The Church That Could Not Disappear: What Scripture Promises About the Church's Continuity

Every Christian body that claims to be the Church of Christ has to say what happened to that Church between the apostles and today. For the Orthodox, Catholic and most Protestant traditions, the answer is that it went on: wounded, divided and often unfaithful in its members, but never gone. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints gives a different answer. Its official teaching is that after the deaths of the Savior and His apostles, "the Lord withdrew the authority of the priesthood from the earth," and that this Great Apostasy, a falling away of the whole Church, lasted until Joseph Smith's first vision in 1820.¹

This is not a side issue for Latter-day Saints, and they do not pretend it is. A Latter-day Saint scholar put it plainly in the Church's own magazine: "If there had not been an apostasy, there would have been no need for a restoration."² The reverse also holds. If the Church that Christ founded never ceased to exist, the question to ask is where it has been all along.

This article asks what Scripture promises about the Church's continuity, and what each promise actually establishes. The historical side is tested in Did Christianity Disappear After the Apostles?, and a long list of passages appears in The Biblical Case Against Total Apostasy.

In brief

The New Testament expects false teachers and grave sin inside the Church, and Revelation shows Christ rebuking whole congregations, but it never describes the Church itself coming to an end before Christ returns. Christ promises that the gates of Hades will not prevail against His Church, that He will be with His disciples "to the end of the age," and that the Spirit will abide "forever." The prophets speak of a kingdom that "shall never be destroyed." The apostles put this promise to work: they replaced Judas, appointed elders in every church, and told their delegates to hand on what they had received to "faithful men who will be able to teach others also." Second-century writers describe that process happening. Latter-day Saints read Amos 8:11-12 and 2 Thessalonians 2:3 as prophecies of a total apostasy; in context, they speak of judgment on ancient Israel and of a rebellion before the Day of the Lord. No single verse settles the matter, and Matthew 16:18 is read differently by Orthodox, Catholics and Protestants. The case is cumulative, and it is strong.

Thesis: Read together and in context, the promises of Christ, the abiding of the Spirit, the prophecies of an indestructible kingdom and the apostles' own provision for successors teach that the Church could be wounded but could not disappear from the earth.

What "could not disappear" means, and what it does not

No Christian tradition says that every bishop, congregation or believer would stay faithful; Scripture records failure even among the Twelve. The claim is narrower: that Christ's Church, as a real community on earth, would never be entirely lost. Fr. Thomas Hopko puts the Orthodox view in the Orthodox Church in America's catechism: "Men may sin and fight against the Church, believers may fall away and be separated from the Church, but the Church itself, the 'pillar and bulwark of the truth' (1 Tim 3.15) remains forever."³ This is often called the Church's indefectibility: the Church as a whole will never fail or fall away from the truth. It does not mean her members are sinless. Hopko says on the same page that "the earthly members and institutions of the Church cannot be identified as such with the Church as holy."³

Even bishops of the greatest sees have erred. The Sixth Ecumenical Council (Constantinople, 680-681) condemned the teaching of "Sergius, at one time patriarch of this royal god-protected city," and anathematized "Honorius who was some time Pope of Old Rome."⁴ The Church did not disappear when its bishops erred. It judged them by the faith it had received.

The conviction is not peculiar to the Orthodox. The Westminster Confession, a Reformed standard, admits that "the purest churches under heaven are subject both to mixture and error," but adds, "Nevertheless, there shall be always a church on earth, to worship God according to his will."⁵ The Catholic Catechism says of the Church: "She is indestructible (cf Mt 16:18)."⁶ These traditions disagree about where that Church is found. They agree that it never ceased to exist.

