Posted on 07/20/2019 3:29:28 PM PDT by ReformationFan
This Saturday marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, when astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first people in history to walk on the Moon. But it’s also the anniversary of the a lesser known event—the first celebration of the Lord’s Supper on the Moon.
Here’s are nine things you should know about the first communion service on the Moon.
1. In 1969, Edwin Eugene “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. was an elder at Webster Presbyterian Church, a congregation just outside of Houston, Texas. He told the lead pastor of his church, Dean Woodruff, that he had “been struggling to find the right symbol for the first lunar landing.” “We wanted to express our feeling that what man was doing in this mission transcended electronics and computers and rockets,” Aldrin told Guideposts magazine in 1970. “One of the principal symbols,” Woodruff said, “is that God reveals himself in the common elements of everyday life.” Traditionally, these elements are bread and wine—common foods in Bible days and typical products of man’s labor.
2. Aldrin got the idea for the communion ceremony while at Cape Kennedy working with the “sophisticated tools of the space effort.” “It occurred to me that these tools were the typical elements of life today,” Aldrin said. “I wondered if it might be possible to take communion on the moon, symbolizing the thought that God was revealing himself there too, as man reached out into the universe. For there are many of us in the NASA program who do trust that what we are doing is part of God’s eternal plan for man.”
3. The communion bread was carried in a plastic packet, the way regular inflight food is wrapped. Because there was just enough gravity on the moon for liquid to pour, Aldrin wanted to pour the wine into a chalice from his church. Woodruff had presented him a silver cup that was small and light enough that it could be carried in the astronaut’s personal-preference kit.
4. Aldrin had originally planned to share the event with the world over the radio. But the atheist activist Madalyn Murray O’Hair had recently sued NASA after Apollo 8 astronauts read the Book of Genesis during a broadcast made on Christmas Day 1968, when they became the first humans to orbit the moon. O’Hair’s case claiming that the astronauts had violated the constitutional separation between church and state was dismissed. Yet NASA was still wary of causing more controversy. Aldrin says his fellow astronaut Deke Slayton, who ran the Apollo 11 flight crew operations, told him to tone down his pre-communion message. “Go ahead and have communion, but keep your comments more general,” Slayton advised.
5. After unpacking the elements from their flight packets and laying them on a small table in front of the abort guidance system computer, Aldrin radioed back to NASA with this message:
Houston, this is Eagle. This is the LM Pilot speaking. I would like to request a few moments of silence. I would like to invite each person listening in, wherever and whomever he may be, to contemplate for a moment the events of the past few hours and to invite each person listening, wherever and whomever he may be, to contemplate for a moment the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his own individual way.
6. Before taking communion, Aldrin read from John 15:5, which he had handwritten on a scrap of paper—”I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me, and I in him, will bear much fruit, for you can do nothing without me.”
7. After radioing in his message and reading the Scripture verse, Aldrin partook of the Supper. Fellow astronaut Neil Armstrong looked on quietly but did not participate. “I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me,” Aldrin says. “In the one-sixth gravity of the moon the wine curled slowly and gracefully up the side of the cup. It was interesting to think that the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the first food eaten there, were communion elements.” After taking the elements, Aldrin says he “sensed especially strongly my unity with our church back home, and with the church everywhere.”
8. Every year, since the moon landing, the Webster Presbyterian Church of Houston, Texas, commemorates Aldrin’s moon communion service. “It’s kind of a tradition around here,” Gene Fisseler said in 1999. “It’s still church. It’s not about the moon. It’s not about the astronauts. It’s still about church. But we feel like it’s an important tradition here in this church.”
9. The communion ceremony was dramatized in an episode of From the Earth to the Moon, a 12-part HBO television miniseries from 1998. Buzz Aldrin was played by actor Bryan Cranston.
Interestingly, Jesus was not ordained nor certified by anyone. In fact, He was crucified by the “church” leaders of His day. I am authorized by Christ to celebrate the Lord’s Supper as is anyone who calls on the Lord- in fact, He directed his disciples to celebrate His death and atoning sacrifice with simple elements of bread and wine. No ritual, no magic, just remembrance of His grace towards sinful man.
My wife and I celebrate the Lords Supper nearly every day. I am free and who the Son makes free is free indeed.
At communion our pastor usually says something like “every time that you eat of this bread and drink of this wine you are proclaiming the saving death of Jesus”.
I suppose he means this Communion bread and wine, but I’m guessing Jesus would be delighted to have us, whenever we sit down to eat with other believers, to treat a normal meal as communion.
And of course he would think it silly to have so many rules around it. Just like he had issues with all of the rules the Pharisees had.
You and your wife are lucky to have each other. My old man always made of point of telling me when it came time to be married that we should be “equally yoked”. Of course at 18 years old I thought that was pretty old-fashioned. Luckily by the time I got married that was a main factor.
