Let's take a look at what a apostasy might look like. The most important evidence that a apostasy took place is the solis fact that there are thousands of different denominations claiming that they are the most correct.
So why did Joseph Smith ostensibly form another one? Seems like the opposite of what he should have done, if the 'evidence' of the so-called apostasy is that these other denominations exist. Now with the LDS there's at least one more, to say nothing of the offshoots of the LDS. He kinda furthered the 'apostasy', according to your own logic.
The scriptures, by the way, tell us of the function of schism, which is not to usher in any kind of 'restoration':
For there must also be factions among you, that those who are approved may be recognized among you. (1 Corinthians 11:19 NKJV)
And how many churches did Jesus organize?
One, and it was not the LDS church.
The next would be prophets and apostles. Where are the prophets and apostles?
The age of public revelation ended with the death of the apostles, but we can say that St. Mark was in Egypt and Libya, St. Paul and St. Peter in Antioch, St. Bartholomew and St. Thaddeus in Armenia, and so on (these being of the 12 or of the 70; there really isn't need for any more, as there is no new revelation to be given).
You have religious people call themselves ministers evangelicals priests bishops elders clergy teachers but no prophets or apostles.
So what? You have 19 year olds who call themselves 'elders'; I don't think your religion has any room to talk about who is doing what. And the lack of 'prophets' or 'apostles' is to Christianity's credit, as it prevents obviously bogus situations like when you guys have to pretend that in 1978 'God' changed his mind about black people and all kinds of other nonsense, and try to defend yourselves against critics by claiming that they're using texts with the wrong copyright dates, thereby tacitly admitting that your doctrine changes with each successive 'prophet'. And you have the nerve to talk about
Christianity as though it is not protected or whatever because it doesn't have your phony baloney prophets? They're doing exactly what you claim Christian churches to be doing by forming new denominations to suit doctrinal innovations, so get outta here with that nonsense. What's the difference between the 5,000 or whatever number of Christian denominations you have in mind and Mormonism? The denominations are open about following one guy's vision (or gal's, e.g., Ellen G. White), while the Mormons pretend that their ever-changing conceptions of what their religion is are given to them by 'God' via their living prophets.
I don't know about you, but I'm a lot more comfortable with the idea of someone like Ellen G. White, Menno Simons, Martin Luther, etc. being wrong in the particulars of their religious belief (as any person can be) than with the idea that 'God' suddenly decided in 1830 or whatever that what had been taught as Christianity for almost 2,000 years by that point was all wrong. But no...Mormons can't stop putting their ever-evolving ideas into the mouth of 'God' via their prophets, and then castigating the rest of us for not having such a wonderfully secure religious system as they do. Well it doesn't look to be so protected from the outside, I'll just put it that way. I realize that Mormons themselves subscribe to the idea that the prophets will never contradict their faith or lead their church into error, but that's a bit like me saying that you should call the Coptic Pope of Alexandria the Judge of the Universe since we do that in my Church (in recognition of the role played by the Bishop of Alexandria in setting the date for the celebration of Easter back in the third century).
Next is authority. Even if the priesthood did not exist where does a person get his authority from God?
"Where does a person get his authority from God"? Hmmm..."from God" is probably a good indicator for the answer to that question. As far as the exact mechanism by which that authority is vested in the person, I suppose that varies according to what church you are looking at (there are some very 'low church' churches out there, after all, where there might not be much involved with being a pastor/preacher), but traditionally it is by the laying on of hands by the bishop during ordination, the idea being that the bishop was himself ordained by a bishop, who was ordained by a bishop, and so on back to the beginning of the Church.
Here is a very short clip (about 3 minutes of what I'm told is a ceremony that is hours long) of the concluding prayers said over a newly ordained priest in my own Church, as part of the ordination ceremony by which he is welcomed into the Church so as to serve at the altar of God. The presiding bishops are HG Bishop Serapion of the Los Angeles Diocese (where the priest now serves) and HG Bishop Youssef of the Southern United States Diocese of the Coptic Orthodox Church.
