed.

I started crying.

I cannot stress enough how much I hated the idea of becoming Catholic. I was bargaining to the last moment. I submitted a sermon for a competition days before withdrawing from school. I was memorizing Psalm 119 to convince myself of sola scriptura. I set up meetings with professors to hear the best arguments. I purposefully read Protestant books about Catholicism, rather than books by Catholic authors.

Further, I knew I would lose my housing money and have to pay a scholarship back if I withdrew from school, not to mention disappointing family, friends, and a dedicated church community.

But when I attempted to do my homework, I collapsed on my bed. All I wanted to do was scream at the textbook, “Who says?!”

I had experienced a huge paradigm shift in my thinking about the faith, and the question of apostolic authority loomed larger than ever.

But let’s rewind back a few years.

I grew up in an evangelical Protestant home. My father was a worship and preaching pastor from when I was in fourth grade onwards. Midway through college, I really fell in love with Jesus Christ and His precious Gospel and decided to become a pastor.

It was during that time that I was hardened in my assumption that the Roman Catholic Church didn’t adhere to the Bible. When I asked one pastor friend of mine during my junior year why Catholics thought Mary remained a virgin after Jesus’ birth when the Bible clearly said Jesus had “brothers,” he simply grimaced: “They don’t read the Bible.”

Though I had been in talks with Seattle’s Mars Hill Church about doing an internship with them, John Piper’s book Don’t Waste Your Life clarified my call to missionary work specifically, and I spent the next summer evangelizing Catholics in Poland.

So I was surprised when I visited my parents and found a silly looking book titled Born Fundamentalist, Born Again Catholic on my father’s desk. What was my dad doing reading something like this? I was curious and hadn’t brought anything home to read, so I gave it a look.

David Currie’s memoir of leaving behind his evangelical education and ministries was bothersome. His unapologetic defense of controversial doctrines regarding Mary and the papacy were most shocking, as I had never seriously considered that Catholics would have sensible, scriptural defenses to these beliefs.

The book’s presence on my father’s desk was explained more fully a few months later when he called me and said he was returning to the Catholicism of his youth. My response? “But, can’t you just be Lutheran or something?” I felt angry, betrayed, and indignant. For the next four months I served as a youth pastor at my local church and, in my free time, read up on why Catholicism was wrong.

During that time, I stumbled across a Christianity Today article that depicted an “evangelical identity crisis.” The author painted a picture of young evangelicals, growing up in a post-modern world, yearning to be firmly rooted in history and encouraged that others had stood strong for Christ in changing and troubled times. Yet, in my experience, most evangelical churches did not observe the liturgical calendar, the Apostles’ Creed was never mentioned, many of the songs were written after 1997, and if any anecdotal story was told about a hero from church history, it was certainly from after the Reformation. Most of Christian history was nowhere to be found.

For the first time, I panicked. I found a copy of the Catechism and started leafing through it, finding the most controversial doctrines and laughing at the silliness of the Catholic Church. Indulgences? Papal infallibility? These things, so obviously wrong, reassured me in my Protestantism. The Mass sounded beautiful and the idea of a visible, unified Church was appealing - but at the expense of the Gospel? It seemed obvious that Satan would build a large organization that would lead so many just short of heaven.

I shook off most of the doubts and enjoyed the remainder of my time at college, having fun with the youth group and sharing my faith with the students. Any lingering doubts, I assumed, would be dealt with in seminary.

I started my classes in January with the excitement of a die-hard football fan going to the Super Bowl. The classes were fantastic and I thought I had finally rid myself of any Catholic problems.


But just a few weeks later, I ran into more doubts. We were learning about spiritual disciplines like prayer and fasting and I was struck by how often the professor would skip from St. Paul to Martin Luther or Jonathan Edwards when describing admirable lives of piety. Did nothing worthwhile happen in the first 1500 years? The skipping of history would continue in many other classes and assigned reading. The majority of pre-Reformation church history was ignored.

I soon discovered I had less in common with the early Church fathers than I thought. Unlike most Christians in history, communion had always been for me an occasional eating of bread and grape juice, and baptism was only important after someone had gotten “saved.” Not only did these views contradict much of Church history but, increasingly, they did not match with uncomfortable Bible passages I had always shrugged off (John 6, Romans 6, etc).

