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Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron.
This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.
Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.
And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.
Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this eighth day of February, 2024.
Before I introduce my guest today, I just have some sad news. I learned this morning that a very dear friend of mine who was one of my very first Christian friends after becoming a born-again believer in the 1980s, Jack Montalbano, he went home to the Lord.
He went home to the Lord this morning after a bout with cancer. Decades ago, Jack had victory over non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, but the cancer recently returned with a vengeance and took his life. And this is sad and tragic news for those who knew and love Jack, but not tragic news for him.
He is face-to-face with the Savior that he loved and followed for so long. And I cut my teeth on Christian theology in Jack Montalbano's basement in Lindenhurst, Long Island, because when I first became a believer, I was attending weekly Bible studies being conducted by my pastor at that time, Mike Gaydosh, my very first pastor as a born-again.
Believer.
And I miss those days of not only learning about the Christian faith in that basement, but so many memories of explosive laughter and fun and fellowship. Jack was a—he was one of those proverbial gentle giants.
He was about 6 '8", weighed over 300 pounds, but was as humble and sweet and kind and gentle as a man could be, and loved his Lord, and he will be missed. Please pray for his wife, Evelyn, and for his surviving family.
I may be going to a funeral soon, depending upon where in the United States it's being held. Jack went home to be with the Lord in Florida, but I know that he is from Long Island, where I am from, so I'm assuming he may be having—his family may be having a funeral for him on Long Island.
But I will keep you posted about that. But today I have a returning guest on the program who hasn't been on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio for a number of years, a dear old friend, who is another one of those folks that I have extremely fond memories of from my earliest days of Christianity.
His name is Jim Eloff. He's the founder and president of Christian Communicators Worldwide, also known as CCW, and he's founder of Christ Fellowship of Kansas City, Missouri. He's an author and a conference speaker, and I have such fond memories of him.
In fact, I was just telling Jim before the program that to this day, and in fact even very recently, I have been for all these years, since the 1980s, raving about a message delivered by Jim Eloff at the church where I was saved, Calvary Baptist Church of Amityville, Long Island, which today is known as Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick, after they merged with First Baptist Church of Merrick.
And Jim preached a sermon on the root of bitterness and the power of forgiveness. And there was something unique that happened at Calvary Baptist Church in Amityville that I never witnessed before or after that.
It was almost like a Holy Ghost revival. There were people weeping and publicly confessing sin, and it was just an extraordinary experience that I never recall being repeated there, because that was not the normal kind of thing that you would witness.
In fact, it's just not the normal kind of thing you would witness at a Reformed Baptist Church ever. But truly something that has permanently been etched on my heart and mind, and I hope that Jim has a recording of that sermon, because I would be surprised if you did not preach that at other locations over the years.
But today Jim is going to be speaking about the Lord's Supper is a meal, and quite a controversial topic. I'm not even 100 how much I personally will be agreeing with Jim today, but I just hope that those listening who have different views on the Lord's Supper aren't too angry about hearing a view that may not represent their own view, because I know that issues like this can be very touchy.
But it's my honor, privilege, joy, and thrill to have you back on Iron Trip and Zion Radio. Jim Elliffe.
Thank you so much, Chris. Great to hear your voice.
Great to hear your voice as well. In fact, I often, when I look at my computer console right now, and it's cluttered with junk, I still chuckle to this day remembering you walking by my office at Calvary Baptist Church in Amityville.
I had an office for WMCA Radio, where I was the Long Island representative, and I had an office right in that church building, and I remember you walking by the doorway, looking at the junk on my desk, and you asked me, when was the last time you saw wood on that desk?
I still remember it vividly. Oh, boy. But, Jim, if you could, let our listeners know about Christian Communicators Worldwide.
Yeah. I was laughing, and I didn't hear what you asked me.
Oh, could you tell us about Christian Communicators Worldwide?
Okay, tell you about that. Okay, yeah. We've been around several decades, and it's a ministry through which we teach, some of us teach the Word. We especially, not only in conferences and other kinds of meetings, but also in something we call Bible Intenses, by which we engage people for many hours together on one text of Scripture without commentaries, just learning how to interpret the Bible, and this has been a huge blessing to us.
I just did it again last week, and my assistant did it in India last week, so this is something we do quite often. We're really interested in getting people in the Bible and learning how to really meditate on Scripture and glean from the Scripture.
Then also, we're doing quite a bit of writing, and we publish books, all without charge, by the way, for those who will commit to read them, on our site, and so we've published many books, and of course, we have an active blog and various other things that have to do with writing.
So, that's mainly it, teaching and writing, and we've been doing it a long, long time now.
And the website is ccwtoday .org, ccwtoday .org. One other thing that I thought I'd mention is that when I worked for WMCA Radio, I was the first person to fill in for the late Andy Anderson of his talk show, Andy Anderson Live, after he passed and went home to glory after I think he had bladder or stomach cancer.
My general manager asked me to fill in every day until they found a permanent replacement, and one of my guests was Jim Eliff, and they were—the station received an avalanche of complaints because I was speaking against the altar call.
