The Bible and Catholic Mass #1A

Welcome to the Truth Pulpit with Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Hello, I'm Bill Wright. Thanks for joining us as we continue teaching God's people God's Word. Don begins a new message today, so without further delay, let's join him right now in the Truth Pulpit. We are continuing tonight our biblical examination of the Roman Catholic Church.

We started this a couple of three weeks ago. We've covered the pope, the Bible and the pope, the Bible and Catholic tradition. And we're doing this in part because coming up at the end of this month is the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. And we are glad to be able to honor that significant date in world history, let alone church history, with this series. But also I want to be very, very plain spoken with you here this evening that there should be no question in anyone's mind about the the utter necessity of this study for the times in which we live. We're not simply marking a historical occasion here, we are speaking about things that distinguish a true church from a false church. And make no mistake about it, the Roman Catholic Church is a demonic false system of religion, and that cannot be stated clearly enough or often enough. But it's important for us to realize that we can't simply fling that accusation and then move on with our lives, we have a responsibility if we're going to make such a strong statement to support it with the truth.

And that's what we're trying to do in this series. Now, again, just about the necessity of this study, just six weeks ago on August 31, 2017, the Pew Research Center released survey results that measured Protestant and Roman Catholic beliefs. And the results show that many who self-identify as Protestants hold what are actually Catholic beliefs. There is great confusion among those who would claim to be Protestants about the most basic and simple elements of truth.

Listen to these, I'm just going to give you a couple of statistics, I don't often do this as you know. But again, and keeping in mind that this survey was released just six weeks ago, the Pew Research Center reports that over half of self-identified Protestants, 52%, believe that good deeds and faith are needed to get into heaven. Both good deeds and faith are needed to get into heaven, that's a Catholic belief. Only 46% believe that the biblical truth that salvation is by faith alone in Christ alone. 46% of Protestants, this is staggering, they go on to report that less than half of professing Protestants, 46%, believe that the Bible is the only source of religious authority for Christians. More than half believe that Christians should look to the Bible and to the church's official teachings and tradition for guidance. Over half of Protestants echoing things that are the foundation of Roman Catholicism.

Why are we doing this study? It's because there is mass confusion among those who wouldn't even claim to be Catholic about what is true and what is false. And beloved, there's no getting around the fact that the professing church of Jesus Christ is reaping the harvest, the bitter harvest, of two generations of pastors and teachers who have loved entertainment and large crowds more than the accurate teaching of God's Word. It is because churches have failed to instruct their people on these kinds of doctrines that this kind of theological chaos can come to pass. Well, it is our privilege as a church tonight, it is my personal privilege this evening, to stand with the Reformers of 500 years ago, to stand with Luther and Calvin and Zwingli and others like them, to stand with them rather than the prevailing spirit of our age.

We don't mind that. We count that an honor to be able to stand with men like that as we bring the Bible to bear and we bring the searchlight of the Bible to bear on the teaching and the false doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church. Tonight what we're going to do is we're going to focus on what they call the mass or the Eucharist. And to greatly oversimplify, just to get it started here this evening, to greatly oversimplify and to even distort to some extent, but just to have a starting point for those of you who may not be familiar with this. The mass, the Roman Catholic mass, is their version of communion. That's basically a starting point. In order to teach unfamiliar things, you start with something familiar, that's the best way I can do it. But let me quickly say that their practice of the mass bears absolutely no resemblance to biblical teaching. And certainly the significance that they attach to it is counter to everything that the Bible would teach. Now just to kind of give you a starting point on this and what we've tried to do in this series if you're new to it, maybe watching for the first time over our live stream. What we're trying to do in this, we're taking care to quote carefully from their current catechism of the Catholic Church that was released in 1994 in English.

I believe it was 92 in French. This is their official catechism that states what they believe. It's a fairly thick, nicely produced book with 2,000, 3,000 paragraphs of teaching in it articulating their official doctrine.

I'm quoting it and quoting the specific paragraph numbers so that everyone can know that we are doing our very level-headed best to represent their teaching accurately in their own words. And then we take that and we apply Scripture to it and see what Scripture would have to say about it. Here is what the catechism of the Catholic Church at paragraph 1365 says about the Eucharist or the mass. They use both words to describe the same ritual in their system. They say, and I quote, the Eucharist is also a sacrifice. In the Eucharist, Christ gives us the very body which he gave up for us on the cross, the very blood which he poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. The operative words here when they say the very body, the very blood, they mean literal flesh and literal blood. They're not talking symbolically. They mean when the priest holds the wafer in his hands, he is literally holding the body of Christ in that, not a wafer. And we'll talk about that more next week.

