Posted on 07/09/2015 9:33:36 AM PDT by RnMomof7
The rites in Catholicism mock God, not because sincere people set out to mock God but because there is a very brilliant and totally evil being who hates God, hates humans and hates that God loves us so much that GOD took flesh and dwelt among so He could die the atoning death none of us can die and give His eternal Life to those who just believe Him to be the Savior and Lord. Jesus Himself affirmed this as the mission when He talked with Nicodemus and pointed to the brass snake lifted up so that ANY who looked at it were healed of snake poison bite ... get it? Snakes, serpents in gardens, sin poison, venom, Faith focus?
Except that if you express assurance of your salvation, you are accused of having the sin of *presumption*.
And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me.
(1 Corinthians 11:24)
Peace,
SR
“...He gave Christians a hint that they were not appointed to God’s Wrath and that they would be removed prior to the hour of ‘testing’...”
Interesting point...this should settle the pre-trib rapture thing too. In this case the Christians were warned to remove themselves from the City (Jerusalem) when they saw the Roman army encamped outside the city. ‘Christians, those who took the Word of Life at His Word fled from Jerusalem while the Roman legions diddled’.
Look, Catholics tell us continually that we have to eat the LITERAL body and blood of Christ and that is what He meant when the crowds left Him because they thought LITERAL flesh and blood.
Some Catholics tell us that the actual, true, real change happens after we swallow it so nobody can deny or disprove their claim that it's the LITERAL actual, real flesh and blood.
You just have to take it by faith that the change happened because it's where nobody can see.
How convenient.
And now y'all tell us that it's not LITERAL literal, but figurative literal, or something.
That we're not really eating the LITERAL flesh and blood, but something that changes into it, or something like that.
Y'all want to get on the same page?
The simplest, easiest explanation is that it's real, literal, actual bread and wine that represents a spiritual reality. It's a picture in the physical that we humans need to understand the spiritual truth that Jesus was teaching. And it is NOT that Jesus is teaching us to violate the perpetual ordinance given before the Law, reiterated in the Law and again reiterated under the New Covenant, that the eating of blood is expressly forbidden by God.
The interpretation of the bread and wine being nothing more than symbolic representation of spiritual truths fits the best with overall interpretation of Scripture and does not contradict the weigh of teaching throughout Scripture to NEVER eat the blood.
Jesus does not inhabit a wheat wafer, a host, or anything other than the believer, who is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Christ in me, the Hope of glory.
I don't need to eat Him to have Him living in me. He's in there 24/7. If He's already there, I don't have to do anything to put Him there where He already is.
Do those that go to communion ever hunger and thirst ?
The Passover was a remembrance of the Jews being sustained in the desert by manna ....
The Matzo ..the unleavened bread of the passover represented the manna in the desert .. He was explaining the passover memorial, was also a prefigurement of the cross.. ..He took the bread and broke it... just as His body would be broken ...
Peter NEVER ASKED FOR THE BREAD...He said that Jesus had the WORDS of eternal life...not the bread
(((((( crickets ))))))
Speaking of emabarrassment, when I was a catholic, the thing that embarrassed me the most, was holy water. I couldn't think of anything more embarrassing than that 😇
The disciples who believed Jesus and were 'down for the whole mission' spoke of the Words of Eternal Life, not bread or manna or blood drinking. Those who walked away were focused upon the flesh and the blood and they were so focused on what they could do to be worthy that the violation of the laws of Moses eliminated Jesus as anything they would follow.
I mean, look at what they asked Jesus: 'what works must we do?'! It's the age old barrier that secret pride in self erects, looking for how to do it for God or how to do it to be worthy of Grace, as if what they can do is going to get accounted for them in some weighing exercise, or their good livin' will outweigh the bad livin'.
The ones who walked away had asked 'what must we do to earn this bread, this forever food from God?' Jesus's answer didn't suit their self pride, so they settled upon the law as their shield from seeing the Truth of what Jesus was telling them, that just believing is what God requires. When that didn't suit them, Jesus used sarcasm to drive them out all together.
The Jews had reached the point that even their Passover meals were not spiritual but exercises in Pride at being the chosen people. What Jesus came to do was fufill the alw the Jews beleievd would weigh them worthy of eternal life. It cannot, as Paul explained over and over.
It matters not that cannibalism is forbidden in Scripture?
Did you know that “holy water” is water the priest has exorcised ? So it has no demons in it
Scientology? Okay. You got me, Elsie. Could you recommend a de-programming clinic? Perhaps, a RC, Presby, Unitarian Mormon truck stop preachin’ agnostic zen sufi, one? Thank you.
They got those all over Southern Utah, don’t they?
Campion: No, it was exactly one year before that. At the Passover, see Jn 6:4.
