Honest Look at Catholicism - No.1 Last Supper - The First Mass?

In the following directives I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm than good. In the first place I hear that when you come together as a church there are divisions among you and to some extent I believe it. No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God's approval.

When you come together it is not the Lord's Supper you eat, for as you eat each of you goes ahead without waiting for anybody else. One remains hungry and another gets drunk. Don't you have homes to eat and drink in or do you despise the Church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you for this? Certainly not.

For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you. The Lord Jesus on the night he was betrayed took bread and when he had given thanks he broke it and said, this is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way after supper he took the cup saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this whenever you drink it in remembrance of me for whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Now as friends who are regular attenders in the tabernacle know it's our practice here to ask parents to bring their youngsters to the church where they can be prayed for.

It's not that we're critical of those who differ from us in our idea of baptism but we think it makes more sense for mum and dad to dedicate their lives and then ask God's blessing upon the life of their youngster or youngsters as the case may be. This has some scriptural warrant in as much as Hannah you remember brought Samuel to the Lord and Mary and Joseph brought the infant Jesus into the temple and so this morning we have two of our friends Simon and Anne who are bringing young Luke to the Lord and they're dedicating their own lives to him too. Simon and Anne let me ask you the questions I generally put at this little act of dedication.

Is it your will, your wish to thank God for the gift of this little boy? Yes. And do you vow here before your Christian friends that as best you can you'll bring him up in an atmosphere where it will be easy for him to place his trust in the Lord Jesus when he matures? Yes. And would you light the prayers of the friends here at the tab, your brothers and sisters, in the Lord to this end that you might keep these vows? Let's bow our heads in prayer.

Loving God and Father we bring this dear family circle to you and believe that what we're doing now pleases you because you are glad when people present themselves before your throne and ask for your blessing. And in the priesthood of being parents we ask that you will grant your help to Simon and to Anne not only as they bring up the first child that you have given but as they bring up this little boy too. Grant them wisdom, grant them compassion, grant them scriptural firmness so that their home may be ordered as pleases you.

And we bring this little mite to you now we thank you for the obvious health and strength. We commend and commit him to you and pray that as he is well physically so he may increasingly be well spiritually and the day may come when he shall slip his hand into the hand of the Lord Jesus and confess him as his savior. Take all the potential that this little life represents and exploit it ultimately for your honor and for your glory.

Father we pray for your blessing upon Luke in your name the name of the triune God, Father Son and Holy Spirit. Amen. Well you can just about see his face here.

He's obviously having a good meal because he was trying to share it with me but not in too embarrassing a fashion and I'm glad to hand him back to dad and mom. God bless you both. For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you.

The Lord Jesus on the night he was betrayed took bread and when he had given thanks he broke it and said this is my body which is for you. This do in remembrance of me. In the same way after supper he took the cup saying this cup is the new covenant in my blood.

This do whenever you drink it in remembrance of me for whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. If I were to give a title to my address this morning I think I would opt for this. Was the last supper the first mass? Was the last supper the first mass? And you might wonder why on earth I have elected to address myself to such a topic as this and the reasons are twofold.

One it so happens without any contrivance on my part that in our systematic our consecutive studies from one Corinthians that we have engaged in during these past months we are up to that point where the Apostle Paul lays down very important teaching about the Last Supper or if you please the Lord's Supper or if you like Holy Communion or if you're more liturgically inclined the Eucharist and it is right therefore that I endeavor to expound to you the teaching of the Apostle on this most important theme. But my second reason which must have come already as apparent to you is the fact that this next month or towards the end of the next month we shall be plastered by the media with scenes of remarkably large congregations meeting in such diverse places as Wembley Stadium in London Bella Houston Park in Scotland, Ninian Park in Wales and the significance of these scenes will be this a genial extremely well qualified president of the Catholic Church Pope John Paul the second will be celebrating Mass and it will be perhaps the case that through your mind as you see these tremendous scenes will go the question what is all this about? Could it be the case that the Catholic Church, I use that in this restrictive field of the Roman Catholic Church, could it be that they have a better and more biblical understanding of communion than we do in the Protestant churches? Could it be the case that they are right and we are wrong and even if you're convinced that that is not so that Protestantism is right then you might be asking yourself well what is all this about? Now the Bible doesn't give any prizes to the ignorant. Indeed the Apostle tells us on several occasions in this letter I do not want you to be ignorant brethren and that of course goes for us today as rather poor successors in the preaching ministry which the Apostle so well emphasized in his life.