Going through difficult times, I can’t imagine being married to someone without similar beliefs in God.
We should be rejoicing in the fact that this act took place AT ALL. Nowadays, we are more likely to get a reading of the Manifesto or some statist/environmentalist/Antifa claptrap, while kneeling. Or worse yet...what if the USSR beat us to it....
The combatants in WWI held a truce on Christmas Day 1914. Can't we all sing God Bless America tonight?
Here is Buzz Aldrin's handwritten card with the Bible verse he read silently.
“(It is the rejection of the Eucharist that is continued by Protestants today)”
They reason they left is they took it literal just like you rcc’s do and they knew it was a sin according to the commandment of God, the Law of Moses and the New Covenant Church.
If they would have taken the statement in the faith of Jesus Christ and Him alone they would have realized the statement was spiritual, John 4:24 and they would have not condemned themselves.
The "proclaiming" comes from 1 Corinthians 11:26: For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come.
Contextually meaning by taking part in this communal meal then they were to effectually remember the Lord's death by which He purchased them ("ye are bought with a price:" 1 Corinthians 6:20) not just individually but as a body ("which he hath purchased with his own blood:" Acts 20:28 KJV), by showing love for each other in sharing food, thus acknowledging union with Christ and each other, "For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread," (1 Corinthians 10:17) by and in fellowship/communion with Christ.
Likewise pagans had "fellowship with with devils" (1 Corinthians 10:20) in their dedicatory feasts, which as specifically done in remembrance of the Lord's death (and thus what is signified) is a sacrificial offering, but not for sin.
However, this is not what the Corinthians were doing as a body, for instead of effectually remembering the Lord's death and thus what it signified, they were hypocritically acting contrary to it, by selfishly eating independently and to the full while effectively treating other holy blood-bought members as outcast, and thus they actually were not coming together to eat the Lord's supper:
Now in this that I declare unto you I praise you not, that ye come together not for the better, but for the worse . (1 Corinthians 11:17)
When ye come together therefore into one place, this is not to eat the Lord’s supper. For in eating every one taketh before other his own supper : and one is hungry, and another is drunken. What? have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? or despise ye the church of God, and shame them that have not ? What shall I say to you? shall I praise you in this? I praise you not. (1 Corinthians 11:20-22)
For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew [kataggellō: preach, declare] the Lord’s death till he come. (1 Corinthians 11:26)
But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body . (1 Corinthians 11:28-29)
And contextually the body which they failed to recognize was the body of Christ (which also is the subject of the next chapter, and elsewhere defines the church as the body of Christ, which the apostle Paul persecuted) by eating independently and ignoring others in need and shaming them. For we can hardly be remembering the Lord's death by which He purchased us and made the church His body if we are acting contrary to the holiness and love that Christ showed by dying for us.
This contrariness being the problem, the solution was
But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup...Wherefore, my brethren, when ye come together to eat, tarry one for another. And if any man hunger, let him eat at home; that ye come not together unto condemnation. And the rest will I set in order when I come. (1 Corinthians 11:28,33-34)
And even if we are not Catholics who focus is on receiving their wafer-god (and some resent interaction with other members during their service), or acting contrary to effectually remembering the Lord's death as blatantly as the Corinthians were - which also includes commitment to the holy character it is supposed to have (If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are: 1 Corinthians 3:17), at best I think we too often remember the Lord's death abstractly from what it accomplished as regards making us one body of believers purchased by the sinless shed blood of Christ. At least I come short in it.
And yet one can hardly be said to be taking "Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you," (1 Corinthians 11:24) and "Drink ye all of it; For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins" (Matthew 26:27-28) when, contrary to the manifestly physical crucified body and shed blood of Christ - which looked, smelled, behaved and would scientifically test as being real human flesh - this "true body and blood" called the "Eucharist" appears as bread and wine - which looks, smells, behaves and would scientifically test as being simply bread and wine.
Yet in Catholic theology the bread and wine do not even exist, but neither would the Eucharist scientifically test as being human, which is contrary to the Christ of Scripture, which emphasizes the manifest real physicality of the incarnated Christ (That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life: This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth. (1 John 1:1; 5:6) , in contrast to a christ whose appearance did not correspond to what He physically was. (For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist: 2 John 7)
To take the "words of consecration" plainly literally would mean that what the apostles consumed was manifestly the same real manifestly human body and blood that proved that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.
However, since (apart from a few purported Eucharistic miracles) Catholic priests cannot perform a literal change of bread and or wine into the same manifestly physical body and blood of Christ, then Catholicism had to appeal to faith in Catholicism (under the premise that God is behind it), and attempt to explain it with a contrived metaphysical explanation.
What started the Protestant Reformation was the corruption of the Catholic church and the desire to get back to Scripture, which Catholics claim to have written.
Communion itself is not what non-Catholics reject, it's the teaching that goes against all the Scripture that forbids the consumption of blood.
