James E. Talmage
The Great Apostasy - Considered in the Light of Scriptural and Secular History
e-artnow, 2020
Contact: [email protected]
EAN 4064066060190
Table of Contents
PREFACE.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints proclaims the restoration of the Gospel and the re-establishment of the Church as of old, in this, the Dispensation of the Fulness of Times. Such restoration and re-establishment, with the modern bestowal of the Holy Priesthood, would be unnecessary and indeed impossible had the Church of Christ continued among men with unbroken succession of Priesthood and power, since the "meridian of time."
The restored Church affirms that a general apostasy developed during and after the apostolic period, and that the primitive Church lost its power, authority, and graces as a divine institution, and degenerated into an earthly organization only. The significance and importance of the great apostasy, as a condition precedent to the re-establishment of the Church in modern times, is obvious. If the alleged apostasy of the primitive Church was not a reality, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is not the divine institution its name proclaims.
The evidence of the decline and final extinction of the primitive Church among men is found in scriptural record and in secular history. In the following pages the author has undertaken to present a summary of the most important of these evidences. In so doing he has drawn liberally from many sources of information, with due acknowledgment of all citations. This little work has been written in the hope that it may prove of service to our missionary elders in the field, to classes and quorum organizations engaged in the study of theological subjects at home, and to earnest investigators of the teachings and claims of the restored Church of Jesus Christ.
Salt Lake City, Utah, JAMES E. TALMAGE.
November 1, 1909.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
The first edition of "The Great Apostasy" was issued by the Deseret News, Salt Lake City, in November, 1909, and comprised ten thousand copies. The author has learned, with a pleasure that is perhaps pardonable, of the favorable reception accorded the little work by the missionary elders of the Church, and by the people among whom these devoted servants are called to labor. The present issue of twenty thousand copies constitutes the second edition, and is published primarily for use in the missionary field. The text of the second edition is practically identical with that of the first.
Salt Lake City, Utah, JAMES E. TALMAGE.
February, 1910.
CHAPTER I.
**Introduction: The Establishment of the Church of Christ**.
1. A belief common to all sects and churches professing Christianity is that Jesus Christ, the Savior and Redeemer of the human race, established His Church upon the earth by personal ministration in the meridian of time. Ecclesiastical history, as distinguished from secular history, deals with the experiences of the Church from the time of its establishment. The conditions under which the Church was founded first claim our attention.
2. At the beginning of the Christian era, the Jews, in common with most other nations, were subjects of the Roman empire.—(See Note 1, end of chapter.) They were allowed a considerable degree of liberty in maintaining their religious observances and national customs generally, but their status was far from that of a free and independent people.
3. The period was one of comparative peace—a time marked by fewer wars and less dissension than the empire had known for many years. These conditions were favorable for the mission of the Christ, and for the founding of His Church on earth.
4. The religious systems extant at the time of Christ's earthly ministry may be classified in a general way as Jewish and Pagan, with a minor system—the Samaritan—which was essentially a mixture of the other two. The children of Israel alone proclaimed the existence of the true and living God; they alone looked forward to the advent of the Messiah, whom mistakenly they awaited as a prospective conqueror coming to crush the enemies of their nation. All other nations, tongues, and peoples bowed to pagan deities, and their worship comprised naught but the sensual rites of heathen idolatry. Paganism—(See Note 2, end of chapter.) was a religion of form and ceremony, based on polytheism—a belief in the existence of a multitude of gods, which deities were subject to all the vices and passions of humanity, while distinguished by immunity from death. Morality and virtue were unknown as elements of heathen service; and the dominant idea in pagan worship was that of propitiating the gods, in the hope of averting their anger and purchasing their favor.
5. The Israelites, or Jews, as they were collectively known, thus stood apart among the nations as proud possessors of superior knowledge, with a lineage and a literature, with a priestly organization and a system of laws, that separated and distinguished them as a people at once peculiar and exclusive. While the Jews regarded their idolatrous neighbors with abhorrence and contempt, they in turn were treated with derision as fanatics and inferiors.
6. But the Jews, while thus distinguished as a people from the rest of the world, were by no means a united people; on the contrary, they were divided among themselves on matters of religious profession and practice. In the first place, there was a deadly enmity between the Jews proper and the Samaritans. These latter were a mixed people inhabiting a distinct province mostly between Judea and Galilee, largely made up of Assyrian colonists who had intermarried with the Jews. While affirming their belief in the Jehovah of the Old Testament, they practiced many rites belonging to the paganism they claimed to have forsaken, and were regarded by the Jews proper as unorthodox and reprobate.
7. Then the Jews themselves were divided into many contending sects and parties, among which the principal were the Pharisees and the Sadducees; and beside these we read of Essenes, Galileans, Herodians, etc.
8. The Jews were living under the Law of Moses, the outward observance of which was enforced by priestly rule, while the spirit of the law was very generally ignored by priest and people alike. That the Mosaic law was given as a preparation for something greater was afterward affirmed by Paul, in his epistle to the saints at Galatia: "Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ."—(Galatians 3:24.) And the fact that a higher law was to supersede the lower is abundantly shown in the Savior's own teachings: "Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be