LDS Church Fathers challenge for LDS

Daniel Marsh

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I am not playing games. You said: You might say they were not Mormon but there was no Mormon theology for them to believe in back then anyway.

This is a blatantly false statement and I could not let you get away with it.

I will give you a list of 7 doctrines that our church believes in that the first century church people believed in too.
1) Jesus is the son of God.
2) Jesus is the creater of all things.
3) Jesus was made flesh and dwelt among men.
4) Jesus was crucified on a cross to atone for the sins of all men that believe in him.
5) Jesus was resurrected and sits on the side of his Father, God the Father in heaven now.
6) Jesus chose 12 apostles to be the foundation of a new church with him as the chief cornerstone.
7) In order to be a member of this church, one must:
Believe in Jesus Christ.
Repent and get themselves ready for baptism.
Be baptised in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, for the remisson of sins.
Recieve the gift of the Holy Ghost
(see Acts 2:37-38. men asked Peter, "what shall we do" on the day of Pentacost when they believed in Jesus, these are Peters instructions.)

This theology is straight out of the bible and we believe it, and would be very comfortable if we were transfered suddenly to the first century. And a first century person transferred suddently to our time would be comfortable with our church.

I doubt the original Apostles would be comfortable in the LDS Church.

Let's point out the truck in the room, God the Father was once a man.

Numbers 23:19 God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?

Yes, I took Numbers out of context for those to read it in context.
 
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Ignatius the Kiwi

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That is why I wrote we would be comfortable in the first (and I will add, part of the second century) church, and they would be comfortable in our church today. But after Ignatius and Polycarp, things went downhill quickly and so by the end of the second century, we would not be comfortable with that church, and they would be uncomfortable with our church today.

All I said was that 6 of the 7 Asian churches do not exist anymore. Why do they not exist? Did they not repent, like Jesus instructed them to, so Jesus allowed the Christian population to be replaced by a Muslim population. No matter what happened, their candlesticks have been removed out of their places. So apparently, by the second century they did not repent and get back to their first love, Jesus.

You can explain all the reasons why you want. I will accept them. But I will add apostasy was the underlying reason.

In your previous post you gave a list of beliefs that indicated you believed the bible. All of those points you made were believed by the second century Church even after Polycarp and Ignatius. Therefore what is your evidence of Apostasy? If you're going to say they lacked Apostles, well Polycarp and Ignatius also lacked Apostles and had no Idea they were in need of one. Ignatius affirmed the Bishop as the head of the Church and Polycarp agreed with him. So how is it possible for you to substantiate the claim of Apostasy when in the doctrines you pointed to earlier, the second century Church agreed with them?

UNless you want to stop playing games and insist that certain Mormon doctrines were taught alongside of those essential beliefs but that would undermine your previous post, now wouldn't it?
 
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Peter1000

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Did most people abandon Christ for the religion of Muhammad? Yes.
Why would God allow a Muslim nation to overrun a Christian nation?
Why would the Christians convert to Mohammad?

Why are you assuming any such 'modifications' based on such a motivated reading of the passage? That is nowhere even hinted at.
Why would you not? The Lord tells the Ephesians that they have left their first love (Revelations 2:4). What does that mean? Did they listen to Jesus or not? Since their candlestick is removed from its place, apparently not.
They must have acted like the Galatians, of whcih Paul marvelled at how soon they had removed themselves from him, and were being taught by men that were teaching another gospel. So in this case, they were moving away from him, and they were moving away from the true gospel of Jesus Christ.

There is plenty in the biblle that would give us cause to think that Diotrephes was not alone in his treatment of the apostles. All Asia had turned away from Paul, many early Christian centers moving from their first love. Corinth did not want to hear Paul teach them the meat of the gospel (1 Corinthians 3:2) and Corinth was always a hotbed of turmoil and dissidents. And this was all before the apostles died.

But Paul warned the saints in Thessolanica that the "mystery of iniquity" was already at work in the church (2 Thessalonians 2:7). BTW what do you think this means in this scripture: "only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way" I believe that is that when the final apostle is gone, then all hell will break lose when they are out of the way.


This assumes that the Mormon delusion of 'apostle' as some kind of church office separate from that of bishop ever actually existed, and there is no evidence to support that claim.
The apostles were the foundation of the church. Peter and the apostles were given the keys of the kingdom of God (the church) to grow and govern the church. Not one bishop was chosen
before the resurrection of Christ. Christ only chose his leadership (the 12 apostles) and then went to heaven.
Why would you call the bishop an office in the church, and not call an apostle an office? It is absurd. Remember it is the apostles who chose and ordained bishops, in the beginning of the true church. You could call the apostles the bishops of the entire church. And they were in fact bishops of local areas too. But the apostles were in charge of the entire church, not just a local area like a regular bishop. IOW, while the apostles were alive, a bishop of a local area could not expand his bishopric by going to a nearby city and enthrone himself the bishop of that city too. That was the job of the apostle, that was their office and calling.

So the hierarchy of the church was: apostle at the top, next the bishops, and elders who reported to the apostles, then the bishop could ordain other elders, deacons and priest to assist him as the local church grew.

To say that the office of apostle did not exist, tells me that your early church organizational chart was missing the most important office. Oh, you have the office of bishop, and you have the office of elder, and you have the office of deacon, and pastor, and priest, but somehow you don't have the office that was most important to Jesus himself, the office of apostle. Go figure?

I can't speak for every bishop ever, but I'm sure that those who were deposed and/or exiled over the centuries, either synodically (e.g., St. John Chrysostom, at the repudiated Synod of the Oak) or by government decree (e.g., HH Pope Shenouda III from 1981 to 1985, or HH Abune Antonios of Eritrea, from 2007 to present) have plenty to say about this idea that they are somehow after secular power.

Just read your history again, especially your Cyril of Egypt. He controlled the city at the height of its power in the Roman empire. He closed Nestorian churches and siezed their sacred vessels. He rounded up Jews and threw them into prisons and banned them from the city. He layed out edicts for the citizens to follow. Oh yes, he was at the height of his glory as the secular and spiritual leader of the people.

He personally is the poster boy for a secular ruling patriarch of the church. So look no further than Saint Cyril. You want to talk about a prattler, look no furth than Cyril, who had his hands in everything both secular and religious. Against other Christians that did not believe exactly as he did. Against pagans, against Jews. Against his own people, when they disobeyed his tedious edicts. He was constantly enflaming situations to be far worse than if he had just left them alone. So yes, secular was in, especially in the time of Cyril, and he took full advantage of it.

