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in a way what i guess we could call 'personal revelation', although i didnt use this term, was kind of frowned upon - or just... not a thing...? or explicitly bad? you have the church. or, you have a priest. OR, you have the bible. but you're not jacked in getting direct answers
we're just going to hit some parts of it relevant to this topic.
so he says right off, he's younger, they moved somewhere, and there was a general excitement about religion. it started with the methodists, everyone got super into it, and soon different faiths were "contending".
the great apostasy is basically the inverse of another idea you may be familiar with (its okay if ur not), apostolic succession. the great apostasy posits that at some point, Christianity was totally hijacked or went completely off the rails. something went wrong, essentially.