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NKP_Vet, Peter went to Rome and there is no doubt in my opinion that Peter was the authority in the Church after Christ left the earth, we agree so far. Peter and all the Apostles taught the same Gospel. Mark taught the Egyptians and they believed, the remnants of the Church that Mark organized are called Coptic's. Marks Church and Peters church are one in the same.

Prior to the Council at Nicaea there was no “Catholic” Church. The word “Catholic” as I stated earlier simply means universal. Until Nicaea there was no universal church. Each church was independent. While there were several leaders in Rome there was no real central authority and each church taught what it wanted. After the Apostles died off there was a free for all for domination of the Christian doctrines. While all the Christian Churches had Christ in common they had so many differing beliefs about who He was or even what He was that there were horrible disputations between the different churches lead in the different cities.

After the death of the Apostles and then after the death of all that had been taught by them things started going south. Not so much a falling away as disarray. Into this vacuum stepped Constantine. If you think about how much time had passed it will be easier to understand, it would be like going back to the year 1600 or so for us. 300 years is a long time. While Peter may have been the head of the Church for a time that was 250 years ago. Peter never had a chance to install someone else as head of the Church so different Elders or Bishops all vied for the position and whom ever could convince the most people that he was right won. When Constantine stepped in it was a much needed adjustment to the Christian world. While we say now that the Bishop of Rome has an unbroken line to Peter it simply isn't so. Certainly the Bishop of Rome has lead the Church more than any other Bishop. Bishops have lead the Church from Spain, from France, from Turkey but mostly from Rome. The Leaders of the Church or Popes were not always anyone whom had ever met the Previous Pope and could not have been ordained to the position as Peter was. Some were evil men, some had bastard children and many were ridiculously influential.

Don't misunderstand me, I'm not trying to undermine the authority of the Pope but I don't think making statements that are not factual help anybody.

Now let me change gears just a little. Much has been said about the authority of the scriptures and a comparison has been made to the US Constitution. The argument being that any believer with the Holy Ghost can interpret the Scriptures with the aid of the Holy Ghost and come up with the true doctrines of the Kingdom. The reason there have been so many schisms in the “Body of Christ” is precisely because so many spirit filled Christians thought they knew better than other Spirit filled Christians what the true doctrine was. It is a wonderful sounding thought but in practice it doesn't work. There has to be an authority where the buck stops. Either someone speaks for God or there are thousands of gods since there are thousands of churches. We cannot have two different answers to a question and both of them be right.