I am a former Catholic, having left the Catholic Church about three years ago. I left the Catholic Church because I found that many Catholic teachings had no basis in scripture (for example: penance, purgatory, indulgences, veneration of Mary, prayers to the dead, prayers for the dead, etc.) I came to realize that I was saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ and his death on the cross for my sins. I realized that I could not be saved through the sacramental system of the Catholic Church.
I do have a concern with the following scripture verses: John 6:53-56 “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.”
Catholics use these verses to prove that in the Eucharist, they actually receive the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus. What is your understanding of these verses? Thank you.
Donna
This is the one subject that has sent may Christians to their deaths Donna.
- Roman Catholic Law… If anyone denies that in the sacrament of the most Holy Eucharist are contained truly, really and substantially the body and blood together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and consequently the whole Christ, but says that He is in it only as a sign, or figure or force, let him be anathema (Session Thirteen, chapter 8, canon 1). Vatical Council II
- The word anathema means accursed and worthy of death.
- During the Roman Catholic Inquisitions, many were put to death because they refused to say that a priest had the power to pull the Lord Jesus out of heaven to become the Eucharist wafer (the body of Christ), or that he could transform the wine of the mass into the actual blood of Christ.
The Lords Supper has been and always will be a way to remember the Lords sacrifice on the cross! As for John 5:53-56, it’s a spiritual verse that the Catholics made a literal one. Many religious people seem to have a hard time separating the spiritual from the natural! The Savior was trying to tell Nicodemus in John 3 about being Born Again and ole Nic just couldn’t seem to grasp it! John 3:9 Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be? 3:10 Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things? 3:11 Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness. 3:12 If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?
Do you remember seeing the letters I.H.S., on the bread when you took the mass? These initials are supposed to represent, “Iesus Hominum Salvator”, “Jesus the Savior of men”. To the pagans in Rome it meant: “Isis, Horus, & Seb”, in other words, “The Mother, the Child, (reincarnated father) and the Father (or husband who dies) of the gods”, in other words, “The Egyptian Trinity”. When the real Christians saw very quickly the real character of their sacrifice, they refused to partake of it. These Christians were treated as heretics. But Rome saw that the heresy might be to their benefit in controlling the people; and therefore the practice of offering and eating this “unbloody sacrifice” was instituted by the Papacy; and now, throughout the whole bounds of the Roman Catholic communion, it has replaced the simple, but most precious ordinance, the Supper instituted by our Lord Himself.
In performing the mass, the priests are supposed to be given the power to transform a piece of bread into the very body of Christ, and the wine into His blood. Transubstantiation is the changing of one substance into another; hence the elements of bread and wine into the body and blood of the Lord, but this is actually the unbloody sacrifice of the Egyptian sun goddess and not the Lord’s supper. It’s not the crucifying of Christ afresh, but the unbloody sacrifice that is implied in the mass that dismisses a man’s sins! Sounds like blasphemy to me.
The papacy teaches that after the consecration, the body and blood as well as the divine soul of the Lord Himself are present in “the Eucharist”. If you refuse to take the Eucharist, the priest the has the power to deny you of your salvation! In past centuries, if you said the Lords Supper is a symbolic event that brings us to remembrance of the Saviors sacrifice, you would have been burned at the stake or even worse.
Actually, once you receive salvation, you’re in the hands of the Savior, and if you’re in the hands of the Savior, you’re also in the hands of God Almighty. Look at what Jesus said about that: John 10:28 And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. 10:29 My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand. 10:30 I and my Father are one. No one, including a Roman Catholic priest, can deny you salvation given to you by God Himself.
Thank You Timothy