Many I have spoken to over the years. I ask them to name a Christian who lived in the second century, third century or fourth century, they can’t name any. They attack Catholic doctrines such as baptismal regeneration and the Real Presence so anyone holding those beliefs can’t be Christian......
Can’t have it both ways my friend.
What these folks don’t understand is, their attack on historical Christian beliefs leads right to Joseph Smith and his lie that the true Church fell away.
I see. So then, you're claiming to have interviewed all of the Protestant Reformation leaders who lived 600 years ago? Remember, you said that "Protestants say it was gone for 1,400 years." I would think that for someone to claim it was gone for 1,400 years, they must have been alive in 1400 A.D. to say it.
Alex, I see what OLOFOB is talking about now...I now understand his point.
The romanized version of what is now considered the Roman Catholic church doesn't really go back to the earliest post-Jesus incarnational years as some non-denom Protestants assume it does. And so they tend to write off those earliest centuries as "Roman Catholic" (and not "catholic" with a small "c" as to its original meaning...the church UNIVERSAL...and therefore, somehow the early church "corrupted" thru and thru in various ways.
OLOFOB is right in that
(a) many non-denom members these days -- along with even mainline Protestants -- can't begin to name any Christian who lived in the second thru 4th centuries;
(b) They assume that certain beliefs -- like baptismal regeneration and the Real Presence -- were somehow late-on-the-scene "add-ons" imposed by Roman Catholic leaders in later centuries.
Yet components of the Real Presence has been there from the get-go...see John 6:48-58, for example. {And even some church bodies (Evangelical Free, others) & authors (John McArthur) that have moved away from Luther's understanding of Communion concede that it's not like they somehow want to be teaching that an omnipresent Christ is somehow missing from the Sacrament altar (or pew)!}
(As for baptismal regeneration, there was NO controversy in the early church. And, in fact, passages like 1 Peter 3:20-21 and Acts 2:38-39 actually winds up surprising many non-denom members, who usually perform interesting gymnastics to steer away from a plain reading of the text!)
So, OLOFOB's point seems to be that some of these modern-day Protestants think Christ's church was AWOL all those years. I would think tho OLOFOB, that a lot of those you reference wouldn't think a 100% apostasy occurred in those centuries...just that there were a number of theological aberrations and a goodly # of "heretics" on the loose.
And that, to me, is a big difference: The Mormon church says we were...
...100% apostatized ('cept the apostle John and alleged Nephite disciples from the Americas);
...that we as Christians 100% became corrupt professors of our faith;
...and that our creeds were a 100% abomination.
I don't think any of the people you are referencing goes even close to that far of a Joseph Smith "scorched earth" claim.
I can name some who lived later; and they were quite powerful men in the Roman Catholic Church.
If you want to try to turn this thread into yet another "The Catholics are the only True and FULL Christians"; go ahead; but I want to keep the focus on the heresy that calls itself Mormonism.
Your chosen religion thinks very little of it.
Why don't you post things IT has produced denouncing LDS?
I'd recommend NOT going here...
Ignatius, Polycarp, Irenaeus, Augustine. Augustine held to baptismal regeneration, but he also believed in predestination and election according to the grace of God (we don't choose God, He chooses us, and works in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure), and all the accompanying doctrines today called "Reformed."
The Reformed by the way do believe in Christ's Real Presence. We just don't believe in Transubstantiation.