What Latter-day Saints teach, in their own words

The Church's Gospel Topics entry teaches that after the apostles, "men corrupted the principles of the gospel and made unauthorized changes in Church organization and priesthood ordinances." During the Great Apostasy, it says, "people were without divine direction from living prophets," and "no one had the authority to confer the gift of the Holy Ghost or perform other priesthood ordinances."¹

Kent P. Jackson, who taught ancient scripture at Brigham Young University, set out the scriptural case in a 1984 Ensign article. He explains that Latter-day Saint theology holds that "the church of the Savior and his Apostles in the Old World came to an end within a century after its formation," and that the end of the apostles was a consequence rather than a cause: "The apostasy did not happen because the Apostles were gone; the Apostles were taken because the apostasy had occurred."²

Latter-day Saints also speak generously of other Christians. In a 1995 general conference address, Elder Dallin H. Oaks said, "We are indebted to the men and women who kept the light of faith and learning alive through the centuries to the present day," and called them "servants of God."⁷ What was lost, in this view, is the Church with its authority to act in God's name.

The Church's Guide to the Scriptures lists texts for this "apostasy of the early Christian church," among them Amos 8:11, Acts 20:29, 2 Thessalonians 2:3 and 2 Timothy 4:3-4.⁸ Latter-day Saints also accept that a church can be promised never to fail. The same Gospel Topics entry says that the restored Church "will not be overcome by general apostasy," because "the scriptures teach that the Church will never again be destroyed," citing Daniel 2:44.⁹ So the disagreement is not about whether such promises exist. It is about when they began to apply.

The promises, gathered by theme

All Scripture quotations below are from the New King James Version.¹⁰

Christ's own promises

The best-known text is Matthew 16:18: "And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it." Christians disagree about the rock. The Catholic Catechism teaches that "the Lord made Simon alone, whom he named Peter, the 'rock' of his Church."¹¹ St. John Chrysostom, whom the Orthodox Church reads as a guide here, explains the rock as "the faith of his confession."¹² Protestant interpreters have proposed other readings. Joseph Smith taught yet another: "What rock? Revelation."¹³

{{debated: Whether the "rock" of Matthew 16:18 is Peter, his confession of faith, Christ himself, or revelation is a real and long-standing disagreement among Christians.}} It need not be settled here. On every reading, Christ builds "My church," and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. Hades in the New Testament is the realm of the dead, and the risen Christ says in Revelation 1:18, "I have the keys of Hades and of Death." The plainest sense is that death, including the death of the apostles, will not hold the Church Christ builds.

Other sayings point the same way. In the Great Commission Jesus says, "lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:20). The eleven would not live to the end of the age, so the promise reaches past them to the mission they began. He tells His disciples to bring an unrepentant brother before the community, "tell it to the church," which can "bind on earth" (Matthew 18:17-18). He tells those He sends, "He who hears you hears Me" (Luke 10:16), and promises, "My words will by no means pass away" (Matthew 24:35). That last verse is about His words rather than the Church, but taken with the others it describes a Lord who means His words to be kept and His envoys heard.

The Spirit who abides

At the Last Supper Jesus promises the Father "will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever—the Spirit of truth" (John 14:16-17), and that "He will guide you into all truth" (John 16:13). These words were spoken first to the apostles, and the Orthodox do not claim that later bishops are apostles in the same sense as the Twelve. But "forever" is a strange word for a gift meant to last one generation, and Jesus also prays "for those who will believe in Me through their word" (John 17:20). At Pentecost Peter said, "the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off" (Acts 2:39), extending it outward in space and forward in time. The risen Christ had breathed on the apostles and said, "As the Father has sent Me, I also send you.... Receive the Holy Spirit" (John 20:21-22), and their first council could write, "it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us" (Acts 15:28).

Isaiah 59:21 adds: "My Spirit who is upon you, and My words which I have put in your mouth, shall not depart from your mouth, nor from the mouth of your descendants, nor from the mouth of your descendants' descendants," says the Lord, "from this time and forevermore." Honesty requires a note. Paul quotes the opening of this promise in Romans 11:26-27 about the salvation of Israel, so it is first a covenant promise to Israel. Christians read the Church as sharing in that covenant, but that is an application, not the verse's only sense.

