The Lord's Eucharist Meal

[Priestly1]

Greatings,
I heard Steve give a refutation of the Apostolic Celebration and Understanding of the Holy Eucharist foretold by the Prophets (in present tense Hebrew) and Christ Himself. The Apostles used the LXX Tanakh in 98% of their scriptural citations and the Dead Sea Scrolls now prove the LXX has an underlying hebrew Text and Canon which they preserved...it predates the masoretic Text/Canon which is the final revision of the Ancient Pre-Hasmonaean Hebrew Tanakh.

I heard Steve use the Koine Greek tense to prove that Christ could not have meant nor is related to His Future New Covenant renewal ofthe Passover Seder as His Eucharist Meal as the Lamb of God, Who causes the Angel of Death to overlook us and liberates us from the Kingdom of Darkness we have been enslaved by through our sins.

Let's see Steve's proof texts. It is present tense...as is the whole of the Gospels, NT and LXX when in dialogue. "He is saying to them,'Unless you are eating and are drinking My flesh and My Blood, you are not having in you any life.'" Great! Normative dailoge for God, Prophets, Christ and his Apostles. That is the way the language works. Steve would know this if he knew Greek, Hebrew or Aramaic ...but implies more than the text allows. Charles Taze Russel also used such seemingly sound arguments...though he too knew little of the biblical languages or their tenses, syntax or such.

I say this not to say Steve, who is my friend, is a Russelite....but here he errs as did the Gostics, Marcionites, Manichaeans, Bogomils, Cathars, Molokons, Zwingli-Calvinists, Anabaptists and others. All of the Church (Greek, Aramaic and Latin speaking) since Christ has refuted this error since Apostolic times as did Dr. Martin Luther...the founder of Evangelical Protestantism.

Before Christ even stated this about His future New Covenant Passover Meal, He uses the same tense to say about His future Resurrection,"If you are tearing down this House, I am rebuilding it in three days!" Look...He speaks of His physical House being presently destroyed and presently rebuild in three days!! according to Steve Christ could not speak so and refer to an even He had yet to Institute!

First year Greek students realise the language differences and intents of Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, latin etc...and English....we have no such style, syntax, tenses and complexity.....so idiomatic understanding from the source tongue into the new tongue is needed for fluent and representative translation of the original. Both texts cited reference the future in the present statements. His argument goes poof.

Next he cites public realization of Christ's statements and their rejection as proof Christ did not say what He meant, or did not mean what He said. His disciples understood Him and accepted His words as Life giving. If we go further the Priests reject Christ because they understood His words to mean He as God's son and therefore Equal to God Himself! Blasphemny!!!! Well was Christ misunderstood here too? Charles Taze Russell and others say so. The Eucharist is a mere celebration of a past event in the present.....no spiritual reality or divine presence involved....it ain't the Bread and Wine of the Presence..noooooo. Yet Paul is clear...it is Sacred and Is the Real Presence of Christ in the Bread and Wine, and God Himself punishes any desecration of it. You remeber all those dead, dying and ill Corinthians who partook of the Eucharist in an unworthy state do to their sin and ill treatment of the Body of Christ (i.e. fellow Christians)? Well they and the rest of the Church throughout history have remebered this and have held to Christ's and Paul's clear declarations in the Greek.


Now Steve is so utterly reactionary to ROMAN catholicism he almost rejects all they believe....sad. But he dislikes any institution not approved by his own private understanding. Fine. Cowboy christianity with a Counter-ultured tie-dyed tee-shirt is cool. I was a jesus freak too...had my own horse n all (don't take that literally..ha). But I did get formal education in Greek and Hebrew as well as ancient Christian apologists and Greek Church Fathers...they knew and spoke the Koine Tongue.

Steve can't cite any proof of his personal interpretation past Zwingli...unless he cites the heretics who also held such notions and worse. There is no Greek, Syrian, Assyrian or Latin Apologist or Father who teaches or expounds his position until the Militant Reformers Zwingli, Calnin and Beza. Dr. Martin Luther refuted these later Reformers by the Greek and the unbroken chain of Church witnesses since the death of Saint John Bar Zebedee.

Now Luther did renounce the Roman notion of Tran-sub-stanciation. The materialistic idea that the cleric who cites the Invocation of God's Spirit to sanctify the bread and wine after he speaks the words of Christ over them...and then they transform into the actual flesh and blood of Christ while apearing bread and wine....this notion Luther and all the Churches of the Eastern Roman Empire and the Orient have rejected.

