Apostasy

“Nothing less than a complete apostasy from the Christian religion would warrant the establishment of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”
(Prophet Joseph Smith, Jr., History of the Church, v. 1, p. xl)

  Ensign, Dec 1984

http://lds.org/ensign/1984/12/early-signs-of-the-apostasy?lang=eng&query=great+apostasy

"The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has proclaimed to the world consistently since its beginning that there was an apostasy of the church founded by Jesus during his Palestinian ministry and led by his Apostles following his ascension. ¹ This is a fundamental belief of the Latter-day Saints. If there had not been an apostasy, there would have been no need for a restoration.

"The doctrines which its inspired leaders taught were corrupted and changed by others not of similar inspiration, the authority to act in God’s name was taken from the earth, and none of the Christian systems that existed after those developments, though they did some good things, enjoyed divine endorsement as the Lord’s own church.

In the face of these and many other teachings of apostasy and perversions of pure doctrines, its obvious that the LDS church hinges on the reality of a "great apostasy."

 The funny thing is...there's absolutely no evidence outside of the LDS church to support the idea. You would think that non-Christian scholars would have been able to objectively find this evidence by now if it existed.

What sort of evidence would there be supporting such a large-scale apostasy?

• Major contradictions and differences between current New Testament translations and ancient documents found dating from around the time of the apostasy or before.

• Contradictions between documents from similar time periods.

• Lack of manuscript evidence.

• Major contradictions between the current Old Testament and ancient documents found from B.C.

• Possibly, papal bulls or other evidence of the Catholic church ordering changes and keeping it secret from the public.

However, none of this sort of evidence is to be found. In fact, all evidence is to the contrary. While some can argue that the choosing of canon wasn't inspired, the actual question of translation is straightforward. The Old Testament is amazingly preserved. The Dead Sea Scrolls prove this. They contain portions or whole copies of almost every Old Testament book, and show that our current Hebrew texts used for translation are extremely accurate today. Translation from there is just based on language-to-language accuracy in translation, which is why there are differences in translations.

The New Testament, while lacking original manuscripts, has an abundance of manuscript evidence. None of these show any notable discrepancies or doctrinal changes in varying locations and times.

The Catholic church had no need to order changes to be made. Only the priests could read the Bible since it was in Latin, and they taught it how they were taught to. The public had to take the church at its word.

The LDS church likes to say that the Council of Nicaea, which produced the Nicene Creed, was where the idea of the Trinity and other false or confusing doctrines began, but that the earliest Christians believed in the Godhead the way the LDS church now presents it. That is a blatant twisting of history to fit an agenda. In reality, the idea of the Trinity is backed up in both the Old and New Testaments (though predominantly the New). And, as stated before, manuscript evidence backs up that the Bible is not unreliable in its translation. See my blog "More About the Trinity" (http://escapedlds.blogspot.com/2010/11/more-on-trinity.html) for examples of Biblical support.

Since the Church is the entity that claims that there was a "Great Apostasy," it would be on them to give evidence. However, all of  their evidence involves generalized and incorrect statements on historical happenings or misinterpretations of New Testament verses (such as in the Ensign article above).

Matthew 16:18 "And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

The church did not need to be restored. Once Jesus started it, he said even the gates of hell couldn't bring it down. There was no need for a restoration of the true Gospel, and therefore another of the foundations of the Mormon Church is faulty.