Other questions that I had buried began to reappear, no longer docile but ferocious, demanding an answer. Where did the Bible come from? Why didn’t the Bible claim to be “sufficient”? The Protestant answers that had held me over in the last year were no longer satisfying.

Jefferson Bethke’s viral YouTube video, “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus,” was released during this time. The young man meant well, but to me he only validated what the Wall Street Journal called “the dangerous theological anarchy of young evangelicals,” attempting to remove Jesus from the confines of religion but losing so much in the process.

Ash Wednesday was the tipping point. A hip Southern Baptist church in Louisville held a morning Ash Wednesday service and many students showed up to classes with ashes on their forehead. At chapel that afternoon, a professor renowned for his apologetic efforts against Catholicism expounded upon the beauty of this thousand year old tradition.

Afterwards, I asked a seminary friend why most evangelicals had rejected this beautiful thing. He responded with something about Pharisees and “man-made traditions.”

I shook my head. “I can’t do this anymore.”

My resistance to Catholicism started to fade. I was feeling drawn to the sacraments, sacramentals, physical manifestations of God’s grace, the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. No more borrowing, no more denying.

It was the next day that I called my mom and told her I thought I was going to become Catholic.

I didn’t go to classes on Friday. I went to the seminary library and checked out books I had previously forbidden myself to look at too closely, like the Catechism and Pope Benedict’s latest. I felt like I was checking out porn. Later, I drove to a 5pm Saturday Mass. The gorgeous crucifix at the front of the church reminded me of when I had mused that crucifixes demonstrated that Catholics didn’t really understand the resurrection.

But I saw the crucifix differently this time and began crying. “Jesus, my suffering savior, you’re here.”

A peace came over me until Tuesday, when it yielded to face-to-windshield reality. Should I stay or leave? I had several panicked phone calls: “I literally have no idea what I am going to do tomorrow morning.”

On Wednesday morning I woke up, opened my laptop, and typed out “77 Reasons I Am Leaving Evangelicalism.” The list included things like sola scriptura, justification, authority, the Eucharist, history, beauty, and continuity between the Old and New Testament. The headlines and the ensuing paragraphs flowed from my fingers like water bursting from a centuries-old dam. 

A few hours later on February 29, 2012 I slipped out of Louisville, Kentucky, eager to not confuse anyone else and hoping I wasn’t making a mistake.  

The next few months were painful. More than anything else I felt ashamed and defensive, uncertain of how so much of my identity and career path could be upended so quickly. Nonetheless, I joined the Church on Pentecost with the support of my family and started looking for work.

So much has changed since then. I met Jackie on CatholicMatch.com that June, got married a year later, and celebrated the birth of our daughter, Evelyn, on March 3rd, 2014. We’re now in Indiana and I’m happy at my job.

I’m still very new on this Catholic journey. To all inquirers out there, I can tell you that my relationship with God has deepened and strengthened. As I get involved in our parish, I’m so thankful for the love of evangelism and the Bible that I learned in Protestantism.

I have not so much left my former faith as I have filled in the gaps. I thank God for the fullness of the Catholic faith.


TOPICS: Apologetics; Catholic; Evangelical Christian; Theology
KEYWORDS: anthonybaratta; baptist; catholic; evangelical; protestant; seminary; southernbaptist
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To: metmom
>>NO way any organization with men like this allowed to be in charge is the actual body of Christ.<<

Nor the ongoing cover up of molestation that has been occurring for who knows how long.

421 posted on 11/30/2014 7:22:10 PM PST by CynicalBear (For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus)
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To: Heart-Rest
Oh that was really, really sad Heart-Rest.

Acts 15:29 That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well. Fare ye well.

That is NOT Old Testament or Mosaic Law. It hasn't been superseded or obsolete under the new covenant. And please don't come back with that lame comment about the blood being from animals sacrificed. It says and from blood, not and their blood.

422 posted on 11/30/2014 7:31:22 PM PST by CynicalBear (For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus)
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To: Heart-Rest; metmom
John 6:63 It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.

But Catholics insist it IS the flesh. The Catholic Church teaches only part of what Jesus says just like Satan misquoted scripture. That should be a hint to those who choose to follow that apostate organization.

