That's not Christ. That's Clinton.
Many of his disciples deserted Christ because they could not accept His teaching about His Body and Blood. And when they began to leave, Christ didn't amend or clarify His words - instead He confirmed that He did indeed mean them to eat His Body and drink His Blood.
The faithful disciples (however) stayed with Christ because they recognized that He was the Son of the living God. They were the first to eat His Body and drink His Blood at the Last Supper.
Since I'm not Protestant, I can't speak to the Protestant position. However, the BIBLE position is that Christ knew that (unlike modern Catholics, apparently) His disciples would be familiar enough with the Old Testament concepts surrounding "eating the Word of God" as it was found in some of the prophets that He could rightly expect them to understand that He was speaking figuratively.
In other words, He was assuming tacit knowledge and the ability to systematically comprehend what He said in light of previous Scripture.
So, when Christ told His disciples, “I am the door,” or “I am the vine,” do you think He was lying to them since He obviously didn’t mean these things literally?
So ... the Protestant position on this is that Christ deliberately lied to his disciples to see which ones of them would have enough faith to recognize that he was lying?Blaspheme duly noted.