Frankly, Peter, your insinuations almost fail at being insulting because they're so disconnected from reality.

Who's reality? Just read your history. It is full of the "game of thrones", and in a true, loving, Christian world that would not be a game Christ's represetatives would be playing.[/QUOTE]
 
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Ignatius the Kiwi

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Why would God allow a Muslim nation to overrun a Christian nation?
Why would the Christians convert to Mohammad?

Interesting question. It's even more interesting that God would allow the apostasy to happen and leave those faithful men (you admitted that Polycarp and Ignatius were good men) alone without Apostles. Yet God did so. Where would be your justification for the complete abandonment of God's people and descent into continuous error?

As to the question specifically. God did not promise earthly power to Christians and it is subject to change at any time. Primarily I think to remind Christians of their sins, which was the chief explanation of the Islamic invasions by Patriarch Sophronius. Yet, God never promised earthly prosperity to Christians and we were never guaranteed a comfortable life. God did promise the consolation that the faithful would have him and his spirit and be rewarded in the next life. However, Mormons don't even believe that much, since God abandoned his people after the first century.

Is it possible, also, that you don't know the extreme pressure people were put under in order to convert to Islam? To be free of Dhimmi status? To be free of the Jizya. To be free of sporadic persecution and just generally assimilate into Islamic society? People who lacked faith, converted, while those who had faith continued under hard conditions. Yet those minorities, Georgians, Bulgarians, Romanians, Serbians, Bosnians, Greeks, Armenians, Egyptians, Syrians and others continued to have faith. Do you also not know about the gradual displacement of Greeks from Asia Minor and their replacement with Turks? To say nothing of the replacement of Armenians with Turks and Kurds. Yeah, there are fundamental reasons you are ignoring as to why those places aren't beacons of Christianity.

You seem to think the physical location of the Churches of Asia minor matters more than the people who really and truly constitute the Church. I cannot agree with you. The Church primarily is God's people.
 
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Peter1000

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Interesting question. It's even more interesting that God would allow the apostasy to happen and leave those faithful men (you admitted that Polycarp and Ignatius were good men) alone without Apostles. Yet God did so. Where would be your justification for the complete abandonment of God's people and descent into continuous error?

As to the question specifically. God did not promise earthly power to Christians and it is subject to change at any time. Primarily I think to remind Christians of their sins, which was the chief explanation of the Islamic invasions by Patriarch Sophronius. Yet, God never promised earthly prosperity to Christians and we were never guaranteed a comfortable life. God did promise the consolation that the faithful would have him and his spirit and be rewarded in the next life. However, Mormons don't even believe that much, since God abandoned his people after the first century.

Is it possible, also, that you don't know the extreme pressure people were put under in order to convert to Islam? To be free of Dhimmi status? To be free of the Jizya. To be free of sporadic persecution and just generally assimilate into Islamic society? People who lacked faith, converted, while those who had faith continued under hard conditions. Yet those minorities, Georgians, Bulgarians, Romanians, Serbians, Bosnians, Greeks, Armenians, Egyptians, Syrians and others continued to have faith. Do you also not know about the gradual displacement of Greeks from Asia Minor and their replacement with Turks? To say nothing of the replacement of Armenians with Turks and Kurds. Yeah, there are fundamental reasons you are ignoring as to why those places aren't beacons of Christianity.

You seem to think the physical location of the Churches of Asia minor matters more than the people who really and truly constitute the Church. I cannot agree with you. The Church primarily is God's people.
The churches are gone, the Christian nation is gone, the people have been assimilated, so the gospel of Jesus Christ is gone.
What would you have done to remain a Christian? I probably would have moved my family to a Christian nation so I could continue to live my religion. I would not have assimilated into the Muslim religion, unless I had a nonchalant attitude about Jesus in the first place.

We believe that there were conditions that arose in the church that caused members, especially the leadership, to be killed off and to abandom him, not in name, but in their actions.

Like the Muslims absorbing Christians in Asia, the Roman Empire absorbed Christians in the 4th century. Many Christians hail the entrance into Roman arms as a victory for the church, but we say that it was its death null. Slow bleeding out of the true gospel of Jesus Christ.
Millions of great people that remained Christians in their hearts and will have all the opportunities to know the true gospel and be saved, so nothing is lost to them. They lived good lives and will be with God and Jesus forever.

But you are aware of the phrase, Christian by name only. Billions have gone this route, so yes, there are still Christian nations, but is the law of Christ fully functional? Do the keys of the kingdom of God to save, still exist in these Christian nations?

Lots of questions?
 
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Ignatius the Kiwi

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The churches are gone, the Christian nation is gone, the people have been assimilated, so the gospel of Jesus Christ is gone.
What would you have done to remain a Christian? I probably would have moved my family to a Christian nation so I could continue to live my religion. I would not have assimilated into the Muslim religion, unless I had a nonchalant attitude about Jesus in the first place.

Why are you assuming that the Christians of Asia Minor didn't do this? At least until the population exchanges in the 20th century? Even then, you aware that Greek Christians continued to live in their ancestral lands, despite all teh challanges to their way of life and pesevere in the faith? Obviously, many did get assimilated, those weakest in the faith while those strongest in the faith maintained their ethnic and religious heritage.


We believe that there were conditions that arose in the church that caused members, especially the leadership, to be killed off and to abandom him, not in name, but in their actions.

Except earlier you said Polycarp and Ignatius were good Chrisitans and you would fit well into their Church. They didn't have Apostles and didn't see the need for them. You also don't have any evidence that the Christians immediately after them abandoned those points of theology you said were essential marks of the Church. Prove to me the Church in Antioch became Apostate after Ignatius was sent to Rome, I'm waiting. Or the that the Church of Smyrna became Apostate. Prove it.

Like the Muslims absorbing Christians in Asia, the Roman Empire absorbed Christians in the 4th century. Many Christians hail the entrance into Roman arms as a victory for the church, but we say that it was its death null. Slow bleeding out of the true gospel of Jesus Christ.
Millions of great people that remained Christians in their hearts and will have all the opportunities to know the true gospel and be saved, so nothing is lost to them. They lived good lives and will be with God and Jesus forever.

Yet God cared not to give them Apostles. He was so unconcerned with their fate that the doctrine of marriage and polygamy was not even taught. Even black Ethiopians were allowed to have Church leaders (Bishops) before the LDS annulled that law in the later 1900s. God should have sent word to them about the essence of marriage how it was an abomination to have black Church leadership in Ethiopia.

But you are aware of the phrase, Christian by name only. Billions have gone this route, so yes, there are still Christian nations, but is the law of Christ fully functional? Do the keys of the kingdom of God to save, still exist in these Christian nations?

