A brief but important and essential part of the great apostasy, the Godhead and the Nicene Creed

[kirtland r.m.]

Where did the modern day description of the Godhead come from that is used across Christianity? It was pushed forward and accepted at the The Nicene Council, hundreds of years after the Savior's Resurrection. Here is a sample of what happened.
Thus, most believers initially believed that there were three persons with a united will. It was only later that this group was “won over” to Athanasius and his group’s brand of Trinitarianism, which is the basis for today’s understanding in most of Christianity. Indeed, Athanasius and his cadre were decidedly in the minority:

The victory over Arianism achieved at the Council was really a victory snatched by the superior energy and decision of a small minority with the aid of half-hearted allies. The majority did not like the business at all, and strongly disapproved of the introduction into the Creed . . . of new and untraditional and unscriptural terms.[22]https://www.fairmormon.org/answers/Morm ... _of_God.3F

[kirtland r.m.]

Judaism was the earliest oppressor of Christianity, and became the instigator and abettor of the succeeding atrocities incident to pagan persecution. Open and vigorous hostility of the Roman powers against the Christian Church became general during the reign of Nero, (beginning about A.D. 64).https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/stu ... 0?lang=eng

[TheChristian]

There was no great falling away, there was only to be a partial falling away in the very last of days, which is occuring in our times.
The Testimony of Jesus of Nazerath has shone brightly in the hearts of the faithfull remnant in every generation and shall continue to do so.

[Niemand]

There was no great falling away, there was only to be a partial falling away in the very last of days, which is occuring in our times.
The Testimony of Jesus of Nazerath has shone brightly in the hearts of the faithfull remnant in every generation and shall continue to do so.

I'd argue there is a massive falling away just now. Not everywhere as some places and people are still converting. It is hard to direct them to the LDS nowadays. It has got to the point where I am reluctant to give people a Book of Mormon in case they run into our group and its problems.

[kirtland r.m.]

There was no great falling away, there was only to be a partial falling away in the very last of days, which is occuring in our times.
The Testimony of Jesus of Nazerath has shone brightly in the hearts of the faithfull remnant in every generation and shall continue to do so.

Yes I know, that's your story and you are sticking to it. As the Second Century A.D. opened, we are confronted with clear evidence of competing versions of Christianity

What Went Wrong for the Early Christians?
Noel B. Reynolds
It is vital to understand how things began to fall apart even in the first century after the Lords resurrection. "Virtually every epistle in the New Testament bears witness to divisions and rebellions in the church, though like most Christians, Latter-day Saints do not usually read the text with that in mind. We tend to see these as calls to repentance and assume that they were probably effective. But should we assume that they were effective? The apparent collapse of the church in the first century suggests that in the final analysis, they were not. When the second century opens, we are confronted with clear evidence of a growing variety of competing versions of Christianity, and the original structure of priesthood leadership has disappeared."
When Joseph Smith emerged from the grove in 1820, he had learned first hand from Jesus Christ himself that the Christian churches of his day were all wrong and that he was forbidden to join any of them. “Their creeds were an abomination in his sight,” their “professors were all corrupt,” and they were teaching “for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness,” but denying “the power thereof” (Joseph Smith—History 1:19).

From that first vision onward, Joseph Smith, and the Latter-day Saints who believed his testimony, understood clearly that the “restoration of all things” was made necessary by the loss of the church established by Jesus Christ during his life upon the earth. These first generation Latter-day Saints were impressed by the rampant confusion and contradictions in the Christian world of their day and tended to see that confusion as sufficient evidence of an apostasy. Israel was scattered and lost. The restoration was necessary to gather Israel and to re-establish the true teachings and church of Jesus Christ in the world.

By the end of the nineteenth century, LDS scholars and leaders had entered a new phase in their understanding of the Christian apostasy by drawing on the findings of modern historians in an attempt to expand their understanding. Protestant historians, who focused on the failings of the Catholic tradition, provided seemingly endless evidences of apostasy in Christian history, justifying the Protestant Reformation in the process. They pointed to the obvious wickedness of late medieval popes and priests. They pointed to the sales of indulgences, a tactic to raise money for the church by selling forgiveness of sins in this world to prevent punishment in the next. Guided by these eighteenth and nineteenth century Protestant historians, LDS writers pushed the apostasy farther back in time by focusing on the sins of medieval European Christianity.

Over the last century there has been an outpouring of newly discovered manuscripts, written during the first Christian centuries, that enables us to get a much clearer picture of what the Christian experience was like in those early times. And as our knowledge of these times grows, the apostasy is again pushed back further, even into the first century. Hugh Nibley was the first LDS author to enter this third phase. Relying on the New Testament, the writings of the apostolic fathers, and the pre-1960 secondary literature that deals with this period, Nibley produced a list of forty “variations on a theme,” that theme being that the primitive church would not last long or had already passed away. In this paper prominently published in Church History, he presented his extensive collections of references from the early manuscripts to argue persuasively that the earliest Christian leaders did not expect the church to endure and that many of them came even to lament the passing of the original.1 Though published in an international journal, Nibley’s paper was destined to provide a watershed for LDS scholars, focusing their interest in the apostasy on the later decades of the very first century, from which almost no writings have survived.

In the 1960s, LDS historian Richard L. Bushman observed that LDS students of the apostasy had become too dependent on Protestant and often anti-Catholic writers and challenged us to look at the apostasy afresh. He said that while noting the various changes to the doctrines and to the ordinances is helpful, it is not enough for it does not address the heart or causes of the apostasy, rather focusing on its effects.2 It is as if you were to approach the aftermath of a car wreck. You can conclude from the debris, the twisted metal frame, the shattered glass, the injured and dead bodies, that an accident has occurred. But you would not say that the broken and scattered parts, the injured and dead bodies, and the twisted frame caused the accident. Although evidence of the accident, they are only its results. Likewise, all the doctrinal changes, the subsequent corruption, the centuries of religious strife and schism may constitute good evidence that an apostasy occurred but may not be the causes of that apostasy.

As James Faulconer explains in “The Concept of Apostasy in the New Testament,” the Greek term apostasia, as used in the New Testament, means rebellion. It was often used in classical Greek to indicate a military rebellion or coup in which traditional bonds of loyalty to a particular leadership are rejected. Thus, apostasia specifically refers to internal problems. Joseph Smith and Brigham Young both recognized this when they said that no force on this earth could destroy the church from without.3 In so doing they were echoing the principle articulated by the angel who appeared to young Alma saying: “Alma, arise and stand forth, for why persecutest thou the church of God? For the Lord hath said: This is my church, and I will establish it; and nothing shall overthrow it, save it is the transgression of my people” (Mosiah 27:13).4

In the Old Testament, apostasy or rebellion against God consisted specifically in the breaking of covenants that men had made with Jehovah. The Lord warned Moses, “‘You are going to rest with your fathers, and these people will soon prostitute themselves to the foreign gods of the land they are entering. They will forsake me and break the covenant I made with them. On that day I will become angry with them and forsake them'” (Deuteronomy 31:16 NIV). The Greek word used here is apostasion, meaning “little rebellion” or “little apostasy,” and specifically indicates divorce, or breaking of the marriage covenant. The Lord repeatedly likened his covenant with Israel to the covenant of marriage, and apostasy from that covenant was likened to adultery. We might expect, therefore, that the demise of the early Christian church was also a result of internal developments—breaking of covenants—and not something imposed from the outside.

