17. In the first stage we have to deal with the forsaking of the truth and severance from the Church by individuals, at times few, at other times many. Such conditions can scarcely be considered otherwise than as natural and inevitable. History fails to present any example of great undertakings upon which multitudes enter with enthusiasm, and from which many do not desert. Unless such cases of individual abandonment are so numerous as to show the operation of some vital cause of disaffection, we would not need the authority of divine prediction and inspired prophecy to explain the occurrence. We find, however, that apostasy from the Primitive Church was widespread and general, and that the causes leading to such a condition were of vital significance. 18. In the second of the two stages already specified we are confronted with conditions of far greater import than those attending individual secession from the Church; for here we find the Church sinking to the degraded level of a human institution, with plan of organization and mode of operation foreign to the constitution of the original, without priesthood or authority to officiate in spiritual ordinances, and devoid of the gifts and graces with which the Savior endowed His Church at the time of its establishment. In short, we find the Church itself apostate, boasting of temporal power, making its own laws, teaching its own dogmas, preserving only a form of godliness, while denying the power thereof.--(See II Tim. 3:1-6.) **Specific Predictions of the Apostasy**. 19. The Lord foresaw the great and general departure from the principles of righteousness, and from the beginning knew that men would set up their own forms of worship, wrongfully claiming divine authority for the same. Through the mouths of His chosen prophets He has repeatedly predicted the inevitable event.--(See note 3, end of chapter.) 20. Among the prophecies antedating the birth of Christ the following may be noted. Isaiah beheld in vision the condition of the earth in the era of spiritual darkness, a period in which all classes would be involved in a general condition of unrighteousness, a time when the world of mankind would be in a helpless and practically hopeless condition. He pictures the earth mourning and languishing in desolation and assigns the reason for the sad condition as follows: "The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant."--(Isaiah 24:5; read verses 1 to 6 inclusive.)