Yes, actually on Nisan 3, one year and ten days before the evening of the last supper. But this does not negate the point that dartuser is making, which is really found in verse 35:
"Then Jesus said to them, 'I Am myself continuously being The Bread of The Absolute Life. The one coming to me positively shall not become hungry. And the one continually committing trust unto me poaitively shall not ever thirst.'" (John 6:35 A Precise Translation)
The context of this is as follows:
(1) "Them" in verse 35is the huge crowd of people that was following him as pseudo-disciples, merely for the sake of the bread (and fishes) that he had supplied them, amounting about two hundred denarii worth.
(2) Among them and hearing Him were also His committed student group, who recorded this event.
(3) Quite apparently, the crowd had brought along their own liquid refreshments, wine and/or water, since they did not complain of thirst at the great feeding the day before or on this day.
(4) Note that Lake Genessaret was not very far away, as a generous source of water.
(5) Note also that the day before, this crowd had been processionally coming to Him to inquire of His teaching, His Words, and as they came He lifted up his eyes and gazed on them with rapt attention, probably causing His Own companions to observe and estimate the size of the crowd, and testing the disciples as to how to feed the crowd,
(6) Jesus' method was always teaching in parables, and He has already shown them how to understand the disciple-winning technique of sowing seed (Mt. 13:1-34. He also taught the parable of wells of living spiritual water (Jn. 4:6-14).
(7)Now, He's setting up another teaching demonstration to gauge His disciples' ability to interpret a parable. He's going to use the figurative-literal citation of equating literal bread with the Word of God as a metaphor (Mt. 4:4, Lk.4:4). First, He's going to show them that he has the unparallelled supernatural power to literally feed the crowd, and do it by capitalizing on the faith of a child who surrenders his lunch basket to the Rabbi.
(8) Then the next day, the crowd found him (as He with foreknowledge expected), and he got the crowd seated, and began to teach them again, with the parable of Himself being the Bread from Heaven, the Living Word of The God.
That is the context.
The meaning transmitted by the verse John 6:35 is:
(1) The action of responding to his invitation to come (approach intellectually) unto Him (re Mt. 11:28-29) and learn from Him is the figurative equivalent of being spiritually fed with the Bread of the Word of God, as the day before He had fed them with the literal bread for their physical hunger, and when one comes to Him and His Word, he/she no longer needs to be spiritually hungry.
(2) To continually commit unreserved trust in Him (and in His Word) is figuratively equivalent to never needing to have spiritual thirst for the Word of God, in like fashion as they had continually been close enough to a vast supply of physical water in the lake of Galilee for their physical thirst-quenching.needs.
That is why this whole drama is not about the literal Remembrance supper of the Lord (which is simply a taking of the tokens that remind us of His Passion), but is the invitation to become a committed follower of Him and His Word in company and companionship of other such disciples.
For us, this passage is a lesson in how to recognize and employ figurative language when it is to be distinguished from pedestrian simple literal expressions which by themselves have no spiritual value.
This passage does not lend any support to the doctrine of transubstantiation, dreamed up by the illiteral unimaginative natural mind (1 Cor. 2:14) for the illiterate participant, and its lack of literally changing the substance of the physical components dismisses the doctrine as having any relation to this passage.
No, I didn't know that. I asked a priest once, to bless my new missal. I don't know why I had one, because I could never follow along with the mass. I always lost my place. All he did, was make a sign of the cross over my missal. I thought, that's it? That's all there is? The other thing that embarrassed me, was exactly what we discuss a lot, the Eucharist. I believed it was true, but it embarrassed me.
When the crowd demanded to know what they must do to do the work God requires they were echoing the demands made upon Moses that resulted in God sending Moses off of the Mountain with the laws of sin and death! The 'crowd' demanded to know what they could do to be righteous enough for eternal life.
The significance of this self-centered demand should not escape our attention because it is the same frame of reference hidden deep in the heart of asserting that someone, if diligent enough at the task, can be worthy of eternal life through the catholic mass regimen.
Jesus knew the hearts of those in the crowd pressing for the requirements to obtain eternal life. Jesus knew they were asking from the human nature side, of pride in self. The Truth of that is right there illustrated in the verses. They want the man who is doing miracles, that just must be result of God with the man, to tell them what they must do so they can be doing what God requires to earn eternal life (remember the words of Nicodemus, "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do, unless God is with him." John 3:2).
When Nicodemus came asking how to be pleasing to God, to have eternal life, Nic was seeking 'what must I do to earn or be worthy of eternal life.' Jesus answered that he must be born again, born from above. Still focused upon what a man can do to earn eternal life, Nic trapped himself by focusing on the birth process from a carnal perspective. Jesus quickly shifted his focus to the spiritual because He knew Nicodemus was sincerely seeking to know what God wanted from him to have eternal life. Jesus could also know Nic's heart, and perhaps heavy on Nic's heart was the spiritual needs of His people, though he still tried to reduce the risks of being rejected by the Sanhedrin for seeking advice from Jesus.