LDS scholars today conclude increasingly that the root causes of the apostasy were the abandonment or breaking of sacred covenants by the Christians themselves. The more we learn about the first decades after the passing of Christ, the more we can see internal rebellion against God’s covenants and against his authorized servants—much like the rebellions against Moses in the wilderness, or against Joseph Smith in Kirtland in 1836. The rebels were members of Christ’s church, sometimes leaders, who sought for earthly power, glory, and even justification for their own sins. The restoration scriptures give us some key insights: The first section of the Doctrine and Covenants says, “they have strayed from mine ordinances, and have broken mine everlasting covenant; They seek not the Lord to establish his righteousness, but every man walketh in his own way, and after the image of his own god, whose image is in the likeness of the world, and whose substance is that of an idol, which waxeth old and shall perish in Babylon, even Babylon the great, which shall fall” (Doctrine and Covenants 1:15—16).

Thus the Lord describes this apostasy as breaking covenants and straying from his ordinances. The Lord likewise says concerning his disciples during his earthly ministry, “My disciples, in days of old, sought occasion against one another and forgave not one another in their hearts; and for this evil they were afflicted and sorely chastened” (D&C 64:8). Thus, we see that apostasy involves breaking God’s covenants, turning from him to idols and things of this world, and not repenting of our sins, which is of course the most fundamental thing we have covenanted to do.

The scriptures of the restoration make it clear that ordinances such as baptism, priesthood ordination, and marriage are all based in covenants between men and God. Those receiving the ordinance have made certain covenants with God to turn away from their sins and obey his commandments, and God in turn makes promises to them. The ordinance provides a public witness of these covenants.5 What we had not previously realized is that when the second-century Christians redefined these ordinances as sacraments, they had already abandoned their covenantal understanding of the ordinances. There were significant efforts by some key thinkers in the Protestant Reformation to restore those covenantal understandings to the ordinances, but these all failed. Reinvented as sacraments, the ordinances were understood in traditional Christianity as the means by which God could bless a person with an infusion of divine grace, through the mediation of the priest. Once the covenantal understanding was lost, it made sense to bless everyone possible. So how could traditional Christianity deny baptism to infants if the recipient no longer was expected to be making a meaningful covenant in connection with that ordinance? A similar analysis applies to Christian sacraments such as last rites. This helps us understand what Nephi meant when he explained the apostasy by saying that “many covenants of the Lord have they taken away” (1 Nephi 13:26).

This volume of essays reports new research by several LDS scholars in different fields which we hope will be useful in helping Latter-day Saints understand the apostasy better. The authors identify several common myths and misconceptions that Latter-day Saints have about the apostasy and help us understand the falling away from Christ’s church more accurately and completely. They argue that the Christian apostasy occurred sometime during the first century—or before AD 100. Traditional Christianity, as we know it, was not established until the Nicene Council in AD 325, or during the fourth century. This volume is designed to support and encourage further systematic research on this topic. It is not designed to be a comprehensive or final treatment of any of these issues. The goals of the authors and editor will be achieved if Latter-day Saints find its contents helpful for understanding this important topic and if it provokes some of them to pursue these and related questions with further research.https://www.byui.edu/devotionals/brothe ... b-reynolds

[kirtland r.m.]

Here is a century by century breakdown of the Great Apostasy, prepare to learn some interesting info. from the thirdhour.orghttps://thirdhour.org/forums/topic/5482 ... -timeline/

[TheChristian]

There was no great falling away, there was only to be a partial falling away in the very last of days, which is occuring in our times.
The Testimony of Jesus of Nazerath has shone brightly in the hearts of the faithfull remnant in every generation and shall continue to do so.

I'd argue there is a massive falling away just now. Not everywhere as some places and people are still converting. It is hard to direct them to the LDS nowadays. It has got to the point where I am reluctant to give people a Book of Mormon in case they run into our group and its problems.

In the old established churchs such as the church of Scotland, church of England, catholic church, episcopalian churchs, those are seeing a great decrease in numbers this has been going on for the last couple of centuries, they are the old dry churchs, but in fairness some of whom leave said churchs do so to join the vibrant Born again groups that have been wonderously, nigh on spontaneously springing up all around the earth in these latter days, were the New testament signs, wonders and miracles are occuring, its as if the Lord is drawing together the faithfull out of the scattered flocks of christianity in preparation for His soon return, it seems no co incidence that at the very same time the Lord is gathering in the Israelites back to Jerusalem, again in preparation for His soon return.
Its a great sorrow to read the New testament signs wonders and miracles that were said to have been to have been exercised freely by the lay members of the Lds church in the early victorian times, were speaking, praying, praising and singing in tongues was commonplace in their meetings and gatherings, that healings took place in their meeting houses and prophesieing, that such has long since ceased in lds gatherings and meeting places, when one attends a lds meeting in our day, they are oft dull, no evidence of those alleged signs, wonders, miracles, tongues of yesteryear in their midst. No fervent, joyous singing of hyms. No rousing , edifieing spirit filled sermons centred on Jesus that lift up the heart and fill with joy the weary soul.
Still this is what happens to Churchs once they get established, they become wealthy, very prosperous, they select only the wealthy, the powerfull, the learned academics for Leaders, and by and by the charismatic christians amongst them are silenced, driven out and spirituality is replaced with respectability and that church becomes a dead church even though externally it looks alive with its great wealth, worldly honors and fine buildings, etc, and said churchs simply become a religious treadmill of works without Jesus and so the Spirit of the Lord departs and seeks out another people to bless.

[John Tavner]

If we took quotes from the LDS Church since it's beginning and applied it the same way we like to apply a few words of those in the 1st and second century, we could see the Great Apostasy occured in the 1830's and 1840s... and 1850s etc...

The idea as taught by the the LDS church in regards to the great Apostasy actually changes the character of God. Mormon's think they are special and called in these latter days... but apparently no one was "special" for 2000 years. God apparently ceased to do His work and despite the fact that He loved the world so much that HE gave His only begotten so man might be saved, God then was like "bro's NOW you crossed the line" I"m gonna cut you off for 2000 years... so curses aren't to just the 4th and 5th generation, but 100 generations. Thank God, that the God I know isn't like that- and He has answered and spoken to all those that believe and will continue to do so and He will continue to call out to them for hte blood of Jesus speaks better things and Is always calling out to us inviting us to come unto HIm. Apparnetly though God stopped calling people to His Son for 2k years.... even though His work and glory according to their own sacred book of scripture is to bring to pass the eternal life of man.. I guess God just rested somewhere in the middle for a couple thousand years?

[TheChristian]

There was no great falling away, there was only to be a partial falling away in the very last of days, which is occuring in our times.
The Testimony of Jesus of Nazerath has shone brightly in the hearts of the faithfull remnant in every generation and shall continue to do so.

Yes I know, that's your story and you are sticking to it. As the Second Century A.D. opened, we are confronted with clear evidence of competing versions of Christianity

What Went Wrong for the Early Christians?
Noel B. Reynolds
It is vital to understand how things began to fall apart even in the first century after the Lords resurrection. "Virtually every epistle in the New Testament bears witness to divisions and rebellions in the church, though like most Christians, Latter-day Saints do not usually read the text with that in mind. We tend to see these as calls to repentance and assume that they were probably effective. But should we assume that they were effective? The apparent collapse of the church in the first century suggests that in the final analysis, they were not. When the second century opens, we are confronted with clear evidence of a growing variety of competing versions of Christianity, and the original structure of priesthood leadership has disappeared."
When Joseph Smith emerged from the grove in 1820, he had learned first hand from Jesus Christ himself that the Christian churches of his day were all wrong and that he was forbidden to join any of them. “Their creeds were an abomination in his sight,” their “professors were all corrupt,” and they were teaching “for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness,” but denying “the power thereof” (Joseph Smith—History 1:19).

From that first vision onward, Joseph Smith, and the Latter-day Saints who believed his testimony, understood clearly that the “restoration of all things” was made necessary by the loss of the church established by Jesus Christ during his life upon the earth. These first generation Latter-day Saints were impressed by the rampant confusion and contradictions in the Christian world of their day and tended to see that confusion as sufficient evidence of an apostasy. Israel was scattered and lost. The restoration was necessary to gather Israel and to re-establish the true teachings and church of Jesus Christ in the world.

