NOT THE BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST

The Roman Catholic Church says that God can turn bread and wine into his son so that they are not bread and wine at all any more but Jesus. This doctrine is called transubstantiation.  God performs this change when the Catholic priest blesses bread and wine on the altar at Mass. 

 

The Roman Catholic Church has a different god from the Christian God. Its god is a piece of bread and a drop of wine into which their God Jesus has been allegedly turned. Their answer is that God is under the form of the bread and wine so that is not true. But it is true. Dogmas have varying levels of importance. You cannot believe bread and wine can become God unless you believe in God first so God is the most important belief and you should be surer he exists than that he can disguise himself as food and drink. Therefore it is blasphemy to say that God is the food and drink and is incarnate as Jesus Christ.  The belief that Jesus is God and that the bread and wine is really God is not as certain or as important as the existence of God.  The Catholics put the belief in Jesus as God and the change of the bread and wine into God before God so it is perfectly right to say they adore a man and bread and wine not God.

Only the gospel of John chapter 6 seems to say the doctrine of the conversion of the bread and wine into God is true but given that John himself and the Law of Moses both state that two unrelated and reliable witnesses have to give a testimony before it can be accepted his gospel can be dismissed even if it does say it.

But it does not say it. At best for Catholics, it says Jesus will feed people with his body and blood but does not say how or if he will turn bread and wine into his body and blood to do it. When the conversion of the food theory is so strange some other strange mystery could be meant here – perhaps one that we cannot even go near grasping. He could be invisibly feeding Christians without communion all the time on the body of Jesus in an invisible and heavenly way. The last supper could picture this feeding. It could be that God wants to be so close to his saints in Heaven that he finds some way of making the transformed body and blood Jesus has had since his resurrection which has ghostly qualities live in them so that in a sense they eat and drink him spiritually.

• John 6:29. "Jesus ... said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent."  Bare belief in Jesus is claimed to be enough.  This denies that sacraments are needed for salvation.  This verse is the key to unlocking the symbolism in John 6 about the eating of Jesus' body and the drinking of his blood.

We only need the grace of God as food and drink so the idea of eating Jesus and drinking his blood is superfluous and would mean God does stupid miracles. Believe that then why not believe that the statues of the Virgin Mary are changed into the body and blood of Mary?

John may be giving what Jesus said but without claiming to know what Jesus meant. John makes it clear that when the Jews did not start on Jesus for advocating the idolatry of worshipping food and drink as God that they knew he did not mean anything like that. Also, Jesus accepted the teaching of the Old Testament that any idol that could not protect itself was not a God at all.  Therefore that the excuse that the God allowed the idol to be harmed for a mysterious purpose was unacceptable so Jesus could not have had the Catholic Eucharist which is bread and wine turned into God in mind for it cannot protect itself against desecration.

Jesus said that bread he will save the world with is his flesh. This bread is symbolic bread because it refers to himself as the bread of life and he was not bread yet and the Catholic doctrine says that God does not become bread but bread becomes God and the bread ceases to be bread. Then the Jews ask, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” At this point Catholics say he would have corrected the Jews had he not meant it literally but instead he went on to say that he who eats him and drinks his blood has life eternal. But why assume the Jews were talking literally? They knew fine well that Jesus did not mean eat literally before?

All believers in the bread and wine changing into the body and blood of Jesus believe that it is the resurrected glorious body of Jesus that is present. But at the last supper, Jesus said it was his body and blood being given up for them in sacrifice so it was the normal pre-resurrection body. They are pretending that the words are literal and it is clear that they know they are not. There is no reason to hold that when Jesus said the bread was his body and the wine his blood that he meant to turn them into himself even if John 6 is about a literal feeding with his body and blood for there is no need for a transformation for that to happen.

 

Suppose Jesus really was taken literally by the Jews and thought to be promising to turn into food and drink.  Jesus told the Samaritan woman at the well that he would give her water that would be everlasting and she asked if he meant he could take away the need to ever go to the well again.  He just kept saying about this water as if he meant it literally.  You see the same device in John 6.  Jesus says something and ignores those who take him literally and talks as if he didn’t hear them in such a way that he might be taken literally.  That is why Catholics saying that when Jesus didn’t correct the Jews for taking him literally the Jews were right to do so is incorrect.  Nothing in the New Testament says the bread and wine of the communion become the body and blood of Jesus.