Lots of questions?
I agree that many Christian nations are no longer Christian nations. That however does not mean the faith there are Apostates. Anymore than it means the Church under Pagan Rome was Apostate.
 
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Peter1000

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I doubt the original Apostles would be comfortable in the LDS Church.

Let's point out the truck in the room, God the Father was once a man.

Numbers 23:19 God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?

Yes, I took Numbers out of context for those to read it in context.
The bible is right. God is not a man. But he was a man at one time. God is now a totally different entity, however, he is made up of resurrected flesh and bone and spirit, and He looks like a man.
 
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Peter1000

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In your previous post you gave a list of beliefs that indicated you believed the bible. All of those points you made were believed by the second century Church even after Polycarp and Ignatius. Therefore what is your evidence of Apostasy? If you're going to say they lacked Apostles, well Polycarp and Ignatius also lacked Apostles and had no Idea they were in need of one. Ignatius affirmed the Bishop as the head of the Church and Polycarp agreed with him. So how is it possible for you to substantiate the claim of Apostasy when in the doctrines you pointed to earlier, the second century Church agreed with them?

UNless you want to stop playing games and insist that certain Mormon doctrines were taught alongside of those essential beliefs but that would undermine your previous post, now wouldn't it?

When a person agrees with what we believe on the first level and are enthusiastic about it, then we teach them a little more. If they accept that teaching, then we teach them more, until they accept all and go to the temple and are married in the temple and are fully aware and agree with all our doctrine. That is how it works, and thousands of people every year enter into this teaching process. Many do not make it to the temple, and they fall away, but many more do and become anchor families for the faith and for Jesus Christ.

This process is has a name in the bible. It is called milk vs meat. You start out with the milk of the gospel, and you end up with the meat. This was a problem for Paul in Corinth, because the people were having problems with the milk. He tried to tell them the meat of the gospel and they rejected him and the meat. (See 1 Corinthians 3:2) So in their case, they might not be comfortable in our church today. Paul would be though.

In the early church writings of the Didache or the Shepherd of Hermas, they have a discussion about 2 interesting situations. These writing would be as the last apostles were dying out.
1) they had a discussion about what to do with men who were coming around and saying that they were apostles and living off the churches until they wore out their welcomes. The discussion was to be very wary of any man, coming around and telling them that they are apostles.

2) they had a policy change about baptism. It was: if you are in a place without much water, you could just be sprinkled and that would be sufficient for baptism.

So at this critical time in the early church, the apostles were not thought of well, and the ordinance of baptism was already changed to fit a particular circimstance.

Roll forward 2000 years and the churches today have no need of apostles, and whether you are baptized or not is up to you, because getting dunked in water certainly does not save anyone.

This is just the beginning of the apostacy.
 
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drstevej

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When a person agrees with what we believe on the first level and are enthusiastic about it, then we teach them a little more. If they accept that teaching, then we teach them more, until they accept all and go to the temple and are married in the temple and are fully aware and agree with all our doctrine. That is how it works, and thousands of people every year enter into this teaching process.

Sounds like the process a drug dealer uses in producing addicts (customers).

Why not allow access to the full spectrum of Mormon Truth to be viewed by those interested in seeing what Mormonism teaches rather than hiding it like Temple undergarments and secret handshakes?

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dzheremi

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Why would God allow a Muslim nation to overrun a Christian nation?

Why would 'god' allow a bunch of pagan nonsense into his 'restoration', whether we're talking about Muhammad or Joseph Smith?

Do you see now how this kind of question gets us nowhere, as it questions/assumes God's motives by first assuming our own to be His?

Why would the Christians convert to Mohammad?

Why would Christians convert to Joseph Smith? Why would Joseph Smith and his true spiritual forefather Muhammad (see also: the Phrygians, the Ebionites, the Nestorians, and the others form whom Muhammad himself took much) mistake devils for the Lord, if he was indeed called by the true God?

The question in the first part of my reply also applies here.

Why would you not?

Because I don't need to read things into the scripture or into the religion more broadly to make my Church's ecclesiology make sense, Peter.

The Lord tells the Ephesians that they have left their first love (Revelations 2:4). What does that mean?

That despite all the ways in which they were laudable (verses 1-3), they nevertheless had fallen short in this manner. As to what it means to "leave their first love", our Bishop HH Pope Shenouda III of thrice-blessed memory put it this way in an article in the December 15, 2011 edition of Watani (a Church newspaper published in Egypt), after reminding us that the Church in Ephesus was earlier in the same passage held up for its good virtues and conduct, being in many things exemplary, laboring and suffering much in His name, and yet falling short in this way:

We are here taught to be on our guard however great we become. Although he is an angel he fell and needed to repent! Mere [sic] leaving his first love is considered a fall, for he did not deviate, but he left that first love which he began with. That is true, for many people started repentance with deep fervency, but by time they lost fervency. Others started ministry with holy zeal, which by time decreased. Others used to enter the church with a deep feeling of unworthiness to stand among the saints, their eyes filled with tears and their heart with humility and contrition. They began as repentant, then ministers, then leaders in the church. At this points they were lost, and deserved to hear the voice of the Lord, “you have left your first love”! It was better for such people to have kept their love as in the beginning.​

+++

In this view, it is a warning in a manner very similar to what is said to some of the others, such as the Church in Laodicea (3:14 and following), which is called lukewarm. That a church in any place should lose its love or its warmth for He Who bought them of course deserves a strong correction, and it is good that we have these words to reflect upon and pray from, as we do in the Coptic Orthodox tradition every Apocalypse Night (Bright Saturday) of the Holy Week services.

Did they listen to Jesus or not? Since their candlestick is removed from its place, apparently not.

Who says it is removed? Rather, the passage is again a warning, as it says in the very verse to which you are alluding (2:5): "Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place—unless you repent." Are you saying that the Christians of Ephesus did not repent, and that this is why they were overtaken by the Arabs? That is strange, considering that the city was partially destroyed by an earthquake in 614 (40 years before the Arabs even got there), and around the same time lost its harbor due to soil erosion, such that by the time the Seljuk Turks conquered the area in 1090, it was a small and inconsequential village. The Byzantines would get it back into their hands only 7 years later, and retain it until 1308.

Explain that series of events, if you can. It doesn't seem to fit into your idea, seeing as it would mean that God was variously with the Byzantines, and then the Arabs, and then the Turks, and then the Byzantines again, and then the Turks. What repenting or following Christ did the godless Arabs and Turks of Muhammad's religion possibly do to gain and finally keep control of this place? (Which today is a historical ruin, by the way...guess they must've not done something the God they don't recognize in the first place wanted them to do that they were doing earlier...whatever that could have been.)