By the end of the nineteenth century, LDS scholars and leaders had entered a new phase in their understanding of the Christian apostasy by drawing on the findings of modern historians in an attempt to expand their understanding. Protestant historians, who focused on the failings of the Catholic tradition, provided seemingly endless evidences of apostasy in Christian history, justifying the Protestant Reformation in the process. They pointed to the obvious wickedness of late medieval popes and priests. They pointed to the sales of indulgences, a tactic to raise money for the church by selling forgiveness of sins in this world to prevent punishment in the next. Guided by these eighteenth and nineteenth century Protestant historians, LDS writers pushed the apostasy farther back in time by focusing on the sins of medieval European Christianity.

Over the last century there has been an outpouring of newly discovered manuscripts, written during the first Christian centuries, that enables us to get a much clearer picture of what the Christian experience was like in those early times. And as our knowledge of these times grows, the apostasy is again pushed back further, even into the first century. Hugh Nibley was the first LDS author to enter this third phase. Relying on the New Testament, the writings of the apostolic fathers, and the pre-1960 secondary literature that deals with this period, Nibley produced a list of forty “variations on a theme,” that theme being that the primitive church would not last long or had already passed away. In this paper prominently published in Church History, he presented his extensive collections of references from the early manuscripts to argue persuasively that the earliest Christian leaders did not expect the church to endure and that many of them came even to lament the passing of the original.1 Though published in an international journal, Nibley’s paper was destined to provide a watershed for LDS scholars, focusing their interest in the apostasy on the later decades of the very first century, from which almost no writings have survived.

In the 1960s, LDS historian Richard L. Bushman observed that LDS students of the apostasy had become too dependent on Protestant and often anti-Catholic writers and challenged us to look at the apostasy afresh. He said that while noting the various changes to the doctrines and to the ordinances is helpful, it is not enough for it does not address the heart or causes of the apostasy, rather focusing on its effects.2 It is as if you were to approach the aftermath of a car wreck. You can conclude from the debris, the twisted metal frame, the shattered glass, the injured and dead bodies, that an accident has occurred. But you would not say that the broken and scattered parts, the injured and dead bodies, and the twisted frame caused the accident. Although evidence of the accident, they are only its results. Likewise, all the doctrinal changes, the subsequent corruption, the centuries of religious strife and schism may constitute good evidence that an apostasy occurred but may not be the causes of that apostasy.

As James Faulconer explains in “The Concept of Apostasy in the New Testament,” the Greek term apostasia, as used in the New Testament, means rebellion. It was often used in classical Greek to indicate a military rebellion or coup in which traditional bonds of loyalty to a particular leadership are rejected. Thus, apostasia specifically refers to internal problems. Joseph Smith and Brigham Young both recognized this when they said that no force on this earth could destroy the church from without.3 In so doing they were echoing the principle articulated by the angel who appeared to young Alma saying: “Alma, arise and stand forth, for why persecutest thou the church of God? For the Lord hath said: This is my church, and I will establish it; and nothing shall overthrow it, save it is the transgression of my people” (Mosiah 27:13).4

In the Old Testament, apostasy or rebellion against God consisted specifically in the breaking of covenants that men had made with Jehovah. The Lord warned Moses, “‘You are going to rest with your fathers, and these people will soon prostitute themselves to the foreign gods of the land they are entering. They will forsake me and break the covenant I made with them. On that day I will become angry with them and forsake them'” (Deuteronomy 31:16 NIV). The Greek word used here is apostasion, meaning “little rebellion” or “little apostasy,” and specifically indicates divorce, or breaking of the marriage covenant. The Lord repeatedly likened his covenant with Israel to the covenant of marriage, and apostasy from that covenant was likened to adultery. We might expect, therefore, that the demise of the early Christian church was also a result of internal developments—breaking of covenants—and not something imposed from the outside.

LDS scholars today conclude increasingly that the root causes of the apostasy were the abandonment or breaking of sacred covenants by the Christians themselves. The more we learn about the first decades after the passing of Christ, the more we can see internal rebellion against God’s covenants and against his authorized servants—much like the rebellions against Moses in the wilderness, or against Joseph Smith in Kirtland in 1836. The rebels were members of Christ’s church, sometimes leaders, who sought for earthly power, glory, and even justification for their own sins. The restoration scriptures give us some key insights: The first section of the Doctrine and Covenants says, “they have strayed from mine ordinances, and have broken mine everlasting covenant; They seek not the Lord to establish his righteousness, but every man walketh in his own way, and after the image of his own god, whose image is in the likeness of the world, and whose substance is that of an idol, which waxeth old and shall perish in Babylon, even Babylon the great, which shall fall” (Doctrine and Covenants 1:15—16).

Thus the Lord describes this apostasy as breaking covenants and straying from his ordinances. The Lord likewise says concerning his disciples during his earthly ministry, “My disciples, in days of old, sought occasion against one another and forgave not one another in their hearts; and for this evil they were afflicted and sorely chastened” (D&C 64:8). Thus, we see that apostasy involves breaking God’s covenants, turning from him to idols and things of this world, and not repenting of our sins, which is of course the most fundamental thing we have covenanted to do.

The scriptures of the restoration make it clear that ordinances such as baptism, priesthood ordination, and marriage are all based in covenants between men and God. Those receiving the ordinance have made certain covenants with God to turn away from their sins and obey his commandments, and God in turn makes promises to them. The ordinance provides a public witness of these covenants.5 What we had not previously realized is that when the second-century Christians redefined these ordinances as sacraments, they had already abandoned their covenantal understanding of the ordinances. There were significant efforts by some key thinkers in the Protestant Reformation to restore those covenantal understandings to the ordinances, but these all failed. Reinvented as sacraments, the ordinances were understood in traditional Christianity as the means by which God could bless a person with an infusion of divine grace, through the mediation of the priest. Once the covenantal understanding was lost, it made sense to bless everyone possible. So how could traditional Christianity deny baptism to infants if the recipient no longer was expected to be making a meaningful covenant in connection with that ordinance? A similar analysis applies to Christian sacraments such as last rites. This helps us understand what Nephi meant when he explained the apostasy by saying that “many covenants of the Lord have they taken away” (1 Nephi 13:26).

This volume of essays reports new research by several LDS scholars in different fields which we hope will be useful in helping Latter-day Saints understand the apostasy better. The authors identify several common myths and misconceptions that Latter-day Saints have about the apostasy and help us understand the falling away from Christ’s church more accurately and completely. They argue that the Christian apostasy occurred sometime during the first century—or before AD 100. Traditional Christianity, as we know it, was not established until the Nicene Council in AD 325, or during the fourth century. This volume is designed to support and encourage further systematic research on this topic. It is not designed to be a comprehensive or final treatment of any of these issues. The goals of the authors and editor will be achieved if Latter-day Saints find its contents helpful for understanding this important topic and if it provokes some of them to pursue these and related questions with further research.https://www.byui.edu/devotionals/brothe ... b-reynolds

Every time you paste great volumes of your internet scourings against the Christians, the words of Jesus come into my heart and mind concerning His congregation.

Jesus spoke of the wheat and the weeds that they must grow together.
Thru the long centuries in the Christian fold, the true christians (the wheat) have always had false Christians (The weeds) in their midst.
As Jesus said this must be so, the wheat and the weeds must grow together for the uprooting of the weeds( false christians) would also destroy many of the fine wheat (the true christians) growing around said weeds (False christians)
Alas my brother you allow your churchly mindset to scour the internet looking only for the weeds (false Christians) that have grown in the fine Christian wheatfields.
And like in any farmers field of goodly crops there are always some weeds, but this does not spoil the crop, the farmer wisely leaves the weeds till harvest time, Just as Jesus leaves the false christians in the christian fields of wheat till the harvest time, which is when He returns, then the fine christian wheat shall be gathered into heavenly barns and the weeds shall be burnt.

