Great Apostasy

Okay.

I think you presuppose the Trinity to be biblical, whereas I do see evidence that over the first four centuries after the Bible stopped, after the Great Apostasy, that people are trying to figure out, "How do we believe that their, uh, Father, Son, and Spirit are God without falling into the heresy of polytheism?" And they had to come up with a solution.

That's, that's how I see it.

But the standard that Jesus Christ gave for what discerns a true prophet from a false prophet isn't the standard that you're proposing here.

When, in 1 Corinthians 15, the Corinthians stopped believing that they'll be resurrected, and he's saying, "Hey, we're gonna be resurrected.

You need to start incorporating this doctrine into your church." Thank goodness for apostles to keep doctrine alignment.

When you don't have apostles, doctrine goes any which direction, which is what we see with the great apostasy.

After the Bible stopped, no more apostles, people started making up things like the Trinity.

the restored church affirms that a general apostasy developed during and after the apostolic period

and that the primitive church lost its power authority and graces as a divine institution and degenerated into an earthly organization only the significance and importance of the great apostasy as a conditioned precedent to the re-establishment of the church in modern times is obvious if the alleged apostasy of the primitive church was not a reality the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints is not the divine institution its name proclaims the evidence of the decline and final extinction of the primitive church among men is found in scriptural record and in secular history in the following pages the author has undertaken to present a summary of the most important of these evidences in so doing he has drawn liberally from many sources of information with due acknowledgment of all citations the little work has been written in the hope that it may prove of service to our missionary elders in the field to classes and quorum organizations engaged in the study of theological subjects at home and to earnest investigators of the teachings and claims of the restored church of jesus christ End of Preface

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CHURCH OF CHRIST A belief common to all sects and churches professing Christianity is that Jesus Christ, the Savior and Redeemer of the human race, established his Church upon the earth by personal ministration in the meridian of time.

Ecclesiastical history, as distinguished from secular history, deals with the experiences of the Church from the time of its establishment, the conditions under which the Church was founded first claim our attention.

If the Church has continued as an earthly organization, where lies the proof or evidence of legitimate succession in priestly authority, and which among the multitude of contending sects or churches of the present day is the actual possessor of the holy priesthood originally committed to the Church by the Christ, its founder? again have the spiritual gifts and graces by which the early church was characterized and distinguished been manifest on earth through the centuries that have passed since the meridian of time and if so in which of the numerous churches of these modern times do we find such signs following the professed believers we affirm that with the passing of the so-called apostolic age, the Church gradually drifted into a condition of apostasy, whereby succession in the priesthood was broken, and that the Church, as an earthly organization operating under divine direction and having authority to officiate in spiritual ordinances, ceased to exist.

If, therefore, the Church of Christ is to be found upon the earth today, it must have been re-established by divine authority, and the holy priesthood must have been restored to the world from which it was lost by the apostasy of the primitive church.

We affirm that the great apostasy was foretold by the Savior himself while he lived as a man among men, and by his inspired prophets both before and after the period of his earthly probation.

And further, we affirm that a rational interpretation of history demonstrates the fact of this great and general apostasy.

All these pleasant things, but I think my listeners want to know why in the world did the Holy Fathers and the church have such a problem with Freemasonry and then crickets?

Why? Well, as we'll get into with at least some of my theories on the end times, as it were, my personal best guess is that we're in the midst of the great apostasy.

The Roman catechism says that there are three principal signs that precede the return of our Lord.

The first one is the gospel has gone to the ends of the earth.

The second one is that there's a great apostasy.

And the third one is antichrist appears.

Obviously, the third one hasn't occurred yet.

Now, that doesn't mean Antichrist is necessarily right around the corner.

Yeah, because there's plenty of people talking about Bible prophecy.

But when I did back in 99, I put together the great apostasy, the lost sign.

And the reason I called it the lost sign is even back then, people were not paying attention to the apostasy going on in the so-called

church.

Then they look upon him and they mourn as for, you know, their only son.

So anyway, they've got that all messed up.

When the Great Apostasy is what happens, it's quite the opposite.

Yeah,

I'm like, "Well, you guys are, you guys are taking it kinda deep in there about what creeds you accept now." But I thought that one of the personages had told Smith, "These are an abomination." Uh, and then, you know, the professor's corrupt.

And so they just-- Jacob specifically himself has this, uh, this kind of remnant theology that I don't think really gels well with the historic Mormon teaching of a great apostasy, although he will defend a great apostasy.

But then he'll also have this idea that there was always a remnant of essentially true believers on the Earth is what I'm getting from him.

Now, they weren't LDS it doesn't seem like, but he's, he still will count them.

Before, the circle was bigger, and they could afford to be outside the cir- I don't, I don't, I don't know.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think it's like part and parcel with kind of this new form of Mormon apologetics, uh, where there's a telling of bits and pieces of the truth but not the whole truth, right? Like you said, if there's this weird form of remnant theology that makeup Ja- maybe Jacob is holding onto, um, that doesn't change the fact that the great apostasy believed that the priesthood authority was gone from the Earth, right? So if the priesthood authority was gone from the Earth for X amount of years, it doesn't matter if there's remnant believers.

They had no authority to perform any of the ordinances that are being performed today.

That day will not come unless the rebellion comes first.

On our last episode, I-- or a couple episodes ago, I called this the Great Apostasy, a, a tremendous falling away that's going to happen before Christ returns.

And the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.

This goes back to Daniel chapter 11.

But there will come a time in God's time when it'll be no longer restrained.

Then the other part that, that I would say that pre-tribulations w- will respond to is the, the Greek word apostasia translated rebellion.

I called it the great apostasy.

I, I don't think that's a-- a- and I'm not a Greek scholar and I won't pretend to be but those who are Greek scholars which I've read is like there's, there's no place ever that this-- what they'll, what they'll try to say is that this apostasia refers to like basically the removal of the church, not just rebellion.

Mm.

And they've, and they've also removed all these sections about dealing with times of refreshing and the restitution of all things, and they've removed at least one reference to the Great Apostasy.

When you get into the section on the Great Apostasy in 2 Thessalonians, they do retain the term, but the language around it has changed.

They're no longer describing it as a rebellion.

Instead, the language is, is shifting more towards, like, it's just a falling away.

Maybe the church just kinda stumbled.

It got off track.

It fell away, but that's a very different way of describing the Great Apostasy than what you find, for example, in the Book of Mormon when the language is much more intentional.