A Beginner's Guide to Talmage by James E. Talmage

Author:James E. Talmage [Stephens, Calvin R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Gospel Teachings
Publisher: Deseret Book Company
Published: 2013-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

7

The Dispensation of the Fulness of Times

Apostasy Preceded restoration

Apostasy and the Need for Reformation. We accept as fact the belief common to Christendom that the Church of Christ was established under our Lord’s personal direction and that during the early period of apostolic administration the Church was blessed with rapid growth and marvelous development. A question of profound importance confronts us: Has the Church of Jesus Christ maintained an organized existence upon the earth from the apostolic age to the present?

We affirm that with the passing of the apostolic period the Church drifted into a condition of apostasy, whereby succession in the Holy Priesthood was broken; and that the Church as an earthly organization operating under Divine direction and having authority to officiate in spiritual ordinances ceased to exist among men.

We affirm that this great apostasy, whereby the world was enshrouded in spiritual darkness, was foretold by the Savior Himself while He lived as a Man among men, and by His prophets both before and after the period of His life in mortality.

The apostolic ministry continued in the Primitive Church for about sixty years after the death of Christ, or nearly to the end of the first century of the Christian Era. For some time thereafter the Church existed as a unified body, officered by men duly invested by ordination in the Holy Priesthood, though, even during the lifetime of some of the Apostles, the leaven of apostasy and disintegration had been working. Indeed, hardly had the Gospel seed been sown before the enemy of all righteousness had started assiduously to sow tares in the field; and so intimate was the growth of the two that any forcible attempt to extirpate the tares would have imperiled the wheat. The evidences of spiritual decline were observed with anguish by the Apostles who, however, recognized the fulfilment of earlier prophecy in the declension, and added their own inspired testimony to the effect that even a greater falling away was imminent.

The apostasy progressed rapidly, in consequence of a cooperation of disrupting forces without and within the Church. The dreadful persecution to which the early Christians were subjected drove great numbers of Christians to renounce their allegiance to Christianity, thus causing a widespread apostasy from the Church. But far more destructive was the contagion of evil that spread within the body, manifesting its effects mainly in the following developments:

(1) The corrupting of the simple principles of the Gospel of Christ by admixture with the so-called philosophical systems of the times.

(2) Unauthorized additions to the rites of the Church, and the introduction of vital changes in essential ordinances.

(3) Unauthorized changes in Church organization and government.

The result of the degeneracy so produced was to bring about an actual apostasy of the entire Church (VM, 106–8).

Ministry of John. The final ministry of John marked the close of the apostolic administration in the Primitive Church. His fellow apostles had gone to their rest, most of them having entered through the gates of martyrdom, and although it was his

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