Jesus told me this recently
"Those that love Me and love their fellow men,
And show unto them mercy as they themselves have been shown mercy by Me,
They are the ones that are of my true fold"


I cannot see the Lord Jesus turning away from His heavenly abode any man or woman that believes in Him and has truly loved his fellow men, has visited the widow and took in the orphan, fed the poor, visited those in prison, ministered to those that were sick, or befriended those that were lonely, that were not afraid regardless of the consequences to themselves to testify boldly of Jesus their Lord. yes men and women whom have worn out their lives in the service of others to the honor and glory of their Risen Lord, yes have turned the other cheek to their smiters, returned cursings with blessings and have always wished the very best for their enemies and prayed continually for them...
Your will find that doctrine and knowlegde, does not excell simple faith in Christ Jesus, yes loving Him and your fellow men opens heavens doors to all men and women possessed of these gifts and graces.

[Robin Hood]

There was no great falling away, there was only to be a partial falling away in the very last of days, which is occuring in our times.
The Testimony of Jesus of Nazerath has shone brightly in the hearts of the faithfull remnant in every generation and shall continue to do so.

Yes I know, that's your story and you are sticking to it. As the Second Century A.D. opened, we are confronted with clear evidence of competing versions of Christianity

What Went Wrong for the Early Christians?
Noel B. Reynolds
It is vital to understand how things began to fall apart even in the first century after the Lords resurrection. "Virtually every epistle in the New Testament bears witness to divisions and rebellions in the church, though like most Christians, Latter-day Saints do not usually read the text with that in mind. We tend to see these as calls to repentance and assume that they were probably effective. But should we assume that they were effective? The apparent collapse of the church in the first century suggests that in the final analysis, they were not. When the second century opens, we are confronted with clear evidence of a growing variety of competing versions of Christianity, and the original structure of priesthood leadership has disappeared."
When Joseph Smith emerged from the grove in 1820, he had learned first hand from Jesus Christ himself that the Christian churches of his day were all wrong and that he was forbidden to join any of them. “Their creeds were an abomination in his sight,” their “professors were all corrupt,” and they were teaching “for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness,” but denying “the power thereof” (Joseph Smith—History 1:19).

From that first vision onward, Joseph Smith, and the Latter-day Saints who believed his testimony, understood clearly that the “restoration of all things” was made necessary by the loss of the church established by Jesus Christ during his life upon the earth. These first generation Latter-day Saints were impressed by the rampant confusion and contradictions in the Christian world of their day and tended to see that confusion as sufficient evidence of an apostasy. Israel was scattered and lost. The restoration was necessary to gather Israel and to re-establish the true teachings and church of Jesus Christ in the world.

By the end of the nineteenth century, LDS scholars and leaders had entered a new phase in their understanding of the Christian apostasy by drawing on the findings of modern historians in an attempt to expand their understanding. Protestant historians, who focused on the failings of the Catholic tradition, provided seemingly endless evidences of apostasy in Christian history, justifying the Protestant Reformation in the process. They pointed to the obvious wickedness of late medieval popes and priests. They pointed to the sales of indulgences, a tactic to raise money for the church by selling forgiveness of sins in this world to prevent punishment in the next. Guided by these eighteenth and nineteenth century Protestant historians, LDS writers pushed the apostasy farther back in time by focusing on the sins of medieval European Christianity.

Over the last century there has been an outpouring of newly discovered manuscripts, written during the first Christian centuries, that enables us to get a much clearer picture of what the Christian experience was like in those early times. And as our knowledge of these times grows, the apostasy is again pushed back further, even into the first century. Hugh Nibley was the first LDS author to enter this third phase. Relying on the New Testament, the writings of the apostolic fathers, and the pre-1960 secondary literature that deals with this period, Nibley produced a list of forty “variations on a theme,” that theme being that the primitive church would not last long or had already passed away. In this paper prominently published in Church History, he presented his extensive collections of references from the early manuscripts to argue persuasively that the earliest Christian leaders did not expect the church to endure and that many of them came even to lament the passing of the original.1 Though published in an international journal, Nibley’s paper was destined to provide a watershed for LDS scholars, focusing their interest in the apostasy on the later decades of the very first century, from which almost no writings have survived.

In the 1960s, LDS historian Richard L. Bushman observed that LDS students of the apostasy had become too dependent on Protestant and often anti-Catholic writers and challenged us to look at the apostasy afresh. He said that while noting the various changes to the doctrines and to the ordinances is helpful, it is not enough for it does not address the heart or causes of the apostasy, rather focusing on its effects.2 It is as if you were to approach the aftermath of a car wreck. You can conclude from the debris, the twisted metal frame, the shattered glass, the injured and dead bodies, that an accident has occurred. But you would not say that the broken and scattered parts, the injured and dead bodies, and the twisted frame caused the accident. Although evidence of the accident, they are only its results. Likewise, all the doctrinal changes, the subsequent corruption, the centuries of religious strife and schism may constitute good evidence that an apostasy occurred but may not be the causes of that apostasy.

As James Faulconer explains in “The Concept of Apostasy in the New Testament,” the Greek term apostasia, as used in the New Testament, means rebellion. It was often used in classical Greek to indicate a military rebellion or coup in which traditional bonds of loyalty to a particular leadership are rejected. Thus, apostasia specifically refers to internal problems. Joseph Smith and Brigham Young both recognized this when they said that no force on this earth could destroy the church from without.3 In so doing they were echoing the principle articulated by the angel who appeared to young Alma saying: “Alma, arise and stand forth, for why persecutest thou the church of God? For the Lord hath said: This is my church, and I will establish it; and nothing shall overthrow it, save it is the transgression of my people” (Mosiah 27:13).4

In the Old Testament, apostasy or rebellion against God consisted specifically in the breaking of covenants that men had made with Jehovah. The Lord warned Moses, “‘You are going to rest with your fathers, and these people will soon prostitute themselves to the foreign gods of the land they are entering. They will forsake me and break the covenant I made with them. On that day I will become angry with them and forsake them'” (Deuteronomy 31:16 NIV). The Greek word used here is apostasion, meaning “little rebellion” or “little apostasy,” and specifically indicates divorce, or breaking of the marriage covenant. The Lord repeatedly likened his covenant with Israel to the covenant of marriage, and apostasy from that covenant was likened to adultery. We might expect, therefore, that the demise of the early Christian church was also a result of internal developments—breaking of covenants—and not something imposed from the outside.

LDS scholars today conclude increasingly that the root causes of the apostasy were the abandonment or breaking of sacred covenants by the Christians themselves. The more we learn about the first decades after the passing of Christ, the more we can see internal rebellion against God’s covenants and against his authorized servants—much like the rebellions against Moses in the wilderness, or against Joseph Smith in Kirtland in 1836. The rebels were members of Christ’s church, sometimes leaders, who sought for earthly power, glory, and even justification for their own sins. The restoration scriptures give us some key insights: The first section of the Doctrine and Covenants says, “they have strayed from mine ordinances, and have broken mine everlasting covenant; They seek not the Lord to establish his righteousness, but every man walketh in his own way, and after the image of his own god, whose image is in the likeness of the world, and whose substance is that of an idol, which waxeth old and shall perish in Babylon, even Babylon the great, which shall fall” (Doctrine and Covenants 1:15—16).

Thus the Lord describes this apostasy as breaking covenants and straying from his ordinances. The Lord likewise says concerning his disciples during his earthly ministry, “My disciples, in days of old, sought occasion against one another and forgave not one another in their hearts; and for this evil they were afflicted and sorely chastened” (D&C 64:8). Thus, we see that apostasy involves breaking God’s covenants, turning from him to idols and things of this world, and not repenting of our sins, which is of course the most fundamental thing we have covenanted to do.