I don't know who or what makes you think you have any kind of place to stand here, let alone stand here mutilating the scriptures so that they say something they do not say, but it's very obvious to every Christian that the Mormons' motivated reading has less to do with what the spirit says and more to do with what your alternate history narrative says, which is itself not part of the Bible.

They must have acted like the Galatians, of whcih Paul marvelled at how soon they had removed themselves from him

Again, based on what? That's not the charge that's actually in the warning to the Ephesians. The spirit does not say they are being called loveless for not having listened to St. Paul.

and were being taught by men that were teaching another gospel. So in this case, they were moving away from him, and they were moving away from the true gospel of Jesus Christ.

It's funny you should mention that. In his commentary on the book, eminent Coptic Orthodox priest and theologian Fr. Tadros Yacoub Malaty writes the following concerning the warning to the Church at Ephesus:

He does not forget the labor of this church, especially what she endured from those who pretended to be ministers and filled the earth with words, while they were liars and were far from her spirit, her message, her meekness, and her love. For this, God speaks to the bishop of Ephesus saying, "And you have persevered, and have patience, and have labored for my name's sake and have not become weary." (p. 33; opens as PDF)​

Every Christian worth his or her salt, upon reading the portion which I have placed in bold, will think to themselves of the various false prophets who have come since the time it was written, and those who know anything of Mormonism will therefore think of Joseph Smith and the religion that he brought, which fits this description to a T.

So you might want to slow yourself and remember what message board you are posting on before you opine regarding who followed Jesus and who instead followed a false prophet or false religion. That it should be so obvious to everyone but you should prompt reflection upon where you have stumbled, and repentance, as the Ephesians are called to. (As we are all called to -- just not all for that specific thing.)

There is plenty in the biblle that would give us cause to think that Diotrephes was not alone in his treatment of the apostles.

Who has claimed that he was?

All Asia had turned away from Paul, many early Christian centers moving from their first love.

And many didn't -- including some in Asia (both the Roman province and Asia in the wider geographical sense). What did Antioch, the place where the disciples were first called Christians, do? What did Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the seat of the Persian Church, do? What did Osroene, the first Christian kingdom in the world with its God-loving capital of Edessa, do? What did India, the beloved land touched by the feet of St. Thomas, do? What did Armenia, the first Christian country, first preached to by Sts. Bartholomew and Thaddeus and enlightened by St. Gregory, do?

You need to know Christian history in the first place to begin to properly evaluate it, and by what you write, it is clear that you do not know it at all.

Corinth did not want to hear Paul teach them the meat of the gospel (1 Corinthians 3:2) and Corinth was always a hotbed of turmoil and dissidents. And this was all before the apostles died.

So what? Why else do you think he would've written them as he did, reminding them of the ungodliness of being sectarian and causing strife among the brothers by saying "I am of Paul" or "I am of Apollo"? Early Church history is not some kind of whitewashed romance. There were disagreements among the apostles themselves, as well (see, for instance, the Apostolic Council in Jerusalem as recorded in Acts, where the same St. Paul withstood St. Peter to his face, because St. Peter was accepting of the Judaizing heresy that had infected some in Jerusalem). So if you think that the mere existence of disagreement is proof of your 'great apostasy' fantasy, then you must indict the very same apostle to whom you are now appealing, and the holy St. Peter -- the prince of the apostles -- as well.

You can't have your apostasy and have your original, uncorrupted Church that you are 'restoring', if things like what you have brought are your evidence of said apostasy. You must, by your own words, paint the apostles themselves likewise as incompetents, which says an awful lot about what Mormonism really thinks of Christ Himself. Lord have mercy.

But Paul warned the saints in Thessolanica that the "mystery of iniquity" was already at work in the church (2 Thessalonians 2:7). BTW what do you think this means in this scripture: "only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way"

Following the early Church and fathers such as St. John Chrysostom (who preached about this in his fourth homily on the epistle), it is taken as a prefiguring of the anti-Christ, and the fall of the Roman Empire, which did indeed happen (in the West in 476, some 69 years before the departure of St. John Chrysostom himself).

I believe that is that when the final apostle is gone, then all hell will break lose when they are out of the way.

That may be your belief, but it's not actually rooted in anything that the Church itself has ever taught. It is completely baseless and senseless, and if you can prove it from any period-appropriate source (i.e., not a bunch of Mormon claptrap, but something from the first five centuries of Christianity, when we all still worshiped and believed together), I will buy a hat just to eat it.
 
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dzheremi

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The apostles were the foundation of the church.

Were, are, and will be, as we believe in Christ and what He taught them and lived out among them, and their witness to Him and the mystery of His birth, life, death, and glorious resurrection.

Peter and the apostles were given the keys of the kingdom of God (the church) to grow and govern the church. Not one bishop was chosen
before the resurrection of Christ.

Try to think about this logically: Why would any bishop need to be chosen before the resurrection of Christ, Who is Himself the head of the Church? All of the apostles were still living at this time, and they had yet to be sent out on the Great Commission (Matthew 28), which occurred after His resurrection.

So what you have said is really illogical.

Christ only chose his leadership (the 12 apostles) and then went to heaven.

What are the 70 (or 72, according to St. Jerome)? Chopped liver? True, they are not among the twelve, but are they any 'less chosen' on that account?

Why would you call the bishop an office in the church, and not call an apostle an office?

Because the office of bishop exists and is attested to in the first century (read the Didache sometime, please), whereas the 'office of apostle' is a Mormon fantasy attested to in Mormon Fantasyland and nowhere else/not in the actually existing world. That's why.

It is absurd.

I agree! What you just asked is very absurd!

Remember it is the apostles who chose and ordained bishops, in the beginning of the true church.

Indeed.

You could call the apostles the bishops of the entire church.

And yet we don't (not in Orthodoxy, anyway), because the Church is much more than its hierarchy. It is the divine and mystical body of Christ, the true Israel of God, the Ark of Salvation, the House of the Angels, and many other things.

And they were in fact bishops of local areas too.

Yes, sure. St. Peter in Antioch, St. James in Jerusalem, St. Thomas in India, etc. These are all people and areas, yes.

But the apostles were in charge of the entire church, not just a local area like a regular bishop.

