What happened to Christ's Church?

When Jesus Christ was on the earth he established a church, and had many followers. These followers were called disciples, of all the followers he had gathered, He chose 12 men, and He called them Apostles. (Luke 6:13-16)

These 12 Apostles traveled around with Christ, Learning constantly of what He taught and preaching along with Him. Later (Luke 10:1) he also appointed 70 other people, and He sent them ahead to teach and preach. So by this time, He must have gathered a large number of followers. 

After His death, Jesus Christ, appeared to his Apostles, (and other people) and he told them very clearly, that they had work to do, and that they were to teach. In John 21:15-17 Jesus instructs Simon Peter to feed his sheep, or in other words, look after those who follow him, both those who are already following him and those who are not yet following him.

With the death of Judas, There was left only 11 Apostles, They knew they needed another Apostle, and they had two people who they felt fitted the qualifications, Barsabas and Matthias(acts 1:21-16). The Lot fell on Matthias and he became one of the 12 Apostles. They then traveled around together, until at the day of Pentecost, the Holy Ghost poured out on them, and they began to preach and baptize in the name of Jesus Christ. They also began to teach amongst the Gentiles. and ordaining people in different area's where they preached.(Acts 14:23)

Most of the New Testament is letters written by the Apostles. The reasons for most of these letters is because false idea's had crept into the church. For example in 1 Corinthians, Paul is telling the Corinthians to stop being divided. (1 Corinthians 1:10-15) or even in his letter to the Galatians, Where he is shocked they have gone to another Gospel, They still believe in Christ, but are being persuaded to believe false idea's (Galatians 1:6-12) and there are many other examples of this.

Not only were the Apostles having to deal with false idea's but they were being persecuted, many were martyred or exiled, and so with their deaths they were not able to continue strengthening the churches around the world. In a couple of the letters, they even prophesied the inevitable, which is a falling away from the truth. (2 Thessalonians 2:1-4, 2 Timothy 4:1-4) These two scriptures indicate that there will be a falling away from the truth, and that they knew it would happen. 

As we see from history there was a great confusion about the message of Jesus Christ, In 325 AD the emperor Constantine, after he himself was converted to Christianity, actually arranged for all the different bishops together around the world and to agree on what they believed thats how different the beliefs were back then, but even since then, there have been many break off's from what people interpret as truth. 

This leads up to 1820, When Joseph Smith was 14 years old, he wanted to know which of all the churches was right. Because he did not know what to do. One day whilst reading through the Bible, he came across James 1:5  "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him." And this is exactly what he did, I will go into what happened in another Blog.