The scriptures of the restoration make it clear that ordinances such as baptism, priesthood ordination, and marriage are all based in covenants between men and God. Those receiving the ordinance have made certain covenants with God to turn away from their sins and obey his commandments, and God in turn makes promises to them. The ordinance provides a public witness of these covenants.5 What we had not previously realized is that when the second-century Christians redefined these ordinances as sacraments, they had already abandoned their covenantal understanding of the ordinances. There were significant efforts by some key thinkers in the Protestant Reformation to restore those covenantal understandings to the ordinances, but these all failed. Reinvented as sacraments, the ordinances were understood in traditional Christianity as the means by which God could bless a person with an infusion of divine grace, through the mediation of the priest. Once the covenantal understanding was lost, it made sense to bless everyone possible. So how could traditional Christianity deny baptism to infants if the recipient no longer was expected to be making a meaningful covenant in connection with that ordinance? A similar analysis applies to Christian sacraments such as last rites. This helps us understand what Nephi meant when he explained the apostasy by saying that “many covenants of the Lord have they taken away” (1 Nephi 13:26).

This volume of essays reports new research by several LDS scholars in different fields which we hope will be useful in helping Latter-day Saints understand the apostasy better. The authors identify several common myths and misconceptions that Latter-day Saints have about the apostasy and help us understand the falling away from Christ’s church more accurately and completely. They argue that the Christian apostasy occurred sometime during the first century—or before AD 100. Traditional Christianity, as we know it, was not established until the Nicene Council in AD 325, or during the fourth century. This volume is designed to support and encourage further systematic research on this topic. It is not designed to be a comprehensive or final treatment of any of these issues. The goals of the authors and editor will be achieved if Latter-day Saints find its contents helpful for understanding this important topic and if it provokes some of them to pursue these and related questions with further research.https://www.byui.edu/devotionals/brothe ... b-reynolds

I believe LDS scholars have pushed the apostasy back too far.
The issues being addressed in the NT by Peter, Paul and others are probably more accurately categorised as teething problems and difficulties of a fledgling church, rather than of an established church in terminal decline.
It's pretty clear that neither the apostolic fathers nor the church fathers were apostates, in the main.
I think it is likely that the Melchizedek priesthood was severely restricted or lost altogether in the second century, but the Aaronic priesthood structure survived much longer. Indeed, even today we see that same organisation of deacons, priests and bishops persisting in Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican churches.

Christian history clearly indicates that healings and other spiritual gifts continued for some time. Full immersion water baptism was still the norm, as was a simple approach to the sacrament.

The lights were going out in various places, but still pockets of true believers holding to true doctrine and practice persisted, especially in remote places like the British Isles amongst the Britons, where the new order of things in the form of Rome, were unable to have influence. The Celtic church was probably the last light to go out.
This was as late as the 6th century.

[kirtland r.m.]

There have been many dispensations since Adam where the gospel in it's fullness has been lost and needed to be restored. The lost 500 years, the shattering and scattering apostasy from Malachi to John the Baptist, and the great apostasy were only two of them. I am not "going after Christians" .

[Niemand]

There was no great falling away, there was only to be a partial falling away in the very last of days, which is occuring in our times.
The Testimony of Jesus of Nazerath has shone brightly in the hearts of the faithfull remnant in every generation and shall continue to do so.

Yes I know, that's your story and you are sticking to it. As the Second Century A.D. opened, we are confronted with clear evidence of competing versions of Christianity

What Went Wrong for the Early Christians?
Noel B. Reynolds
It is vital to understand how things began to fall apart even in the first century after the Lords resurrection. "Virtually every epistle in the New Testament bears witness to divisions and rebellions in the church, though like most Christians, Latter-day Saints do not usually read the text with that in mind. We tend to see these as calls to repentance and assume that they were probably effective. But should we assume that they were effective? The apparent collapse of the church in the first century suggests that in the final analysis, they were not. When the second century opens, we are confronted with clear evidence of a growing variety of competing versions of Christianity, and the original structure of priesthood leadership has disappeared."
When Joseph Smith emerged from the grove in 1820, he had learned first hand from Jesus Christ himself that the Christian churches of his day were all wrong and that he was forbidden to join any of them. “Their creeds were an abomination in his sight,” their “professors were all corrupt,” and they were teaching “for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness,” but denying “the power thereof” (Joseph Smith—History 1:19).

From that first vision onward, Joseph Smith, and the Latter-day Saints who believed his testimony, understood clearly that the “restoration of all things” was made necessary by the loss of the church established by Jesus Christ during his life upon the earth. These first generation Latter-day Saints were impressed by the rampant confusion and contradictions in the Christian world of their day and tended to see that confusion as sufficient evidence of an apostasy. Israel was scattered and lost. The restoration was necessary to gather Israel and to re-establish the true teachings and church of Jesus Christ in the world.

By the end of the nineteenth century, LDS scholars and leaders had entered a new phase in their understanding of the Christian apostasy by drawing on the findings of modern historians in an attempt to expand their understanding. Protestant historians, who focused on the failings of the Catholic tradition, provided seemingly endless evidences of apostasy in Christian history, justifying the Protestant Reformation in the process. They pointed to the obvious wickedness of late medieval popes and priests. They pointed to the sales of indulgences, a tactic to raise money for the church by selling forgiveness of sins in this world to prevent punishment in the next. Guided by these eighteenth and nineteenth century Protestant historians, LDS writers pushed the apostasy farther back in time by focusing on the sins of medieval European Christianity.

Over the last century there has been an outpouring of newly discovered manuscripts, written during the first Christian centuries, that enables us to get a much clearer picture of what the Christian experience was like in those early times. And as our knowledge of these times grows, the apostasy is again pushed back further, even into the first century. Hugh Nibley was the first LDS author to enter this third phase. Relying on the New Testament, the writings of the apostolic fathers, and the pre-1960 secondary literature that deals with this period, Nibley produced a list of forty “variations on a theme,” that theme being that the primitive church would not last long or had already passed away. In this paper prominently published in Church History, he presented his extensive collections of references from the early manuscripts to argue persuasively that the earliest Christian leaders did not expect the church to endure and that many of them came even to lament the passing of the original.1 Though published in an international journal, Nibley’s paper was destined to provide a watershed for LDS scholars, focusing their interest in the apostasy on the later decades of the very first century, from which almost no writings have survived.

In the 1960s, LDS historian Richard L. Bushman observed that LDS students of the apostasy had become too dependent on Protestant and often anti-Catholic writers and challenged us to look at the apostasy afresh. He said that while noting the various changes to the doctrines and to the ordinances is helpful, it is not enough for it does not address the heart or causes of the apostasy, rather focusing on its effects.2 It is as if you were to approach the aftermath of a car wreck. You can conclude from the debris, the twisted metal frame, the shattered glass, the injured and dead bodies, that an accident has occurred. But you would not say that the broken and scattered parts, the injured and dead bodies, and the twisted frame caused the accident. Although evidence of the accident, they are only its results. Likewise, all the doctrinal changes, the subsequent corruption, the centuries of religious strife and schism may constitute good evidence that an apostasy occurred but may not be the causes of that apostasy.