A kingdom that cannot be shaken

Daniel 2:44 foretells that "the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people." Daniel 7:14 says of the Son of Man: "His dominion is an everlasting dominion, Which shall not pass away." Gabriel says of Christ, "of His kingdom there will be no end" (Luke 1:33). Hebrews 12:28 tells its first readers, "we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken," and Paul gives glory to God "in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations" (Ephesians 3:21).

Latter-day Saint scripture applies Daniel's stone, "cut out of the mountain without hands," to the restored Church (Doctrine and Covenants 65:2), and speaks of the kingdom "in the latter days, never again to be destroyed" (Doctrine and Covenants 138:44).⁹ But Daniel places the kingdom's founding "in the days of these kings," within the ancient empires of the dream, whichever the fourth is taken to be. Jesus began preaching that "the kingdom of God is at hand" (Mark 1:15), and Hebrews says Christians were already receiving the unshakable kingdom. A kingdom set up in the first century, then lost for seventeen centuries, is hard to reconcile with "never be destroyed."

The pillar and ground of the truth

Paul writes to Timothy about "the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth" (1 Timothy 3:15). In Ephesians 4:11-14 he says that Christ gave apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers "till we all come to the unity of the faith," so that "we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine." The ministry exists for stability against false teaching.

Latter-day Saints draw on the same passage; their sixth Article of Faith affirms "the same organization that existed in the Primitive Church, namely, apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, evangelists."¹⁴ If apostles were to continue "till we all come to the unity of the faith," they reason, their absence proves an apostasy. The Orthodox answer is that the apostles' ministry continued in the bishops and presbyters they appointed, who received both the laying on of hands and the apostolic faith, though no later bishop was an eyewitness of the Resurrection. The household of God is "built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets" (Ephesians 2:20), and a foundation is laid once and then built upon.

Many modern scholars doubt that Paul wrote the Pastoral Letters (1 and 2 Timothy and Titus), pointing partly to their "many references to officials such as bishops, elders, and deacons"; others defend Pauline authorship.¹⁵ On any dating, they show that the earliest churches expected an ordered ministry to carry the apostolic teaching forward.

Succession in practice

The apostles did more than promise continuity; they arranged for it. After Judas's death, Peter cites the psalm, "Let another take his office," and the eleven choose Matthias, who "was numbered with the eleven apostles" (Acts 1:20, 26). The Greek word behind "office" is episkopē, which the NKJV's own footnote renders "position of overseer." Paul and Barnabas "appointed elders in every church" (Acts 14:23). Paul left Titus to "appoint elders in every city" (Titus 1:5), warned Timothy, "Do not lay hands on anyone hastily" (1 Timothy 5:22), and wrote, "the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also" (2 Timothy 2:2). That one sentence contains four links: Paul, Timothy, faithful men, and others.

In short: the apostles did not expect the Church to end with them. They ordained others to carry on the same faith. This is the beginning of what is called apostolic succession: continuity of ordination and of faith together.

Paul did foresee trouble. He told the Ephesian elders that "savage wolves will come in among you" (Acts 20:29), and Latter-day Saints rightly list this verse. But his remedy in the same speech is: "take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers" (Acts 20:28). The answer to wolves is shepherds whom the Spirit has appointed. Peter likewise tells the elders, "Shepherd the flock of God," until "the Chief Shepherd appears" (1 Peter 5:2-4).

The next generation tells us this is what happened. {{strong: A letter sent from the church in Rome to the church in Corinth, traditionally ascribed to Clement, says the apostles appointed bishops and deacons and then provided for others to succeed them.}} In J. B. Lightfoot's translation it says the apostles, "preaching everywhere in country and town, ... appointed their firstfruits, when they had proved them by the Spirit, to be bishops and deacons." Knowing "that there would be strife over the name of the bishop's office," they "provided a continuance, that if these should fall asleep, other approved men should succeed to their ministration."¹⁶ Irenaeus, writing in the late second century, says this Clement "had seen the blessed apostles, and had been conversant with them."¹⁷ Jackson's suggestion that the apostles "were taken because the apostasy had occurred" has to reckon with this: the New Testament shows the apostles multiplying their ministry, never withdrawing it. The history of the bishop lists is treated in Did the Early Church Believe in Apostolic Succession? and the site's succession guide.