We don't want people to be ignorant and therefore it's for those two reasons that I address myself to the question was the Last Supper the first Mass? Of course there could be those who will say that the Catholic Church in its understanding of the Mass has changed considerably down the years. It was in the 14th century when a Pope by the name of Boniface VIII embarrassed his successors by issuing a decree called his Unum Sanctum, an encyclical, to the church in which those tremendous words were issued in the Latin tongue extra ecclesiam nulla salus which for the uninitiated in Latin means outside the mother church there is no salvation. Now it is true to say that a lot has happened since then and those Protestants who believe that Rome does not change are proven to be incorrect.

The Vatican Council the second Vatican Council has demonstrated the fact that Rome does change and she is completely different in some areas to what she was in the 14th century. But as I shall try to argue this morning from reference to the writings of the Pope that I've been looking at during these last few days as well as to the creeds of the church down the centuries that the Mass basically as understood and taught by the majority if not all of Roman Catholics remains in entirety what it was in the centuries when we were first informed that the body and blood of our Lord Jesus become encapsuled within the wafer and the wine that is part and parcel of the Catholic Mass. So I'm straying from my brief a moment but I'm doing so to indicate this that though there have been changes in Rome and I want to outline some of these changes in the two lectures I want to give at the end of this month and the beginning of next month it seems to me that essentially as far as 95% of Roman Catholic people and clergy and theologians are concerned there has been no change from the concept that was spelt out in earlier centuries of transubstantiation and the fact that in the Mass we have the localizing of the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Well let me move on a moment and try to develop this subject further and then right at the end in the last few moments I'll bring you back to the Apostle Paul's teaching some of which will be clearly in your mind I trust from last week. What will happen at these colossal masses over which the pontiff will preside? Could you not simplify the whole thing and say that basically it's just a question of a man celebrating a religious feast and using bread and wine and the only difference between Catholics and Protestants is the tradition and the liturgy that's bound up and the charisma that there is in the presidential office of the Roman Church. Well I wish it was as simple as that and in some senses being basically despite what some of you may feel a man of peace rather than a man of war I would like to leave it just like that.

Political Protestantism does not attract me one little bit and yet I am still a Protestant. I will still protest when I think that something is an error. That does not mean that I engage in character assassination of the person or the people who differentiate, who distinguish their teaching from that that I follow but I have every right from God's Word to evaluate and make conclusions on certain things within the Catholic Church which I believe are profound errors.

Well let's take up then the business of what happens at the mass at these fantastic masses that there will be or at the ordinary masses might be celebrated here in some of the Catholic churches in in Worthing. Well first of all let us say this that only a priest, only a man ordained within the Catholic Church can celebrate the mass. Let's also make this point that there will be an altar specially constructed in the cases of these mammoth masses which are yet to be held.

There will be an altar on which the celebration will take place. The bread will be in the form of wafers and obviously the wine will be similar to what you would receive say in an Anglican Church. But at one stage and if you do away with a lot of the liturgy and incidentally since Vatican II the mass has been simplified considerably.

If you do away with a lot of the other liturgy the whole thing comes to its pinnacle, comes to its critical point when the priest or the Pope will lift the golden tray containing the hundreds or maybe thousands of wafers and he will pronounce the Latin phrase Hoc est corpus meum. This is my body and whether that is said in Latin or in English what is denoted and understood thereby by Catholic believers is that the very wafer itself if not in its outward form in its inner essentials will literally turn into the body of Christ and so the wine into his blood. Listen for example to the decree of the Council of Trent in the 16th century speaking of what I have just described.

This is identical with the sacrifice of the cross. In as much as Jesus Christ is a priest and victim the only difference lies in the manner of offering which is bloody upon the cross and bloodless on our altar. So here you have the idea of the wafer and the wine becoming the body and the blood literally speaking of Christ.

Now if that is the case, let's just apply logic to the presupposition. I don't agree with it but let's imagine it's right to start with. Then that means that there will be a tremendous veneration of the wafer and that's what happens.

The wafer is termed at that point the host. We get that from a Latin word which really means the victim and here we have presented in Catholic churches around the globe the body of our Lord Jesus. It's the incarnation to some extent all over again and what happened at the incarnation there was worship.

Worship that was offered by the Magi and the shepherds and so there is what Catholic friends will refer to as the adoration of the host in Catholic churches today. Let me quote just to demonstrate that I'm in no way just twisting this because of my bias towards Protestantism. Let me quote from the Council of Trent in the 16th century.

