The Great Apostasy
How the foretold falling away of the early Church made a Restoration not optional, but prophesied and necessary.
When we speak of the Great Apostasy, we do not mean the failure of any one believer to keep the faith. We mean something far larger and far more sobering—the general falling away of the Church that Jesus Christ Himself organized in the Old World, the loss across that whole body of believers of the authority, ordinances, and fulness of the gospel He had established. This was no accident of history. It was named, dated in sequence, and explained by the prophets and apostles long before it ran its course. To understand why a Restoration was needed in the latter days, we must first see, from scripture, that the apostles knew the night was coming.
The Apostles Foretold It Plainly
Paul did not speak of apostasy as a vague possibility. He named it as a fixed event that had to precede the second coming of Christ. To the Saints at Thessalonica, who feared that day had already arrived, he wrote a correction that doubles as a prophecy.
“Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ… that ye be not soon shaken in mind… Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition.”
The Greek word rendered “falling away” is apostasia—a departure, a defection, a turning away. Paul says it must come first. The apostle who knew the Church best did not expect it to endure unbroken to the end. He expected it to fall, and he said so.
To the elders of Ephesus, gathered for what he knew was a final farewell, Paul was more specific about how the falling away would come—not only from enemies without, but from leaders within.
“For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.”
Wolves from outside; corrupted shepherds from inside. Paul saw both. And to Timothy he wrote that this drift would not merely happen but was decreed, that men would abandon sound doctrine for what flattered them.
“Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils… forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats.”
“For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.”
Truth exchanged for fables. This is the anatomy of apostasy described by the very men who held the keys—a people who would not endure sound doctrine, and so would gather to themselves teachers who told them what they wished to hear.
A Famine of the Word
Centuries before Paul, the prophet Amos saw the same drought of revelation—not a famine of bread, but of the living word of God, a heaven gone silent.
“Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord: and they shall wander from sea to sea… they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it.”
A people running from sea to sea, searching for the living word and not finding it—not because God had ceased to love them, but because the channel of revelation, the living oracles, had been taken from among them. That is the silence the Restoration would one day break.
Isaiah Names the Cause
If the apostles described what apostasy would look like, Isaiah diagnosed why it would happen. In a single verse he traces the corruption of the earth to three precise failures.
“The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant.”
Transgressed the laws. Changed the ordinances. Broken the everlasting covenant. This is not the sin of a backsliding individual—it is the alteration of the very ordinances of salvation and the breaking of the covenant by which men are bound to God. When the ordinances are changed and the covenant is broken, the saving power does not merely weaken; it departs.
What Was Lost
Consider first the foundation of the Church. Christ called twelve apostles and gave them the keys of the kingdom. When Judas fell, the eleven did not simply choose a successor by committee—they sought a replacement through prayer and revelation, that the quorum of the Twelve might be whole. But as the apostles were killed one by one through the first century, no revelation came to ordain new apostles in their place. The keys of presidency, the right to direct the Church and receive binding revelation for all the world, were withdrawn with the men who held them.
With the authority gone, the doctrine and ordinances were free to be reshaped by the wisdom of men. Where once living apostles settled questions by revelation, now councils of scholars convened to debate the nature of God, and creeds were composed to fix by majority vote what could only rightly be known by revelation. The form of godliness remained, but the living oracle that gave it power had been silenced. This is precisely the substitution the Savior warned against, when He foretold deceivers so persuasive they would mislead even the devout.
“For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.”
Paul was so alarmed at how quickly the corruption set in that he marvelled the Galatians had “so soon” turned to a counterfeit, and he pronounced a curse upon any—man or angel—who would preach it.
“I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel… though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.”
So the inventory of loss is clear: apostolic authority and the keys of the priesthood, withdrawn when the Twelve were not replaced by revelation; the doctrines and saving ordinances, changed and corrupted as Isaiah foresaw; and the living word of God exchanged for the councils and creeds of men.
Not the Loss of All Truth
We must be careful here, for the apostasy was not the extinction of all goodness or all light. The Bible was preserved through faithful hands, carrying the testimony of Christ across the centuries. Countless men and women lived virtuously, loved God sincerely, and walked in all the truth they had. Reformers later labored at great cost to recover what they could. The darkness was real, but it was not total. What was lost was not every truth—it was the fulness: the priesthood authority to act in God’s name, the saving ordinances administered by that authority, and the living revelation that holds a Church to its course. A lamp may keep a single flame and still leave a great house in shadow. That is the apostasy—not the loss of every spark, but the loss of the fulness of the fire.
The Apostasy Was Centered in the Old World
There is a second boundary, just as important, that must be marked—not only that some truth remained, but where the night fell. The falling away described here swept over the Old World, the lands of the Bible, where the apostolic Church had been planted. But the earth is wider than the Mediterranean, and the arm of the Lord is longer still. At the very hour the Old World was sinking into darkness, the gospel shone in open daylight on the far side of the world. For after His resurrection, Jesus Christ descended to a covenant people in the Americas and ministered among them in person.
