Dr. John Bergsma

And in Protestantism, the church can neither be a support nor a defense of the truth because the church cannot be identified with any visible entity.

The church is just an invisible collection of the elect, and we have Protestant denominations, but no Protestant denominations claim the authority to be able to speak for the bride of Christ, to speak for the church.

but the Catholic church does claim that authority because we are the church going back to the apostles.

There are some things you can do when you are the faithful ones that always stuck around and didn't leave for some heresy, some culture, some schism.

And one of the benefits of being in that position is that with integrity, you can say, we are the same body that Jesus founded.

And therefore we have the authority that Christ gave to his church.

Um, well,

They did, what happened was that authority resided in the temple because what Moses says is go up to the place which the Lord your God will choose, that's the central sanctuary, and consult with the Levitical priests.

Well, that continued all the way until the temple was destroyed in 587.

Then it was resumed when they came back and reestablished the temple and rebuilt it in 517, reestablished the Levitical priesthood.

And once again, that was up and running and functional.

What happened was in 152 BC, Jonathan Apis, the Maccabean king, forced his way into the high priesthood and usurped the high priesthood.

And that caused a religious crisis within Judaism because he did not have the authority.

And the people lost confidence in the high priesthood as the interpreters of the law.

And that created a religious vacuum.

And into that vacuum rushed this scholarly class that was called the Pharisees.

And they said, well, you can't really trust the priests anymore, but we've studied the law and we'll start binding and loosing for you.

Exactly.

It was.

So in the time of our Lord, there was mass confusion because the rightful authority within Judaism had been corrupted and had lost the confidence of the people of God.