Ok. So, I have a question that I’m sure has been asked, but the more I look into it (and the more I read these Cathloic vs Mormon threads), the more I wonder.
When exactly did this Apostacy occur? If it truly occurred after the last apostle died, then theoretically, the Church would have been abandoned by Jesus very soon after He created it. My whole life, in my naïveté, I just assumed this Great Apostacy was a more recent thing.
I just have a hard time believing He would leave His church for so long. Especially since, correct me if I’m wrong, we were told He would not abandon His church.
I’m hearing different theories on it and would like to know the forum’s take on things. Is there anything showing an approximate time of this Apostacy? And if there is, doesn’t it contradict what we read in the bible?
You’re on the right track, I believe, and it’s precisely your way of thinking that led me to first lose belief in the Great Apostasy. The Mormon position is entirely untenable for a couple reasons:
- The LDS position is that apostasy of entire churches involves the loss of priesthood authority. It isn’t per se the individual turning away from sound teaching or behavior, but an actual loss of the Christ given authority to administer (what Catholics would call) the Sacraments.
For this to have occurred
universally, and in such a quick amount of time as you noted, nearly every priesthood holder would’ve had to
simultaneously abandoned the priesthood somehow (be it through corruptible sin or improper ordination of successors). Bishops from Rome, to Antioch, to Jerusalem, to Babylon, to India… the whole world over all “losing priesthood authority” within a span of say 100 years. I find it
very unlikely that these many men would simultaneously choose such a thing, lest Jesus was in error when he said that the gates of Hades would not prevail against his Church.
- Mormons use as evidence of the Great Apostasy the “introduction” of “false teachings” such as infant baptism, the Trinity, the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, etc. If the loss of priesthood authority is the cause of the Apostasy, and these allegedly false teachings are its effects, then the Apostasy necessarily must precede the teachings of such false ideas. In other words, within the Mormon framework you cannot have men with true priesthood authority teaching such things, lest their connection to God through “continuing revelation” be the cause of such teachings and so these teachings couldn’t be deemed “false”!
Given that it’s a matter of
historical record that many of these teachings were
explicitly taught by Christians so very early on in the history of the Church (and so
universally in the Church despite geographical near isolation in many cases), this confines the alleged Great Apostasy to an even smaller, and more abrupt time frame. This brings us right back to the first problem I enumerated: How
likely is it that such would occur? Since it’s nearly impossible for a “gradual apostasy”, as so many Mormon apologists would have us believe while speaking out of both sides of their mouths, do you really think that the rank-and-file Christians of the day wouldn’t have noticed the abrupt loss of the priesthood? Would they have not noticed the sudden introduction of false teachings? Would Christ’s sheep no longer recognize their Shepard’s voice?
