On a facebook discussion group, one former Mormon who is now an Evangelical Protestant wrote the following:
Jesus said, 'I will build my church and the gates of hell will not overcome it.' (Mt.16:18) If there was an apostasy then the gates of hell did prevail and Jesus was a false prophet. How do Mormons reconcile this clear promise with their story of apostasy and restoration?
I have interacted with, and soundly refuted, this author on my blog previously (Mike Thomas), such as Latter-day Saints and the Bible.
Before addressing Matt 16:18, let us, for the sake of argument, allow that “Mormonism” is false. Notice that this Protestant apologist is begging a question (common among Evangelical apologists)—they are assuming the truth of Protestantism. However, it should be noted that the key doctrines and practices of Protestantism are utterly absent, not just within the pages of the Bible itself, but also within the writings and teachings of the earliest Christians, such as sola scriptura and baptismal regeneration. There were no early Christians who held to the formal sufficiency of the Bible nor any who rejected baptismal regeneration, but this apologist and his theology are utterly opposed to the early Christians (and the Bible) on both these points, as well as others (e.g., the earliest Christians rejected eternal salvation—they held that a truly justified person could lose their salvation, as did the apostle Paul and the author of Hebrews in chs. 6 and 10). I have discussed the biblical evidence against sola scriptura many times on this blog (click here) as with baptismal regeneration (see the LDS and the Bible page for a discussion of Acts 2:38, for instance; another example would be John Greer vs. the Biblical Doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration and Another note on Ephesians 2:8-9 and baptismal regeneration). With respect to the historical evidence from early Christian writings, see the following examples:
There were no proto-Protestants in the early Church.
With respect to baptismal regeneration, the evidence against the view held by Thomas et al. is so overwhelming that his fellow co-religionists are forced to admit that the early Christians were "unanimous" in their acceptance of baptismal regeneration. William Webster, a Reformed Baptist, admitted that "The doctrine of baptism is one of the few teachings within Roman Catholicism for which it can be said that there is a universal consent of the Fathers . . . From the early days of the Church, baptism was universally perceived as the means of receiving four basic gifts: the remission of sins, deliverance from death, regeneration, and the bestowal of the Holy Spirit." (William Webster, The Church of Rome at the Bar of History [Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1995], 95-96).
With respect to Matt 16:18, the verse was not quoted in its entirety:
And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. (KJV)
Since gates—even the gates of hell (Hades/Sheol)—do not attack and destroy churches (or anything else), it is clear that Jesus could not have meant that hell would not destroy the church. Indeed, gates are either intended to keep people in (prisoners) or keep people out. But since Jesus gave Peter keys in verse 19, it seems clear that he intended that the church should open the gates of hell and release its prisoners (cf. 1 Pet 3:18-20; 4:6). This is what he meant about the gates of hell not prevailing over the church. That this is the case can be seen in the fact that the Greek word rendered “prevail” in the King James Bible is κατισχύσουσιν, the third person plural future indicative active of κατισχύω, literally, “be strong against,” and it is often used in the sense of “restrain.”
As one Protestant scholar commented:
In keeping with the linguistic data, "gates of Hades" is to be considered a figure of speech for death, which cannot keep the Christ imprisoned. (Jack P. Lewis, "'The Gates of Hell Shall not Prevail Against It' (Matt 16:18): A Study of the History of Interpretation" in JETS 38/3 (September 1995): 349-67, here, pp. 366-67.
As New Testament scholars W.D. Davies ad Dale C. Allison wrote on the phrase, “the gates of Hades will not overcome”:
The spectrum of opinion on these words, which in the early church were so often used against heretics, and which later came to serve as an apology for tradition, is unusually broad. But readers should likely think of the end-time scenario, when the powers of the underworld will be unleashed from below, from the abyss, and rage against the saints cf. Rev 6.8; 11.7; 17.8. The promise is that even the full fury of the underworld’s demonic forces will not overcome the church. One may compare Rev 9.1-11, where the demonic hosts, under their king Abaddon, come up from the bottomless pit to torment humanity. They prevail against all save those with the seal of God. Also worth comparing is 1QH 6.22-9. In this the author faces the gates of death but is delivered by entering a fortified city founded on a rock. The context is the great eschatological conflict. (W.D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, Matthew: A Shorter Commentary [London: T&T Clark, 2004], 270)
In reality, the promises given to the New Testament Church strongly parallel those given to Israel in the Old Testament, and yet the latter apostasised. Eric Svendsen (again, a Protestant) wrote the following on this issue:
Catholic apologists often counter this point [the charge of apostasy] by noting that God promised the indestructibility and infallibility for his church in passages such as Matt 16:18 and 28:20—promises never granted to Israel. But such an assertion is incorrect. The people of Israel were given many promises that they would never cease to be God’s chosen people, as in the following passage:
“This is what the Lord says, he who appoints the sun to shine by day, who decrees the moon and stars to shine by night, who stirs up the sea so that it waves roar—the Lord Almighty is his name: “Only if these decrees vanish from my sight,” declares the Lord, “will the descendants of Israel ever cease to be a nation before me.” This is what the Lord says: “Only if the heavens above can be measured and the foundations of the earth below be searched out will I reject all the descendants of Israel because of all they have done,” declares the Lord. (Jer 31:35-37)
Moreover, Paul insists that it was to the Jews that God entrusted his word (Rom 3:1-2; 9:3-5). He further asserts of “the people of Israel” that:
“Theirs is the adoption as sons; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who is God over all, forever praised!” (Rom 9:4-5)
According to these passages Israel was promised at least as much as the church was promised. Based on these promises the Pharisees might have made a similar argument for their own authority as Catholic apologists make today regarding the authority of Rome. The Pharisees alone, it could have been argued, were capable of interpreting the Old Testament and the “Fathers” (since they alone were entrusted with God’s word, and were promised the Law, the Covenants, and the Patriarchs). Similarly, they might have staked a claim to sole ownership of the tradition of the liturgy (since Paul includes “temple worship” in his list). And, of course, how could anyone deny that they possessed eternal life since they were granted “adoption as sons” and the Messiah himself? Indeed, these statements by Paul and Jeremiah are decidedly at least as strong as (if not much stronger than) those made in reference to the church.
As much as Catholic apologists are reluctant to do so, they must face the fact that their claims to indestructibility (based on the promises of Jesus to his church) are virtually indistinguishable from those made by Israel (based on Jeremiah, and later, Paul). More importantly, they must come to terms with the fact that Israel was dead wrong in just how those promises were to be understood! Israel was promised at least as much as the church was promised. The problem is, they thought they were invincible by virtue of their association with Moses (1 Cor 10:1-5) and their pedigree to Abraham (Matt 3:9)—and they wrongly defined “true Israel” as an institution. These are the same errors made by the Roman Catholic church. Sadly, those who ignore history are destined to repeat it.
In the end, because of her long history of disobedience and moral corruption, Israel as an institution was rejected by God; God then turned to the Gentiles who accepted his word with gladness. It is such a surprise then that God, after tolerating centuries of abuse and moral corruption, would finally say “enough!” (Eric D. Svendsen, Evangelical Answers: A Critique of Current Roman Catholic Apologists [Lindenhurst, N.Y.: Reformation Press, 1999], 112-14; comment in square brackets added for clarification)
Another example of eisegesis by an Evangelical against the LDS Church refuted by exegesis and historical facts.