There's so much here that we're going to have to cover this over two weeks and not deal with it all tonight. What the Catholics are saying in the mass is that we are sacrificing the very body and the very blood of Christ. Literally, they mean this. They go on to say that this mass is a sacrifice to the very body, the very blood of Christ. In a paragraph 1414, a summary paragraph, they say, as a sacrifice, the Eucharist is also offered in reparation for the sins of the living and the dead and to obtain spiritual or temporal benefits from God.

Let me say that again. As a sacrifice, the Eucharist is offered in reparation. Reparation is a word that means to make amends for. It's offered to make amends for the sins of the living and the dead, for the dead, and to obtain spiritual or temporal benefits from God. They're saying that this ritual that we practice involves the literal blood, the literal body of Christ, and we offer it to atone for sin as we do. Now, we'll have more to say about that later.

I'm just trying to get some basic information on the table. And so what Catholics believe occurs in their mass, a perverted version of communion, is that the substance of the bread and wine is changed into the literal body and blood of Christ. And the priest offers these elements to God as a sacrifice to make amends for their sins and don't miss it also for the sins of the dead. You want to spring a soul from purgatory, offer a mass for them, and you can speed it up by an uncertain number of... a certain amount of time. Now, to us that are, you know, we're used to biblical teaching, we're used to a, you know, what we are used to, this all sounds really strange and bizarre and even grotesque.

But 1.27 billion people, as we've made the point repeatedly, are baptized in a religion that teaches this and practices this. And so what we want to do is this. We want to ask this question to start with tonight. How do they get to that view?

How do they get to that view? And we're going to spend, like I say, two nights tonight and next Tuesday, we're going to address this, and we're just going to piece it all together, hopefully, by the time we're done next week. How do you get to what I just described from the Bible is the question. And it's not entirely dependent on the Bible, but we want to look at it this way. And so let's start here with our first point, explaining the Catholic view of the Last Supper.

When Jesus had the final meal, the Passover meal with the disciples before he was crucified, that's what we're referring to, explaining the Catholic view of the Last Supper. That's our point number one here. Now, let me just say this and make a couple of introductory comments that perhaps I should have moved up earlier in my notes, but I didn't. You can see me afterwards if you want to register a complaint.

That won't be necessary. First of all is this. The Catholic mass is difficult to untangle. And as you hear things tonight and next week, you may very well find it difficult to follow what I'm saying. And don't be surprised if that happens because you're not the first person that's struggled to even understand what they mean by the mass. As one teacher said, they're all over the map on this. And so it's very difficult to present it in a concise, streamlined way that goes in a linear manner from point A to point B, and you say, oh, okay, I've got it.

It's not that simple, but we're trying to do the best that we can. To give you an idea of how complex this is, their catechism devotes 98 paragraphs to explain what they mean by the mass in paragraphs 1322 to 1419. And that does not even include the other places throughout the catechism where it's referred to indirectly. Ninety-eight paragraphs is devoted to their teaching on the mass. They have, I believe it is, six paragraphs devoted to the doctrine of justification.

It gives you a sense of the distortion that's in their system. But with 98 paragraphs, beloved, it is inevitable that we're going to pass over important details. We're going to omit things that they would contest, and that's okay. We're just trying to give an overview that allows us to get a grasp on what we're doing. And not just for the sake of the academic exercise of this, but as many of you have approached me privately and said, I know that you work with, you interact with Catholics. You are interacting with people. It will help you to understand their perspective so that you can interact with them intelligently and hopefully under the blessing of the Holy Spirit be an instrument to bring the gospel to them and that God would use your witness informed by an understanding of Catholicism in order to lead them to a true saving knowledge of Christ. That would be the ultimate goal of what we're doing here this evening.

So it's difficult to untangle. That's one preliminary comment. Secondly, again going by their official teaching, you should understand that Catholics consider the mass to be central to their entire system of religion. This is no incidental matter to them. This is at the very core of what they believe, what they practice, and what they put their hope in. Listen to what they say at paragraph 1324 of their catechism, and I quote, The Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian life. For in the blessed Eucharist is contained the whole spiritual good of the church, namely Christ himself. To call it the source and the summit is to say this is the origin of the Christian life.

This is where you find it. To call it the summit is to say this is the climax of our existence. This is the purpose of everything that we do, is the celebration of the mass or the Eucharist.

And they assert that you literally find the Lord Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. Not a symbol, not a remembrance, not a memorial. I debated whether to say this.

