The
False Teaching
From Paul:
For I received from the Lord what I have also delivered up to you, that
the Lord Jesus, in the night in which he was delivered up, took bread,
and having given thanks he broke [it] and said: This is my body being
broken in your behalf. Be doing this in my remembrance. Likewise also
[he took] the cup after having supped, saying: This cup is the new
contract in my blood. Be doing this, as often as you be drinking, in my
remembrance. For as often as you be eating this bread and be drinking
this cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord, until he come. (I
Cor.11: 23-26)
Catholicism:
The
quintessence of these doctrinal decisions consists in this, that in
the Eucharist the Body and Blood of the God-man are
truly, really, and substantially present for the nourishment of our
souls, by reason of the transubstantiation of the bread and wine into
the Body and Blood of Christ, and that in this change of sub- stances
the
unbloody Sacrifice of the New Testament is also contained.
Baptists:
The Lord's Supper is a symbolic act of obedience whereby members of the
church, through partaking of the bread and fruit of the vine,
memorialize the death of the Redeemer and anticipate his Second Coming.
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Exposing
the Error
The Last Supper was a Passover meal,
as observed by the Jews. Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, Go and prepare the Passover for us,
that we may eat it (Lk.22:8). As
they ate, he said to them: I have
earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer (Lk.12:13).
They ate the Passover together, feasted on the Paschal lamb that had
just been slain and some words were spoken. The Lord was not the
Paschal lamb -- he ate it. Yet Paul identified him as such and as a
sacrifice (! Cor. 5:7). The Lord did not identify the bread as
his body, nor the wine as his blood, as Paul and the Synoptics say.
Paul claimed to have received from the Lord what he delivered to the
church at Corinth and his is the first record of a Eucharist. The
synoptic versions must have been amended to support this doctrine. He
once again is the strange shepherd, but his word was authority for the
early Gentile Christians. The "Fathers" honored him and the churchmen
continue to do so even though there is no evidence that the apostolic
church in Jerusalem partook of the Eucharist. Jesus would not have
called the bread his body nor the wine his blood because elsewhere, he
identified
them as the Spirit and the Word. See the next column.
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Declaring
the Truth
Jn.6[53] Truly, truly, I say to you, unless
you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no
life in you; [54] he who
eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise
him up at the last day. [55]
For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. . . . [61] But Jesus,
knowing in himself that his disciples murmured at it, said to them, "Do you take offense at this? [62]
Then what if you were
to see the Son of man ascending where he was before? [63] It
is the spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail; the words that
I have spoken to you are spirit and life. Vs. 63 explains this discourse with some
Jews asserting the superiority of the Lord's bread from heaven to that
of Moses. He hastened to explain to his disciples that he was not
speaking literally of eating his flesh and drinking his blood, because the flesh profits
nothing. It is useless! The Living Bread that one
must eat is the
words that I have spoken. All
his words!
This utterance has no relation
to the Eucharist, but shows instead that Eucharist profits nothing!
This false doctrine serves
the purpose of Paul, the Strange Shepherd,
and conceals the need for receiving the Word.
It
binds men to the
church, not to Jesus. More
& More
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