Welcome back to Shemis Popery. I'm Joe Heschmire. And many of you are probably familiar with the popular Protestant YouTuber Rouselan K.D. I think I first encountered him with the interview that he did with George Janko a while back. But since then, I've seen him in several different contexts, whether it's sharing his faith or interviewing guests or moderating debates. And I've honestly enjoyed him in each of those roles. He clearly seems like somebody trying to be fair, trying to be open to the evidence,

and trying to build up the body of Christ.

And I don't know what more you could ask for.

And so I've been very interested in his recent video called The Real Reason I Won't Convert

to Orthodox or Catholic Christianity.

Now, I think he really offers two real reasons. He rejects

Apostolic succession, and he thinks that the original church had just two offices, Elder and Deacon,

not three, Bishop Elder and Deacon. Now, I've actually responded to that second argument recently

in a video called the Most Divisive Christian Controversy. But Ruslan goes a little more into the evidence from the Apostolic Fathers, the first Christians after the time of the apostles, so I'm excited to get into the weeds with him. I mean, after all, if these are the issues holding him back from converting, these are obstacles that seem pretty surmountable. You know, this week I'm going to be at the Catholic Creator Conference in Steubenville, and you know how amazing it would be if next year somebody like Ruzlan was there? Now, of course, short of that, both he and you can watch the panel discussion that I'm going to be a part of streamed right here on Thursday evening. Also, special thanks to Kyle R, who brought my attention to this episode from Ruzlan. He asked me to make this response.

He's one of my patrons over at shamelessjo.com.

Now, if you want to join wonderful people like Kyle,

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And thank you to all of my patrons.

It's your direct support to keep this channel going. Okay. So I want to actually address the second

major argument that Ruzlan makes before I address the first one. Because at the heart of why

he rejects apostolic succession is his belief that this whole model of a single bishop over a particular

church is one that wasn't really established by Jesus. So I want to address it in two parts. I want to

look at the biblical evidence and then I want to look at the evidence from the earliest Christians,

...