As James Faulconer explains in “The Concept of Apostasy in the New Testament,” the Greek term apostasia, as used in the New Testament, means rebellion. It was often used in classical Greek to indicate a military rebellion or coup in which traditional bonds of loyalty to a particular leadership are rejected. Thus, apostasia specifically refers to internal problems. Joseph Smith and Brigham Young both recognized this when they said that no force on this earth could destroy the church from without.3 In so doing they were echoing the principle articulated by the angel who appeared to young Alma saying: “Alma, arise and stand forth, for why persecutest thou the church of God? For the Lord hath said: This is my church, and I will establish it; and nothing shall overthrow it, save it is the transgression of my people” (Mosiah 27:13).4

In the Old Testament, apostasy or rebellion against God consisted specifically in the breaking of covenants that men had made with Jehovah. The Lord warned Moses, “‘You are going to rest with your fathers, and these people will soon prostitute themselves to the foreign gods of the land they are entering. They will forsake me and break the covenant I made with them. On that day I will become angry with them and forsake them'” (Deuteronomy 31:16 NIV). The Greek word used here is apostasion, meaning “little rebellion” or “little apostasy,” and specifically indicates divorce, or breaking of the marriage covenant. The Lord repeatedly likened his covenant with Israel to the covenant of marriage, and apostasy from that covenant was likened to adultery. We might expect, therefore, that the demise of the early Christian church was also a result of internal developments—breaking of covenants—and not something imposed from the outside.

LDS scholars today conclude increasingly that the root causes of the apostasy were the abandonment or breaking of sacred covenants by the Christians themselves. The more we learn about the first decades after the passing of Christ, the more we can see internal rebellion against God’s covenants and against his authorized servants—much like the rebellions against Moses in the wilderness, or against Joseph Smith in Kirtland in 1836. The rebels were members of Christ’s church, sometimes leaders, who sought for earthly power, glory, and even justification for their own sins. The restoration scriptures give us some key insights: The first section of the Doctrine and Covenants says, “they have strayed from mine ordinances, and have broken mine everlasting covenant; They seek not the Lord to establish his righteousness, but every man walketh in his own way, and after the image of his own god, whose image is in the likeness of the world, and whose substance is that of an idol, which waxeth old and shall perish in Babylon, even Babylon the great, which shall fall” (Doctrine and Covenants 1:15—16).

Thus the Lord describes this apostasy as breaking covenants and straying from his ordinances. The Lord likewise says concerning his disciples during his earthly ministry, “My disciples, in days of old, sought occasion against one another and forgave not one another in their hearts; and for this evil they were afflicted and sorely chastened” (D&C 64:8). Thus, we see that apostasy involves breaking God’s covenants, turning from him to idols and things of this world, and not repenting of our sins, which is of course the most fundamental thing we have covenanted to do.

The scriptures of the restoration make it clear that ordinances such as baptism, priesthood ordination, and marriage are all based in covenants between men and God. Those receiving the ordinance have made certain covenants with God to turn away from their sins and obey his commandments, and God in turn makes promises to them. The ordinance provides a public witness of these covenants.5 What we had not previously realized is that when the second-century Christians redefined these ordinances as sacraments, they had already abandoned their covenantal understanding of the ordinances. There were significant efforts by some key thinkers in the Protestant Reformation to restore those covenantal understandings to the ordinances, but these all failed. Reinvented as sacraments, the ordinances were understood in traditional Christianity as the means by which God could bless a person with an infusion of divine grace, through the mediation of the priest. Once the covenantal understanding was lost, it made sense to bless everyone possible. So how could traditional Christianity deny baptism to infants if the recipient no longer was expected to be making a meaningful covenant in connection with that ordinance? A similar analysis applies to Christian sacraments such as last rites. This helps us understand what Nephi meant when he explained the apostasy by saying that “many covenants of the Lord have they taken away” (1 Nephi 13:26).

This volume of essays reports new research by several LDS scholars in different fields which we hope will be useful in helping Latter-day Saints understand the apostasy better. The authors identify several common myths and misconceptions that Latter-day Saints have about the apostasy and help us understand the falling away from Christ’s church more accurately and completely. They argue that the Christian apostasy occurred sometime during the first century—or before AD 100. Traditional Christianity, as we know it, was not established until the Nicene Council in AD 325, or during the fourth century. This volume is designed to support and encourage further systematic research on this topic. It is not designed to be a comprehensive or final treatment of any of these issues. The goals of the authors and editor will be achieved if Latter-day Saints find its contents helpful for understanding this important topic and if it provokes some of them to pursue these and related questions with further research.https://www.byui.edu/devotionals/brothe ... b-reynolds

I believe LDS scholars have pushed the apostasy back too far.
The issues being addressed in the NT by Peter, Paul and others are probably more accurately categorised as teething problems and difficulties of a fledgling church, rather than of an established church in terminal decline.
It's pretty clear that neither the apostolic fathers nor the church fathers were apostates, in the main.
I think it is likely that the Melchizedek priesthood was severely restricted or lost altogether in the second century, but the Aaronic priesthood structure survived much longer. Indeed, even today we see that same organisation of deacons, priests and bishops persisting in Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican churches.

Christian history clearly indicates that healings and other spiritual gifts continued for some time. Full immersion water baptism was still the norm, as was a simple approach to the sacrament.

The lights were going out in various places, but still pockets of true believers holding to true doctrine and practice persisted, especially in remote places like the British Isles amongst the Britons, where the new order of things in the form of Rome, were unable to have influence. The Celtic church was probably the last light to go out.
This was as late as the 6th century.

Certainly one of them. There are suggestions that some forms may have hung on in Central Asia and parts of Africa longer.

The Apostasy was incremental. I think greed and bureaucracy came in very early, but some doctrinal stuff later.

[kirtland r.m.]

There was no great falling away, there was only to be a partial falling away in the very last of days, which is occuring in our times.
The Testimony of Jesus of Nazerath has shone brightly in the hearts of the faithfull remnant in every generation and shall continue to do so.

Yes I know, that's your story and you are sticking to it. As the Second Century A.D. opened, we are confronted with clear evidence of competing versions of Christianity

What Went Wrong for the Early Christians?
Noel B. Reynolds
It is vital to understand how things began to fall apart even in the first century after the Lords resurrection. "Virtually every epistle in the New Testament bears witness to divisions and rebellions in the church, though like most Christians, Latter-day Saints do not usually read the text with that in mind. We tend to see these as calls to repentance and assume that they were probably effective. But should we assume that they were effective? The apparent collapse of the church in the first century suggests that in the final analysis, they were not. When the second century opens, we are confronted with clear evidence of a growing variety of competing versions of Christianity, and the original structure of priesthood leadership has disappeared."
When Joseph Smith emerged from the grove in 1820, he had learned first hand from Jesus Christ himself that the Christian churches of his day were all wrong and that he was forbidden to join any of them. “Their creeds were an abomination in his sight,” their “professors were all corrupt,” and they were teaching “for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness,” but denying “the power thereof” (Joseph Smith—History 1:19).

From that first vision onward, Joseph Smith, and the Latter-day Saints who believed his testimony, understood clearly that the “restoration of all things” was made necessary by the loss of the church established by Jesus Christ during his life upon the earth. These first generation Latter-day Saints were impressed by the rampant confusion and contradictions in the Christian world of their day and tended to see that confusion as sufficient evidence of an apostasy. Israel was scattered and lost. The restoration was necessary to gather Israel and to re-establish the true teachings and church of Jesus Christ in the world.

By the end of the nineteenth century, LDS scholars and leaders had entered a new phase in their understanding of the Christian apostasy by drawing on the findings of modern historians in an attempt to expand their understanding. Protestant historians, who focused on the failings of the Catholic tradition, provided seemingly endless evidences of apostasy in Christian history, justifying the Protestant Reformation in the process. They pointed to the obvious wickedness of late medieval popes and priests. They pointed to the sales of indulgences, a tactic to raise money for the church by selling forgiveness of sins in this world to prevent punishment in the next. Guided by these eighteenth and nineteenth century Protestant historians, LDS writers pushed the apostasy farther back in time by focusing on the sins of medieval European Christianity.