Here you are invoking a false distinction that is oddly medieval Roman Catholic-sounding. There is indeed a sense by which the early Church all agreed on St. Peter as the prince of the apostles (not just in the West with the eventual claims of the Roman Church itself, but in things like how you will often find in early writings things like St. Mark being described as "the interpreter of St. Peter", cf. 1 Peter 5:13), for instance, but that did not place him as some kind of head of the entire Church, to be heeded on that account. He was still rebuffed -- and rightly so -- by St. Paul in the earlier-mentioned conflict at Jerusalem, wherein St. Peter's preference was not adopted. Later conflicts in the 3rd century in Roman north Africa saw subsequent Popes of Alexandria call to account their erring Roman brothers in the time of Roman Popes Stephen and Xystus, in the conflict concerning the baptism of heretics involving St. Cyprian of Carthage. (Carthage being a part of the Roman Church in Africa.)

This shows that the conciliar model -- where the bishops across the Church seek consensus, and that consensus is thereby established as the ruling of the Church -- is the more proper and ancient form (of what use would be any council, whether in Jerusalem in the first century or later, if instead they could've just asked St. Peter what he though they should do and thereby solve any problem?). What you appear to be saying would have all governing power placed in one man who, by virtue of being that man (or in the line of that man, or however they'd put it) is head of the entire Church. No. Christ is the head of the Church, not any bishop. Not in Rome, not in Alexandria, not in Antioch, not anywhere. And all bishops, in every place, are accountable to the faith with which they are nourished and entrusted. This is why in the Christian east or 'orient' we have retained the canonical, synodical means of censuring and/or deposing an errant bishop, as has happened throughout history (see: Nestorius of Constantinople, or if you're a Chalcedonian, Dioscorus of Alexandria), and more recently in certain cases in Coptic Alexandria (Pope Yus'ab II) and Greek Jerusalem (Patriarch Irenaios).

It is weird to see a Mormon argue what is essentially some type of skeletal reflection of Roman ecclesiology, though I suppose power is power in any organization.

IOW, while the apostles were alive, a bishop of a local area could not expand his bishopric by going to a nearby city and enthrone himself the bishop of that city too.

What is this? Bishops don't enthrone themselves in the first place, so this comment makes no sense. A man is consecrated a bishop by his brother bishops -- namely, by the Patriarch/Catholicos/Pope (depending on what each church calls its most senior bishop) with the participation of the bishops of the diocese in which the consecration takes place, as in this short clip of the consecration of HG Bishop Daniel of Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana, celebrated in the Monastery of St. Bishoy in Egypt (hence only HH Pope Tawadros II, the man who is laying hands on HG Bishop Daniel; one Bishop Pavle, who I take it must oversee the diocese in which the monastery is located; and of course HG Bishop Daniel himself are mentioned in the "Axios" prayer chanted during his investiture -- this respects the hierarchy in terms of who is present, as of course the monastery has its own existence within a wider diocese, which is itself within some larger subdivision of Egypt, even though HG Bishop Daniel is being elevated to serve in his new role in a diocese in the USA; thus we follow the ancient instruction of HH St. Ignatius of the 1st/early 2nd century, who commands the faithful to do nothing apart from the bishop):


That was the job of the apostle, that was their office and calling.

No. The apostles already had jobs. They were tent makers, fishermen, etc. Their calling was to follow Christ, Who eventually sent them out to baptize the entire world. If this mythical office of 'apostle' was actually something real, you would have seen them ordain apostles rather than bishops in every place -- unless of course it is your contention that the Lord Who chose them wanted His Church to die with them/become corrupted, which is so stupid and blasphemous I have to assume is most definitely not what He wanted according to Mormonism, or else you'd be violating His command by 'restoring' it in the first place.

So the hierarchy of the church was: apostle at the top, next the bishops, and elders who reported to the apostles, then the bishop could ordain other elders, deacons and priest to assist him as the local church grew.

I repeat: There was no such thing as an office or rank of 'apostle' at the top of anything. The apostles have long been reckoned as the founding bishops of a given see (e.g., St. Mark in Egypt, St. Thaddeus in Mesopotamia, Sts. Peter and Paul in Antioch, etc.), though we know from various church historians that this reckoning didn't come into use until later. In that case, then we have men like HH St. Inanios, HH St. Evodius, Mor Aggai, etc. to count as the first bishops, being each consecrated to the rank of bishop by the apostle(s) who first brought Christ to their lands. This is fine. The point is that we have these lines -- which don't diverge from one another until considerably later, in the wake of the Council of Ephesus when the Nestorian/Persian Church fought the Orthodox Christological title Theotokos -- which go back to the apostles themselves. So any time that you point to and say "The great apostasy happened at this time", we can point to which bishops were where and ask, with full knowledge of the answer (nothing), what did HH St. _______ introduce at the time which was new and corrupting?

And since you are taught a fairy tale in place of actual Christian history, you will either have nothing to say (knowing nothing of Christianity in the first place, much less its true histories), or spin another unbelievable yarn as you have once again attempted to do here. And it will not be accepted, because you have no evidence for anything you say. You have no unbroken tradition or historical record attested to in period-appropriate sources, nor should you, since in reality your religion does not predate the 1820s at the earliest, when Joseph Smith invented it.

So it is rejected out of hand as being at best baseless, and at worse...well, Lord have mercy on any who will find out, if they do not repent (in keeping with your sudden love of the warnings from Revelation).
 
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dzheremi

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To say that the office of apostle did not exist, tells me that your early church organizational chart was missing the most important office.

Well, where is it then? If you recognize that we do indeed have such sources, where is this 'most important office'? If it was ever part of the Church in any place, it would be there in the historical record, just as surely as we know the list of deans of the Catechetical School of Alexandria dating back to about 180 AD. Point being that the early Church was not as bad at handing things down as the 'great apostasy' theory requires them to be; but I'm sure you'll have some actual evidence of this 'most important office' you have likewise invented.

I'll just wait here for it...

Oh, you have the office of bishop, and you have the office of elder, and you have the office of deacon, and pastor, and priest, but somehow you don't have the office that was most important to Jesus himself, the office of apostle. Go figure?

Again: Prove it. Prove what you say. Don't just say whatever. Where does Jesus say that the "office of apostle" is most important to Him, or even that such an office exists?

Just read your history again, especially your Cyril of Egypt. He controlled the city at the height of its power in the Roman empire.

You've been reading too many Dan Brown books. He was exiled three times from his see by Arians in their false councils. His writings were attacked to the degree that this attack formed the basis for a later council of Chalcedonians (look up the 'three chapters controversy'). It was not a walk on easy street for our father, the Pillar of Faith HH St. Cyril.

He closed Nestorian churches and siezed their sacred vessels.

