Not all protestants were trying to change the church in a new way. The Lutheran reformation was an attempt to correct drift from papal decrees from the original christian doctrine so I wouldn't say the Catholic Church is the closest to the early church. I could see how something like the Latter Day Saint movement to be something way off the original track though.

....."still the original church"

The Orthodox churches may want to have a word with you. Especially the orthodox church in India founded by Thomas (one of the Jesus' 12 disciples)

A whole lotta "No True Scotsman" BS going on in both/all sides of this argument.

"A Christian is a person who believes in Jesus Christ and follows the religious teachings of Christianity."

Some are good people. Some are bad. All are Christians, so long as they have this core, defining belief system.

If you want to bicker over what constitutes a "good Christian", you might have some basis - but you're arguably in the wrong forum.

> The Catholic Church has withstood the test of time

What does this even mean? That the Catholic Church has some special authority by dint of having been around a long time? Also, what does it even mean if the Catholic Church has been around for a long time when so much about it (including the line of Popes) has been interrupted? Feels a bit like Theseus's ship.

> BUT it is still here and the closest thing we have to the way early church fathers practiced Christianity than any of the 30,000 protestant churches lol.

By what metric? Catholicism added _a whole lot_ onto traditional Christian teaching (Saints, the pseudo-divinity of mary, the infallibility of the papacy, relics, purgatory, etc) that many protestant denominations have stripped away. One could easily argue (and many do) that these protestant denominations are closer.

I'm not sure we can find an objective answer, or that finding one is even useful beyond ego stroking.