The Passing of the Church: Forty Variations on an Unpopular Theme

In this article, Nibley brings up the seldom-discussed idea that Christ’s true Church did not survive after the deaths of his Apostles. He supports this idea with the expectations of the early Christians regarding its fate; as Jesus had already told them his gospel would be rejected by all men, their strange behavior considering this expected Apostasy was due to an assumption that the gospel was destined to be short-lived. The Apostasy itself saw members stray within the early Church, not from it, but nevertheless the Church failed to survive in a form that was not perverted. Religious leaders reinterpreted doctrine and events for their own benefit. Reprinted from Church History, June 1961.