There's 100X more evidence that Arianism/Jehovah's Witnesses can trace their movement through history than OPs.
If they're not the true church, how much less the OP movement which cannot produce a single movement in 20 centuries that held to their fundamental doctrine?
The fact is the true church (the believing church) was blended (especially after the 3rd century) with the visible church. Wheat and Tares. Some splits, some corruption, but the true church of Christ endured through the centuries. Those believers who repented of their sins and were regenerated by the Holy Spirit are the true church. Its the same today.
Would even the most ardent defender of OPism deny that even within what they consider to be the "true" church (OP movement) that there are truly regenerated and those who are not saved.
Do we not consider the parable of the sower?
IMO it is a mistake to look for any outward org/denomination/movement/sect and call it the church, and this error is compounded if your looking for a group that denied the trinity, baptized in JN, claimed all saved people must speak in tongues, and then the conglomerate of standards.
You'll never find that ever in church history. The Montanists are your best bet, and of course the most notable Montanist is Tertullian (the father of trinitarianism).
You can jump hundreds of years to the Irvingites, which don't fit OP credentials.
I admit I find it amusing that some will believe that the OP church has always been on the basis of shoddy scholarship and blind faith. But deny the achievements, advancement of the gospel, heroic martyrdoms, contributions to church music, practice, and scripture translation, and salvation of trinitarians despite all the evidence readily available.
I searched in vain for OPs through history. Read Bernards History, Weisser, Arnold. Then Schaff, Lattourette, and Bruce.
Its wishful thinking. Its not impossible that there could be a pocket group here or there in history (though no one, including Arnold, has ever found one), but even if a couple tiny regional sects were found scattered in history, would that be good reason to believe the "true OP church" has an unbroken line back to the apostles?
I think the bigger problem on the part of OPs is the assumption they have the apostles doctrine right. Seeing as how 1)OPs have to explain away and redefine large portions of the epistles (especially Romans) and the gospels (especially John)
2) the early church apparently DIDNT come to the modern OP conclusions on the water/Spirit doctrine since we find no evidence of it outside of the Bible even in the 1st and 2nd centuries
3)It seems plausible if not likely that the entire OP foundation, identity, philosophy, and tradition is all the result of a misunderstanding of scripture thus resulting in an inaccurate understanding not only of what Bible Salvation is but also of the true church in history (hence the total absence prior to 1913 of any movement that taught what modern OPs do).
We also have to consider that we have plenty of documentation of the existence of many schismatic and heretical groups existing in church history, and it seems HIGHLY unlikely that ALL references to and works of historical OP have been lost or destroyed when so many other groups have endured the centuries. THEN to assert THAT was actually the true church of JC established that Jesus referenced in Caesarea Philippi and established in
Acts 2 seems preposterous to me. And at one time I wanted it to be true more than any one....but its not.
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