Saturday, June 30, 2012
Saturday, June 23, 2012
Friday, June 15, 2012
Artical on Communion
COMMUNION
(LITERAL OR SPIRITUAL?)
Let's start this pamphlet by looking at the traditional view of what is called communion. Let's see what the word communion really means. We will look at the scripture that this ritual is based on. We will also take a look at when this tradition began.
The word communion means, fellowship, association, community, communion, joint participation, intercourse.
Strongs # 2842 is used for the word communion and fellowship.
a) The share which one has in anything, participation
b) Intercourse, fellowship, intimacy
1) The right hand as a sign and pledge of fellowship (in fulfilling the apostolic office)
c) A gift jointly contributed, a collection, a contribution, as exhibiting an embodiment and proof of fellowship.
Now we will look at the scripture that the communion ritual is based on.
Luke 22:15 And he said unto them, With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer:
16For I say unto you, I will not any more eat thereof, until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God.
17And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and said, Take this, and divide it among yourselves:
18For I say unto you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine, until the kingdom of God shall come.
19And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, this is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me.
20Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, this cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you.
For us to really understand what was taking place here , we have to look at the whole setting of scripture. A look at verse 15 tells us that they were eating the PASSOVER. We must ask ourselves, are we supposed to observe Passover in this age or is there a spiritual application for us today.
Let's take a look at some scriptures on the subject.
Hebrews 10:1For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect.
Hebrews 10:9 Then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first that he may establish the second.
10By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
1 Corinthians 5:7 Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us.
It is evident that the old (Mosaic law) was taken away. This includes the passover. Today Jesus is our passover.
Let's take a look at the passover from The book of Exodus. ALL the elements of the passover in the old covenant has a SPIRITUAL application under the new covenant.
Exodus 12:1-23
And the LORD spake unto Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt saying,
2This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you.
3Speak ye unto all the congregation of Israel, saying, In the tenth day of this month they shall take to them every man a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, a lamb for an house:
4And if the household be too little for the lamb, let him and his neighbour next unto his house take it according to the number of the souls; every man according to his eating shall make your count for the lamb.
5Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year: ye shall take it out from the sheep, or from the goats:
6And ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month: and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening.
7And they shall take of the blood, and strike it on the two side posts and on the upper door post of the houses, wherein they shall eat it.
8And they shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire, and unleavened bread; and with bitter herbs they shall eat it.
9Eat not of it raw, nor sodden at all with water, but roast with fire; his head with his legs, and with the purtenance thereof.
22And ye shall take a bunch of hyssop, and dip it in the blood that is in the bason, and strike the lintel and the two side posts with the blood that is in the bason; and none of you shall go out at the door of his house until the morning.
23For the LORD will pass through to smite the Egyptians; and when he seeth the blood upon the lintel, and on the two side posts, the LORD will pass over the door, and will not suffer the destroyer to come in unto your houses to smite you.
17And ye shall observe the feast of unleavened bread; for in this selfsame day have I brought your armies out of the land of Egypt: therefore shall ye observe this day in your generations by an ordinance for ever.
Your lamb shall be without blemish.
Jesus is our lamb. He was without sin.
2 Corinthians 5:21 For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
Male of the first year.
Kill it in the evening.
The crucifixion took place at the end of the dispensation of law. The church age is a new day. A day of greater things.
Strike it on the two side posts and
on the upperdoor post of the houses.
Striking the door posts was done on the first Passover. Jesus died once for all.
Hebrews 10:9 Then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second.
10By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
11And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins:
12But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God;
13From henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool.
14For by one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified.
18Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin.
Eat the flesh in that night.
Roast with fire.
Unleavened bread.
With bitter herbs they shall eat it.
Eat not of it raw, nor sodden at all with water, but roast with fire; his head with his legs.
Ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance forever.
1 Corinthians 5:8 Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
Seven days shall ye eat unleavened bread; even the first day ye shall put away leaven out of your houses: for whosoever eateth leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that soul shall be cut off from Israel.
No manner of work shall be done in them.