Not a very popular position to take in mainstream evangelical radio. And we also had some criticisms, I think gracious criticisms, of Billy Graham and that ministry, but hey, you gotta speak boldly about what you believe the Bible teaches, and you can't be overly concerned with people's feelings when it comes to things like that.
That's right. In love, though.
Amen.
That's for sure.
Amen. I mean, we were not nasty at all about Billy Graham or those who practice the invitational altar call system. Now tell us about Christ Fellowship of Kansas City, Missouri.
Yeah, Chris, we're actually a small network of house churches. We have five pastors, and our main meetings are in the homes, which is a building, by the way. So we meet in buildings called homes, and this has been wonderful.
We've had 20 years of history. We're not a—we're deep running in terms of our doctrine and our view of leadership and all the things that we hold to be important for churches to be. But we just have a different venue, meet in a home, and every six weeks or so we meet together.
All the congregations meet together. It's been a wonderful, wonderful experience, and one of the things that we do is eat the Lord's Supper together every time in our homes. So it's been a great laboratory in a way for really examining some of the first century issues, practices, and making the distinction, of course, between what's descriptive and what's prescriptive.
But we really had a wonderful time. It's been an amazing church.
Amen. Well, if you want to find out more about Christ Fellowship of Kansas City, Missouri, if you live in that area or if you are passing through that area or if you have family, friends, and loved ones in that area, go to ChristFellowshipKC .org.
ChristFellowshipKC .org. And I hope that my niece, Patrice Farrell, who is a beautiful Christian niece, I hope that one day she pays you folks a visit because she lives very close to that area.
Okay.
Good. And, well, today, as I said, we're speaking about something that has a bit of controversy connected to it. The Lord's Supper is a meal. And if you could, first of all, lay out the primary or the main premise of what exactly that means, and then we'll get more involved into detail and so on.
Of course. Yeah. Yes. Actually, what isn't controversial to scholars is that the early church ate a meal that they called the Lord's Supper. So that's not controversial in itself. But the practice of it today has, with quite a bit of morphing over history, over the long history, looks a lot different than the early church experienced it.
So we take the Lord's Supper, the term, and the only real designation for this, and it is an oregape meal, both of them implying a meal. And this description tells us what we ought to do. It's a supper, highlighting, of course, the elements of the bread and the wine or grape juice, whatever's used.
So that's something we do every week when we gather together. So we don't take the Lord's Supper, we eat the Lord's Supper, a true fellowship meal. Built upon what we're representing, what is being represented through the bread and the wine or juice.
So that's the simple idea. We've had over 900 meals together, for instance, as a church over these years.
And when I first met you, when you came to preach at Calvary Baptist Church of Amityville, you were pastor of a more traditional Reformed Baptist church in Little Rock, Arkansas, if I'm not mistaken. Yes.
And did you have this view of the Lord's Supper being a meal back then, or if you didn't, how did that develop?
No, I didn't. It developed in my understanding of the Scripture and definitely didn't. We did take the Lord's Supper elements every week. That was a practice that we had, but we had not really seen the import and really the construction, apostolic construction, to eat the Lord's Supper together on a weekly basis.
So now it's been about 20 years, 20 or so years since this became a reality in our understanding.
And this also is a view that I have only heard from those that also believe in the house church model. I've never heard of someone, a pastor or elder or another individual, outside of that house church view that practices the Lord's Supper as a meal.
Are there actual, more traditional, mainstream kind of churches that are also doing this?
Yes, there are some. I think they're wrestling—and by the way, we don't think meeting in house churches is the only way, by the way.
Thank goodness.
Yeah, that's right. No, we don't. And a lot of our work is in just traditional churches. Yes, there are some churches that have done that. In fact, I guess to restate a little bit about my history, we did have a time where for several years we had a meal, but we didn't think of it as the Lord's Supper.
We had a meal every Sunday together after our morning meeting. And so the practice of having a meal also was a step forward, but we didn't put all the pieces together until, you know, as I said, maybe about 20, maybe a little bit ahead of that time, that all came together and I think this is exactly what's being talked about in the Scripture.
So yeah, there are some churches here and there. Not many, of course, in the traditional vein because the church buildings are typically not as accommodating to do this as a home would be, of course. Well, you know, we haven't built our architecture around this idea.
Well, why don't you tell us about the meal at Gaius's house?
Yeah, I began this book that I, a small book that I wrote, The Lord's Supper is a Meal, with a fictional story actually about eating at Gaius's house. Gaius's actually is the home of the person where the Corinthian church met.
That's listed in Romans chapter 16. Gaius has hosted the whole church, writing from Corinth. And so, yeah, I just tell a fictional story about another couple and some servants, slaves who went down with him, all of whom had been converted to the ministry of Paul, eating together in Gaius's large home.
And everything seemed normal. The wealthy people sort of hobnobbed with the other wealthy people that they were used to talking to. The slaves or the poor people tend to group up with those people. When it came to eating, they carried their own meals and the poor had very little and the wealthy people had a lot.