Guarding the deposit

A family of apostolic commands assumes that the faith can be kept. "That good thing which was committed to you, keep by the Holy Spirit who dwells in us" (2 Timothy 1:14). "Stand fast and hold the traditions which you were taught, whether by word or our epistle" (2 Thessalonians 2:15). Paul praises the Corinthians because they "keep the traditions just as I delivered them to you" (1 Corinthians 11:2). John writes, "let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning" (1 John 2:24), and Jude urges his readers "to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3), a text explored in the site's short video on Jude 3 and in The Apostolic Faith: Once for All Delivered.

Commands imply that failure is possible; nobody is told to guard what cannot be lost. That is true of any one church or teacher. But the command comes with a promise: the deposit is kept "by the Holy Spirit who dwells in us." Peter says "the word of the Lord endures forever," adding, "Now this is the word which by the gospel was preached to you" (1 Peter 1:25).

Rebuked, but not removed

Revelation shows Christ walking among "seven golden lampstands," which "are the seven churches" (Revelation 1:20). He rebukes several sharply. Ephesus is warned, "repent ... or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place" (Revelation 2:5), and Laodicea hears, "As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten" (Revelation 3:19). The threat is real, but it is local and conditional, spoken by a Lord still present among the churches. When people left the apostolic community, John concluded: "They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us" (1 John 2:19). Defectors departed; the community remained.

The Latter-day Saint texts, read in context

Amos 8:11-12

Amos foretells "a famine on the land, Not a famine of bread, Nor a thirst for water, But of hearing the words of the Lord," when people "shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord, But shall not find it." The prophecy has a named audience. Amos was told, "Go, prophesy to My people Israel" (Amos 7:15), and the vision just before this one says, "The end has come upon My people Israel" (Amos 8:2). The famine is God's judgment on the northern kingdom of Israel in Amos's own day.

The book does not end there. Amos 9:11 promises, "On that day I will raise up The tabernacle of David, which has fallen down," and in Acts 15:16-17 James applies this promise to the Gentiles' coming into the Church: God "will rebuild the tabernacle of David, which has fallen down... So that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord." The New Testament reads the restoration that follows Amos's famine as already under way in the apostolic Church.

2 Thessalonians 2:3

Paul writes that "that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed." Jackson notes that the Greek word, apostasia, can mean rebellion or revolt rather than a gradual drift, and argues that "the rebellion would supplant God from his position in the Church."² The point about the word is fair. The context, however, ties the falling away to the end. Paul is correcting people who thought "the day of Christ had come" (2 Thessalonians 2:2), and he says the lawless one will be destroyed by the Lord "with the brightness of His coming" (2:8). The passage does not say the falling away would be total or that the Church would be restored before Christ's return, and Paul's instruction to the same readers is "stand fast and hold the traditions which you were taught" (2:15), not to wait for a restoration.

Other warning texts

2 Timothy 4:3 says, "the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine." Jude, in the verse after his call to contend for the faith, warns that "certain men have crept in unnoticed" (Jude 4, also on the Latter-day Saint list). In each case the faithful are told to hold on. These texts show that apostasy happens within the Church; none says it would swallow the Church whole.

Objections and responses

"The gates of Hades did not prevail, because the Church went on in the spirit world."

The Latter-day Saint apologetics organization FAIR argues that gates prevail only by keeping people in or out, so the verse may mean the Church's work would reach the dead, or that the Church would be held for a time in the spirit world before returning to earth.¹⁸ This is a thoughtful reading of the image. But Jesus is speaking of a community on earth, to which He gives authority to "bind on earth" (Matthew 16:19). A Church confined to the dead for seventeen centuries is precisely a Church that death had overcome on earth.

