Who REALLY Invented the Catholic Church? (It Wasn't Peter)

The church was born at Pentecost (Acts 2) — Peter was there, the apostles founded it. But the INSTITUTION you call the Roman Catholic Church — the single ruling bishop, the priesthood, the papacy, the imperial hierarchy — has a birth certificate, with dates and inventors, and not one of those dates falls within the lifetime of the apostles.In this study we lay the institution's own machinery next to the New Testament and the earliest Christian records, one piece at a time:▸ The single ruling bishop — the NT has plural bishops/elders per city (Philippians 1:1; Acts 20:17,28). The one-bishop model is first pushed by Ignatius of Antioch, c. 110 AD — a generation after the apostles.▸ The sacrificing priesthood — the NT never calls a Christian minister a "priest" (hiereus); it calls EVERY believer one (1 Peter 2:5,9; Revelation 1:6). The altar-and-priest language appears with Cyprian of Carthage, c. 250 AD.▸ The universal pope — early churches governed themselves as equals in councils; Roman supremacy grows slowly (Leo I, 400s, and for centuries after). Peter called himself "a fellow elder" (1 Peter 5:1).▸ The imperial Roman church — Constantine, 312–325 AD, Council of Nicaea. That's where the "Roman" comes from.Peter belonged to the church of the upper room, which pointed every believer to the one mediator, Christ Jesus (1 Timothy 2:5). That older church is still in your New Testament — you're allowed to read it for yourself.