Luther taught "con-substanciation"...which means that after Christ's words the True Presence of Christ inhabits the bread and wine and spiritually becomes for the Faithful His Body and Blood. Like Iron when removed from the coals is white hot because of exposure to the Heat and Flame of the coals...so too the Bread and Wine contain the Spirtual Presence of Christ they have been imersed by the Holy Spirit at the Blessing. This is the Doctrine of the Eucharist held by all Orthodox Evangelicals (Traditional Lutherans, Old Catholics and Orthodox Anglicans).

Now The Orthodox churches of the East and Orient reject all forms of definition other than it is a divine Mystery.....the unward union and action of Divine Grace, Power and Presence with a corresponding materially visible action. Thus Water Baptism, Baptism in the Holy Spirit (Charismation/Confirmation), Eucharist, Reconciliation (Confession/Pardon), Marriage, Ordination and Healing (Annointing with oil and prayer) are all Sacred Mysteries. All of our Life in Christ is a Sacred union of the divine Spirit manifesting His Life, power and Grace in and through us daily until the Resurrection. Christ's Incarnation is the First Mystery.

Unless we Literally participate in and through our literal partaking of Christ's Broken Body and Shed Blood.....we can have no part in Him..nor His Power, presence and grace. He is our Heavenly Bread. He is the Glory of God which infuses and bathes his Bread of the Presence which eminates by the Holy Spirit from the Holy of Holies. At the Master's Table He both the Sacrifed lamb of God (Flesh and Blood) as well as the officiating High Priest. He is the Passover Sacrifice and Sacrificing Priest. There is a real and literal action between us and Christ at Communion...we are re-presented each time we participate in the Eucharist (Gk-Thanksgiving Oblation) with the single and final atonement sacrifice. We partake of the Feast and truly consume and become one with Christ...just as in Baptism. it is an outward materially visible experience with a corresponding inward spiritually unseen experience....a Sacred mystery i.e. Sacrament.


It is taught in Scripture, upheld by martyrs, apologists and church fathers since 100 CE...and defended by Dr. Martin Luther, whom God summoned to reform the corrupted Western Church.




Rev. Ken HuffmaN (PRIESTLY1@VERIZON.NET)

[Jill]

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[Homer]

Ken,

You wrote:

Unless we Literally participate in and through our literal partaking of Christ's Broken Body and Shed Blood.....we can have no part in Him..nor His Power, presence and grace. He is our Heavenly Bread. He is the Glory of God which infuses and bathes his Bread of the Presence which eminates by the Holy Spirit from the Holy of Holies. At the Master's Table He both the Sacrifed lamb of God (Flesh and Blood) as well as the officiating High Priest. He is the Passover Sacrifice and Sacrificing Priest. There is a real and literal action between us and Christ at Communion...we are re-presented each time we participate in the Eucharist (Gk-Thanksgiving Oblation) with the single and final atonement sacrifice. We partake of the Feast and truly consume and become one with Christ...just as in Baptism. it is an outward materially visible experience with a corresponding inward spiritually unseen experience....a Sacred mystery i.e. Sacrament.

What if a person sincerely partakes of the communion elements, while in ignorance, being unaware that your position is true? Would the person's ignorance cause Christ to not be present in his particular piece of bread? Or would God honor the person's sincere attempt to be obedient to the command "this do in remembrance of me", even though the person is ignorant of "the mystery". Reading of when Jesus instituted the communion (or eucharist), it doesn't strike me as a particularly mysterious event. It was a Passover meal, where various items on the menu represented and brought to mind certain events of the past. Then it seems Jesus instituted a new use of the elements to remember, rejoice, and proclaim what He accomplished. That doesn't seem much of a mystery.

And where do we find in the scriptures any information on how, when, and where the elements are infused with Christ? Can my wife and I, along with some other Christian brothers and sisters gather in our home for "the breaking of bread"?

I am sort of a sacramentalist myself. I am supposing you believe (and hoping I am wrong) that I can not properly celebrate the Lord's supper without a priest or ordained person saying the words of consecration. If you believe this, could you show from the scriptures where this is so? I realize the priestly class believe they alone can baptize; Peter thought otherwise. He ordered those who accompanied him to the house of Cornelius to do the baptizing. Who were they? Luke informs us Peter was accompanied by merely "some disciples". It would likewise seem that ordinary Christians are capable of celebrating the Lord's supper.

Hoping you can enlighten me. I didn't hear the referenced Narrow path program. When you call in, you speak very capably, but your post was difficult to follow; perhaps you were in a hurry.

