I get what you’re saying, but that interpretation doesn’t actually hold up historically or biblically. Jesus didn’t speak in abstract metaphors when He said, ‘Upon this rock I will build my Church.’ He gave authority to Peter by name, gave him the keys, and promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against it—not just a vague, invisible idea. There was no waiting until Constantine. The early Church had bishops, sacraments, liturgy, and hierarchy long before the Roman Empire stopped persecuting it. Just read the early Church Fathers Ignatius of Antioch, Clement of Rome, Justin Martyr they all describe a very visible, structured, Catholic Church by the late 1st and early 2nd centuries.
Saying ‘Jesus is the Church’ is poetic, but He clearly distinguished Himself from the Church He built on Peter. That Church still exists. It’s the Catholic Church not perfect in every member, but protected from error in what it teaches, exactly as He promised.
If we believe in Jesus, we should believe what He actually instituted, not just what feels safer or more abstract.
I’ve studied the historicist view too, including the Geneva Bible annotations and the claim that the papacy is the Antichrist. But if you’re serious about truth, you have to ask: who preserved Scripture, doctrine, and apostolic succession from the first century onward? The Catholic Church did. The early Church was visible, hierarchical, sacramental, and unified under bishops long before Constantine. If the papacy were truly the Antichrist, you’d have to believe Christ let His Church fall into total apostasy for over a thousand years, which directly contradicts His promise in Matthew 16:18. The real counterfeit isn’t the historic Church, it’s the rebellion against it.
You’re quoting Luther like he was some infallible prophet, but he was a priest who broke his vows, rewrote Scripture, and split the Church Christ founded. You say he “measured the temple” but by what authority? His own? The Church existed for 1,500 years before Luther ever picked up a hammer. If that was all apostasy, then Christ failed, and His promise in Matthew 16:18 was a lie. But He didn’t lie, and the gates of hell didn’t prevail.
You’re leaning on historicist timelines like 1,260 years and labeling popes and Jesuits as beasts, but you’re building that on interpretations that didn’t exist until well after the fact. Meanwhile, the actual early Church read Ignatius of Antioch, Irenaeus, Clement described a visible, hierarchical, sacramental Church that looks nothing like your invisible remnant theory.
You mentioned Pella and the Jewish-Roman war as if that fulfilled the Great Tribulation, but the early Christians who fled Jerusalem still worshipped under bishops, still celebrated the Eucharist, and still saw Rome as the place where Peter and Paul died for the faith not as the seat of Antichrist.
Luther’s rebellion triggered chaos splintering the faith into tens of thousands of denominations and opening the door to Enlightenment secularism and moral relativism. If anything, that looks more like the “falling away” than a Church that has preserved apostolic succession, sacraments, and Scripture for two millennia.
Christ didn’t found confusion. He founded a Church. It wasn’t hidden in the shadows or waiting for a 16th-century German monk to rediscover it. It’s been visible, attacked, slandered, and still standing because it’s His.
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