Over the last century there has been an outpouring of newly discovered manuscripts, written during the first Christian centuries, that enables us to get a much clearer picture of what the Christian experience was like in those early times. And as our knowledge of these times grows, the apostasy is again pushed back further, even into the first century. Hugh Nibley was the first LDS author to enter this third phase. Relying on the New Testament, the writings of the apostolic fathers, and the pre-1960 secondary literature that deals with this period, Nibley produced a list of forty “variations on a theme,” that theme being that the primitive church would not last long or had already passed away. In this paper prominently published in Church History, he presented his extensive collections of references from the early manuscripts to argue persuasively that the earliest Christian leaders did not expect the church to endure and that many of them came even to lament the passing of the original.1 Though published in an international journal, Nibley’s paper was destined to provide a watershed for LDS scholars, focusing their interest in the apostasy on the later decades of the very first century, from which almost no writings have survived.

In the 1960s, LDS historian Richard L. Bushman observed that LDS students of the apostasy had become too dependent on Protestant and often anti-Catholic writers and challenged us to look at the apostasy afresh. He said that while noting the various changes to the doctrines and to the ordinances is helpful, it is not enough for it does not address the heart or causes of the apostasy, rather focusing on its effects.2 It is as if you were to approach the aftermath of a car wreck. You can conclude from the debris, the twisted metal frame, the shattered glass, the injured and dead bodies, that an accident has occurred. But you would not say that the broken and scattered parts, the injured and dead bodies, and the twisted frame caused the accident. Although evidence of the accident, they are only its results. Likewise, all the doctrinal changes, the subsequent corruption, the centuries of religious strife and schism may constitute good evidence that an apostasy occurred but may not be the causes of that apostasy.

As James Faulconer explains in “The Concept of Apostasy in the New Testament,” the Greek term apostasia, as used in the New Testament, means rebellion. It was often used in classical Greek to indicate a military rebellion or coup in which traditional bonds of loyalty to a particular leadership are rejected. Thus, apostasia specifically refers to internal problems. Joseph Smith and Brigham Young both recognized this when they said that no force on this earth could destroy the church from without.3 In so doing they were echoing the principle articulated by the angel who appeared to young Alma saying: “Alma, arise and stand forth, for why persecutest thou the church of God? For the Lord hath said: This is my church, and I will establish it; and nothing shall overthrow it, save it is the transgression of my people” (Mosiah 27:13).4

In the Old Testament, apostasy or rebellion against God consisted specifically in the breaking of covenants that men had made with Jehovah. The Lord warned Moses, “‘You are going to rest with your fathers, and these people will soon prostitute themselves to the foreign gods of the land they are entering. They will forsake me and break the covenant I made with them. On that day I will become angry with them and forsake them'” (Deuteronomy 31:16 NIV). The Greek word used here is apostasion, meaning “little rebellion” or “little apostasy,” and specifically indicates divorce, or breaking of the marriage covenant. The Lord repeatedly likened his covenant with Israel to the covenant of marriage, and apostasy from that covenant was likened to adultery. We might expect, therefore, that the demise of the early Christian church was also a result of internal developments—breaking of covenants—and not something imposed from the outside.

LDS scholars today conclude increasingly that the root causes of the apostasy were the abandonment or breaking of sacred covenants by the Christians themselves. The more we learn about the first decades after the passing of Christ, the more we can see internal rebellion against God’s covenants and against his authorized servants—much like the rebellions against Moses in the wilderness, or against Joseph Smith in Kirtland in 1836. The rebels were members of Christ’s church, sometimes leaders, who sought for earthly power, glory, and even justification for their own sins. The restoration scriptures give us some key insights: The first section of the Doctrine and Covenants says, “they have strayed from mine ordinances, and have broken mine everlasting covenant; They seek not the Lord to establish his righteousness, but every man walketh in his own way, and after the image of his own god, whose image is in the likeness of the world, and whose substance is that of an idol, which waxeth old and shall perish in Babylon, even Babylon the great, which shall fall” (Doctrine and Covenants 1:15—16).

Thus the Lord describes this apostasy as breaking covenants and straying from his ordinances. The Lord likewise says concerning his disciples during his earthly ministry, “My disciples, in days of old, sought occasion against one another and forgave not one another in their hearts; and for this evil they were afflicted and sorely chastened” (D&C 64:8). Thus, we see that apostasy involves breaking God’s covenants, turning from him to idols and things of this world, and not repenting of our sins, which is of course the most fundamental thing we have covenanted to do.

The scriptures of the restoration make it clear that ordinances such as baptism, priesthood ordination, and marriage are all based in covenants between men and God. Those receiving the ordinance have made certain covenants with God to turn away from their sins and obey his commandments, and God in turn makes promises to them. The ordinance provides a public witness of these covenants.5 What we had not previously realized is that when the second-century Christians redefined these ordinances as sacraments, they had already abandoned their covenantal understanding of the ordinances. There were significant efforts by some key thinkers in the Protestant Reformation to restore those covenantal understandings to the ordinances, but these all failed. Reinvented as sacraments, the ordinances were understood in traditional Christianity as the means by which God could bless a person with an infusion of divine grace, through the mediation of the priest. Once the covenantal understanding was lost, it made sense to bless everyone possible. So how could traditional Christianity deny baptism to infants if the recipient no longer was expected to be making a meaningful covenant in connection with that ordinance? A similar analysis applies to Christian sacraments such as last rites. This helps us understand what Nephi meant when he explained the apostasy by saying that “many covenants of the Lord have they taken away” (1 Nephi 13:26).

This volume of essays reports new research by several LDS scholars in different fields which we hope will be useful in helping Latter-day Saints understand the apostasy better. The authors identify several common myths and misconceptions that Latter-day Saints have about the apostasy and help us understand the falling away from Christ’s church more accurately and completely. They argue that the Christian apostasy occurred sometime during the first century—or before AD 100. Traditional Christianity, as we know it, was not established until the Nicene Council in AD 325, or during the fourth century. This volume is designed to support and encourage further systematic research on this topic. It is not designed to be a comprehensive or final treatment of any of these issues. The goals of the authors and editor will be achieved if Latter-day Saints find its contents helpful for understanding this important topic and if it provokes some of them to pursue these and related questions with further research.https://www.byui.edu/devotionals/brothe ... b-reynolds

Every time you paste greatmes volu of your internet scourings against the Christians, the words of Jesus come into my heart and mind concerning His congregation.

Jesus spoke of the wheat and the weeds that they must grow together.
Thru the long centuries in the Christian fold, the true christians (the wheat) have always had false Christians (The weeds) in their midst.
As Jesus said this must be so, the wheat and the weeds must grow together for the uprooting of the weeds( false christians) would also destroy many of the fine wheat (the true christians) growing around said weeds (False christians)
Alas my brother you allow your churchly mindset to scour the internet looking only for the weeds (false Christians) that have grown in the fine Christian wheatfields.
And like in any farmers field of goodly crops there are always some weeds, but this does not spoil the crop, the farmer wisely leaves the weeds till harvest time, Just as Jesus leaves the false christians in the christian fields of wheat till the harvest time, which is when He returns, then the fine christian wheat shall be gathered into heavenly barns and the weeds shall be burnt.

Jesus told me this recently
"Those that love Me and love their fellow men,
And show unto them mercy as they themselves have been shown mercy by Me,
They are the ones that are of my true fold"


I cannot see the Lord Jesus turning away from His heavenly abode any man or woman that believes in Him and has truly loved his fellow men, has visited the widow and took in the orphan, fed the poor, visited those in prison, ministered to those that were sick, or befriended those that were lonely, that were not afraid regardless of the consequences to themselves to testify boldly of Jesus their Lord. yes men and women whom have worn out their lives in the service of others to the honor and glory of their Risen Lord, yes have turned the other cheek to their smiters, returned cursings with blessings and have always wished the very best for their enemies and prayed continually for them...
Your will find that doctrine and knowlegde, does not excell simple faith in Christ Jesus, yes loving Him and your fellow men opens heavens doors to all men and women possessed of these gifts and graces.