God bless, Homer

[Jill]

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[steve]

Hi Ken,

You almost had me worried there (but not much), when you said that John 2:19 was in the present tense. If you had been correct, it would have gone some distance in deflating my point about the implications of the present tense of John 6:54.

[As an aside, for those outside the loop, I had claimed (and still claim) that Jesus, in John 6:54 speaks in the present tense of people who were, at the time of His speaking, "having" eternal life because they were "eating" His flesh and "drinking" His blood. My point was that He could not have been speaking of the Eucharist, since no one was at that time (nor for another year thereafter) eating the Eucharist. Instead, I said, Jesus interprets His own symbolic imagery by making the identical statement (without the imagery) in verse 40—where "seeing the son" and "believing in Him" replace the images of eating and drinking.

Ken, who is an Orthodox priest, took exception by claiming that the present tense was the normal way of speaking of future actions, in Koine Greek. He gave no examples, but one, which was John 2:19—which Ken thought should be literally translated, "If you are tearing down this House, I am rebuilding it in three days!" This struck me as odd, since I had always read and heard that present tense is not normative in Greek for future action. But, as Ken has pointed out as frequently as the opportunity arises, I am no Greek scholar, and he has formally studied Greek.

While I am certainly not capable of reading and exegeting the Greek directly from the text, I do profess the ability to open reference works by those who are experts at this very thing. Of course, I do not have the proficiency to judge the accuracy of the scholars who wrote the reference works, so I cannot guarantee that Ken will not challenge them. All I can say is that they certainly do not agree with Ken's rendering of John 2:19, the only example he gave of the phenomenon.]

Ken, you may not appreciate Protestant scholars, but the ones I consulted were Spiros Zodhiates, A.T. Robertson and the translators of "The NKJV Greek/English Interlinear New Testament"—who, for all their imperfections at least had the advantage of fully agreeing with each other. What they said was that neither of the verbs in John 2:19 is in the present tense, and all the verbs in John 6:54 are in the present tense. This is what any good translation would have yielded anyway, but it never hurts to double check.

In John 2:19, the verb "destroy" is "first aorist active imperative of luo." Now, though I am no Greek scholar, I know enough English to know what "imperative" means. Thus, your translation: "If you are tearing down this house..." misses on both tense and mood. The verb in the phrase "I will raise it up," according to the authorities I mentioned, is in the future tense (not present, as you suggested). Perhaps you didn't look it up? I do that sometimes myself—quote something as I (wrongly) remembered it. However, I don't rely on faulty memory when I am citing a passage that is the sole text I am using to prove a contended point. If you would like for my readers and me to be convinced of your counter-intuitive claims, I would suggest that proof texts that actually support your point (rather than your opponent's) would be preferable (and possibly just a little more humility as well—you know, just in case...).

Of course, most of what you said about the Eucharist has nothing at all in scripture for its support, and you did little to address my complete argument (which I will repeat below so that you may refute it point-by-point, if you can). There is one scripture that you used, the interpretation of which I would like to take issue with you about. You alluded to 1 Corinthians 11:27-30, where Paul tells the Corinthians that some of their number have become sick, and even died, as a chastisement for their abuse arising from their failure to "discern the body of Christ." You said that the problem was that some of the Corinthians had defiled the holy bread while "in an unworthy state." Now the Greek word that you represent with this phrase is simply the word "unworthily."

I suppose this word might, in some contexts, be taken to mean "in an unworthy state," but, if that was Paul's meaning, we might have expected him to show a modicum of charity in explaining to the offenders (or potential offenders) what constitutes "an unworthy state" for one to be in while taking communion. He gives not a clue—even though such knowledge would be essential to stemming the tide of sickness and deaths in the church. Is there anywhere in scripture that tells us what "state" we must be in while taking communion?

Many commentators and translators believe (in keeping with the context) that Paul was not speaking of an "unworthy state," but of an "unworthy manner." Certainly Paul had already (v.21) described the despicable manner in which some of the Corinthians had been indulging themselves (at the expense of their brothers, since they failed to "discern [that they were] the body of Christ"). Taking all the food at the meal for oneself, so that you go home glutted and drunk while your brother goes home hungry is truly and unworthy manner of taking this love feast. There is no evidence that they had desecrated (like Uzza touching the Ark) some sacred slice of bread that had magically turned into Jesus after magic words were spoken at the meal. It was not a case of high-voltage bread. It was because of their uncommon rudeness that they had come under God's chastisement.