423 posted on 11/30/2014 7:40:09 PM PST by CynicalBear (For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus)
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Comment #424 Removed by Moderator

To: metmom

Back attcha!


425 posted on 11/30/2014 7:53:14 PM PST by verga (You anger Catholics by telling them a lie, you anger protestants by telling them the truth.)
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To: metmom; Heart-Rest; CynicalBear; mdmathis6

Forget the blood, the other day I ALMOST ate some bread that had the leaven of the Pharisees in it. That’s a big no-no there.


426 posted on 11/30/2014 7:53:52 PM PST by BipolarBob (You smell of elderberries, my friend.)
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To: metmom
"NO way any organization with men like this allowed to be in charge is the actual body of Christ."

=============================================================

With that kind of reasoning, there would be "NO way any group with men like this [see below] would be allowed to be in charge of starting the Church of Jesus Christ (also called His body, and which He was the Head of - Colossians 1:18), or of writing the New Testament, the Holy Written Word of God.

(All of these guys who wrote the "books" of the New Testament or who helped to begin and build the Catholic Church of Jesus Christ, were sinners.)

That kind of reasoning just does not hold up under scrutiny.

(By the way, Jesus allowed Judas Iscariot to stay in His closest group for most of His public ministry, right up till the end, even though Jesus knew Judas was a wicked thief and betrayer.)

427 posted on 11/30/2014 7:57:02 PM PST by Heart-Rest ("Our hearts are restless, Lord, until they rest in Thee." - St. Augustine)
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To: CynicalBear
"Oh that was really, really sad Heart-Rest."

"Acts 15:29 That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well. Fare ye well. That is NOT Old Testament or Mosaic Law. It hasn't been superseded or obsolete under the new covenant. And please don't come back with that lame comment about the blood being from animals sacrificed. It says and from blood, not and their blood."

=============================================================

CynicalBear, your claim sounds exactly like the same one the Jehovah's Witnesses often make and like to ask Catholics about, and I think it will be very helpful to you to read the response given to their similar claim and question by the staff of "Catholic Answers" at this link and shown below:

------------------------------------------------------------

Is Jesus' command to drink his blood a violation of God's law?

Full Question

Jehovah's Witnesses told me that Jesus' commands to eat his flesh and drink his blood in John 6 could not be literal because Jesus would be advocating something against God's law by commanding us to eat blood (cf. Gen. 9:4, Acts 15:28-29). What can I say to this?

Answer

You can say four things. First, any divine command that comes later modifies divine commands that came earlier. When Jesus declared all foods clean (Mk 7:19), his command superseded the earlier command that certain foods be regarded as unclean (Lv 11:1-8). If Jesus today commands us to drink his blood, his command supersedes any prior command concerning drinking blood.

Second, the command against drinking blood, like all of the Old Testament dietary regulations, has passed away, for "These are only a shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink" (Col 2:17, 16).

The mention of not eating blood in Acts 15:20, 29 was a pastoral provision suggested by James to keep Jews from being scandalized by the conduct of Gentile Christians. We know that these pastoral provisions were only temporary. One concerned abstaining from idol meat, yet later Paul says eating idol meat is okay so long as it doesn't scandalize others (Rom 14:1-14, 1 Cor 8:1-13).

If it is objected that blood is not a food (though it is in some cultures), note that Jesus was asked (Mk 7:5) why his disciples ate with unwashed hands. He replied, "Don't you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him unclean? For it doesn't go into his heart but into his stomach, and then out of his body" (7:18-19). In context this refers to a non-food substance (the dirt on one's unwashed hands).

Third, the Old Testament is very specific about why one was not to eat blood: "The life of every creature is the blood of it; therefore I have said to the people of Israel, You shall not eat the blood of any creature, for the life of every creature is its blood" (Lv 17:14, cf. Dt 12:23). The Israelites could not eat animal blood because it contained the animal's life, but there is one Person whose life you must have in you, "Christ who is your life" (Col 3:4).

Finally, even if the Jehovah's Witnesses were right that drinking blood were intrinsically evil instead of the subject of a temporary prohibition, they would still have problems with John 6 because, in their interpretation, Jesus would be commanding us to eat his flesh symbolically and to drink his blood symbolically. He would be commanding us to act out symbolically an intrinsically evil deed as part of a sacred worship service. But this leads us to a ludicrous conclusion, so it must be that drinking Christ's blood is permissible (not to say desirable).