Now this is funny, you come from a group who says I am not a Christian and is full of personal attacks towards me and anyone like me. I am attacking lying, false traditions, fake doctrine, and the doctrines of men and women mingled with some scripture, and those "volumes of internet scourings" many of them, happen to be early Christians explaining and bearing witness to the very points I am making.

[SJR3t2]

The Catholic church fathers taught modalism. The Trinity is a mix of pagan triun god and modalism. JS taught modalism and it's one reason the Lectures on Faith was removed https://seekingyhwh.org/lectures-on-faith/. But it's all over the BoM. Brigham Young's godhead is closer to the triun god than the trinity, in that the triun god is three seperate individuals 2 males and 2 female. In some fringe Brighamite groups they claim the Holy Spirit / Ghost is a female. But the BoM and D&C makes it clear the Holy Spirit is an IT.

IT
2 Nephi (LDS 33:2) (RLDS 15:2) But behold, there are many that HARDEN their HEARTS against the HOLY SPIRIT, that IT hath no place in them; wherefore, they cast many things away which are written and esteem them as things of naught.
***
2 Nephi (LDS 31:8-9) (RLDS 13:10-11)
8 Wherefore, after he was baptized with water the HOLY GHOST DESCENDED upon him in the form of a DOVE. 9 And again, IT showeth unto the children of men the straitness of the path, and the narrowness of the gate, by which they should enter, he [Jesus] having set the example before them.
2 Nephi (LDS 32:5) (RLDS 14:6) For behold, again I say unto you that if ye will enter in by the way, and RECEIVE the HOLY GHOST, IT will SHOW unto you all things what ye SHOULD DO.
Alma (LDS 34:38) (RLDS 16:237-238) That ye CONTEND no more against the HOLY GHOST, but that ye RECEIVE IT, and take upon you the name of Christ; that ye humble yourselves even to the dust, and worship God, in whatsoever place ye may be in, in spirit and in truth; and that ye live in thanksgiving daily, for the many mercies and blessings which he doth bestow upon you.
Alma (LDS 39:6) (RLDS 19:8-9) For behold, if ye DENY the HOLY GHOST when IT once has had place in you, and ye know that ye deny IT, behold, this is a sin which is unpardonable; yea, and whosoever murdereth against the light and knowledge of God, it is not easy for him to obtain forgiveness; yea, I say unto you, my son, that it is not easy for him to obtain a forgiveness.
Moroni (LDS 2:2) (RLDS 2:2) And he called them by name, saying: Ye shall call on the Father in my name, in mighty prayer; and after ye have done this ye shall have power that to him upon whom ye shall lay your hands, ye shall GIVE the HOLY GHOST; and in my name shall ye give IT, for thus do mine apostles.
https://seekingyhwh.org/2019/06/09/the- ... -the-same/

[TheChristian]

Now this is funny, you come from a group who says I am not a Christian and is full of personal attacks towards me and anyone like me. I am attacking lying, false traditions, fake doctrine, and the doctrines of men and women mingled with some scripture, and those "volumes of internet scourings" many of them, happen to be early Christians explaining and bearing witness to the very points I am making.

When one looks thru narrow sectarian eyes, one does not see the fine wheat growing in Gods field, the sectarian only looks for the weeds, indeed due to the bitter sectarian spirit that has engulfed him even the fine wheat in Gods field becomes weeds to him.
A true Christian regardless of what building he attends to worship, is the one whom truly loves Jesus of Nazerath and his fellow men. His fruits are sweet and are to be found growing daily feasting apon the words from the Sermon apon the mount and putting said sayings into practice..

[kirtland r.m.]

Now this is funny, you come from a group who says I am not a Christian and is full of personal attacks towards me and anyone like me. I am attacking lying, false traditions, fake doctrine, and the doctrines of men and women mingled with some scripture, and those "volumes of internet scourings" many of them, happen to be early Christians explaining and bearing witness to the very points I am making.

When one looks thru narrow sectarian eyes, one does not see the fine wheat growing in Gods field, the sectarian only looks for the weeds, indeed due to the bitter sectarian spirit that has engulfed him even the fine wheat in Gods field becomes weeds to him.
A true Christian regardless of what building he attends to worship, is the one whom truly loves Jesus of Nazerath and his fellow men. His fruits are sweet and are to be found growing daily feasting apon the words from the Sermon apon the mount and putting said sayings into practice..

So I have a bitter sectarian spirit? Do you know that a number of those who led mobs to rape, kill, and maim and torture the latter day saints were ministers. Now that's a real group with a bitter sectarian spirit, not me. However I am a fighter for truth, and I notice you did not give any real responses to the many early Christian quotes I post. No hard feelings, I don't dislike you and I've said so. I am very glad you have a strong testimony of our Savior.

[TheChristian]

Jesus told me this recently........
"Those that love Me and love their fellow men,
And show unto them mercy as they themselves have been shown mercy by Me,
They are the ones that are of my true fold"

Go and ask Him concerning this.........

[Ymarsakar]

TheChrsitian, heh that sounds like him. Or close enough.

But I heard from peeps on this forum that I must subscribe to their lord or else I am not lds or worshipping a strange god.

So all your mormon brothers and sisters in satanic rituals are not worshipping a strange god? Haha

[kirtland r.m.]

...The collision between the speculative world of Greek philosophy and the simple, literal faith and practice of the earliest Christians produced sharp contentions that threatened to widen political divisions in the fragmenting Roman empire. This led Emperor Constantine to convene the first churchwide council in A.D. 325. The action of this council of Nicaea remains the most important single event after the death of the Apostles in formulating the modern Christian concept of deity. The Nicene Creed erased the idea of the separate being of Father and Son by defining God the Son as being of ‘one substance with the Father.’

Other councils followed, and from their decisions and the writings of churchmen and philosophers there came a synthesis of Greek philosophy and Christian doctrine in which the orthodox Christians of that day lost the fulness of truth about the nature of God and the Godhead. The consequences persist in the various creeds of Christianity, which declare a Godhead of only one being and which describe that single being or God as ‘incomprehensible’ and ‘without body, parts, or passions.’ One of the distinguishing features of the doctrine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is its rejection of all of these postbiblical creeds.Elder Dallin H. Oaks, Ensign, May 1995, 84–86

The baptism of our Savior in the New Testament is only one example in Biblical scripture that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are as described in D&C 130 (the Father's voice was heard and a manifestation of the Holy Ghost in the form or sign of a dove was seen). The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit. Were it not so, the Holy Ghost could not dwell in us. They are not as the Nicene Creed describes.

Yet there was not in 1820, a single church across the face of the earth teaching this true doctrine, it had to be restored. Quite amazing really!

[kirtland r.m.]

While on the subject of the Godhead, here are some important early Christian leader's quotes that modern day protestants would consider blasphemous, these alone show the massive apostasy from early Christian teachings into what has morphed into modern Christianity and are strong evidence of not only the need for a restoration, but evidence that it has now occurred.

Irenaeus

“We were not made gods at our beginning, but first we were made men, then, in the end, gods.”
“Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God, of his boundless love, became what we are that he might make us what he himself is.”
But of what gods [does he speak]? [Of those] to whom He says, ‘I have said, Ye are gods, and all sons of the Most High.’ To those, no doubt, who have received the grace of the ‘adoption, by which we cry, Abba Father.’”

Clement of Alexandria

“Yea, I say, the Word of God became a man so that you might learn from a man how to become a god.”

Justin Martyr

“[By Psalm 82] it is demonstrated that all men are deemed worthy of becoming “gods,” and even of having power to become sons of the Highest.”
Athanasius

“The Word was made flesh in order that we might be enabled to be made gods….just as the Lord, putting on the body, became a man, so also we men are both deified through His flesh, and henceforth inherit everlasting life…[we are] sons and gods by reason of the word in us.”