There is therefore no room for doubt that all the faithful of Christ may in accordance with the custom always received in the Catholic Church give to this most holy sacrament in veneration the worship of Latria, service which is due to the true God. Neither is it to be less adored for the reason that it was instituted by Christ the Lord in order to be received. For we believe that in the same God is present of whom the Eternal Father when introducing him into the world says and let all the angels of God adore him.

The Magi whom the Magi falling down adores who finally as the scriptures testify was adored by the Apostles in Galilee. And so you could go on and read that Council of Trent and you will find at the end there are anathemas, curses that are brought down on men who disagree with that particular proclamation which should make my position here in the tabernacle be somewhat uncomfortable at this very moment. Now the adoration of the host is taken to a public manifestation at the feast of Corpus Christi.

What do I mean? Well they'll bring the host outside the church and if you have been in pronounced Catholic countries you will know something of the festivities and the mammoth processions that are arranged on the day of the feast of the body of Christ. What is more if this is the body then if there is anything left over after the mass then the host has to be looked after very carefully. There is such a thing in in Catholic practice as reserving the sacrament.

Maybe you've been in a Catholic Church before now and you've seen a little light just off the altar, a little red light. What does that indicate? Well the host is there, the presence of Christ, the body of Christ. Tremendous adoration is given to the host.

Well all these things you will see in some areas at any rate. In these masses that the Pope celebrates and you would see in any local Catholic Church here in in Worthing. But the objection may be at this point from someone from the Catholic Truth Society and I was an hour with them last, when was I in London, last last Thursday.

Most of my research is direct from Roman Catholic records. Not all of it but quite a good deal of it. There might be an objection.

Vatican II has changed all this. We no longer believe this. You see within the Catholic Church there are many many branches.

We think of Protestantism as being fractured into various groups and here is the monolithic structure, the one ecclesia, the Catholic Church which stands out in all its rigidity and all its uniformity. That could not be further from the truth. There are so many breaks within Catholicism that are papered over.

There are the liberal Catholics. I'll refer to them in the lectures that I hope to give later on this this month. And there will be certain people who would argue that what I'm presenting this morning is not really an accurate statement of present Catholicism.

And I would have to confess that Vatican II did change a great deal. You might know that the mass used to be held just in the Latin language. Now it's no longer in the Latin tongue.

It's in the vernacular. That means the ordinary language of the national, be it in England, therefore English, be it in Mexico, in Spain. How on earth they get round the decree of the Council of Trent which brought down an anathema on those who would conduct the mass in a vernacular language, I don't understand.

There is the contradiction within Rome. And the idea that Rome is infallible is really a ghost that has now been exposed. I digress a moment.

There is a man, a great theologian in the Catholic Church by the name of Hans Kung, who wrote a book on infallibility with a question mark at the end. He was querying it. And he demonstrated historically that the idea of infallibility does not exist.

And for his pains he has just been disabused of his qualifications as a Catholic theologian. And now he's really in limbo, I could tell you, of other Catholic theologians who are suffering the same sort of thing. But there has been a change.

The mass is now in the vernacular. The cup, which was always kept to the priest, at least since the beginnings of, say, from the 10th century onward, that no longer is reserved just for the priest. Ordinary people can celebrate.

The congregation have become participants more than spectators. But when you've dealt with all these cosmetic changes, the principle remains, and I would argue this against any Jesuit who would like to discuss the whole area with me, the principle remains that the Catholic Church at mass stands for transubstantiation, which means what I have just spelled out to you. Now one would think that our Pope, the present Pope, should be the touchstone of orthodox Catholic theology.

What does he have to tell us, this remarkable man from Poland, who writes a very remarkable commentary on the findings of Vatican II? What does he have to say to his priests about the mass? After all, if he goes into writing, then surely if I quote what he says, it must more or less apply to every orthodox Roman Catholic. Well, he did write a letter to all priests on Holy Thursday, 1979, and he tells them that the priestly life is built on the foundation of the sacrament. And he goes on, the adoration of Christ in the sacrament must find expression in Eucharist devotion.

Personal prayer before the blessed sacrament, he advises. Hours of adoration in the reserved sacrament, under the appearance of bread and wine, says the Pope, is the actual body and blood, soul and divinity of Christ. And he goes on, the bread and wine presented at the altar and accompanied by the devotions and spiritual sacrifices of the participants are consecrated so to become truly, really, and substantially Christ's own body that is given up, and blood that he shed.