What Nestorian churches, where? To my understanding, there was a rather insignificant Nestorian presence in Egypt outside of Alexandria (where they did have a presence, but were never very strong, thanks to the consistent opposition they faced from the Orthodox), as Nestorianism flourished elsewhere, having started in Constantinople with Nestorius himself, and spread mostly in Mesopotamia and points further east (that is to say, in the Persian Empire, not in Egypt, which was on the eastern edge of the Roman Empire). I think you may be mixing up the Nestorians with some different sect. Heck, the Persian church had already held the Synod of Dadisho' in 424 to declare themselves ecclesiastically independent of the churches within the Byzantine Empire (probably as a political bid to get the Zoroastrian authoritidx to stop arresting their clergy on charges of spying for meeting with bishops who came from the Byzantine Empire, since the Byzantines and the Persians were often at war with one another), which was within the time of HH St. Cyril's service as the Pope of Alexandria (412-444).

He rounded up Jews and threw them into prisons and banned them from the city. He layed out edicts for the citizens to follow. Oh yes, he was at the height of his glory as the secular and spiritual leader of the people.

By this do you have in mind the aftermath of the riots in Alexandria? Because if so, Peter, you should know that the expulsion of Jews was after the premeditated murder of Christians by a group of Jews in Alexandria outside of the Church of St. Alexander. This is what precipitated the anti-Jewish riots that followed, culminating in the expulsion of the Jews who had originally attacked the Christians outside of the Church.

Fr. John McGuckin explains in his book St. Cyril of Alexandria: The Christological Controversy (p. 12; I don't have a copy, but it is accessible via Google Books):

Socrates [Scholasticus, Hist. Eccl. 7.13, written c. 439 -- dzh.], in this connection, speaks of Cyril instigating a mass expulsion of the Jews from the city, but this is surely an exaggeration. Cyril's administration certainly marks a stage in the increasing Christian domination of fifth century Alexandria but the Jewish presence there would remain strong and influential for a long time to come. The expulsion of Jews he instigated should rather be seen as particularized and related to the incident of the Alexander church murders; an aspect of Cyril's claims to exercise independent juridicial powers in manners related to religion, in the face of Orestes' civil jurisdiction. Far from being the whole Jewish population the exiles probably constituted the group around the Alexander church.​

---

I certainly don't think a follower of a religion that has things like the Mountain Meadows Massacre in its own history has any room to talk down from a place of moral authority concerning one of the greatest bishops in the history of the Christian Church, who is recognized as such by everyone (except for the Nestorians, for obvious reasons). Yes, he had some Jews who had murdered Christians expelled from the city. Is this wrong? If so, then why do we in secular societies to this day remove murderers from the general population? Is that wrong? Does murder become okay if Jews do it?

He personally is the poster boy for a secular ruling patriarch of the church.

We should hope so, though we give him proper respect for his fight against Nestorius, the remaining Arians, the Jews who saw fit to kill Christians, and the secular authorities, all the while maintaining the pure and holy Christian faith, undefiled by any of the errors of the heretics and blasphemers.

So look no further than Saint Cyril.

For your computer to the throne of God.

You want to talk about a prattler, look no furth than Cyril

Oh really? Which one of his writings do you consider to be prattle? Was it his commentaries? Was it his festal letters? Is it in fact the case that you haven't a clue what you're talking about, as you've never bothered to actually read a single thing he wrote, and are just slinging mud onto the wall, as you always do?

I trust that everyone here can see the truth, or that those who don't know anything about the man will ask, as it is certainly fit to ask why anyone is held in such high regard by almost all Christianity. (And, to be fair, why the tiny fraction who maintain an unjust hatred of him do so; Nestorius' Bazar is available for everyone to read online, though I sure as heck won't be linking to it!)

who had his hands in everything both secular and religious.

With a persistent criticism of the secular authorities, yes, and an ironclad conviction that those things which involve the Church -- like its believers being murdered in their churches -- ought to be things which he rules over, as their patriarch. This is not at all strange, and in fact was assumed up until very recently to be how everything would be. Heck, when JFK was elected president back in the 1960s, there were not a few people in the USA who were afraid that he would take his cues from Rome, as a Roman Catholic. This kind of thinking is not so odd, though it certainly wouldn't have a place in a modern, secular, western society like the USA, which Egypt in the fifth century certainly wasn't (and it still isn't today).

This is de facto how it works in modern Egypt, as some latitude in personal status and family law is given for each of the communities recognized in the Egyptian constitution (Christians, Muslims, and Jews), so as long as it is not one of these non-Muslim groups interacting with the Muslim majority, it is handled entirely within the community. This is why the Coptic Orthodox Church can maintain strict law in keeping with our canons against divorce, abortion, and other things that the wider Islamic society is comparatively very lax on. Again, is this bad? Should Christians just adopt whatever the surrounding society has to say on anything, lest we be seen to be "having our hands in everything"? What nonsense.

Also, excuse me, your highness, but do we really need to go into the actually divided loyalties of Mormon politicians in the USA, a society that is actually secular? Because we have the footage of Mormon politicians like this representative in Oregon (modern day Oregon, not 5th century Oregon!), placing himself in subjugation to your octogenarian men in suits from Utah, and openly stating that his Mormon religious conviction comes before his commitment to the United States:


There are also matters like the recently declassified Council of Fifty, in which your earliest Mormon leaders attempted to covertly set up a Mormon theocracy.

Careful not to slip on that massive pile of hypocrisy that your religion tried to hide from people for such a long time.

(For interested people, here is a much longer discussion on the council of fifty notes that were finally made available to the public in 2016. It's about two and a half hours.)

Against other Christians that did not believe exactly as he did. Against pagans, against Jews. Against his own people, when they disobeyed his tedious edicts. He was constantly enflaming situations to be far worse than if he had just left them alone.

Oh blah blah blah. When did you turn into Edward Gibbon?

So yes, secular was in, especially in the time of Cyril, and he took full advantage of it.

Hahaha. Whatever this random jumble of words is supposed to mean. "Secular was in"? Uh, sure. Okay. Sure was. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Who's reality?

Reality. As in what actually happened according to the historical record. You know, that thing you don't care about, because it's not full of sexy and exciting intrigues that make the Church look like monsters to intellectual jellyfish such as yourself?

You know, how Jewish sources say things like this about the Jews of Alexandria (emphasis added):

By the beginning of the Byzantine era, the Jewish population had again increased, but suffered from the persecutions of the Christian Church. In 414, in the days of the patriarch Cyril, the Jews were expelled from the city but appear to have returned after some time since it contained an appreciable Jewish population when it was conquered by the Muslims.