I'm going to say it because, you know, it's helpful. When I was a very brand new Christian, I went to a Catholic mass. I didn't know any better. I was with a friend and, you know, and hey, you know, everything's Christian. I'd been a Christian for days or weeks.

I didn't know any better. So I have to preface it that way so you don't say, oh man, what was he doing at a mass? And why is he even a pastor?

He went to a mass. Yeah, it's not like that. So I'm in this utterly foreign environment. I don't believe I'd ever been in a Catholic church before. I didn't know what was going on. And people start going up to the front after the priest had gone through his ritual where they say that they converted the, you know, the elements, the bread and the wine to the body and blood of Christ. So I walk up and I follow.

I'm just, you know, I'm just kind of going along with the crowd doing what I think I'm supposed to do at this point. Well, the person who handed me the wafer, as I recall, it was some kind of altar boy. It wasn't the priest himself or some kind of, maybe it was a female servant up there, whatever it was, doesn't matter. She took that wafer and she presented it to me. And she said, I believe it was a she, she said, this is the body of Christ. Now, in my heart and in my mind, I may have even shown it on my countenance. I'm just like, right, you're holding a cracker. And so I'm going to play along with your game and say, okay, it's the body of Christ.

Because it was just so absurd to think, it never crossed my mind that she actually meant that. But that's what they believe. And we'll talk about that more and how they understand that when they're holding a cracker in their hands, and I'm being deliberately derogatory and pejorative in what I say, how can you hold a cracker in your hand and say, this is the Lord Jesus.

This is the body of Christ. Well, that's what they believe. And my whole point of saying it, going into this detail with you, is that you must understand that they mean these things literally.

They are not kidding. They're not speaking symbolically or metaphorically. They mean what they say, and they say it over and over and over again in their catechism. And they've been saying this for centuries. And so I just want to help you see, when they say the body and the blood of Christ, you should not think, oh, they're talking symbolically, like we do when we have communion.

No, they mean it. They are not saying the same thing that we are in communion. And if you can start with that understanding, you've come a long way toward being able to grasp the significance of the Catholic mass.

Now, so, it's convoluted, admittedly, but the fact that it's convoluted isn't my fault. They were teaching this long before I ever got on the scene. It's convoluted, and it's literal, and it's central to them. It is essential to them. How do they get to that? That's the whole point here. There's two biblical steps that they go through to do this, just in terms of their system.

They may not explain it to you this way, but their system works like this. And we'll go to these passages in just a moment. They go to John chapter 6 to start with, and then based on what Jesus said in John chapter 6, they say, see, this is what he was doing at the Last Supper. So with that in mind, turn to John chapter 6, and you can begin to see the path that they take from scriptures to what we've been describing here today. John chapter 6 in verse 52, or actually in verse 51, Jesus said, I am the living bread that came down out of heaven.

If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever, and the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. Now, we understand that Jesus is pointing to the cross there. He would give his literal flesh on the cross a Calvary 2,000 years ago.

That's what he's talking about. And then he begins to teach people that they need to personally appropriate him by faith, that they need to internalize him by faith, and he uses symbolic language in the verses that follow. Look at verse 52. Then the Jews began to argue with one another, saying, how can this man give us his flesh to eat? So Jesus said to them, he presses the point, truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in yourselves. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day, for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him. Now, drop down to verse 59 because the geographic reference will be helpful in just a moment.

In verse 59 it says, these things he said in the synagogue as he taught in Capernaum. So Jesus makes these statements in John chapter 6 earlier in his ministry describing that his flesh and blood were the key to salvation. He uses a metaphor of eating to say you need to internally appropriate that, and it becomes a picture of what he is about to do. Now, understand that as you go through the Gospel of John, we'll talk about this more next week, Jesus repeatedly uses metaphors to help explain his mission.

He said, I am the door, I am the shepherd, and on and on. He doesn't mean that he's a literal wood panel on hinges. You can't take all of these things literally.

It's obvious that he's talking in metaphors. But the Catholics take this and say this is literal here. And so they take John chapter 6 and they apply that text to interpret the Lord's Supper. Look at Matthew chapter 26 now. Matthew 26. Again, we're just trying to give you a little sense of how they think so that we can deal with it and refute it, as is the responsibility of church elders to do. Matthew chapter 26, verse 26.

You're familiar with the narrative account? Matthew 26, verse 26. While they were eating, Jesus took some bread, and after a blessing, he broke it and gave it to the disciples and said, take, eat, this is my body. And when he had taken a cup and given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, drink from it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins. But I say to you, verse 29, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom. Now, as we've said many times, every time we have a communion service, we say this is a symbol that the Lord was giving to the church, that the bread is representative.