"Indefectibility is circular: whatever survived gets called the Church."

This is a serious objection, but the early Christians did not appeal to mere survival. Irenaeus appeals to a public, checkable test: anyone "in every Church, who may wish to see the truth," can "contemplate clearly the tradition of the apostles manifested throughout the whole world," and can name "those who were by the apostles instituted bishops in the Churches."¹⁷ He describes the Church "although scattered throughout the whole world," carefully preserving the same faith "as if occupying but one house."¹⁹ {{strong: Second-century writers describe the same faith being taught in many cities through known successions of bishops.}} Hegesippus, after visiting Corinth and Rome, wrote: "In every succession, and in every city that is held which is preached by the law and the prophets and the Lord."²⁰ When disputes arose, the Church settled them as the apostles had in Acts 15, in council. Hopko describes the pattern: "a consensus of opinion among all the believers inspired by God who were led by their appointed leaders, first the apostles and then the bishops."²¹ That claim can be tested against the documents, and the earliest of those witnesses are introduced in Closest to the Apostles.

"The true Church is invisible, so it never needed a visible succession."

The Westminster Confession says the catholic Church "hath been sometimes more, sometimes less visible."⁵ The Orthodox reply that the New Testament Church is a body one can bring a dispute to (Matthew 18:17), with named overseers (Acts 20:28). Paul calls it Christ's "body, which is the church" (Colossians 1:24), made visible at the Eucharist: "For we, though many, are one bread and one body; for we all partake of that one bread" (1 Corinthians 10:17). Ignatius joined the two: "Take heed, then, to have but one Eucharist," for there is "one altar; as there is one bishop, along with the presbytery and deacons."²² Elsewhere, in Lightfoot's translation, he writes: "Wheresoever the bishop shall appear, there let the people be; even as where Jesus may be, there is the universal Church."²³ Either way, this view still holds that the Church never disappeared.

"Scripture predicts apostasy, so you are ignoring the warnings."

It does, and the warnings should not be softened. But apostasy within the Church differs from apostasy of the Church. The New Testament has plenty of the first and nowhere teaches the second; its remedy is always to hold fast to what was received.

Latter-day Saints may reply that their position rests finally on revelation to Joseph Smith, who reported being told that the churches of his day "were all wrong" (Joseph Smith—History 1:19); the Doctrine and Covenants calls the restored Church "the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth" (1:30).²⁴ That is where the disagreement finally lies, and it means the biblical texts are being read through the later revelation, not the other way around. The site's longer article on the Latter-day Saint claim of restoration takes up that question.

What we can say confidently

• The New Testament warns repeatedly of false teachers and local apostasy, but nowhere states that the Church as a whole would cease to exist before Christ's return.
• Several promises are framed to outlast the apostles: "to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:20), "forever" (John 14:16), "to your children" (Acts 2:39), "to all generations" (Ephesians 3:21).
• The apostles provided for successors in their own lifetimes (Acts 1:20-26; 14:23; Titus 1:5; 2 Timothy 2:2), and 1 Clement says they did so on purpose.
• Amos 8:11-12 is, in context, a judgment on ancient Israel, and the New Testament applies Amos's following promise of rebuilding to the apostolic Church (Acts 15:16-17).
• Latter-day Saint teaching itself accepts that a church can be promised never to be destroyed, and applies Daniel 2:44 to the restored Church.

