Welcome back to Shemis Popery. I'm Joe Heschmaier. Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants, and Mormons

all agree that Jesus Christ founded a church. After all, he tells us that he's founding a church.

But most of us also agree that people can fall away from the faith. This falling away in Greek is

apostasia, which is where we get words like apostate and apostasy. But Mormons and many Protestants

believe that not only can individuals fall away from the church,

but that the church itself can and has fallen away. That is, the church that Jesus founded fell into error,

an event that Mormons call the great apostasy. Now, this belief is integral to the claims of Mormonism in particular.

As preached my gospel, the LDS Church's handbook for missionary puts it,

a universal apostasy occurred following the death of Jesus Christ and his apostles.

If there had been no apostasy, there would have been no need of a restoration.

So if the great apostasy didn't happen, then Mormonism is false.

On the other hand, if the great apostasy did happen, then Catholicism, as well as orthodoxy

and Coptic Christianity, are all false. Either way you cut it, it's going to be a knockout punch

for one or the other side. Now, the LDS apologist Jacob Hanson and I just debated this topic

last week, or at least

that is the debate that he proposed. He actually handpicked both me as an opponent, Cameron Bertuzia's

moderator, saying that he enjoyed my content in tone, in that sense one of the major objections

to Mormonism is its notion of a great apostasy. It'd be good to do a debate on whether there

are good reasons to believe the latter-day saint

claims about a great apostasy. So I've done my best in this episode to make sure I've used

the LDS Church website and official Mormon materials and to make sure I'm using like the

official church claims. And as you'll see, my argument is that the church's claims are false,

...