And, but actually, you know, it was a meal like this, in that kind of context, that kind of experience where Paul wrote and said, you come together for the worse. These people were doing what socially was common.
Everybody probably thought in the Corinthian church that everything was right and good, but the apostle Paul saw something there that was strikingly bad to him. And he said, when you come together to eat, you actually come together for the worse, because what you're eating is not the Lord's Supper.
It's your own meal. It's not the Lord's Supper.
And when you have this supper as a meal, give us more about, before we go on with some of the other chapter themes in the book, give us some more details about what is actually taking place. I'm assuming that you have the primary elements that are traditionally had in the Lord's table, bread and wine or bread and grape juice.
By the way, do you believe that it is required to have either fermented wine or unfermented grape juice? There are churches, obviously, as you know, that are strongly divided over that in the body of Christ.
Well, it's what we practice, and we do believe with this. We do believe that's part of the point. But I understand there might be places in the world where this is not possible, so I'm sure the Lord would understand if it's not possible to do that.
Do what? Which though? Fermented or non-fermented?
No, just not even have the grapes, period. You know what I'm saying? There might be places in the world where they don't have access to that. You know, so that might be an exception, which I'm sure the Lord would understand.
But no, we do. It's accessible to all of us that are listening to this, and I do think it's important to do that. But, you know, it's not.
Yeah.
At any rate, that's a very secondary issue to us, but I think it's important to do that myself.
Well, which way do you do it, though? You haven't answered if it's fermented.
Yeah, because we have had—well, at any rate, we use the grape juice.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, but I don't think we're totally contrary to having the wine. The question there has been, of course, sometimes people have had an alcoholic background and so forth.
Right. And how about the bread? Do you only use unleavened bread or does it matter to you?
We think it matters. It's part of the symbolism. And, for instance, very clearly in 1 Corinthians 5, you know, unleavened, related to sin, a whole history of symbolism about that from the Passover on.
So we use unleavened bread.
Now, when you have the elements, like, for instance, at the Last Supper, the actual partaking of communion seemed to be after the Passover meal, you know, the Scriptures referring to when the supper was ended, he took the cup.
And so do you have the Lord's Supper, even though you connect it with a meal, do you have it in a distinct section of that meal as a more ceremonial aspect after the meal? Or do you just, you know, pile plates filled with mashed potatoes and meatloaf and string beans and corn and apple pie?
And then you have your unleavened bread and your grape juice. I mean, how does that work?
Yeah, I mean, again, I don't think that this is prescribed in the Scripture as far as the eating of the Lord's Supper is concerned about when in the meal or how in the meal exactly. One of the things that is important to consider is that in the Mediterranean world, the bread was the utensil that they used to eat their food.
And even in the Scripture passage you're mentioning, it was only the cup that they took afterwards. And that had more to do, I think, Chris, with the formulation of the Passover Seder experience and the import of the symbolism about the particular cup which he was lifting up and drinking at the time.
But the bread was earlier, by the way. So in the Lord's Supper meal, it doesn't seem to be any ceremony about the meal. And in our case, most of our congregations, they're free to do however they wish to do it as individual congregations.
We've done it different ways. We've taken those elements different ways. But we like to have someone talk about that before the meal begins. We're all in the kitchen around the food. And we'll take a few minutes to hear something out of the Scripture, maybe to pray, to sing something.
And then they do pick up these elements after we've made something of them. And then they pick them up and take them with them to the table. Because historically, they would have been just, again, the drink and the bread that they would have used in the meal.
So it's a little bit different, this not being the staple part of our meals. But it was always part of a banquet to have wine and always part of every meal to have this bread, this unleavened bread, or leavened or unleavened, but in this case, unleavened bread.
And so that poses a little conundrum to think through. One of our congregations does that immediately following the meal. We've stopped in the middle of the meal and highlighted these things. The one thing that I think is important is that it does need to be highlighted.
This is the cup which we bless and the bread which we bless. So we do take some time to think about that.
Amen. And we have to go to our first commercial break. And if anybody has questions of your own for Jameleff on The Lord's Supper is a Meal, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.
Give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside of the USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.
Let's say you agree with Jim, but you're a member of a church that vehemently disagrees with Jim, and you don't want to draw attention to your identity, or vice versa. Whatever the case may be, we will honor your request to remain anonymous if you believe your question is personal and private.
But otherwise, if it's a general question, give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence. Please don't go away. We're going to be right back with Jameleff.
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Chris Arnzen here, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. I strongly recommend a church I've been recommending as far back as the 1980s. Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey, pastored by Alan Dunn.
Grace Covenant Baptist Church believes it's God's prerogative to determine how he shall be worshiped and how he shall be represented in the world. They believe churches need to turn to the Bible to discover what to include in worship and how to worship God in spirit and truth.
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We're now back with Jim Eliff, founder of Christian Communicators Worldwide, and we are discussing his book, The Lord's Supper is a Meal. If you have a question, send it to chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.
