I was asked whether those who are in the middle of an apostasy can detect that it is underway.
Yes and no: Yes, as to isolated individuals. No, as to the institutional mindset or they would have done something about it. The Great Apostasy began sometime during the second century. But you have to get down to the Protestant fathers in the 1500’s and thereafter before there is any widespread shouting about what has been lost. For the intervening thirteen centuries people respected authority, and trusted that the leaders had the keys to save them.
I can’t imagine the courage it took for Martin Luther to refuse to back down when he was confronted with thirteen centuries of history telling him he was wrong. We really do owe a debt of gratitude to him, and those who followed after, for ultimately establishing religious freedom. Americans more than any other people are the direct beneficiaries of that courage.
I think this is an important point. It is so very hard to separate yourself from your time and circumstances and see things as they really are. Just as it is so hard to see that Nephi is speaking to the readers of the Book of Mormon, not to those who will never read it.
It is so easy to see how wicked and ignorant were those who rejected Jesus and Joseph and so hard to see the same traits in us who have rejected the new and everlasting covenant.