According to Arabic sources, there were about 400,000 Jews in Alexandria at the time of its conquest by the Arabs (642), but 70,000 had left during the siege. These figures are greatly exaggerated, but they indicate that in the seventh century there was still a large Jewish community.

Just read your history.

I have, and do. That's how I know you're full of baloney.

It is full of the "game of thrones", and in a true, loving, Christian world that would not be a game Christ's represetatives would be playing.

Just because you love saying a dumb phrase over and over doesn't mean it fits whatever situation you're writing about (and misrepresenting, of course).

Any time you want to actually deal with the fact that your religion aspired to theocracy in the time of its founder (see again the Council of Fifty notes), then can we talk about all the time anyone in my Church did something which seemed like it meant that to you. HH St. Cyril is not such a person, beyond taking matters into his own hands when the authorities would not do what is necessary to protect both communities (again, expelling Jewish murderers to put an end to reprisals and counter-reprisals is the right thing to do), which in context can hardly be seen as a power grab, or at least not any more of one than the modern police are supposed to do in Egypt when they hear of threats against churches. "Oh, there goes the Church, involving itself with the state again! Yeahhhh...just nobody look over here where we're terrorizing travelers we come across, killing Indians (check out that first quote from John A. Peterson, admitting that there was indiscriminate killing by 'frustrated' Mormon settlers), marrying little girls, etc. We suddenly care so much about fifth-century Egyptian Jews, for some reason!

I'm not buying it. I don't think you're honest, responsible with whatever sources you are getting your information from (where are you links, like how I try to link to all of my sources?), or really even all that well-equipped to understand what you're reading in the first place, assuming that they aren't all conspiratorial hack jobs written by Christianity-haters.

You're back on my ignore list, where you probably should have been all along. Life is too short to waste it in discussions that never go anywhere with people who are dishonest and more interested in their prefabricated narrative than with the truth of what actually happened in history, and what it all means.

I hope one day you will wake up from the spiritual slumber and mental slavery that Mormonism has placed you in, Peter. I really do. Even if you still think the Christian religion and Church is bunk, it would be better to leave a lie and search than to remain in a lie and never be freed from it. Christ did not shed His holy blood upon the life-giving cross so that you and 16 million other people could follow a child-defiling con man with delusions of rewriting the Bible and making up an entirely new history (well, as new as something can be that probably cribs a lot of its style from preexisting sources, like The Late War and other books that predate the BOM) for select Biblical figures, and a cast of Hebrew Indian emigres and others that there is no reason to believe ever existed in the first place. Lord have mercy.
 
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Ignatius the Kiwi

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When a person agrees with what we believe on the first level and are enthusiastic about it, then we teach them a little more. If they accept that teaching, then we teach them more, until they accept all and go to the temple and are married in the temple and are fully aware and agree with all our doctrine. That is how it works, and thousands of people every year enter into this teaching process. Many do not make it to the temple, and they fall away, but many more do and become anchor families for the faith and for Jesus Christ.


This process is has a name in the bible. It is called milk vs meat. You start out with the milk of the gospel, and you end up with the meat. This was a problem for Paul in Corinth, because the people were having problems with the milk. He tried to tell them the meat of the gospel and they rejected him and the meat. (See 1 Corinthians 3:2) So in their case, they might not be comfortable in our church today. Paul would be though.

In the early church writings of the Didache or the Shepherd of Hermas, they have a discussion about 2 interesting situations. These writing would be as the last apostles were dying out.
1) they had a discussion about what to do with men who were coming around and saying that they were apostles and living off the churches until they wore out their welcomes. The discussion was to be very wary of any man, coming around and telling them that they are apostles.

2) they had a policy change about baptism. It was: if you are in a place without much water, you could just be sprinkled and that would be sufficient for baptism.

So at this critical time in the early church, the apostles were not thought of well, and the ordinance of baptism was already changed to fit a particular circimstance.

Roll forward 2000 years and the churches today have no need of apostles, and whether you are baptized or not is up to you, because getting dunked in water certainly does not save anyone.

This is just the beginning of the apostacy.[/QUOTE]

Peter, earlier in our conversation when I pointed out that there were Mormon distinctives not taught by the Apostles or the early Church, you responded by listing a bunch of doctrines or Ideas of doctrines that you knew I would agree with as being present. I called this for what it was, a game, you are deliberately obfuscating the issue at question by vagueness instead of actually proving a point. Now that you've admitted what you should have admitted in an earlier post that you believe Mormon distinctives were taught, where is your evidence of them?

You talk about Baptism and that somehow the Baptism the Church offered to those converts who were under pressing circumstances was a great calamity. If only God had sent Apostles to warn men like Ignatius or John of Damascus or the author of the didache! Or do you think the author of the Didache was an insincere believer, deliberately trying to deceive the Church instead of answering a difficult situation that the Bible doesn't speak explicitly about? Mind you, for all we know it was Apostolic teaching, it simply wasn't written down by the Apostles in the Bible but was perhaps an oral tradition. Yet you characterize the Didache falsely. Baptism by pouring is done in extreme circumstances, not commonly, at least in the Orthodox Church. I'll let Catholics defend their practice for themselves, so don't expect me to defend their practice.

Yet, we've had this tired conversation before. You have no counter to this point, only to insist on apostasy and cherry pick historical circumstances to fit your narrative. If I mention good men like Ignatius you claim them as your own. When I then mention how Ignatius advocated the Episcopal leadership of the Church (Polycarp also affirmed Ignatius' Epistles), all I hear from you is silence. The difference between us, is while you are forced by your Church to look at the Christians with the worst perspective possible, I can look at the Church fathers and the Christian community for what they were, human beings, sinful and holy as they are.

Finally, you mentioned that there were Apostles who were mistrusted by fathers. Should they have opened their door to anyone who claimed to be an authority? Or should they have relied on what they had received in the Bible and by tradition? Do we have any evidence that the men you are saying were real Apostles should be trusted? Let alone that they preached Mormonism? Or is this merely a supposition on your part?
 
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Peter1000

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Sounds like the process a drug dealer uses in producing addicts (customers).

Why not allow access to the full spectrum of Mormon Truth to be viewed by those interested in seeing what Mormonism teaches rather than hiding it like Temple undergarments and secret handshakes?

View attachment 279999
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Answer this questionn and you will have answered your question to me:

In 1 Corinthians 3:2 we learn that there are at least 2 levels of teaching in the true church.
1) the milk
2) the meat

You cannot get to the meat of the gospel, until you have a full disclosure and belief in the milk of the gospel.