Before I go to any listener questions, and we already have some, tell us about The Lord's Supper is a weekly meal, and this idea of it being a weekly meal seems to be, in my experience, growing in popularity amongst churches, perhaps especially Reformed churches that have historically, perhaps for decades or a century or more, been only having it once a month, and some churches have it less, but there seems to be a growing popularity in wanting to have this meal every week.
Perhaps even the younger pastors are moving in that direction, seeing it as a more biblical way to be faithful in regard to the supper. But if you could, tell us about that, The Lord's Supper.
Yes, okay. Yeah, that's a very interesting question, and thank you for that. Yeah, in the passage, in a very important passage related to The Lord's Supper, 1 Corinthians 11, where there was an abuse of The Lord's Supper, we learn a great deal about it.
We learn clearly that it was a meal, for instance, but he says five times, when you come together, he uses that phrase, when you come together, and for instance, he says here in verse 18, when you come together as a church, and then just after that, it says, when you come together to eat, and this is sometimes a connection point, I think, for people to discover that this is a regular practice of their lives.
There are other historical information about that as well. But yeah, that, in Acts chapter 20 in Troas, it says it was the first day of the week when they came together to break bread. I think these are the two prominent places you would go, Acts 20 and 1 Corinthians 11, to see this practice outside of the other historical information.
So many churches have, this history, I mean, is played out in some of the denominations, right? There are some denominations, whatever their view of The Lord's Supper is, that are practicing that on a weekly basis.
And so that's just a continuation. I do think it's clearly what did happen on a weekly basis, and almost every scholar I've ever read on this subject would agree with that, that this was just the practice that they had.
By the way, usually at the end of the day, it was a supper, and a long line of suppers, you know, from the Passover meal to the Last Supper, throughout all the years of The Lord's Supper, looking forward to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.
So, you know, it was just something that they did after work, because until 313, I think it was, when there was an edict, everybody worked, you know, you didn't get the day off on Sunday. Everybody just did their work, and when they were through with their work, they gathered as a church.
It was The Lord's Day, but it wasn't a day off until then, at least in the Roman world. So, yeah, they would eat a supper together regularly. When they come together to eat, that's—and when they come together as a church, are the same thing.
And as far as The Lord's Supper is a meal for inter—intentional and undivided fellowship, how does that relate specifically to those two aspects?
Well, I think of the purposes of The Lord's Supper, one, of course, to symbolize the death of the body, the blood of Jesus Christ, but particularly The Lord's Supper from the passages in 1 Corinthians 10 and 11 especially, I think, make this clear.
Well, I think there are other places, maybe Galatians chapter 2 as well, and the conflict Paul had with Peter not eating with Gentiles was a Lord's Supper experience as well. But this idea of being this kind of warm fellowship built upon the death, the body and the blood of Jesus Christ—in other words, their eating together was a way to say, in fellowship with each other, was a way to say, Jesus Christ has made this possible by his death for us.
And this is what allows us to have fellowship with the Father on a vertical level and fellowship with one another on a horizontal level. We also see this from the whole sacrificial system in the Old Testament, the eating of the food after the sacrifice, this idea that you would eat—that the people who made sacrifices were sharers in that, and we are sharers as well, 1 Corinthians 10, in the body of Christ.
And we are one bread, which speaks of our fellowship together. The very problem that was going on in Corinth was a problem on the horizontal level of abuse of this fellowship, and not including, you know, it was sort of a status division that was going on.
And Paul has gone into some detail about the importance of fellowship. So much to say that when they eat the meal with this kind of broken fellowship, not considering one another, they're eating their own meal.
They're not eating the Lord's Supper. So the Lord's Supper is a meal that is intentionally about our fellowship with each other. And by the way, there's very little fellowship in just a small cracker and a little sipping a little drink, you know, a cup.
That, in a funny way, is about the thing that might be done in a church meeting that has the least fellowship connected to it. But that, I believe, is kind of a hangover from Catholicism that didn't get corrected, really, in my view.
Well, the answer—.
So fellowship, you know, fellowship around the table is strongly thematic in the Scripture. Even our future, eternal future, is spoken of by Jesus as fellowship around the table. And so this and that culture, and even in our culture, is just a strong statement about our fellowship.
And that's what they did. It was the Lord's Supper. They were eating a meal together. And it's not called communion. That's what we hope to experience. It's not called Eucharist. That's the word for giving thanks.
Jesus gave thanks. But those are words that are used that kind of cause people to separate out the eating of the elements with the meal itself. But it's called, you know, the Lord's Supper. And as my son said one time, the Lord's Supper is a supper after all, isn't it?
You know, it is a supper. And by its own name, or the term agape feast, of course, explicitly saying it's a feast. It's a meal together. So this is what the early church did. They came together to eat, and they had fellowship together.
Having that 900 meals together as a church in our context over here, I have to tell you, has so deepened our love and relationship with each other. It's incredibly deeper. Can you just imagine and think about that?
