Are there any ECF writings that list the current 12 Apostles of that writer's day? That would cause quite a stir.
This is a nonsense question that assumes that Mormonism's leadership structure actually reflects something that was present in the early Church, which is not the case. The apostles had long departed by the time of the Early Church Fathers.
It actually does. The definition of successor is "someone or something that follows and takes the job, place, or position that was held by another".
The problem with confusing this with
equivalence (the word I actually used) is that it can eventually lead to the kind of ecclesiology that the modern RCC espouses, wherein the bishop is to
equated with St. Peter for ever and ever throughout the universe, exclusively in Rome and not in Antioch (hence being "in communion with St. Peter" in their world is accomplished when you submit to
Rome in particular; being Antiochian Greek or Syriac Orthodox is not good enough), with all of the prerogatives they say this affords them which literally no one else agrees with. (The bit about HH St. Evodius would be more a matter of deference to those who come before us than denial of the very real pattern of succession established there, in a manner analogous to how the canons of Nicaea referred to preexisting tradition concerning Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, or even how saint's
Vitas were often composed by their disciples and featured such laudatory language, even when those disciples went on to far exceed their spiritual fathers in terms of clerical rank, as was the case with regard to HH St. Athanasius, the disciple of St. Anthony.)
An Apostle replaces an Apostle, a Bishop replaces a Bishop, and so forth.
'Apostle' is not and has never been a rank within the Church no matter how much your fidelity to Mormonism makes you think it is.
I'm quoting this to show he believed he was a Bishop and didn't believe he held the higher authority of an Apostle
Again, 'Apostle' was never a rank in the first place. The fact that the Apostles would replace Judas with Matthias after the former's betrayal of Christ and subsequent suicide shows us that they had such a mechanism in place if they wanted to (in essence) 'elevate' new apostles, and yet that was the one time that we have record of that happening. No new apostles were elevated in Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, India, Armenia, Mesopotamia or any other place where the apostles themselves travelled -- only bishops. If I were a Mormon, I'd be wondering why that is, since these are the very places where the same apostles and disciples written of in the scriptures traveled and established the Church in fulfillment of the Great Commission.
No, it's meant to remind the local Christians that there is a higher office than Bishop and that he's not suited to address some of their concerns.
Nope. That's your Mormon mangling of the source material. Such a thing is nowhere even hinted at anywhere outside of your own brain.
Yeah, because again, apostle was never some kind of office or rank!
Ephesians 4:11, 13 (KJV)
11 And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers;
13 Till we all come in the unity of the faith,
Paul clearly states that the organization of the 12 Apostles should remain from ancient times continuously until "we all come in the unity of the faith".
Let's read on, shall we?
11 And He Himself gave some
to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, 12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, 13 till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; 14 that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, 15 but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ— 16 from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.
+++
For what shall we come to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God? "That we should no longer be children, tossed to an fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting."
This description of what we are to avoid by maintaining unity sounds like the closest thing we're ever going to find to a description of Mormonism in the Bible itself.
Since there currently isn't a unity of faith on the Earth (as evidenced by this forum and elsewhere)
Check this very website's Statement of Faith, which is the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381 with some allowance for the later filioque clause (sensible, or else Catholics and many Protestants couldn't post here). All Christians are unified in their affirmation of the basic outline of the Christian faith contained therein.
So you're quite simply wrong in this assertion that there is no unity of faith on the Earth. At a deeper level (that is, beyond the basic outline as given in the Creed), there is unity of faith in the particular communions which make up the lion's share of Christianity: Catholic with Catholic, Eastern Orthodox with Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox with Oriental Orthodox. Some of the more traditional Protestants also form communions in their own right, such that one can speak of 'the Anglican communion'.
there ought to still be a single organization of 12 Apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ on the Earth.
Because establishing a parasitic pseudo-church is what's going to get us unity on Earth? Please. I'd rather unify around favorite flavor of bagel or something. At least joining up on that won't risk anyone's soul.
Even better would be no one attempting to squelch debate... on a debate forum.
I'm not trying to squelch anything. I've just been here long enough to know that Mormons are woefully underequipped to be handling the writings of the fathers, since they're the fathers of
Christianity, not Mormonism, and I've literally never interacted with a Mormon who read them for their own sake in order to learn, rather than attempting to force them into some preexisting Mormon paradigm that didn't even exist in their day.
Its formative period was during the ministry of Christ and the Apostles.
No it wasn't, and everything after the sentence I'm responding to now is just more of you reading your religion into the Christian past, where it is nowhere to be found.
And that's why in the earliest post-Apostolic writes
You reference St. John Chrysostom among them here. He departed in
407, long after the first two ecumenical councils which established for us the Creed which Mormons have been trying to tell me for years is practically exhibit A of the supposed 'apostasy' of Christianity. He himself was a strong believer in Nicene Christianity and an exponent of Orthodox Trinitarian theology. How on earth such a person who is anathema in every conceivable way to Mormonism on those theological matters which most clearly separate it from Christianity can be made into a supporter of Mormonism is beyond me...unless of course you don't care about who any of these figures are or what they have to say but that you think you can use them to buttress your fake and false religion in its horrid and blasphemous claims against Christianity.
And there are exactly 0 distinctly Trinitarian references in any edition of the Book of Mormon, as is the case with the Bible.
Then I'll invite you to go to the afterlife and debate this matter with independent LDS researcher and Mormon Boyd Kirkland, who paints the theology of JS as being expressed using "Trinitarian but nonbiblical" phraseology in various parts of the BOM in his essay
on the development of the Mormon doctrine of God in the anthology
Line Upon Line.
(BTW, 