Now here is a summary of the arguments I gave on the air:

I. Concerning John 6

A. It is just like many other specimens of Jesus' teaching in the Gospel of John. Jesus said "destroy this temple..." (John 2); "you must be born again" (John 3); "If you drink the water I will give, you will never thirst" (John 4), etc. etc. In every case, Jesus spoke figuratively, and his hearers mistakenly took Him literally. This would almost qualify as a main theme in John's Gospel: People tended to misunderstand Jesus' message by taking Him too literally, rather than spiritually. John 6 was not the first time He had spoken figuratively of the need to "drink" (meaning "believe"), because He had told the woman at the well of her need to "drink" living water. He also repeated this requirement at the Feast of Tabernacles (John 7:37-39), where He clearly equated "drinking living water" with "believing in Him." No denomination has, to my knowledge, required the literal drinking of some sanctified water (which is pretended, through some incantation, to have become "living water") as a part of the conditions for salvation. If "drinking living water" means believing in Jesus, on what grounds can we suggest that "drinking blood" is the literal ingestion of red and white corpuscles?

B. If "eating flesh" and "drinking blood" are taken literally, there is no valid argument against the false charge that Christians are cannibals, since eating human flesh is the very definition of cannibalism, and drinking blood is an abomination to God.

Gen.9:4—"But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat."

Lev.3:17—"It shall be a perpetual statute for your generations throughout all your dwellings, that ye eat neither fat nor blood."

Lev.7:26—"Moreover ye shall eat no manner of blood, whether it be of fowl or of beast, in any of your dwellings."

Lev.17:12—"Therefore I said unto the children of Israel, No soul of you shall eat blood, neither shall any stranger that sojourneth among you eat blood."

Acts 15:20—"But that we write unto them, that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood."

Wouldn't this last instruction from the apostles be perplexing to the Gentiles, if they were told to scrupulously abstain from animal blood, but also to regularly eat human flesh and drink human blood?

C. If "eating flesh" and "drinking blood" are taken literally as the make-or-break condition for having eternal life, then that life will have to be denied to the Old Testament saints, who had no opportunity to gain life through this peculiar method.

D. Jesus Himself gave all the disclaimers necessary to avoid falling into the error of transubstantiation. He equated eating and drinking with seeing, coming and believing, throughout the rest of the discourse. After saying repeatedly that one must "eat...flesh" in order to have eternal life, He seems to contradict all this by saying, "It is the Spirit that gives life. The flesh profits nothing." Then He clarifies: "The words I speak to you, they are Spirit, and they are Life." (v.63). Not His physical body and blood, but His words, through the Spirit, impart life. When He then asked the twelve if they would leave Him, Peter's answer was "you alone have the words of eternal life" (if He had understood Jesus' earlier teaching in terms of transubstantiation, he should have said, "you alone have the body and blood of eternal life").

II. The Last Supper

A. The Last Supper was a Passover ceremony, and most believe that it followed the course of a traditional seder—up to a point. That point is the one where the host would speak words of memorial over the matzos and the cup. These were viewed as (and declared to be—Ex.12:14, 24-27) a memorial of the exodus. Jesus changed the words, making them a memorial of His sacrifice (1 Cor.11:24-25), but gave no indication that He was introducing new magic that had been absent from the traditional supper.

B. When the head of the household would say, "This [bread] is the bread of our fathers' affliction in Egypt..." this declaration did not imply that any supernatural process was now transubstantiating the bread into something else—the suffering of their ancestors. That these were merely words of memorial was clearly understood. There is nothing in the words that Jesus used "This [bread] is my body..." that requires any more literal an interpretation than that used in the traditional seder.

One more thing, Ken...you said that I am "so utterly reactionary to ROMAN catholicism" that I reject "almost all they believe." This is not true, even a little bit. I probably believe almost as many of their doctrines as I reject (maybe not, but I am not consciously interested in distancing myself from a belief simply because Catholics hold it). I have never recoiled in horror to the pariah of Roman Catholicism, and then sought to find beliefs as different from theirs as possible. My theology has been forged in an environment entirely oblivious to what Catholics think. I did not engage in controversies with Catholics until decades after I had formed my views from scripture.

As my reasons above show, I have based my interpretations on a rational approach to the biblical texts themselves. True, you would prefer that I take a mystical, rather than a rational, approach to what you call 'the mysteries," but I do not favor the practice of creating mysteries and other stumblingblocks where the scriptures do not require this.