I mean, there's not much not to like about that, is there? That we spend time together around the table just getting involved in each other's lives in a deep way because of Jesus Christ, entirely because of his death.
Amen. And I'm sorry, are we going to continue on with that point?
No, that's fine.
Okay, if you could hone in on an essential element that should be, obviously, a focal point of the Lord's Supper, no matter what other views you have on the physical aspects of partaking it, is the Lord's Supper is a meal to proclaim Christ's death.
That's exactly what the Scripture says in 1 Corinthians 11. There's a section in 1 Corinthians 11 where it's something that's often quoted when pastors lead a church in the Lord's Supper. I received for the Lord that which I also deliver to you, that the Lord in the night took the bread.
When he was betrayed, he took bread, and when he was given thanks, he broke it, and he said this is my body. But that section is in the context of this fellowship problem that is going on, and if you look at it carefully, it begins with a for.
He's going to explain something. For, he says. He's been talking about the broken fellowship in the church which is causing judgment by God on them, and he's going to explain something with what Jesus Christ said he was doing with his body and his blood, and he says for, and he gets to the end of it, and he says therefore.
So he's using this not as something which has to be said each time we eat the Lord's Supper together. There's no commandment to say these words at all. It's okay to say them, but there's no commandment to say them.
He's actually using this to emphasize that this death which was sacrificial for others, it's totally hypocritical for you while you're emphasizing the death of Jesus Christ in these symbols that you have in your hands, and then to have these status divisions among you not caring for each other even in the meal itself.
This is the height of hypocrisy when you do this, and he's emphasizing there that we're proclaiming the Lord's death not just in what we say about the body and the blood, but we're proclaiming the Lord's death in our eating this meal together, in our fellowship together by imitating this kind of sacrificial love for each other.
Therefore, he goes on to say whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup in an unworthy manner, and the word can be translated as unfitting or a way that does not correspond in a manner that does not correspond, will, and then he goes into a segment about judgment.
So, yeah, the reason that is inset in 1 Corinthians 11, for those of you who can sort of picture or are looking at the scriptures, the reason that is inset is to make the point that these people in Corinth were being entirely hypocritical, and this is the reason, not being like Christ and not really, right here in the midst of holding this bread and drinking this cup, you are actually demonstrating the opposite of what Jesus.
Christ said.
That is unfitting, and that brings about judgment. That's how Paul is explaining that judgment has come to these Corinthian people, many of them sick and weak, and some of them have died because of it.
Yeah, I would imagine that there are a lot of folks in modern evangelicalism that believe that that would never possibly happen in the 21st century, that people might actually die from, in some way, disrespecting the intent of the Lord's table.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, well, I actually think, Chris, that it was a total shock to these people.
Yes.
You know, it really took the apostles' look at this, the apostles' understanding, to read what was happening in their situation. We know not all sickness is a judgment in any way by God, but he saw this clearly as connected to this problem.
Listen, Paul gets really exercised about this. This is about as strong a word as he says to any church, right? And it has to do with the Lord's Supper. We take the Lord's Supper so incidentally, you know, like it's almost nothing.
But he is talking about their fellowship, which is built upon the death of Jesus Christ. That's what brings. It's the death of Christ that broke the middle wall of partition down between Jews and Gentiles.
You know, this is his theme. This is where he, this is what he harps on, really, in all the books in one way or another. I mean, just one after another, he's so concerned that this fellowship be taking place.
And the way this fellowship shows up in the church life is to eat this, eating this meal together, which is an apostolic tradition. And it's built upon the death of Jesus Christ. He got exercised about it when what apparently was a Lord's Supper meal in the Antioch of Syria above Israel.
You may remember it's mentioned in the book of Galatians when Paul stands up and rebukes Peter for eating with the Jews. You remember that he'd come from Jerusalem and he professed before he'd been eating with a Gentile.
What, what, and when you think about what Peter was doing, you know, the one to whom much had been revealed about opening up to the Gentiles, right? Sort of a iconic figure about, you know, the sheets coming down and all the things that he experienced about being open to the Gentiles.
And here Paul has to actually rebuke this apostle in front of everybody openly because this is what Paul gets really, again, very exercised about this. Here we have a meal where we're intentionally having fellowship because of the death of Jesus Christ.
This is the Lord's Supper. This is what we do. We always do this when we come together to provide this opportunity and to demonstrate and symbolize what we mean together. And you're doing the very opposite of this.
And so it's, it's just, it's very acute. You know, Paul, Paul is very worked up in both of those cases over a meal. Interesting, isn't it?
Yes. And let's squeeze in one listener question before we go to our midway break. We have Mike in Monroe, New York. And I, he's asking a first question that you've already covered, but you could feel free to clarify anything about it.
He said, is Brother Jim's church part of a fellowship or association of churches that also practice the Lord's Supper in this way? And I'll ask his second question after you answer that one.
Okay. Yeah, we are part of a couple. We have relationships with, we have relationships with the Southern Baptist, and we have relationships with FIRE, Fellowship of Independent Reformed Evangelicals. But no, it is not monolithic across the board.