 

Long after this and John 6, if we turn to John 16, we read that the apostles praised Jesus for speaking plainly at last meaning he never did it before.

 

Jesus said that food going into the body cannot make one unclean for it goes into the stomach and then out of the body into the toilet.  He thought food was not absorbed into the body.  "You are what you eat", is heresy. He said all this in Mark 7.  By eat my flesh and drink my blood in John 6, Jesus had the idea of absorption in mind.  This shows that eat and drink meant absorb the body and blood of Jesus.  Mark 7 eliminates the idea that this eating and drinking meant Jesus turning into real food and drink for these do not morph into the body and are not assimilated.  The stomach holds food but does not absorb it and the food changes in appearance and comes out in the toilet.

 

Some say that in Mark 7, Jesus only meant that the food cannot make you dirty for it can't get into your heart, your heart meaning your character.  It cannot contain power that affects the kind of person you are.  You cannot become a bad person by eating the wrong food.  So you can't become a good person either by eating or drinking.  Yet Romanism claims that communion has the power to make your heart good if you receive it with the right dispositions.  And the power to make your heart bad if you receive it with the wrong dispositions.

 

In actual fact, you can become a bad person by eating the wrong food!  We make ourselves from the food we eat.

 

Paul the apostle wrote in the Bible, 1 Corinthians 11:17) that whoever partakes of the bread and wine without recognising the body is guilty of the body and blood of the Lord and so people should examine themselves first.   Patrick Madrid says Paul means three things cause this guilt.  The person in a state of grave sin so its sacrilege for him to eat and drink.  The person who partakes and doesn't believe the bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ is committing a grave sin.  The person who partakes and doesn't examine himself to make sure he is not guilty of grave sin also commits a grave sin.  See page 113, Where is that in the Bible?  But Paul simply says that whoever partakes of the bread without recognising the body eats and drinks judgement and suffering to himself.  He doesn't say recognising the body in the bread or that the bread is the body but nevertheless the Catholics do believe that it is a grave sin for anyone to take communion while being sceptical that communion is the body and blood of Jesus.  Romanism does not believe that Protestant communion is real communion.  But nevertheless the Protestant intends to partake of communion by taking it.  He or she is in the same position as a Catholic who takes real communion but doesn't believe it is the body of Christ.  Both intend to take communion while believing that bread does not become Jesus.  The intention is the same so if one sins so does the other.  The reality or not of the communion is not the point.  Paul does not say that grave sinners are banned from the bread and wine or that it is a sin for them to partake. 

 

Whoever partakes of the bread and wine without recognising the body is guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.  So Paul says.  Madrid says this is a euphemism for murder (page 113, Where is that in the Bible?).  Christianity thinks there isn't enough guilt in the world causing trouble and making people anti-social so it has to add to it with rubbish like this. It must be the worst form of murder to kill the son of God or the man who is God, Jesus Christ.  Doctrines like that accustom you to feel you are a murderer and live with it.  It won't be surprising if you get the strength to go out and kill somebody and not mind doing so!  Christianity has a nerve accusing a person taking communion who has the sense to disbelieve that it is the body of Jesus of murder and then deny that the Church is a murderer for gathering up treasures and not selling them for the dying poor in Africa.  Nobody can prove I kill Jesus by taking communion while not believing.  But people can prove I kill by neglect when I won't serve the poor in Africa.  The Church says it is not a murderer for it doesn't intend to kill the poor.  But when I take communion I don't intend to kill Jesus either!  And besides, if I won't take my dying cat to the vet knowing the vet could save it, I am simply lying if I say I didn't intend to kill it.  Its actions not words that tell the tale!

The Law of Moses says that even if a miracle worker who knows the future suggests other Gods he is a fraud. If Jesus taught what Catholics say he taught then he was a false prophet for he had them committing idolatry.

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