It was a physical reminder of a different reality when Christ literally died on the cross. But the bread is bread, and that's why it looks like bread. That's why it tastes like bread.

It's why it smells like bread. You know, it's like the duck thing. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck, you know what it is?

It's a duck. Well, if it looks like bread, tastes like bread, and smells like bread, you know what it really is? It's bread.

It's not human flesh. But here's what Catholics say. Catholics say that when Jesus said, this is my body and this is my blood, that at that time he was literally converting those elements into his literal flesh and blood and then he gave them to the disciples to eat. And they cross-reference two unrelated passages, John 6 with the narrative accounts of the Last Supper, and they say, see, this is what Jesus was talking about in John chapter 6. There is a perverse, superficial plausibility to it if you haven't read anything else in the Bible, basically. There has to be a certain level of plausibility, or you have to depart from something in the text in order to get this. Now, is that what Catholics truly teach?

Have I fairly represented what they teach? Listen to paragraph 621 of the Catechism, the Roman Catholic Catechism, which says, and I quote, Jesus freely offered himself for our salvation. Beforehand, during the Last Supper, he both symbolized this offering and made it really present. This is my body, which is given for you. He made it really present. The blood and body were really present in what he gave to the disciples.

Not a symbol by what they say. And they go on to say in paragraph 1339 of the Catechism, Jesus chose the time of the Passover to fulfill what he had announced at Capernaum. That's why we mentioned verse 59. Giving his disciples his body and his blood.

Appreciate their comparative clarity and to put it in print so that we can hold it up to the light of scriptures. Catholics say he gave them his literal flesh and blood to eat. And they say the elements were changed to his literal body and blood through a miracle known as transubstantiation. That the elements were transformed from bread and wine into literal human flesh and human blood. Not simply any human flesh and blood, but his. The blood and body of Christ itself. We'll talk more about transubstantiation next week. I just want to introduce the term for now.

Simply meaning that the elements are transformed into something else by a miracle that takes place. A so-called miracle. Now, why, you might ask, why would Christ do this?

What is the point of that? Well, the Catholics have an answer to that. And they say, and I quote from paragraph 1380 of the Catechism, since Christ was about to take his departure from his own in his visible form, he wanted to give us his sacramental presence. In other words, Jesus was about to leave the earth and he knew that. He was about to be crucified, buried, resurrected, and ascended.

He was going to be leaving soon. And so what Catholics say is that in order to compensate for his imminent physical absence, Christ instituted a ritual with the apostles as the first priests in which his literal body and blood would be present with them after he had departed. You see, this is why it's so significant to them. Christ, to them, is present in this ritual that they call the Mass, that they call the Eucharist. And so when they hold up the wafer and say, this is the body of Christ, this is an act of worship to them because they believe Christ is literally there. And the modern Mass continues the ritual. They believe that they are literally receiving flesh and blood in the Mass, the flesh and blood of Christ himself. And if you step into their mindset, if you accept that for the sake of the argument, you can see why it would be so central to their beliefs, because they believe they are encountering Christ himself at that moment in the Mass.

Now, that's an overview of how they get to it. We'll talk more next week about other things that it means to them, and we'll address things in more detail. This is the departure point. The Lord's Supper, John chapter six, this is their departure point.

This is the interpretation that they place on those key passages of Scripture. Now, what we want to do here, second point here this evening, is this. We want to examine the Catholic view of the Last Supper. Examine it. We explained it in point number one. We explained it. Now we want to examine it. Now we want to test it by the truth of Scripture and bring things to bear on it. Could this possibly be what was happening at the Last Supper? Could this possibly be a true explanation of what Scripture teaches us in John six and in the Gospel accounts of the Last Supper? Could it possibly be true?

I'll answer that question for you. No, absolutely not. It cannot possibly be true. It cannot possibly be true. And I'm going to give you three reasons why it cannot possibly be true from Scripture, from God's Word.

In every instance, explaining why that cannot possibly be the case. That's Don Green here on The Truth Pulpit. And here's Don again with some closing thoughts. Well, thank you, Bill. And just before we close, my friends, I just want to let you know that this podcast is made possible for you by the generous support of many friends of our ministry.

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Know that our love and prayers are with you. Thank you for joining us. We'll see you next time as we continue to study God's Word together here on The Truth Pulpit.

That's Don Green. Founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Thank you so much for listening to The Truth Pulpit. Join us next time for more as we continue teaching God's people God's Word.