There are some, but not monolithic across the board that they eat the Lord's Supper in the way that we do. So I wrote this book hoping to encourage the brethren to think about it. You know, to think about this.
But there is a small network of churches that is sort of an association that you were just mentioning earlier, where you come together, you worship separately, but then come together for a joint meeting.
So obviously, there's some kind of an association.
Yes, in the North Carolina, Kansas City, yes, we do that. In our homes, when we meet, that's our main meeting. And in our main meeting, we eat the Lord's Supper together every week. And that's the main thing.
And then at various times, we come together as a whole. So we are one church. We meet in various ways as a whole, like all the women were together from all the congregations last night. So I don't mean to go into all the details about our church.
But all of these, we call them congregations, that meet in a home on a Sunday, they're eating the Lord's Supper together every time. And we're usually together, frankly, four or five hours. I mean, we're together a long time.
We just fellowship a lot. So we come together. We have a session, an hour and a half, maybe two hours, where we're hearing the Word. We're very intent upon the Bible, having a big impact on our lives.
And we're edifying each other, et cetera, sharing our lives, sharing our needs, and so forth. And then we'll eat a meal together. You know, we eat that meal and we fellowship together. And it's a joyous time.
Well, we have to go to our midway break. And Mike from Monroe, we're going to ask Jim your second question when we return from the midway break. Please be patient with us, folks, because the middle break is always a little longer than the other breaks, because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida, who airs this program, they are required by the FCC to localize Iron Trip and Zion Radio geographically to Lake City, Florida, because that's where they're located.
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That's also the email address where you can send in a question to Jim Eliff on the Lord's Supper is a meal. Chris Arnsen at Gmail dot com gives the first name, at least city and state and country residence.
Mike from Monroe, New York. Second question to you is, has Jim ever received any criticism for this unique practice, which I think is a wonderful way for anybody to get close to one another around this glorious ordinance?
Yeah, thank you for that question, Mike. You know, I think because I have fairly often talked about this issue with pastors, and they have many questions. The typical response is, well, I you know, I just like my response was when I began to see it in the scripture.
I mean, what I've been missing, I just I've been missing so much. And now I see this as something God makes is actually an apostolic tradition, in my view, and makes all the sense in the world. What is there not to not to love about it?
And so most of the responses I've gotten have been that way. Sometimes I have just a very occasionally I'm a pretty nice guy, you know, so generally people are nice to me. So I have not had, you know, just people screaming at me or anything like that.
But there have been questions, especially from people who are work, work, the Lord's Supper is something they take with the two elements into sort of this liturgy and ceremony of the church. This is a really such a big overturn of that idea that I believe they rightfully should be very cautious and examine things very closely, you know, to to make sure they, you know, they understand what I'm saying and what the Bible is saying and so forth.
And I can understand that initial negative response. After all, you have years and years of people doing this, just, you know, taking the little bit of bread, the little the little cup and and and doing it in a more or less ceremonial way.
But I think, again, I understand that. I understand that kind of pushback. And but it's always been up to this point in talking to pastors meetings, which I've done a considerable amount of, people have been actually very gracious because I think deep down they understand that, at least understand this, that in the early church, if they obviously were eating a meal here and it is obviously called the Lord's Supper or a coffee feast.
And I just think they know that part of their history. They tend, a lot of the people tend to fall back from get their doctrine mainly out of the Reformation or from a period of time after the after the New Testament church, when things begin to change, when Catholic traditions were forming in the second, third, especially the third and fourth centuries.
When institutions, the church became more institutional, there were larger crowds of people, priesthood and altars and ceremony and feast days and all of the things entered into church life, which were really reflections of some.
Pagan practices or maybe Old Testament cultic worship, I don't say that in a negative sense, but the Old Testament worship was priestly, priest acting for the people. You know, I mean, and so that, they were built on those sorts of things as they gradually developed in the early centuries.
But if you go all the way back to the New Testament, the first 150, 200 years, especially, you just see, you know, it was very primitive and they were eating meals together. Now, the question I think they have to ask is, has God shaped it differently?
Do we go back to the New Testament and find out what God prescribes and what describes? So we need to look at what's described as well, because there might be principles behind a part of that that's prescribed.
So we have to be careful about that. But, or do we go, do we believe God is making things new all along and we're developing and we're where we are because God really led us to be where we are? So those are questions one has to ask.
But for me, I believe we go back to the New Testament and we find out what we should be doing in terms of the church. We, you know, we just, I think we need to be committed to that. I really believe that was a Reformation idea, but I believe in the Reformation, several things hung over of a ceremonial nature, and this is one of them.
And again, just taking a little sip and a little, and being very independent, separate. This is not even the idea, in my view, of what the Lord's Supper is there for. It is to be about fellowship and sharing in the body of Christ and sharing in one another.
And this is the heart of it. We're missing the heart of it. That's the thing that bothers me, you know, that, and I mean, we're really missing the meaning, I think, of the Lord's Supper. We get the meaning about the body and the bread being symbolic of Christ.
