Where In The Bible Will I Find:

The Prophecy And Fulfillment Of An Apostasy?

The apostle Paul warned the followers of Christ that an apostasy was soon to come. This apostasy did come several years after his death thereby fulfilling this prophecy. This warning of Paul came in his historic meeting with the Ephesian eldership at Miletus. He spoke of the emerging dangers soon to come from both outside forces and from the very leadership of the church (Acts 20:29-30).

Paul had already warned the church at Thessalonica (II Thess. 2), and he also wrote to Timothy concerning the departures of some of the perilous times (I Tim. 4; II Tim. 3). That apostasy was neither slow nor long in coming. Defiant deviations came soon after John, the final apostle died. Ultimately, Roman Catholicism was spawned and became an infamous reality. She, across the centuries, became worse and worse. Stalwart souls and valiant voices paved with power the coming of the mighty Reformation Movement. It was an attempt to reform something that had gone wrong, that had soured in the realm of religion. But Catholicism was too far down the river of no return to be turned back.

The Protestant Reformation simply crystalized into hundreds of warring, competing factions. The warfare now has become a gigantic movement to disagree with each other. But then men with clearer vision of what should be the norm and practice of those who professed faith in and love for Jesus Christ sensed that the needed answer was neither in Roman Catholicism nor in Protestant denominationalism. The answer lay in a TOTAL RETURN to apostolic doctrine and to the faithful practice of the same.

Relying totally on the Bible was a drawing card with the sincere masses of the day who for too long had been duped by Roman Catholicism corruption and Protestant poison. They declared war on both creeds and clergy, calling for men to discard all doctrines and commandments of men and be content with just a "thus saith the Lord.'" They urged speaking where the Bible speaks and respectful silence where it is silent. They proposed that Bible things be called by Bible names and Bible practice conform to Biblical demands or Scriptural authority.

With love and convictions they appealed to people on this noble norm that if we preach the same message now that they preached then and if men will hear and heed the same doctrine now that the people heard and heeded in the first century, then we can and will be the same thing now (Christians) that they were then. And, as they were added to the church of Christ then (Acts 2:47), we will also be added by the Lord to His one and only church today.

--I.D. Byars