So here is the question: Why did Jesus not allow the full spectrum of his teachings to be viewed by those interested in seeing what Christianity teaches rather than hiding it like the meat vs milk?

Just 1 example:
John 6:53-57 King James Version (KJV)
53 Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.
54 Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.
55 For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.
56 He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.
57 As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me.

Jesus teaches a little bit of the meat of the gospel. Except ye eat the fleh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.

What did many of the disciples say:
John 6:60 King James Version (KJV)
60 Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard this, said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it?

And what did many of the disciples do?
John 6:66 King James Version (KJV)
66 From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.

So Jesus gives them a taste of the deep doctrine of the church and many were not prepared for the lesson, and turned from Jesus and walked with him no more.

Same thing in Corinth. Paul trys to wing them off of the milk, but they would have nothing to do with it, because the meat is much more of a disipline than the milk and only the true believers are able to receive the meat and follow.

So what is your answer?
 
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Peter1000

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Well, where is it then?

Was there an office of bishop? Yes. Were the apostles more important than the bishops? Or at least did they oversee the bishop? Yes. Then there was an office of apostle.
So you ask if there was an office of apostle, where is it today? The world was not ready for apostles of the Lord, and killed them viciously one by one, and for a time, the Lord replaced killed apostles with new apostles. But by the 2nd century, the world was against them, and the leadership of the churches eventually rejected revelations and the governance of the churches from Jerusalem, or Antioch, and Rome. The bishops became a power unto themselves, both secular and spiritual, and the voice of the people got what they cried out for.

But the office of Apostle existed for about 80 years after the resurrection of Jesus.

Again: Prove it. Prove what you say. Don't just say whatever. Where does Jesus say that the "office of apostle" is most important to Him, or even that such an office exists?

It is a simple proof:
John 15:16 King James Version (KJV)
16 Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you.

Jesus also gave Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven:
Matthew 16:19 King James Version (KJV)
19 And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

He gave Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven and the power to bind and loose. Jesus also gave the apostles the power to bind and loose too:
Matthew 18:18-19 King James Version (KJV)
18 Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
19 Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven.

So from the bible is your proof. Jesus only ordained apostles. The apostles went out and eventually ordained bishops and others, having the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and the office of apostle.

Oh really? Which one of his writings do you consider to be prattle? Was it his commentaries? Was it his festal letters? Is it in fact the case that you haven't a clue what you're talking about, as you've never bothered to actually read a single thing he wrote, and are just slinging mud onto the wall, as you always do?

His prattle was not his writings, his prattle was he had his fingers in everything secular as well as tried to be the bishop and spiritual leader of his church in Alexandria. But he had his fingers in the politics of other cities as well, and in the control of what was said all around. He was a real busy body. How did he ever have time to take good care of his office of bishop, and his peoples spiritual welfare, while he had his fingers on so many plates?

Christ did not shed His holy blood upon the life-giving cross so that you and 16 million other people could follow a child-defiling con man

Actually he did. And JS was not a child-defiling con man. Many say he is because he married for eternity only, a 13 year old girl. Never consumated the marriage, never had any children from her and her father approved and was at the sealing, knowing full well that JS would not be with her in this life, but only in eternity. So no child molesting stories here.
 
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BobRyan

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The LDS interpretation does not exist in the early church fathers, who were taught by the apostles. I challenge you to research the early church fathers. Make a list of your doctrines. Post only from primary sources with a link to its source. I will not accept secondary or third hand sources.

Here is an example of how I want documentation done:
LDS - The Fathers on John 10:30

Don’t you see Christianity got corrupted, thus Joseph Smith had to bring the “true teachings” of Christ back.

yep --- I certainly saw that one coming...
 
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Peter1000

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yep --- I certainly saw that one coming...
Christianity did get corrupted. That is why churches since the 4th century have had an incling to get back to the beginning. To get back to the original church of Jesus Christ. Get back to the same organization that existed in the original church of Jesus Christ.

If it was all the same why the yearning to get back to the original?
 
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BobRyan

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The LDS interpretation does not exist in the early church fathers, who were taught by the apostles. I challenge you to research the early church fathers. Make a list of your doctrines. Post only from primary sources with a link to its source. I will not accept secondary or third hand sources.

Here is an example of how I want documentation done:
LDS - The Fathers on John 10:30

Don’t you see Christianity got corrupted, thus Joseph Smith had to bring the “true teachings” of Christ back.

yep --- I certainly saw that one coming...

Christianity did get corrupted. That is why churches since the 4th century have had an incling to get back to the beginning.

Protestant "reformation" and many others always bringing the church doctrines closer and closer to the NT origin of the Christian church.

And how did they do it ?? Answer: just as we see Christ doing it in Mark 7.... "sola scriptura" -- testing all doctrine and practice, all prophets and spirits, all claims ---- against the Bible.

Mark 7
‘This people honors Me with their lips,
But their heart is far away from Me.
7 ‘But in vain do they worship Me,
Teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.’
8 Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men.”

9 He was also saying to them, “You are experts at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition. 10 For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘He who speaks evil of father or mother, is to be put to death’; 11 but you say, ‘If a man says to his father or his mother, whatever I have that would help you is Corban (that is to say, given to God),’ 12 you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or his mother; 13 thus invalidating the word of God by your tradition which you have handed down; and you do many things such as that.”
 
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Peter1000

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yep --- I certainly saw that one coming...



Protestant "reformation" and many others always bringing the church doctrines closer and closer to the NT origin of the Christian church.

And how did they do it ?? Answer: just as we see Christ doing it in Mark 7.... "sola scriptura" -- testing all doctrine and practice, all prophets and spirits, all claims ---- against the Bible.
Was Christ testing all doctrine and practice, all prophets and spirits, all claims---against the bible you know and love as read in Mark 7?

How did the doctrine and the organization get so far away from the original that the reformers had to bring it back closer to the original?
 
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Daniel Marsh

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    1. Acts 1:20
      For it is written in the book of Psalms, Let his habitation be desolate, and let no man dwell therein: and his bishoprick let another take.
    2. Philippians 1:1
      Paul and Timotheus, the servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus which are at Philippi, with the bishops and deacons:
    3. 1 Timothy 3:1
      This is a true saying, if a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work.
    4. 1 Timothy 3:2
      A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach;
    5. Titus 1:7
      For a bishop must be blameless, as the steward of God; not selfwilled, not soon angry, not given to wine, no striker, not given to filthy lucre;
    6. 1 Peter 2:25
      For ye were as sheep going astray; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.
 
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