That's one thing that is to be displayed. But the point in these sections, for instance, particularly in 1 Corinthians 10 and 11, I mean, the longer section here, it's very clearly revealing that it's about this sharing or this koinonia in the body of Christ and with one another.
That's just like it was in the Old Testament sacrifices when they sat down and ate a meal. Just frankly, I mean, it's a sharing, right? It's a sharing in each other's lives built upon the death of Jesus Christ, built upon the sacrifice of Christ.
So I really feel mainly a great deal of sadness that churches don't experience this. Can you imagine that we've had 900 meals together?
Wow.
Think about that. What would that be like for you to have 900 meals together in terms of warming up your fellowship and your love for each other? It's a method. It's something God has designed for the churches to do.
In Corinth, it just says five times when you come together as a church, when you come together to eat. So this is what they did. When it's the Lord's Day, they came together to share their lives together and to really really know each other well and have true fellowship built upon Jesus' death.
So I get some pushback sometimes, but I also understand that pushback because of just these traditions that have been around for so long. It's kind of unnerving when somebody says something different than that.
I don't claim to have all knowledge. You know, I don't at all. But I'm trying to explain what we have seen as a church, and I think it's hard not to love what God does this way.
So you don't share my exhaustive knowledge on all things?
Well, Chris, I just know one guy like you. I'm kind of set up, so I just count on you to do that part. Yeah.
I have an anticipated opposition that actually involves something that you said about the way other people view the Lord's table and practice it. You used the phrase that there were some people who—and now I can't remember exactly what you said—but it was something to the effect that it was no big deal.
It was not very important or something. And some people might think that when you're having the Lord's table as a part of a meal with fried chicken and mashed potatoes and baked beans, that it's trivializing the actual ordinance to being very common.
Because we have three meals a day, every day of our lives, most of us.
Yeah, I see what you're saying.
So why don't you respond to that?
Yeah. Boy, I like fried chicken, don't you?
Oh, yeah, I love it. I really do. I do love fried chicken.
One of the things that I think what we need rather to do is lift up the idea of meals in the Bible and how important meals are in the Scripture for the practice of fellowship. Anyway, just in general, the idea of meals is a way that God talks about communion with each other.
He even uses that in Revelation 3 .20, which is just popping in my mind. Come in and I will eat with you and you with me. This is the way to talk about fellowship. When you think of heaven, you think of a table with the patriarchs around the table and eating with them.
This is the thing. There's the marriage supper of the lamb. So elevating the idea of a meal, not formalizing it, it is what it is in a way because it's relaxed and we're able to just be ourselves and share our lives with each other.
I think raising that will help us to see and then also to remember that in the Old Testament, in the sacrifices, they would sit down and eat a meal from that animal that had been sacrificed and so forth.
It's always associated with a meal. In other words, the whole linear connection between Passover, the Last Supper, the Lord's Supper, the Marriage Supper, the Lamb, they're all about meals. I think we would be maybe misunderstanding the value of a meal or the heightened view we should have about meals in relationship to fellowship rather than saying that meal denigrates something about the Lord's Supper.
It's what the death of Jesus Christ created. It created fellowship for us. And the best picture of fellowship and the most often repeated picture of fellowship in the Bible is we're eating together.
And you did specify earlier that you do separate the partaking of those two elements of the fruit of the vine.
There is the cup which we bless, the bread which we share. We think there's something special about those elements. We highlight those elements. People can do that, I think, in different ways. It's not prescribed for us exactly how that's highlighted.
We don't do a Passover Seder. That's not what we're doing. It's something different, something new. But eating meals together, joyous meals. This is a happy time to eat together because of what Jesus Christ has done for us.
But as forgiven people, people who've been justified by Christ's death, we can have fellowship on a level that others cannot have. So we highlight those things. And then we have a meal, which is a joyous meal.
And we like to give proper emphasis on those things. But remember, when you build a whole tradition where you get really quiet, you have certain kind of music playing, you say certain words as a ceremony.
Over and over, you do things. Sometimes deacons do things. Your movements are all choreographed, perhaps, and all those kinds of things that happen around this, which, again, I think it's a bit of a Catholic hangover.
But you do all those kinds of things. And then you take that away. You're thinking, well, we're not sort of sacralizing this like we had in the past. And so you understand, we might be missing what was not required, if you know what I'm saying.
We might be missing something. Yes, we could create something that we like or don't like, but maybe we like it. But we've just done it so long. We've really tried to find ways to find as much meaning as possible in it.
I think there can be some meaning in that, for sure. But in taking that away, in a sense, I can understand people's reaction to that. But I think in the early church, it really wasn't that way.
By the way, Michael—oh, go ahead. I'm sorry.
Yeah, go ahead. That's it.
I was just going to tell Michael in New York that you have won a free copy of The Lord's Supper is a Meal, thanks to the generosity of Jim Ellef and Christian Communicators Worldwide, and also thanks to our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com, who will actually be shipping the book out to you.
