• Apostasy
    Reasoning From the Scriptures

    • Job 13:16: “Before him [God] no apostate will come in.”

      Heb. 6:4-6: “It is impossible as regards those who have once for all been enlightened, and who have tasted the heavenly free gift, and who have become partakers of holy spirit, and who have tasted the fine word of God and powers of the coming system of things, but who have fallen away [“if they then commit apostasy,” RS], to revive them again to repentance, because they impale the Son of God afresh for themselves and expose him to public shame.”

  • Apostolic Succession
    Reasoning From the Scriptures

    • Apostolic Succession

      Definition: The doctrine that the 12 apostles have successors to whom authority has been passed by divine appointment. In the Roman Catholic Church, the bishops as a group are said to be successors of the apostles, and the pope is claimed to be the successor of Peter. It is maintained that the Roman pontiffs come immediately after, occupy the position and perform the functions of Peter, to whom Christ is said to have given primacy of authority over the whole Church. Not a Bible teaching.

      Was Peter the “rock” on which the church was built?

      Matt. 16:18, JB: “I now say to you: You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church. And the gates of the underworld can never hold out against it.” (Notice in the context [vss. 13, 20] that the discussion centers on the identity of Jesus.)

      Whom did the apostles Peter and Paul understand to be the “rock,” the “cornerstone”?

      Acts 4:8-11, JB: “Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, addressed them, ‘Rulers of the people, and elders! . . . it was by the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, the one you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by this name and by no other that this man is able to stand up perfectly healthy, here in your presence, today. This is the stone rejected by