“Behold, I am Jesus Christ, whom the prophets testified shall come into the world. And behold, I am the light and the life of the world; and I have drunk out of that bitter cup which the Father hath given me, and have glorified the Father in taking upon me the sins of the world.”
He came not as a visitor only. He taught His doctrine, called and ordained twelve disciples, gave them authority to baptize, instituted the sacrament, and established His Church among them, commanding that it be called by His name (3 Nephi 27:3–8). Every blessing the Old World was losing—apostolic authority, the true ordinances, the living voice of the Lord—was being poured out in fulness upon this people at the same time. And the fruit was a society of righteousness such as the world has rarely seen: for nearly two hundred years after Christ’s visit there was no contention in all the land.
“And it came to pass that there was no contention in the land, because of the love of God which did dwell in the hearts of the people… and surely there could not be a happier people among all the people who had been created by the hand of God.”
Nor were these the only people who knew their Lord. While still in Jerusalem, Jesus had spoken of “other sheep” who would hear His voice (John 10:16); and when He came to the Nephites He revealed that they were but one such flock—and that yet others remained, in lands unknown to Jerusalem and unknown even to them.
“And verily, verily, I say unto you that I have other sheep, which are not of this land, neither of the land of Jerusalem, neither in any parts of that land round about whither I have been to minister… for they are not as yet come unto me… and I shall go unto them, and… they shall hear my voice.”
The God of the whole earth remembers all the nations, “and I bring forth my word unto the children of men, yea, even upon all the nations of the earth” (2 Nephi 29:7). So the gospel was understood in the Americas, and, by the Lord’s own word, very probably among yet other peoples elsewhere. The Great Apostasy, then, was never an instant and total erasure of the gospel from the face of the whole earth. It generalized in the Old World and ran its course there.
The Book of Mormon is the keeping-place of this witness. It is the record of those very people—their prophets, their scriptures, and the visit of their risen Lord—preserved by the hand of God and brought forth in the latter days as another testament that Jesus is the Christ. The Book of Mormon is true, and its truth guards us against a false conclusion: that heaven fell wholly silent everywhere in the same hour. It did not. Where the Old World had the testimony of the apostles, the New World had the testimony of Nephi, of Alma, of Mormon and Moroni—and the testimony of the Lord Himself, standing in their midst.
In time, however, even the New World fell. The Book of Mormon records that the Nephite nation dwindled in unbelief and was at last destroyed, until Moroni walked the earth alone, the keeper of the record (Mormon 8:3–7). What we cannot say—what no scripture tells us—is whether, or exactly when, the fulness of the gospel became entirely absent from all the earth. The Lord may have kept His authority and His servants among peoples and in lands whose history we do not possess; on that question the record is silent, and honesty requires that we be silent too. What we do know is narrower, and it is enough: the fulness was lost from the Old World, and it was not found among the nations to whom the gospel would be restored in the latter days. That much is certain, and that much alone makes a Restoration necessary—without our needing to claim knowledge of some precise hour in which the last light on earth went out. The night came; how widely and how completely, only God knows.
The Remedy Was Foretold
Here is the mercy in the whole account: the same prophets who foresaw the falling away also foresaw its cure. Peter, preaching in the temple, declared that the heavens would hold the Christ until an appointed day of restoration spoken of by every prophet from the beginning.
“Repent ye therefore… And he shall send Jesus Christ… whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.”
A restitution—a restoring of all things. If nothing had been lost, nothing would need restoring. The very promise presumes the apostasy it heals. And John the Revelator saw exactly how that restoration would begin: not by the slow refinement of men, but by an angel sent from heaven bearing the gospel back to earth.
“And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth… Saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come.”
Why would an angel need to bring the everlasting gospel back to the Christian world, if that gospel had never left it? John’s vision only makes sense against the backdrop of the apostasy. The gospel had to be brought again because it had been taken away.
Why the Restoration Was Necessary
Lay the testimony of scripture side by side and the conclusion is unavoidable. Paul said a falling away must come before the end. Amos saw a famine of the word, a silence of heaven. Isaiah named the cause—laws transgressed, ordinances changed, the everlasting covenant broken. The apostles were killed and not replaced by revelation; the doctrine was reshaped by councils and creeds; the fulness of the priesthood and the saving ordinances were lost from the lands that had received them. And the same scriptures that foretold the loss foretold the cure: a restitution of all things, an angel restoring the everlasting gospel.
This is why the Restoration of the gospel in these latter days was not an optional improvement upon a healthy Christianity, nor the founding of one more denomination among many. It was the fulfillment of prophecy. Heaven did not break its silence on a whim—it broke it because the prophets had promised it would, because the everlasting gospel had been carried away by an angel in John’s vision and had to be brought again by an angel in fact.
The apostasy is the dark backdrop that makes the Restoration shine. Without a falling away, there is nothing to restore; without a famine, no need to break the silence; without ordinances changed and covenants broken, no reason for an angel to fly through the midst of heaven with the gospel in his hands. The God who foresaw the night also appointed the morning. And so the Restoration stands not as the boast of men, but as the keeping of a promise older than the apostasy itself—that the times of restitution of all things would surely come.