What remains disputed

• The identity of the "rock" in Matthew 16:18, and therefore what the verse says about Peter and his successors, divides Orthodox, Catholics and Protestants.
• Where the continuing Church is found is disputed among the traditions that agree it never disappeared.
• The authorship and date of the Pastoral Letters are debated by scholars, though these letters remain early witnesses on any view.
• How far promises spoken to the apostles (John 14-16) or to Israel (Isaiah 59:21) apply to the later Church is a matter of interpretation, not simple reading.
• The Great Apostasy narrative is itself being re-examined by scholars, as in the 2014 Oxford volume Standing Apart, edited by Miranda Wilcox and John D. Young.²⁵

Conclusion

The Church that Scripture describes is a flock with wolves at the door and lampstands under rebuke. What keeps it is the faithfulness of its Lord, who promised to build it, to be with it to the end of the age, and to send the Spirit to abide with it forever. The apostles trusted that promise enough to plan for the generations after them, and those generations say they received what was handed on.

For the Orthodox Church this is first a gift received. It confesses at every Divine Liturgy, in the Creed of Nicaea and Constantinople, faith in "one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church," and it knows from its own history how often that Church has been wounded by the sins of its members. Latter-day Saints who love Christ and long for His authority on earth are asking the right question. The answer Scripture gives is that He never took it away. The lampstands were warned, and the Lord who walks among them never left.

Notes

1. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, "Apostasy," Gospel Topics, Topics and Questions (2023), churchofjesuschrist.org. ↩
2. Kent P. Jackson, "Early Signs of the Apostasy," Ensign, December 1984, churchofjesuschrist.org. Jackson was then an assistant professor of ancient scripture at Brigham Young University. ↩
3. Thomas Hopko, The Orthodox Faith, vol. 1, Doctrine and Scripture, "The Symbol of Faith: Church" (Orthodox Church in America, online edition at oca.org). Hopko quotes 1 Timothy 3:15 in the RSV. The same page gives the Creed's words "one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church." ↩
4. Third Council of Constantinople (680-681), the Sixth Ecumenical Council, Session XIII, "The Sentence Against the Monothelites," trans. Henry Percival, NPNF2 vol. 14 (1900), newadvent.org/fathers/3813.htm. The Seventh Council (787) recalls the same judgment, newadvent.org/fathers/3819.htm. ↩
5. The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), chapter 25, sections 4-5, Orthodox Presbyterian Church edition, opc.org. ↩
6. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed., para. 869, vatican.va. ↩
7. Dallin H. Oaks, "Apostasy and Restoration," general conference, April 1995, churchofjesuschrist.org. ↩
8. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Guide to the Scriptures, "Apostasy," section "Apostasy of the early Christian church," churchofjesuschrist.org. ↩
9. "Apostasy," Gospel Topics (note 1), citing Doctrine and Covenants 138:44 and Daniel 2:44; Doctrine and Covenants 65:2 and 138:44, churchofjesuschrist.org. ↩
10. The Holy Bible, New King James Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982), text checked at biblegateway.com. Cross-reference letters are omitted. ↩
11. Catechism of the Catholic Church, para. 881. ↩
12. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew 54.3, trans. George Prevost, rev. M. B. Riddle, NPNF1 vol. 10 (1888), newadvent.org. Chrysostom gives this explanation directly after the words "upon this rock will I build my Church" (Matthew 16:18). ↩
13. Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith (2007), chapter 16, "Revelation and the Living Prophet," churchofjesuschrist.org. The Church's New Testament Class Member Study Guide (1997), lesson 13, gives the same teaching, citing Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith (1976), 274. ↩
14. Articles of Faith 1:6, Pearl of Great Price, churchofjesuschrist.org. ↩
15. "Pastoral Epistles," Encyclopedia of the Bible (Zondervan), biblegateway.com/resources. The article sets out the objections and argues for Pauline authorship. ↩
16. 1 Clement 42.4 and 44.1-2, trans. J. B. Lightfoot, in Lightfoot and Harmer, The Apostolic Fathers (1891), earlychristianwritings.com. ↩
17. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.3.1 and 3.3.3, trans. Alexander Roberts and William Rambaut, ANF vol. 1 (1885), newadvent.org. ↩
18. FAIR, "Apostasy/The 'gates of hell'," FAIR Answers wiki, fairlatterdaysaints.org. FAIR is an independent Latter-day Saint apologetics organization, not an official Church source. ↩
19. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.10.2, ANF vol. 1 (as note 17). ↩
20. Hegesippus, quoted in Eusebius, Church History 4.22.3, trans. Arthur Cushman McGiffert, NPNF2 vol. 1 (1890), newadvent.org. The sentence is elliptical as it stands in this translation. ↩
21. Thomas Hopko, The Orthodox Faith, vol. 1, Doctrine and Scripture, "Sources of Christian Doctrine: The Councils," oca.org. ↩
22. Ignatius of Antioch, To the Philadelphians 4, trans. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, ANF vol. 1 (1885), newadvent.org/fathers/0108.htm. Colossians 1:24 and 1 Corinthians 10:17 are NKJV. ↩
23. Ignatius of Antioch, To the Smyrnaeans 8.2, trans. J. B. Lightfoot, in Lightfoot and Harmer (1891), earlychristianwritings.com. ↩
24. Joseph Smith—History 1:19, Pearl of Great Price; Doctrine and Covenants 1:30, churchofjesuschrist.org. ↩
25. Miranda Wilcox and John D. Young, eds., Standing Apart: Mormon Historical Consciousness and the Concept of Apostasy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), publisher's description at academic.oup.com. ↩