That's how, in a nutshell. You are given some authority by someone who has authority to give to you, and they got it from someone who got theirs likewise, etc. going back to the apostles themselves. This is yet another reason why this 'restoration' business doesn't work: there actually are chains of bishops going back to the early church itself by which we can say, indisputably (but that some dispute it to give their own religions/churches reasons to exist), that we are rooted in the apostolic faith. Granted, at least in the Orthodox conception this also requires the maintenance of that faith unchanged (such that we don't have things like the Roman Catholic phenomenon of 'Episcopi Vagantes' whereby people may be said to be validly ordained despite not being in communion with the Church), but the same principle is at play historically: One or more of the 12 or of the 70 brought the faith to a given land or people, ordained bishops to carry on after he left, and those bishops ordained bishops, who ordained bishops, etc. This is so in Rome, this is so in Alexandria, this is so in Antioch, and everywhere else that the apostles were known to have traveled. So a 'restoration' doesn't work, because there's already living lines of bishops all over the world which trace their ordination back to the apostolic times.
What there may be (and this, as everything, varies according to which particular church you are looking at) is what the Roman Catholics call a 'titular see', which is the see of a former diocese that is no longer functioning. Thus, for instance, we know from historical records there were dioceses of the Syriac Orthodox Church in what is now Afghanistan between the 7th and 13th centuries (in Zaranj and Herat, to name a few). We don't know exactly when they stopped functioning, but that's the time period that is attested to in the historical record. If the Syriac Orthodox Church were to name any bishop for these territories, they would be purely 'titular' (at least with respect to that territory), since there are no longer any people of Syriac Orthodox confession to serve at those locations. This phenomenon is much more well-known among the Roman Catholics, I suspect, due to the number of territories they had once gained through the Crusades and later European colonialism that now have no worshipers in them due to the changing fortunes of the RCC's European backers (i.e., when the Italians pulled out of Libya or Somalia, their Catholic churches were destroyed or converted to mosques by the locals).
This does not, I hope you'll note, do anything to affect the normative mechanism by which the Church is established in a given place. In other words, say there was some reason to reestablish the Roman Catholic Church in Somalia (mass conversions or some such big change from the current state of affairs): they would still send bishops who were ordained by bishops, etc. So this idea that the Church is 'taken away from the earth' or whatever really doesn't hold up, since there are always going to be descendants of the apostles and their disciples, to be spread out over the earth and hence to spread the faith over the earth. Probably the closest the world ever got to witnessing the complete destruction of a Christian Church (not
the Christian Church entire, but one very important, ancient, and indisputably apostolic Church) was during the genocide against the Armenians at the hands of the Turks at the beginning of the last century. I've read that upwards of 90% of their clergy were slaughtered.
That was in 1915, and now barely 100 years later, the Armenian Apostolic Church maintains a (self-reported) population of some 9 million people, the majority of whom do not live in Armenia (largely thanks to the genocide creating a worldwide diaspora of over 5 million people).
That is but the most extreme and obvious historical example, but it should suffice to show why this idea of an 'apostasy' and the church being taken away or disappearing as a result is not only wildly inaccurate and impossible, but also something of a slap in the face to those who never, ever went anywhere and yet the LDS or whatever other restorationist groups like to pretend don't count because...whatever reason. Because they weren't LDS, I guess, so to the warped mind that apparently thinks that God lied when saying that the gates of hell would not prevail against His Church, the existence of these people is
evidence of the apostasy, rather than a refutation of it.
To that I say: What makes you LDS people so sure that the existence of
your group is not evidence of an apostasy? After all, Christian groups of all eras and places, while they often disagree with one another, likewise do not agree with the BOM or the LDS. At least with many groups they have some verifiable history to point to whereby you can say that they were established in some sense in Christianity (as Orthodox, as Catholics, as Protestants) via this way or that way, or on this date, or by this person, or whatever. But Mormonism specifically shies away from that precisely because of the LDS belief in a 'great apostasy' whereby you claim that such things cannot be known or trusted, or are evidence of this apostasy itself.
Well...whether or not you think they are evidence of an apostasy, they are also evidence of the historical reality of Christianity as it existed in a given place, in a given time, and/or among a given people. So while you're certainly still free to disagree with them doctrinally (I don't agree 100% with anyone outside of the Oriental Orthodox Church, myself), it makes no sense whatsoever to maintain this fiction that 'the church is taken from the earth' because some people claiming it are wrong. We (Christians) all agree that Mormonism is wrong, and yet you're still here. So disagreement is a pretty low bar by which to claim the
non-existence of something, and of course without the Church not existing, the entire idea of the (LDS or other) 'restoration' falls apart and is revealed to be the scam and/or wishful thinking that it in fact is.
