And in the context of the whole passage…
Acts 2:25 “Now I know that none of you among whom I have gone about preaching the kingdom will ever see me again. 26 Therefore, I declare to you today that I am innocent of the blood of any of you. 27 For I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God. 28 Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God,[a] which he bought with his own blood.**
29 I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock.** 30 Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. 31 So be on your guard! Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears.
Distortion corrected. Unless the elder’s of Ephesus Paul was speaking to were the specific men that destroyed the Church.
Funny how in Revelation 2:5 the Ephesians were threatened with having the presence of God Removed from them for their misdeeds.
Revelation 2:5
Realize how far you have fallen. Repent, and do the works you did at first. Otherwise, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.
The lampstand clearly represents God’s presence here.
Vonsalza;14477048:
So what date, exactly, did Christ unending Church fail? I’m collecting all the different dates each Mormon gives me.
That’s like asking when someone’s hair turned grey. Apostasy was a gradual process. There are a myriad if historical indicators.
Eusebius, quoting Hegesippus on the subject of false teachers and referring to the condition of the Church about the close of the first century:
The Church continued until then as a pure and uncorrupt virgin, whilst if there were any at all that attempted to pervert the sound doctrine of the saving Gospel, they were yet skulking in dark retreats: but when the sacred choir of Apostles became extinct, and the generation of those that had been privileged to hear their inspired wisdom had passed away, then also the combinations of impious errors arose by the fraud and delusions of false teachers. These also, as there were none of the Apostles left, henceforth attempted without shame, to preach their false doctrine against the gospel of truth. (Eusebius Ecclesiastical History, bk. 3, ch. 32)
Eusebius referring to his own day wrote:
We [sank] into negligence and sloth, One in being and reviling another in different ways, and we were almost, as it were, on the point of taking up arms against each other, and where is sailing each other with words as with darts and Spears, prelates inveighing against prelates, and people rising up against people, and hypocrisy and dissimulation had arisen to the greatest height of malignity; … we added one wickedness in misery to another. But some that appeared to be our pastors, deserting the law of piety, were inflamed against each other with mutual strides, only accumulating quarrels and threats, rivalship, hostility and hatred to each other. (Eusebius, ecclesiastical history, 8:318)
Tertullian observed “
The gospel was wrong we preached; men wrongly believed; so many thousands were wrongly baptized… so many priestly functions, so many ministries were wrongly executed.” (The Ante-Niceness Fathers, 3:256)
Adolf von Harnack commented on the much-changed Christianity after a century of compromise and worldly assimilation:
If we place ourselves about the year 200, about 100 or 120 years after the apostolic age… what kind of spectacle does the Christian religion offer?.. The living faith seems to be transformed into a creed… devotion to Christ, into Christology… prophecy, into technical exegesis and theological learning; The ministers of the Spirit, into clerics… miracles and miraculous cures disappear altogether… The “Spirit” becomes law and compulsion… this enormous transformation took place within 120 years. (Von Harnack, What is Christianity? 192-93)"
Cyril of Jerusalem stated…
Thus wrote Paul, and now is the falling away. For men have fallen away from the right faith; and some preach the identity of the Son with the Father, and others dare say that Christ was brought into being out of nothing. And formally the heretics were manifest; but now the Church is filled with heretics in disguise. For men have fallen away from the truth, and have itching ears. It is a plausible discourse? All listen to it gladly. Is it a word of correction? All turn away from it. Most have departed from right words, and rather choose the evil, than desire the good. This therefore is the falling away, and the enemy is soon to be looked for… (Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lecture 15:9, in NPNF Series 2, 7:106-107)
If the Church failed then Christ lied. Period. Of course, if he was the Devil’s “spirit brother”, as you say, he may have.
Since the Bible refers to Satan as a son of God, and I assume you believe Jesus is the Son of God, that kind of makes them brothers.
Job 1:6 One day, when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD,** the satan also came among them**.
Job 2:1 One day, when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, the
satan also came with them.
