While Ephraim used flowery language, the substance of what he wrote is in Scripture:
And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. Matthew 26:26
Whatever else you may want to say about the Last Supper discourse, there is no denying that in this verse, Jesus took bread, blessed it, and said that it was His body.
Some aver that He was merely being symbolic; others say that He was instructing that, in some mysterious way beyond our understanding, He literally transforms bread into His body.
You choose to believe what you want, I believe that there is no limit to what God can do. If He says that He can transform bread into His body, I believe Him.
Peace,
Rich
Ah, so we have arrived. I wondered how long it would take you to get to saying something like, "God can do whatever He wants to do."
I point out that what your earlier quote said went very, very far beyond what God Himself inspired in Scripture.
Now you have come back to the Words of Christ and stopped at one phrase.
Christ also said He was a door. If He wanted to turn Himself into a door, I guess by this argument, you will believe, right? He also said, I am the true vine. Guess you will believe He is really a vine, right?
There is an entire collection of inspired writings you must study to understand what was said and how the Apostles understood it. They were in the room, as you point out. Yet there is no evidence in Scripture that they ever had priests, ever turned bread and wine into body and blood. Never commanded. No example of this being replicated or believed.
I am always a bit astounded when someone turns their nose up at studying God's Word and happily substitutes the words of mortals. But then, that used to be me too!
And Jesus was also recorded as saying that He was drinking the fruit of the vine.
Why don’t Catholics then believe that it was simply wine REPRESENTING His blood.
Especially in light of the fact that drinking blood would have violated the Law that Jesus came to fulfill, not abolish, and would have caused Him and His disciples to sin, thus making Him a sinner, not capable of being the spotless lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world?
But the *God can do anything* is a false premise. God CANNOT do *anything*.
He cannot lie, He cannot change, He cannot deny Himself.
Which is a terrible and invalid basis for doctrine, and a slippery slope that would sanction Mormonic magic underwear and dwelling on the planet Kolob. Etc.
If He says that He can transform bread into His body, I believe Him.
But which is simply begging the question, presuming the very thing that needs to be proved, but which is utterly absent in the life of the NT church, which is interpretive of the gospels. Only the symbolic position easily conflates with the totality of Scripture, while relying in a purely literal hermeneutic one can hold that David believed in transubstantiation, since he clearly said that water was the blood of men and poured it out unto the Lord, and thus the men who brought it would be priest.
And David longed, and said, Oh that one would give me drink of the water of the well of Beth–lehem, which is by the gate! And the three mighty men brake through the host of the Philistines, and drew water out of the well of Beth–lehem, that was by the gate, and took it, and brought it to David: nevertheless he would not drink thereof, but poured it out unto the Lord. And he said, Be it far from me, O Lord, that I should do this: is not this the blood of the men that went in jeopardy of their lives? therefore he would not drink it. These things did these three mighty men. (2 Samuel 23:15-17)
More by God's grace.