And ye shall take a bunch of hyssop, and dip it in the blood that is in the bason, and strike the lintel and the two side posts with the blood that is in the bason.
23For the LORD will pass through to smite the Egyptians; and when he seeth the blood upon the lintel, and on the two side posts, the LORD will pass over the door, and will not suffer the destroyer to come in unto your houses to smite you.
Therefore shall ye observe this day in your generations by an ordinance for ever.
PASSOVER
Spiritual meanings
Exodus 12: 2 Beginning of months= Our life with Christ starts when we accept his blood for the forgiveness of our sins.
Exodus 12: 3-4 To be saved, everyone must partake of the lamb of God. The lamb was kept up four days before killing it. Jesus entered Jerusalem
Exodus 12:5 Jesus was without blemish, he had no sin.
Jesus is the Lamb of God. John 1:29. 1 Peter 1:19. The lamb was roasted denoting the suffering of Jesus at his crucifixion. The wrath of God is like a fire; Jesus was made a curse for us.
Exodus 12:46 Not a bone was broken. (John 19:33-36.) Jesus
Strength was unbroken.
Exodus 12:6 Jesus was crucified in the evening.
Exodus 12: 7 The blood was sprinkled on the door post. The blood was applied to the door post this first Passover. It wasn't repeated in future Passovers. Jesus blood was shed once and for all. We must never crucify him again. (Hebrews 10:10) By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
Jesus is the door. John 10:9. Jesus blood being shed is not enough; it must be applied to our hearts. Verse 22, Hyssop was used to apply the blood. Now it is applied by faith.
The blood was put in a basin. The basin is a type of the everlasting covenant.
When we apply his blood, we are protected from eternal death.
Don't apply the blood on the threshold to be trampled under foot.
Hebrews 10:29. Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace?
The blood had to be applied before they went to sleep. We must apply the blood of Jesus before we go to our eternal sleep.
Exodus 12: 8 Unleavened bread.
1Corin.5:6 Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?
7
Purge out therefore the old leaven that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us:
8
Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
Exodus 12: 8 Bitter herbs. This was to remember the bitter bondage in Egypt
Exodus 12: 9 The roasting typified the suffering of Christ.
Exodus 12: 10 We don't just look upon the lamb of God, we eat it all. We must take his cross (or yoke) as well as his crown.
1 Corin. 11: 28 But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup.
29 For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body.
What is it that would make you unworthy?
Exodus 12:48 And when a stranger shall sojourn with thee, and will keep the passover to the LORD, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near and keep it; and he shall be as one that is born in the land: for no uncircumcised person shall eat thereof.
Romans 2: 28 For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh:
29 But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.
Exodus 12:11 They ate in a departing posture. When we partake, we MUST depart from sin. This world is not our home. Heb 13:14
For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come.
Exodus 12:13 A token is a substitute for the real thing.
Exodus 12:43 And the LORD said unto Moses and Aaron, This is the ordinance of the Passover: There shall no stranger eat thereof.
Exodus 12:48
And when a stranger shall sojourn with thee, and will keep the Passover to the LORD, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near and keep it; and he shall be as one that is born in the land: for no uncircumcised person shall eat thereof. Romans 2:28-29 Circumcision is of the heart.
QUESTIONS ABOUT THE COMMUNION RITUAL
Did the sacrament of communion originate in pagan worship?
Did the early church practice this ritual?
Was the bread and wine a part of the Passover celebration? If so, should we continue to observe the Passover feast?
Rom. 12:5 So we, [being] many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.
1Cr 10:16 The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?
1Cr 12:12 For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also [is] Christ.
1Cr 12:27 Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular.
Col 2:17 Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body [is] of Christ.
NEW TESTAMENT FEASTS
Passover, (unleavened bread) 1Corin.5:7 Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us.
Pentecost, Acts2:1-4 And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.
Ingathering,(a feast of thanksgiving) 1 Thess.5:18 In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.
1Tim.2:1
I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men.
Heb.13:15
By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name.