[darinhouston]

Let's see Steve's proof texts. It is present tense...as is the whole of the Gospels, NT and LXX when in dialogue. "He is saying to them,'Unless you are eating and are drinking My flesh and My Blood, you are not having in you any life.'"

help me understand - when you leave the table, do you no longer have in you any life? I don't mean to be crude, but how about the next day when the elements have "passed?" how often must you "renew" this life-gaining activity so that the life of the Christ remains in you?

[Jill]

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[Paidion]

By way of explanation of eating his flesh and drinking his blood and having life, Jesus said, "The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life." (John 6:63)

It seems that those to whom He was speaking could feed upon Him by hearing his words and obeying them. He also compared a person who does that with a wise man who builds his house on a rock.

There may be several ways to "eat His flesh and drink His blood"; each of them is receiving Him in some way. It is an inner act.

One of the ways that we can "eat His flesh and drink His blood" is to participate in the communion (sharing) or eucharist (thanksgiving). Though we outwardly are eating bread, inwardly we are feeding on Christ. Though outwardly we are drinking wine, inwardly we are drinking the spirit of Christ.

Jesus must have meant something when He said, "This is my body" and "this is my blood". Did He mean no more than "this is a symbol of my body and this is a symbol of my blood"? If so, why didn't He word it that way? The bread and wine are indeed symbols of His body and blood, but they are so much more! When we are physically eating and drinking the bread and wine, we are inwardly receiving HIM in a special way. The early church received the bread and wine every Sunday. It was the central activity of their whole Christian life. It was not a mere formality; rather every aspect of their worship in that meeting was a remembrance of what Christ did for them as well as a special experience with Christ. There was a ministry of the body of Christ, first to Christ Himself, and secondly to each other. It was so much more than a formal meeting in which a preacher or priest does all the religious stuff and everyone else sits in rows as if they were an audience rather than participators.

I think a similar thing happens in baptism. When we go down under the water, it is not a mere symbol of what has happened to us. Rather, it is a symbol of what is happening to us right then and there! Going under the water symbolizes our death (being "buried" with Him in baptism), and coming up out of the water symbolized our being raised up with Him to life. Inwardly, the reality of what is being symbolized takes place. We actually die to the self-life and are raised up to a new life in Christ Jesus.

[Jill]

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[darinhouston]

This is a rough transcription from TNP the other day. I thought it was excellent, and I had never considered that Jesus' first discussion of eating and drinking "Him" was a year prior to the Last Supper where the Eucharist was supposedly instituted.

January 14th, 2009, from approximately 27 minutes in to approximately 36 minutes out.

As far as eating His flesh and drinking His blood in Chapter 6 (of John), many people of course associate this with the Last Supper where Jesus said "This cup is my blood, this bread is my body, which is broken for you..." and so forth. Even though the wording is similar, both passages speak of His body as bread and His blood as wine, and that creates an almost irresistible temptation to say "Oh, they're both talking about the same thing". I don't think they are talking about the same thing -- I don't think that in John, chapter 6, where Jesus said "if you eat my flesh and drink my blood you have life in you, and if you don't eat my flesh and don't drink my blood you don't have any life in you", I don't think He's talking about what happens at the Communion supper because first of all, He has not instituted that yet. That was something that the disciples and the other people would have absolutely no frame of reference to understand because Jesus had not yet instituted the Lord's Supper.

It would be, in fact, another year after John chapter 6 before Jesus would institute it, and yet Jesus was saying in John chapter 6 "there were already people who were eating His flesh and drinking His blood." He said "anyone who is eating my flesh and drinking my blood" (present tense) "has eternal life." So, Jesus was saying right there and then there were people who had eternal life because they were eating His flesh and drinking His blood, although nobody was taking the Eucharist. No one would take it for another year. And so, He must be talking about something else.

Now, when He did come around to the Last Supper, saying "this bread is my Body, and this cup is my Blood," of course what He is really saying is "this bread is a memorial of my body -- it represents my body -- and this cup, my blood." The reason we know that is because He was simply modifying the Passover ceremony -- there was a Passover meal, He and His disciples had kept Passover for three years together, and all their lives with their families before that. They knew the ritual. We know something about the ritual, too.