Well, you can't drive a bus through that, can you, as far as trying to find some means of saying that he's not being precise. This is Trent all over again. This is the statement of transubstantiation.

So here our Pope tells us, or their Pope tells them, of the nature of the Mass. And of course they use the Masses as propitiation. This is how we propitiate an angry God.

The body and the blood of Jesus is offered again to the Lord, and sins to some degree are emitted. Masses, as you know, have many variations. You can have a Mass for marriage.

You can have a Mass in respect of a person who's died. A Mass is a powerful means of prayer in Catholic theology, whereby some blessing, some favor may be given you by the Lord. When my father died, a Catholic relative of mine, and I don't question the sincerity at all, had, without my permission, certain Masses said for the soul of my father to help to get him out of purgatory a bit more quickly than he would normally have been able to emerge from that rather distasteful place.

Well, I felt that it was nonsense, so I very much appreciated the kindness of my relative and the motivation behind what was done. But you see, the Mass is so basic to Catholicism. You go to any of the churches here in Worthing, you'll find hundreds of Catholics who come along on a Sunday.

The Mass is the pinnacle. It is the fulcrum on which Catholicism swings. And I would argue that their understanding is completely unscriptural and therefore unsound.

Well, let me, in my last few moments, try to relate some of what I have been talking to you about to Paul's statement here when he sets up the Lord's Supper, when he institutes it with the authority of Christ behind him. Notice how in the 11th chapter of 1 Corinthians, he, speaking for the Lord Jesus, says, this is my body. This is verse 24.

This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. A similar comment in the following verse.

This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this whenever you drink it in remembrance of me. Why was I stressing the verb of action there? Because it doesn't say offer this.

It says do this. There is no sacramental idea at all. It is completely foreign to the teaching of the apostle and he received it, I remind you, from the Lord himself.

This was not something that one was going to offer to the Lord. This is a command that is made to men as men. Do this amongst yourselves in remembrance of me.

Now the second thing, which it seems to me the Catholic friends have got completely wrong, is that when our Lord celebrates the Last Supper or institutes it, he doesn't in any sense of the word offer himself to the Father. He couldn't be doing so. He does not suggest that he there and then is making an atonement for the sins of the world.

He is prophetically anticipating what lies ahead. Later on in John's Gospel, after the institution of the Lord's Supper has been set up, he says these words, mine hour has not yet come. What hour was that? The time when Jesus would die on the cross of Calvary.

The time when atonement would be made for the sins of the world. But here Jesus is prophetically anticipating this. It wasn't his body and his blood just then that were offered.

In a dramatic fashion he indicates what yet lies in the future. The horror of Gethsemane and Calvary. And it's not until he is pinned to the cross that full atonement is made.

What our Lord Jesus Christ is doing here is offering certain benefits to men. He is not suggesting that men offer the body and the blood that is his to the Father. Here is a man, if you please, writing out his will, telling us that when we eat and we drink this bread and this wine worthily, in a right relationship to himself, then the benefits of his atoning death will apply to us.

You see, this is very much a man-centered thing that our Lord Jesus is instituting. Look at the 26th verse. Whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim.

That's a verb that I told you last week. It means to preach. You herald.

You herald the Lord's death until he comes. You preach to one another. You identify with one another.

Your common faith in the Savior. You never preach to God. You praise God.

You pray to God. You testify to God of your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. But you preach to men and women.

And the whole notion of setting up the altar at Calvary again and turning, if it were possible, the bread and the wine into the body and the blood of Jesus. It's something that's imported into this scripture. I defy anybody, be he skilled in the philosophy and the theology of the Jesuits, to show me one word that will, in any sense, qualify the argument that I'm bringing to you right now.

And when you move on into the Epistle to the Hebrews, well, you find what should be the death knell of any concept of the Mass really sounded. You take such scriptures as the eighth chapter and the first verse. The point of what we are saying is this.

We do have such a high priest who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in heaven. This is the thought of Jesus who, having achieved the atonement at Calvary, goes to heaven and he sits down. The very posture indicating a job that has been perfectly accomplished.

Look at the tenth verse when our Lord Jesus tells us of the covenant that is made as a result of the shedding of his body, the breaking of his body, and the spilling of his blood. We read in the twelfth verse of the next chapter of our Lord Jesus, he did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves, but he entered the most holy place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption. And so you can go on and on in the Epistle to the Hebrews and you discover that comment is made as to the finality of the sacrifice of Christ.