Mystery cults
Parallel to the religious duties to god and state, "the Hellenic world also fostered a number of 'underground' religions, which countless thousands of people found intellectually and emotionally satisfying."[81] They were known as the "mysteries," because their adherents took oaths never to reveal their rites to the uninitiated. Several honored young male gods born of a divine father and human mother, resurrected after a heroic death. In some of these secret religions "celebrants shared a communal meal in which they symbolically ate the flesh and drank the blood of their god."[81]
Dionysus cult
Early Christianity spread through a Hellenized populace. Jewish feast practices had taken on Hellenic forms as noted above. Dionysus was "god of 'the vine' - representing wine, the most universally popular beverage in the ancient world." [82] Barry Powell suggests that Christian notions of eating and drinking the "flesh" and "blood" of Jesus were influenced by the cult of Dionysus.[83] In contrast, the ancient Greek tragedy, The Bacchae, a ritual involving the wine of Dionysus is not drunk, but poured out as a libation. In the Greek novel, Leucippe and Clitophon by Achilles Tatius, Dionysus is said to have given a sheperd of Tyre his first wine. When Dionysus shows the grape cluster where he got the wine from, Tatius parodies the Christian eucharist rite.[84]
In the chapter "Totem-Sacrifices and Eucharists" of his 1920 book Pagan and Christian Creeds, Edward Carpenter advanced the theory that the Christian Eucharist arose from an almost universal practice of a tribe occasionally eating the animal that it identified with, a practice that he saw as developing into ceremonial eatings of shared food by lamas in Nepal and Tibet, ancient Egyptians, Aztecs, Peruvians, Chinese and Tartars. He concluded: "These few instances are sufficient to show the extraordinarily wide diffusion of Totem-sacraments and Eucharistic rites all over the world."[85]
By the time the Roman conquest, Jews practiced festive dining in essentially the same form as the Greeks, with a dinner (deipnon) followed by the symposium proper, where guests drank wine and enjoyed entertainment or conversation. There were, to be sure, cultic differences, such as a berakhah over the wine cup instead of the Greeks' libation to Dionysus. But eating together was a central activity for Jewish religious groups such as Pharisees and Essenes.
"Thanksgiving" (in Greek, "εὐχαριστία" [eucharistia]) is probably to be regarded as the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew "ברכה" [berakhah, berakah], the Jewish "blessing" (in Greek, "εὐλογία" [eulogia]) "addressed to God at meals for and over the food and drink. It is in this sense that the term was originally used in connection with the common meal of the early Christian community, at which the 'blessing' or 'thanksgiving' had special reference to Jesus Christ."[86]
One formulation had it that "(t)he eucharistia was the berakhah without the chaburah supper, and the agape is the chaburah meal without the berakhah.[87]
The Eucharistic celebrations of the early Christians were embedded in, or simply took the form of, a meal. These were often called Agape Feasts, although terminology varied in the first few centuries along with other aspects of practice. Agape is one of the Greek words for love, and so "agape feasts" are also referred to in English as "love-feasts".
This Hellenic ritual was apparently a full meal, with each participant bringing a contribution to the meal according to their means. Perhaps predictably enough, it could at times deteriorate into merely an occasion for eating and drinking, or for ostentatious displays by the wealthier members of the community of the typoe criticised by Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:20–22.
What about the communion ritual?
The communion ritual that is observed in most Christian churches today was not practiced in the Christian religion until the fourth century. This ritual was borrowed from the old religion of Rome. That religion was Greeksion thinking. It was Pagan worship.
Most Christians have been taught that Jesus instituted a new Ritual that is to be observed in our churches today. As in the sixth chapter of John when Jesus said you have to eat his flesh and drink his blood, he had a spiritual meaning in mind. Just as in the rest of the Passover there is a spiritual meaning to the bread and the wine of the last supper.
1. If you research this subject, you will find that Christians in the first centuries practiced the Lords Supper. Research will show that the term LORDS SUPPER carried a different meaning than it does today. Today the words Lords supper means the communion ritual. In the early church the words Lords supper meant fellowship dinner. It was almost the same as what we call a POT LUCK dinner.
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