In the ritual for Passover, the head of the household -- the father, usually, or whoever was heading up the meal -- would take the bread, and he would say "this bread is the bread of affliction of our fathers who were in Egypt." Now, that bread in their hands was not at all the actual bread that their fathers ate nor was it the affliction that their fathers endured. To say that this bread is the bread of the affliction of our fathers means, of course, that this bread is a memorial of that. By eating this bread, we are remembering that our fathers in Egypt ate the bread of affliction. To say "this bread is that" is simply saying that it reminds of that or is a symbol of that, and so when Jesus changed it he only changed it a little bit and He said "this bread is" and then He changed it to something else -- "this bread is my body, which is broken...." So, He said "from now on, do this in remembrance of me."

So, as I understand it -- when Jesus was in the Upper Room doing the Communion thing with the disciples, He was changing the thing the Passover was to commemorate. Forever before, the Passover meal commemorated the fact that people of Israel had been in bondage in Israel and suffered cruelly, and God had delivered them. And, from now on, Jesus says "instead of remembering that your fathers suffered in Egypt, when you break this bread, remember my suffering, breaking my body for you. I want my atoning death, my suffering in death to be dominant in your thinking rather than the past -- rather than the deliverance from Egypt and all. That was a wonderful salvation, but what I'm about to do by dying is going to be an even greater salvation, and I want you to remember that from now on." So, He simply took the Passover meal, which was a memorial supper of something in the past, and said from now on when you do it I want it to be a memorial of something else, namely me, dying. So, that's a very different thing from trying to turn wine into blood and bread into flesh and things like that which some people claim magically happened at that time. Jesus was not claiming that was happening, and there is no reason in the world to believe, really, that it did happen that way.

Now, when Jesus in John 6 said you must eat my flesh and drink my blood, compare two verses together in John chapter 6, and you'll see what He means. In John 6:54, Jesus says "whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise them on the last day." Now, He says the same thing in different words in verse 40. He says "and this is the will of He who sent me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life and I will raise them up on the last day." Now, notice that both of those verses are identical in meaning, but different in wording. They both say that "whoever does such and such will have eternal life and I will raise them up on the last day." But the "such and such" that they "do" is different in both verses. In verse 40, it's whoever sees the Son and believes in Him. Well, the same action is referred to as eating my flesh and drinking my blood in verse 54. The rest of the verse is the same. So, seeing the Son and believing in Him is eating His flesh and drinking His blood as He is speaking of it there, and there were people who were doing that.

So He could speak of something that people were already doing. Nobody was taking the Eucharist -- no one was taking the Lord's Supper, which had not been instituted and would not be instituted for another year. But He was speaking of something people could do and were doing at that time -- seeing Him and believing Him, and they were, therefore, eating His flesh and drinking His blood, so to speak, spiritually. And later, when people began to be offended by that, Jesus said in verse 63, "the flesh doesn't profit anything, it's the spirit that gives life." He said "the words that I give to you, they are spirit, and they are the life." So, it's not eating flesh that profits, it's taking in the Holy Spirit through the words -- the words He speaks are spirit and they are life, and He says it's the spirit that gives life, it's not eating spiritual flesh -- let's not get too gross about this -- of course, some Christians throughout History have gotten quite gross about it and indicate that we do literally eat His flesh and drink His blood.

To take John 6 in that way (literally) is to make the same mistake that we see people making throughout the Gospel of John. In the Gospel of John, Jesus talks to various people about spiritual things and He makes physical analogies, and they always mistake them literally. Remember, in John chapter 2, Jesus said "destroy this Temple and in three days I'll raise it up," and the people said "what, we spent 46 years and how can you say ..." They take it lterally, but the scripture says He was actually talking about the temple of His body. Later, when He was speaking to Nicodemus, He said you had to be born again. In chapter 3 of John, he says "what, am I supposed to go back in my mother's womb again..." Again, he is taking Jesus in a literal way when He's talking about something spiritual. In the next chapter, chapter 4, He's talking to the woman at the well and says, "whoever drinks the water I am going to give will live forever and never thirst," and she says "give me this water, where is your well, where is your bucket, where is your rope," She took him literally, that is she took his word about something physical when He was talking about something spiritual. And so, throughout the gospel of John, we have the same thing -- Jesus is using physical analogies for spiritual things and people are always mistaking Him for talking about the physical things and not the spiritual things. The same thing is happening, for example, in the Roman Catholic church where Jesus said "eat my flesh and drink my blood," He was speaking of a spiritual thing where He elsewhere says is seeing and believing in Him. But, they're taking it literally, physically, just like the woman at the well took Jesus literally, and Nicodemus took him literally, and the Jews took him literally when He said "I'm not talking literally." And I don't see why we have to keep making that same mistake, especially where there is no good biblical argument for it in my opinion.