Answered by: Catholic Answers Staff


------------------------------------------------------------

Now I'll say goodnight to everyone, and may God bless all of us with greater and clearer understanding of all His revealed truths.
428 posted on 11/30/2014 9:14:15 PM PST by Heart-Rest ("Our hearts are restless, Lord, until they rest in Thee." - St. Augustine)
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To: af_vet_1981

This is your post I replied to

To: delchiante
You and I agree..
Actually, probably not as I think you belong to one of the many Protestant cults.

338 posted on Sat Nov 29 2014 23:23:53 GMT-0600 (CST) by af_vet_1981 (The bus came by and I got on, That’s when it all began.)

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You can clarify which many Protestants are cults if you want...


429 posted on 11/30/2014 10:00:33 PM PST by wardaddy (glenn beck is a nauseous politically correct conservative on LSD)
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To: Elsie; Mrs. Don-o
But; since you DO disagree; can you explain how Jesus could be holding a piece of His flesh in His hand when He said the words you know so well?

We can explain it to you, we just can't understand it for you.

God is omnipotent. He thinks or says something and it happens.

How do YOU explain 3 persons with one divine nature that is still one God? How do YOU explain one person (Jesus) with two natures, One divine, one human, that are in full accord?

One you (protestants) accept that God is omnipotent, and I mean really accept, not just pay it lip service, the scales will fall from them your and eyes will be opened.

430 posted on 12/01/2014 2:45:10 AM PST by verga (You anger Catholics by telling them a lie, you anger protestants by telling them the truth.)
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To: Heart-Rest
Elsie, have you ever posted anything that was honest and true?

 
 
 
 

 
Micah 6:8
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.


John 6:28-29
Then they asked him, "What must we do to do the works God requires?
 Jesus answered, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent."


1 John 3:21-23
Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him.
And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.


James 1:27
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
 

 
 
 

431 posted on 12/01/2014 3:02:13 AM PST by Elsie ( Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: Mrs. Don-o
I am convinced in my heart that when Jesus says "This is My Body," the only fitting response is, "Amen."

"Get thee behind me, Satan."

432 posted on 12/01/2014 3:04:09 AM PST by Elsie ( Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: Mrs. Don-o
I am convinced in my heart that when Jesus says "This is My Body," the only fitting response is, "Amen."

You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?

Matthew 23:33

433 posted on 12/01/2014 3:05:54 AM PST by Elsie ( Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: Mrs. Don-o
The Bible itself, in God's own words, proclaims how we are saved:

 
Romans 8:24 For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?
 
 

434 posted on 12/01/2014 3:19:43 AM PST by Elsie ( Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: verga
God is omnipotent. He thinks or says something and it happens.

Your pope is impotent.

He can't say or think anything without at least half of you Catholics complaining about it!

Seems like you ALL want to be pope!

435 posted on 12/01/2014 3:21:53 AM PST by Elsie ( Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: verga
God is omnipotent. He thinks or says something and it happens.

Let's try some easy math:


There are approximately 1.2 billion Catholics world wide;

If merely 1% of them  'ask' Mary for help just once each day;

that means that 12 million separate prayers are headed Mary's direction every day.

Given that there are 86,400 seconds per day... (24 hours times 60 minutes times 60 seconds)

...that means that Mary has to handle approximately 139 'requests' per second!

Purty good fer someone NOT 'devine'!

436 posted on 12/01/2014 3:22:42 AM PST by Elsie ( Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: Elsie
You would be amazed what she could do if she was devine!</sarc>
437 posted on 12/01/2014 3:47:23 AM PST by Gamecock (Joel Osteen is a Gospel preacher like Colonel Sanders is an Army officer.)
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To: Heart-Rest
With that kind of reasoning, there would be "NO way any group with men like this [see below] would be allowed to be in charge of starting the Church of Jesus Christ (also called His body, and which He was the Head of - Colossians 1:18), or of writing the New Testament, the Holy Written Word of God.

You're getting it!

No organization, or denomination is the body of Christ.

The body of Christ is a spiritual body comprised of all born again believers throughout the church age, encompassing 2,000 and the entire world.

It is not located in one geographical place, headquartered anywhere, run by anyone.

