Excellent post – and thanks for the insight, Stan…

You had to let it dissolve in your mouth out of respect for Him and the solemness of the experience.

You know, I used to wonder why some assemblies I had communion with had wafers that seemed to quickly dissolve in my mouth. They probably did not intentionally use those wafers for that particular reason, but the mass (no pun intended) sale of those types of wafers MUST be because of Roman Catholic influence .

As for the rest of your comment, it is not just what you believe, but the truth. Jesus spoke the words noted in John 6 not while serving the first communion, but while ministering to people who were trying to follow Him. And by the end of John 6, we see solid confirmation that salvation is from God to the elect alone and not any work of man. But as usual, Roman Catholics hack a verse, strip it totally from what was being said and claim it is the truth.

It is taught that only a RC priest can actually produce this miracle of transubstantiation. It is done by virtue of his office (descended directly from Peter) and by the carefully worded and choreographed ritual called the “Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.” They claim that receiving the Mass’ Eucharist transforms the soul in stages into the very character of Christ. So, following on the logic of it, if Roman Catholics have exclusive access to the very person of Jesus Christ taken into their own very persons, we should find correspondingly godly effects upon their lives. These effects should also be totally absent from all non-catholic believers since they cannot avail themselves of this special miracle. Due to this constant ingestion of Jesus, RCs should be stellar examples of righteousness and holiness for all the world to see. After all, the premise is that the Living and Real Christ has just entered your body through the act of eating His flesh and drinking His blood (according to their interpretation of John 6:53-56). Such a personal and real commingling of the Creator with the catholic participant through the act of eating and drinking His flesh and blood should result in His very character and life transferred to the one who just consumed Him. They do teach that this sanctifying process is a fact.

Jesus said that wisdom is justified of her children, meaning that if what you say and practice is Truth, the results should prove it is truth. Yet, the results I see and have seen of those, including myself when I was a practicing Roman Catholic, whose faith is centered in the Mass, is that they do not exhibit the expected godliness and holiness. They are basically the same both before confession and communion as well as afterward.

If, for the sake of argument, the communion elements were meant by Jesus to be transubstantiated into His actual flesh and blood, then it would happen everywhere it is celebrated by true Christians. It would not be the special and exclusive jurisdiction of RC priests to perform this miracle. But, if no transubstantiation was meant by Jesus (which is what I believe), then no matter how impressive, expensive and careful the ritual of the Mass is, it would not make one bit of difference to the communion elements.

Jesus said at the end of John 6, the same chapter used as one of the proof texts for transubstantiation “the flesh profits for nothing. The words I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life.” Eating His flesh and drinking His blood means to experience His sacrificial work through receiving and holding the pure, Apostolic Gospel, which are the living words Christ speaks to us. Trusting the gospel message makes the work of Jesus’ death and shed blood efficacious for us. It is done from Heaven, brought to us by the Spirit, not by eating supposedly transformed natural elements.

Jesus also says in Mark 7, when speaking of whether food could defile a man, that what a person eats does not enter the heart, but the stomach. This principle about food would have to work both ways. Food does not affect us spiritually one way or the other. If communion was a divine exception to this rule because of what happens to it, then, as I have concluded, we should see this particular food entering the heart; thereby affecting the character of the heart. It would show forth in godliness of reverently participating Roman Catholics. Men would truly glorify the Father in Heaven for the effects they see in RCs. But, do they?

I was a Roman Catholic for the first 18 years of my life. Guess what. My sins only got worse as I faithfully and reverently partook of both confession and the communion of the Mass. Even with these apparently supernatural influences, godliness slipped away from me as I got older until I was as pagan in heart and practice as the prodigal son. That reality did not stop until I gave my life to Jesus Christ outside of the RCC. After that, Jesus began His work of saving grace that I had never experienced being a RC and taking the supposed transubstantiated elements. And, I have never been convicted to return to the so-called Mother Roman Catholic Church to complete this work of salvation. I am not a catholic or a protestant or pentecostal or independent. I consider myself simply a Christian.