Look at the eleventh verse of the tenth chapter. Here is an analogy between the repetitive nature of Old Testament sacrifices and that one supreme sacrifice of our Lord Jesus. Day after day, every priest stands and performs his religious duties again and again.

He offers the same sacrifices which can never take away sins. But when this priest, Jesus, had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. I don't see how you can read the Epistle to the Hebrews and to come to any other conclusion that the sacrifice of Jesus at Calvary was once and for all.

And the institution of the Lord's Supper, far from being a literal reenactment of that, is a memorial meal which reminds us of the benefits of the Christ. This is my body. What does that mean? This represents my body.

This stands for my body. As in other cases, our Lord says, I am the door. As he makes reference to being the Good Shepherd.

The body, the blood, or rather the wine and the bread, they symbolize, they represent, they stand for our Lord Jesus Christ. And which you notice, the Apostle Paul makes no reference to some special celebrant, some priest who alone can conduct the Eucharist, can conduct the Mass. There's a very embarrassing statement, and I don't know how Catholic friends are going to get around this, issued by Pope Leo XIII at the turn of this century, in an encyclical Apostilicae Curiae.

And in that particular encyclical, the Pope not only denied the validity of Anglican orders, but he said in effect that no one but a Roman priest can celebrate Mass properly. Listen to him. He lays down that the special grace and power of the priesthood is the power of consecrating and offering that true body and blood of the Lord in that sacrifice, which is no more, which is no mere commemoration of the sacrifice accomplished on the cross.

The priest has unique, unassailable, and irreplaceable authority in the celebration of the sacrament. You see the point? No Anglican communion, no Anglican Eucharist is acceptable to Roman Catholics, if they apply their own theology. I was reading this new book on the final report between the Anglo-Catholic International Committee, which came out last week, and in a very limp way, the Anglicans suggest that having conceded quite a great deal, this calls for a reappraisal of the verdict on Anglican orders in Apostilicae Curiae.

I don't know what the Archbishop of Canterbury will be thinking when he gives hospitality to to the Pope in a month or so's time, for in the Pope's estimation he is none other than the godly brother. His very vestments, they amount to absolutely nothing. So says Pope Leo XIII.

How are we going to get round this one? Well, I don't know, but it's amazing what theologians have been able to get round before in this whole development of theology, and doubtless somebody will come up with some resolution. No, you see my friend, I bring you back to Paul's statement here in 1 Corinthians 11. The Last Supper, the Lord's Supper, is not the Mass.

The idea of the veneration of the host is repulsive to me. The notion that happened last century, would you believe, at Canterbury, the Anglican Cathedral of a man, the Archbishop, celebrating what in effect was the Mass and looking on the host as though it was the body of Christ. And you've got one of one of the archbishops in the last century almost dancing in attendance on the host, standing back and going forward a few steps and standing back again.

What was he dramatically illustrating? That here we have the localized presence of the Lord Jesus Christ? No, not a bit. We have a cup filled with wine which reminds us of the blood that was spilt. We have bread broken from one loaf which reminds us of the body that was slain.

Calvary occurred once and it's cherished in the minds of believing Christians. The Mass is an extension, a proposed continuation of Calvary which is logically absurd and biblically indefensible. The Lord's Supper is the unchanging statement of that which is unchanging in Christianity.

The center of Christianity is what Jesus did. The Lord's Supper, in its dramatic picture, states just that as it is. Preaching talks about it.

Theology interprets it. The sacrament announces it. We remember the death of our Lord simply in the way that Paul teaches in 1 Corinthians 11.

And we say lovingly to our Catholic friends, and if we bear be so bold to Pope John Paul II, we beseech you in the mercies of Christ, consider that you might have been mistaken. The Lord's Supper is not and never will be the Mass. 343.

My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. Within the name of Christ the Son of God I stand All other countries fear me Whereo'er ye pray, ye do not stay On Christ the Son in love I stand All other countries, worldly miseries And Father, for the essential simplicity of the Gospel, we thank you. And for the comprehensive nature of the priesthood which makes every man and woman who confesses the name of Christ a priest unto God, we bless you.

And for the anchor of our salvation, even Jesus Christ the Lord and the inspired writings that give out his teaching, even the Bible, we bless you, Father. Enable us Protestants to protest against error, but give us that charity and that love that embraces every individual as someone who has the impress of God upon them. Now may the blessing of Almighty God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit rest and remain with each one of us until that day when God in Christ shall come or call.

Amen.