Bibliography

Primary sources

• The Holy Bible, New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982.
• Clement of Rome. First Epistle to the Corinthians. In The Apostolic Fathers, edited and translated by J. B. Lightfoot and J. R. Harmer. London: Macmillan, 1891.
• Ignatius of Antioch. Epistle to the Smyrnaeans. In Lightfoot and Harmer, The Apostolic Fathers, 1891.
• Ignatius of Antioch. To the Philadelphians. Translated by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson. Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1. 1885.
• Third Council of Constantinople (680-681) and Second Council of Nicaea (787). Translated by Henry Percival. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 14. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1900.
• Irenaeus of Lyons. Against Heresies. Translated by Alexander Roberts and William Rambaut. Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1885. Revised edition at newadvent.org.
• Eusebius of Caesarea. Church History. Translated by Arthur Cushman McGiffert. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 1. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1890. Revised edition at newadvent.org.

Orthodox and patristic sources

• John Chrysostom. Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew. Translated by George Prevost, revised by M. B. Riddle. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 1st series, vol. 10. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1888. Revised edition at newadvent.org.
• Hopko, Thomas. The Orthodox Faith, vol. 1, Doctrine and Scripture (sections "Church" and "The Councils"). Orthodox Church in America, online edition at oca.org.

Other scholarship (including scholars who disagree)

• Catechism of the Catholic Church. 2nd ed. Libreria Editrice Vaticana. vatican.va.
• The Westminster Confession of Faith. Orthodox Presbyterian Church edition, opc.org.
• "Pastoral Epistles." Encyclopedia of the Bible. Zondervan. Online at biblegateway.com/resources.
• Wilcox, Miranda, and John D. Young, eds. Standing Apart: Mormon Historical Consciousness and the Concept of Apostasy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Sources from the Latter-day Saint tradition

• The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. "Apostasy." Gospel Topics, Topics and Questions, 2023. churchofjesuschrist.org.
• The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Guide to the Scriptures, "Apostasy." churchofjesuschrist.org.
• The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith. Salt Lake City, 2007. Chapter 16.
• The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. New Testament Class Member Study Guide. 1997. Lesson 13.
• The Doctrine and Covenants, sections 1, 65 and 138; The Pearl of Great Price, Joseph Smith—History and Articles of Faith. churchofjesuschrist.org.
• Jackson, Kent P. "Early Signs of the Apostasy." Ensign, December 1984.
• Oaks, Dallin H. "Apostasy and Restoration." General conference address, April 1995. churchofjesuschrist.org.
• FAIR. "Apostasy/The 'gates of hell'." FAIR Answers. fairlatterdaysaints.org.