No. It sounds to me like the Protestant/Evangelical story that there were no surviving apostolic churches after the first two centuries, and the world was effectively lost for at least thirteen hundred years, until a Catholic priest rebelled against the Catholic Church, ending up a notorious anti-Semite that re-formed the religion. One could at least join the Independent Fundamental Baptist churches and preach that they survived from the time of the apostles until now. That would be a claim of legitimacy. Three remain: those IFB fellowships (assuming their claim is historical for argument's sake), the Orthodox churches, and the Catholic churches. The rest are offshoots of one of these. There is a fourth alternative theory, which arguably leads to more cults, where anyone can read any Bible, and without any apostolic teaching to guide him, can found a new denomination, faith group, sect or cult.
I note the Messiah did not command the Apostles to compile a Bible and promulgate it throughout the world. He did command them to teach all nations, baptizing them (in water) in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. He again promised to be with them until the end, or consummation, of the world.
Finally, I see Messiah's prayer for unity. He never failed in His prayers so I believe in the holy catholic apostolic Church, which by the grace of Almighty God, has a place, I trust, for separated, as well as, elder brethren.
Rather, while Rome most manifestly largely did apostatize, in progressive deformation , the church of Matthew 16:18 is the body of Christ which alone consists 100% of believers, and is visible wherever it worships and works gather, and which has always continued as a relative remnant. While Rome grew in pretense and pomp, and much becoming as the gates of Hell for multitudes, yet enough of the truth was preserved so that the body of Christ continued, though often the remnant were more like those in the OT, who
were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; (Of whom the world was not worthy:) they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. (Hebrews 11:37-38)
until a Catholic priest rebelled against the Catholic Church, ending up a notorious anti-Semite that re-formed the religion.
You keep trying the anti-Semite card only to be shown how much popes were like Rome in this attitude, to which they added actions. Do you want to see it again?
And then you have the church leading up to the Reformation.
.Part of the tragedy of the Reformation is that the Church before 1517 was unable to reform itself or to set in motion events or changes that would have led to a reform in the Church that would have satisfied its members and really affected change....
To...Boniface IX, goes the unenviable distinction of probably having begun the papal sale of offices...
..Sixtus IV was completely a worldling. He is best known perhaps for the chapel that he built which was later decorated by Michelangelo, the Sistine Chapel. His successor Innocent VIII had an illegitimate family. Alexander VI, who was Spanish, was perhaps the worst of them all. He had many illegitimate children, but he was a good political candidate. But his reign as pope did more to weaken the moral prestige of the papacy than almost anything imaginable...
And if we go to the clergy, to what we can call the lower clergy or the ordinary priests, we can say that one vice that many of them had was immorality. Many of them had women that they kept in their rectories by whom they had children, so they had families to support. — Maurice W. Sheehan, O.F.M. Cap., Lecture 2: Prelude-Causes, Attempts at Reform to 1537; International Catholic University http://home.comcast.net/~icuweb/c01802.htm
Referring to the schism of the 14th and 15th centuries, Cardinal Ratzinger observed,
"For nearly half a century, the Church was split into two or three obediences that excommunicated one another, so that every Catholic lived under excommunication by one pope or another, and, in the last analysis, no one could say with certainty which of the contenders had right on his side. The Church no longer offered certainty of salvation; she had become questionable in her whole objective form--the true Church, the true pledge of salvation, had to be sought outside the institution. "It is against this background of a profoundly shaken ecclesial consciousness that we are to understand that Luther, in the conflict between his search for salvation and the tradition of the Church, ultimately came to experience the Church, not as the guarantor, but as the adversary of salvation. (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, head of the Sacred Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith for the Church of Rome, “Principles of Catholic Theology,” trans. by Sister Mary Frances McCarthy, S.N.D. (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1989) p.196). http://www.whitehorseinn.org/blog/2012/06/13/whos-in-charge-here-the-illusions-of-church-infallibility/) More