There is the body of Christ in every denomination and there are tares in every denomination because the body of Christ is PEOPLE making an organism, not an organization.

BTW, if you're going to address what someone said, please have the courtesy to represent what they said correctly.

What you seemed to claim is my reasoning, this statement, which is not and I did not even imply it, and started with the quotation marks was not what I said. What I said was this No way any organization with men like this allowed to be in charge is the actual body of Christ.

What you stated here With that kind of reasoning, there would be "NO way any group with men like this [see below] would be allowed to be in charge of starting the Church of Jesus Christ (also called His body, and which He was the Head of - Colossians 1:18), or of writing the New Testament, the Holy Written Word of God. is NOT *my kind of reasoning.

Are you also equating the men who started the body of Christ, the writers of the gospels, are peers with those men of debauchery whom you guys own as popes?

438 posted on 12/01/2014 4:01:39 AM PST by metmom (...fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith...)
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To: wardaddy; delchiante
You can clarify which many Protestants are cults if you want...

There are some 30,000 plus denominations, sects, and cults derived from the main Protestant denominations (Lutheran, Anglican, Presbyterian, Baptist, etc.). Rebellion breeds rebels and Protestantism continues to calve new sects and movements each year. Many of these are cults. They have no root in themselves. They don't regard their parent denomination as competely genuine or legitimate and yearn to restore some branch of Christianity that they think will be.

Many of the nonCatholics posting refuse to disclose their affiliation while they attack Catholics, which is hypocrisy. You, and a few others, are not ashamed of your affiliation. In the apologetics list I posted there are many examples of cults, among them Adventism and Sabbatarianism.

    Some examples of cults descended from Protestantism:
  1. Adventism: Widespread trans-denominational movement inspired by William Miller's prediction that Jesus' "advent" (return) would take place in 1844. Even after the Great Disappointment (the date's failure), many people in the movement continued to believe. Some suggested revised chronologies and new dates, eventually forming groups such as the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. Others, notably Hiram Edson and Ellen G. White, suggested that the 1844 date was accurate but that a heavenly (thus invisible) event had taken place. Their teachings became the basis of Seventh-day Adventism, which eventually spawned its own offshoots, including Armstrongism and the Branch Davidians.
  2. Apostolic Churches: A branch of Pentecostalism including several denominations as well as independent churches with the name "Apostolic"; many (but not all) Apostolic churches adhere to Oneness Pentecostalism.
  3. Apostolic Overcoming Holiness of God, Inc., Birmingham, AL: Pentecostal church, stresses the oneness of God while accepting the Triune Being of the Godhead. Salvation depends upon baptism, tarrying to receive the Holy Spirit, and holiness. Publishes The People's Mouthpiece magazine.
  4. Apostolic United Brethren: See Corporation of the Presiding Elder of the Apostolic United Brethren.
  5. Seventh Day Adventist Church (SDA), Washington, DC: The largest Adventist church. Ellen G. White, who claimed to have "the spirit of prophecy," was an important early leader of the movement and taught a number of distinctive SDA doctrines, including the Investigative Judgment and Sabbatarianism. While the church's official theology now appears to be generally in the tradition of evangelical Christianity, certain SDA claims and unique doctrines continue to raise questions. These doctrines include the SDA belief that Sunday worship will result in the "Mark of the Beast," imbalanced teachings on keeping the commandments (baptism, Sabbath observance) that often implies a kind of salvation by works, the "Remnant Church" doctrine that implies that the SDA is or will be God's only true church, and the doctrine of the Investigative Judgment. Profile available.

439 posted on 12/01/2014 5:49:46 AM PST by af_vet_1981 (The bus came by and I got on, That's when it all began.)
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To: NYer; All

Have just read the post that started this thread again and then a third time. Even though the account may be factual to a large degree, something does not ring true about his testimony.

I think the author has left out some very key information that could change the impact of his story, which sounds like a revised college creative writing project, by virtue of the back and forth in time manner of telling.

Although the author’s religious background is evident, and even though he has experience several changes in his life direction, I found no evidence he has experienced the kind of second birth that Jesus said is a requirement and that he is now a believer in and follower of the Lord Jesus Christ and Him alone.

His story is sappy and lacks both conviction and persuasion.


440 posted on 12/01/2014 5:56:47 AM PST by Resettozero
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