Eating human flesh is cannibalism and drinking blood is strictly forbidden by God, which is probably why certain groups practice it.
Peter himself said that he had never eaten anything unclean. which would mean that even he did not consider the Last Supper with Jesus to be LITERAL flesh and blood.
Nor could Jesus command people to break the Law and therefore sin.
Or are you going to try to convince us that Jesus commanded people to sin just before He went to the cross?
That really doesn’t answer the question.
Everyone last one of us is in a state of sin of some kind or other simply by virtue of the fact that we are still living on this planet.
However, I think more in mind is the concept of known, egregious, unrepentant sin of the priest. Things like sexual sin, or other mortal sins that the priest is continuing to participate in. I don’t need to give examples. Anyone can think of them themselves.
In John 6 we see those turning away from Jesus because they could not reason the issue in any way other than the carnal mindset, and their pride in following the law overwhelmed their seeing something in the spiritual sense rather than their carnal sense.
In Catholicism we see the adherents to that religion eager to be carnal ( thus be in condemnation) so they can take pride in their 'doing', as if being obedient (while actually being in disgusting opposition to the Command from God which was given long before the Ten Commandments yet was repeated by the earliest council of the Apostles as seen in Acts 15)!
The Catholic's refusal to see the issue in any way but the carnal (eating 'real flesh' and 'real blood' and taking into their mouths 'the soul of and the spirit of' Jesus is proof of the deep-seated pride of self accomplishment), being obedient and thus deserving, gaining merit toward eternal life. The obscenity standing in stark evidence of a works based religion in opposition to the Grace of God in Christ Jesus.
The thrust of Catholic Eucharistic teaching empowers a priesthood, like the Nicolaitans which Jesus proclaimed he hated. It is also satan's way of empowering the religion he splintered off from Christianity, the religion that claims to be the one holy org.
Well and truly stated. Amen
John 6:63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.
As usual, Jesus spoke to the crowds in parable form.
“However, this is not what the Corinthians were doing as a body, for instead of effectually remembering the Lord’s death and thus what it signified, they were hypocritically acting contrary to it, by selfishly eating independently and to the full while effectively treating other holy blood-bought members as outcast, and thus they actually were not coming together to eat the Lord’s supper:” They were failing to discern the Body of Christ of which they were but a member and the one’s they were shunning also members.
I would like to know where this information (that he was Cahtolic) came from as well. If he was not, and he was a “devout Christian” as your article states, then why did he not participate in the lunar communion?
Indeed. Mrs. Warrior and I celebrate His body broken for ours ( by HIS stripes we ARE healed) and by the shedding of HIS Blood (for the remission of MY sins/sinfulness) we follow the scriptural pattern given both by the LORD Himself in Luke etc and Corinthians, not doing so lightly but as pat of our morning devotions and prayer time. Certainly we are in situation where we have the time to do so patiently and reverently in our current circumstance ( disabled wife, retired and responsible husband).
I never understood why most congregations rarely celebrate the Lords Supper. It is a natural thing for a saved person to want, in my experience. I see folks make it into some ritual, solemn rarity surrounded in wisps of smoke and false /self righteousness, but for me and my house, we do so whenever we gather. Matter of fact, granddaughter birthday today, all three grands and two of the children in attendance, first we celebrate Jesus, the we recognize the birthday girl. Perspective.
Jesus said we are to be Prophets ( speaking Gods Word) Priests ( administering His love and Grace) and Kings ( ruling our circumstances with faith and hope in His providence and care). I endeavor to be that, in His Name.
Indeed. And “where two or three are gathered in My Name, I am in the midst”. The Body of Christ in many folds, but one flock.
NO...As a good Catholic you wrested the scriptures (2Pet. 3:16) to obviously lead people astray from the written word of God...According to your reference you jumped from John 6:56 to John 6:66...You don't understand those all important scriptures in between, or you just left them out in an attempt to deceive people???
Is that how the Catholic religion taught you??? You'd better look for a more honest teacher...
Mat 13:10 And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables?
Mat 13:11 He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.
Mat 13:12 For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.
Mar 8:17 And when Jesus knew it, he saith unto them, Why reason ye, because ye have no bread? perceive ye not yet, neither understand? have ye your heart yet hardened?
Mar 8:18 Having eyes, see ye not? and having ears, hear ye not? and do ye not remember?
Mar 8:19 When I brake the five loaves among five thousand, how many baskets full of fragments took ye up? They say unto him, Twelve.
Mat 13:13 Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.
Mat 13:14 And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive:
Mat 13:15 For this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.
Mat 13:16 But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear.
So of course Jesus was speaking of spiritual truths in another one of his parables...There were followers (disciples) who saw the miracles Jesus performed but STILL didn't believe...Jesus knew he was wasting his time with these people so he had to thin the crowd so those in the back who couldn't hear him speak could move closer to the front...
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