And yet after 2 millennium we still see strong Bible based Evangelical churches sharing The Gospel. A decentralized congregational Christianity will always be overwhelmed by a politically connected centralized hierarchy, but the truth will still remain. In the end the Bible will supersede anything a centralized hierarchy can come up with.
China is terrified of the growing Evangelical Christianity in it's midst and as hard as they try they can't stop it's growth. The Gospel will always overpower institutional control.
The Bible wasn’t complete until the death of John about 100 or 120. Many books floated around for 300 or 400 years. A few painstakingly, handwritten Bibles staring coming into existence at this point. But until the invention of the printing press, very few Christians had personal Bibles. Is all this supposed to be ignored? People followed the Church which is “the pillar and foundation of truth(1 Tim 3:15).”