The Church today is just as She was
- on a particular Thursday night in 33 AD when Jesus' inner circle --- Peter, James, and John --- couldn't even stay awake and pray with Him for one hour
- that same night when, of His 11 remaining select men, one betrayed Him, one denied Him, and the other nine scattered and headed for the tall grass
- when a few stood by the Cross until He shed the last drop of His blood and He hung there, a battered corpse
- when He rose and appeared to them, and a few believed without seeing, and many doubted even when they saw Him
- when the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles and Mary
- when they commenced on a mission to preach, teach and baptize "every creature" in the whole world (Mark 16:15)
- when each and every one of Paul's 14 Epistles deals, in part, with errors, dissensions, factions and false teachings entangling some the very people he and the other Apostles had baptized,
- and Paul even had to rebuke Peter to his face for his backsliding and hypocrisy;
- and yet all the Apostles gave their lives in martyrdom, except John who died in exile
- and still the Church surged forward through the centuries and millennia and across the continents and cultures with her confessors and faithful, stumbling, staggering and stalwart people we know as the Communion of Saints.
Tell me how things are different now? Or are you envisioning a Golden Age when the Church on earth perfectly embodied what Christ intended? And how long do you think that lasted? Fifteen minutes?
Did this present lamentable falling-away --- so long and so frequently prophesized --- take you by surprise? Do you think it takes Him by surprise?
And yet:
- "Everything must be done so that the Church may be built up." (1 Corinthians 14:26)
- "This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the Church" (Ephesians 5:32)
- "Be shepherds of the church of God, which He bought with His own blood." (Acts 20:28)
- "If he refuses to listen even to the Church, regard him as you would a pagan or a tax collector."(Matthew 18:17)
- "The Church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth." (1 Timothy 3:15)
There is a distinction between church buildings/denominations and that of the Body of Christ when you speak of The Church. The church is all Christians who are the Lords in all denominations....they are believers in Christ and his finished work..of which the catholic church is one of.
There is also a distinction between who enters the churches....both believers and not attend.
True believers distinguish these differences and recognize these things. We, as believers, are one with Christ as the head of us all. ....the church. Yet we are told there will be a great falling away, a great deception as no other tine in history within the churches and we are seeing this beginning today.....have watched it develop and grow .... So yes there is a difference between what continues today and what once was.