Featured Does your church have an altar?

Hebrews 9:11-12, ". . . But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. . . ."

Hebrews 10:10-12, ". . . we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins: But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God; . . ."

Hebrews 13:10-12, ". . . We have an altar, whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle. For the bodies of those beasts, whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin, are burned without the camp. Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate. . . ."

 

I guess only 'RCC' are going to be singled out. How about Orthodox, Lutheran, Methodist, Anglican, Coptic, etc, in fact, the majority of Christian churches have altars. Again, any ancient excavations of 'Baptistic' kinds of churches that have pulpits and no altar? The answer is NO. Any ancient Christian writings that support a symbolic view of the Eucharist (other than your claim that the scriptures teach a symbolic view) around? The answer is NO, NADA, NOTHING. The early Christians all believed in the Real Presence of Christ in the Lord's supper as did all Christians until Zwingli and other 'reformers'.

 

The Eucharist is a re-presentation of the sacrifice once for all. No new sacrifice. Jesus died and shed His Holy blood only once on Calvary. Did you know that many early Christians were accused of cannibalism? Some even died for that accusation. Do you know why they were accused of that crime?

 

Greetings,

Anything that is representative of the flesh, physical man made symbolism, is of the flesh. When we walk in the Spirit, we will not serve nor fulfill the works of the flesh. Because that can become an idol.

2Co_4:18 While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.

Eph 5:9 (For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth
Eph 5:10 Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord.
Eph 5:11 And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.

Heb_11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Heb_11:3 Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.

The Lord bless you.....

In His Love....

 

Here is what a Catholic friend of mine gave me from his RCIA class:
'If Catholics believed the Mass were a sacrifice in the sense implied by this question, there would be something to the objection. But this isn’t how the Catholic Church sees the sacrifice of the Mass.

The Mass has always been held to be a relative sacrifice—relative to the sacrifice of the Cross, not independent of it. The Council of Trent says the Mass is the means “whereby that bloody sacrifice once to be accomplished on the Cross might be represented, the memory thereof remain even to the end of the world, and its salutary effects applied to the remission of those sins which we daily commit” (Session 22, chapter 1).

Trent continues by saying, “And inasmuch as in this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the Mass is contained and immolated in an unbloody manner the same Christ who once offered himself in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross, the holy council teaches that this is truly propitiatory….For the victim is one and the same, the same now offering by the ministry of priests who then offered himself on the Cross, the manner alone of offering being different” (Session 22, chapter 2).

Frank Sheed summarizes Catholic teaching on the point in Theology and Sanity:

“There is no new slaying of Christ in the Mass….Yet that it is the Christ who was slain upon Calvary is shown sacramentally by the separate consecration of bread to become His body and wine to become His blood. The essence of the Mass is that Christ is making an offering to the Father of Himself, who was slain for us upon Calvary. The Mass is Calvary, as Christ now offers it to His Father.”

Hebrews teaches the atoning death of Christ was effective for the remission of sins and hence needed to be offer only once. But this speaks of what theologians call the “objective redemption.” It doesn’t mean that, since Jesus died for everyone, everyone will get to heaven. (That’s universalism.) The merits or the fruits of Christ’s death need to be applied to the individual.

When Catholic theologians talk about the Mass being a propitiatory sacrifice for the remission of sins, they mean, among other things, that the objective redemption which Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross merited is subjectively applied to the individual through the sacrifice of the Mass.'

 

The RCC seems oblivious/ignorant to the book of Hebrews where the preacher tells us that Jesus sacrifice is once and for all who believe.

 

The book of Hebrews is in essence a homily on the Christian Eucharistic sacrifice, taking the reader from the Old Testament sacrifice of the blood of the covenant in Exodus 24 to Christ’'s blood of the new covenant and our participation in it.

 

This is one of the points disagreement. Your church teachings confuses Christ's promises as the true Bread of Life with the Lord's remembrance you are calling the Eucharist.

 

Hebrews 10:1 explains, ". . . For 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. . . ."

 

And yet you miss the point of the speaker. How is it that the speaker can be so clear, Jesus died once, and yet the RCC has Jesus dying over and over and over again?

 

Or playing instruments, or wearing glasses.

 

Well, I like seeing “mourner’s benches”, altars etc..
Symbolic object that says, “Get on your knees and bow your head to the ground”. If that’s not enough, get Face down on your belly because you’re worthy of nothing but being Divinely tazed back to dust.

 

Technically, I think the official RCC explanation is more of a “time warp” sort of thing. Jesus died once in time, but we are linked to that one moment over and over. I guess the RCC table is sort of like a Delorean with a Flux Capacitor, warping you back to AD 33 (give or take a few years).

 

Too many take “boldly to the throne” as meaning “What’s up Pop?”
In too many churches, Reverence for our Holy Sovereign God has been tossed to the heap of casual chat time with dad.

 

The example of the Lord's table as proof of an NT altar is quite the stretch. The Lord's table is a remembrance, not a reenactment, of what He did for us.

 

Nor of using musical instruments.