At that stage Jesus rewarded sincerity with an insight not even found in the scriptures Nicodemus had studied all his adult life, that as the serpent was raised up in the desert to heal venomous snake bites, so the Son of Man must be lifted up to heal the bite of sin, purge the satanic poison. In both cases Jesus is telling Nicodemus that it is faith which brings healing, not the actual object upon which we focus. The people gathering around Jesus, who were on the verge of seizing Him beside the lake, were not focused on faith. They were focused on their bellies (Jesus told them they sought Him not for wisdom or knowledge but because they had been filled with the food miracle John 6:26).
Jesus responds to what is in their pride perspective --they wanted to seize HIm and take HIm to be their conquering King. He tells them in 6;27 to work for the food that remains for eternal life. He is about to split the group into two factions: one faction is focused on their self worth, their self empowerment to earn that which Jesus knows cannot be earned and must be given by The Grace of God responding to faith, responding with belief in Who God has sent for their salvation. He knows up front that one group will continue to focus upon the carnal and seek a means to work their way to worthiness. They had an agenda, to get the conquering King out in front and cast off Roman rule. He also knows there is a small cadre of those who already have learned to focus upon the spiritual in what Jesus says, for His are the Words of Eternal Life.
Jesus does just what He said He had come to do: Matthew 10:34-36 ... He had not come to bring Peace, and the one group, the much larger group, had every intention of forcing Him to bring Peace by this miraculous power He demonstrated with the five loaves and two fishes. The larger crowd could not get enough of this spectacular stuff! They demanded more, perhaps believing they could catch Him up in the power rush! Of course that is satanic in origins. Satan wanted to out the Messiah on satan's terms, not God's timing.
When Jesus answered their demand to know what God requires 'they do' to be worthy of God's rewards, Jesus tells them the same thing He told Nicodemus, He just phrased it a little differently. He told them to focus faith upon the one God has sent for their healing of the sin disease.
This of course did not fit with the intentions they had when pursuing Him to the other side of the lake! They wanted to carry Him off to be their King. Did the demand for a king that resulted in Saul not remain in their minds as a lesson to not demand their own choices? Apparently the human pride thing is too powerful for 'God's chosen people' to get around in order to see the Truth. With some, a large sum, they demand to know what work they can do to earn / be worthy of what God gives freely in response to faithing in Whom He has sent and has told us repeatedly cannot be earned; it is a Gift of God.
So, how does Jesus rid His entourage of these works based followers? With divine sarcasm! The irony is that the catholic faith system is made up of the very same error which Jesus purged from His followers!
The faithful following of the sacramental trail, with essential hallmarks like taking Mass as often as possible and penance (talk about earning something!), and fidelity to Mary, and repetitions of memorized phrases, etc. All that is working to be worthy. Jesus gave the ironic solution by sarcastically pointing to 'okay, you want to earn this Gift, violate the Laws of Moses by eating my flesh and drinking my blood. You think you can earn eternal life, violate the laws of Moses and eat my flesh and drink my blood to get God's Life in you.' Jesus used the spear of irony to strike at the heart of their works based trust.
But Jesus didn't leave the other of the groups without understanding. He told them that taking in the flesh profits not at all, that eating His flesh and drinking His literal blood has no spiritual value. And we know that small group got the sarcasm because Peter says, 'Lord, you have the Words of Eternal Life.' Peter didn't say 'you have the flesh we need to eat or the blood we need to drink'. Peter was learning that the things Jesus emphasized ALWAYS were aimed at spiritual Truths.
So, what was one of the most important lessons in John 6? You cannot earn eternal life. It must come by faith, for only God has the righteousness necessary to inhabit His eternity with Him.
Catholicism is a works based religion, in many ways similar to Mormonism in that a specified system of religious duty is the means to 'obtain' eternal life.
And with that, I will guarantee there are catholic minds who have had the decency to read all the way through to here and yet will have burble up in their minds 'Jesus said, "Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you." These are they whom Jesus used divine sarcasm on to send them out of the mission He was following. 'For it is by faith you are saved, not of works lest any man or woman boast.'
When I was more active in the FR Wars of Religion, the chief benefit to me was a deepened understanding of the Incarnation.
I also sympathized more and more with Dorothy Sayer's suggestion that we should start teaching disputation to kids at around 10-11 years old ... when they're smart alecs anyway. She meant real disputation, not sophistry fests, with people staying on topic and being called out by the teacher for sophistries and fallacies.
My fifth grade teacher was doing post-graduate work in logic at Columbia. As soon as we got the required stuff out of the way, we would do logic puzzles. He also read Animal Farm to us! Can you imagine that today?
Anyway, I wish the opponents of the dogma would read the relevant part of the Summa. It would save time.
Thanks again.
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