So please give us your full address in New York State, and we'll have cvbbs .com ship that out to you as soon as possible. We have Brian in Palm Bay, Florida. He's asking two questions that are somewhat off-topic, but they are involving the Lord's Supper.
What do you think about new believers being baptized first, before being allowed to take the Lord's Supper? That's his first question.
Yes, that's a—right, I do believe that. This is a supper for the Church, and the Church historically, in almost every denomination, regardless of what you believe about baptism, the mode of baptism, or the time for baptism, in almost every denomination, is a body of baptized believers.
Not everyone, but in almost. And so that's a—without spending a long time demonstrating why that's so, yes, we do believe that a person needs to be a true believer, openly pledging their adherence to Christ with baptism and, you know, therefore being part of the Church.
They would be the ones to eat the Lord's Supper. So others would be there. Like, there would be some children there, but for them it is a meal. But for us, for the believers, this is the Lord's Supper.
Yeah, that's one aspect of bringing back what you were saying earlier about separating or highlighting the two elements of the Lord's Supper in some distinctive way, apart from because if you have kids there, they're obviously eating the meal.
They're eating the fried chicken and mashed potatoes and the corn on the cob, but they're not going to be, unless they're old enough to have been baptized as believers, they're not going to be having the elements.
Yes. And Brian's second question, since the Lord's Table is reserved for believers, when should we allow children to partake in the Lord's Supper?
Yes, as children come to know Christ, and, I mean, we're baptistic, I'm baptistic, you know, in my beliefs, believing that baptism follows conversion to Christ, you know. We baptize disciples, people who decided to follow Jesus and put their trust in Him, and we baptize them.
So, you know, then after that happens in their lives, whatever time, whenever that might happen, then they are free to eat the Lord's Supper. We'll be doing that this week, for instance, with a young man, probably 13 years of age, who's come to Christ.
He's been there with his family, but he's not been partaking of the special elements, and now he will be doing that with us.
Okay, we have, oh, by the way, Brian, you've also won a free copy of The Lord's Supper is a Meal. Please provide us with your full mailing address in Palm Bay, Florida, so that's cvbbs .com, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, and ship that out to you.
And also, if you are a first-time questioner, and that goes for everybody today, if you submit questions, if you're a first-time questioner, you're also going to receive a free New American Standard Bible, compliments of our friends at nasbible .com, who sponsored this program, and compliments of cvbbs .com, who will ship it out to you.
We have Thurgood in Superior, Colorado, and Thurgood asks, Do you have a strictly memorialist view of the Lord's Supper, or do you have a more traditionally Reformed view that has a lot more spiritual aspects involved?
Yes. Well, I don't think it's going to be advisable to get into the weeds here about all of this, but principally, I believe what Jesus established in what he said is he told us what these symbols were, and then the apostles, in my view, established the tradition of the Supper.
I believe it's called a tradition in 1 Corinthians 11, where two traditions are mentioned, and the first one uses the word tradition, then he goes to the next one, which is the Lord's Supper issue, which he calls instructions.
I believe this is an apostolic tradition, to be obeyed, by the way. I believe in all the means of grace, there are spiritual things that can happen, so I'll just leave it right. That can happen, but I do hold a view of it, essentially, that what we've established here is that it's symbolic of something, and we live that out in our fellowship with each other.
But in any kind of thing we do, I think as believers, there's potential for great spiritual benefit and spiritual experience to be had in it. So that's not a great answer, but I don't have time to develop it more, I don't think, and stay with the Lord's Supper here.
Well, thanks, Thurgood. Please give us your full mailing address, because you've also won a free copy of the Lord's Supper. Go ahead.
Yeah, I think people might be able to hold different views about that issue and still eat the Lord's Supper. My emphasis is on the Lord's Supper as a meal, so they might be able to have different views about that issue he just mentioned.
Okay, let's see here. We have a charity in Cooper Landing, Alaska. Cooper Landing, Alaska. And charity wants to know, is your view compatible with a church that every time when partaking the Lord's Supper, they invite everyone to a meal after the worship service?
And I do know churches that do that. Every single time they have the Lord's Supper—and sometimes it's every week—they will have a meal, but it's after the Lord's Supper in the actual worship service, and then you go into the fellowship hall, and you have your meal.
Is that good enough, in your opinion, to reflect the spirit of what you believe is the most.
Biblically faithful way? That's a great question. A really great question. I think it'd be significant about the language people use. In other words, where people err a lot in language is they say, we're going to take the Lord's Supper.
That's not a correct way to say that. We eat the Lord's Supper. So what we're having—the Lord's Supper is a meal with the elements highlighted. So it's way better. What she's mentioning is way better, I think, than many people would do.
I think if I were in that situation, I would want to move what is done related to the elements of the Lord's Supper closer to the meal in that context of the meal. I think it would say more of what needs to be said about fellowship being created in the death of Christ, although I don't think you'd be necessarily—I think you could possibly work with what you're doing and get closer.
The actual Lord's Supper is a meal with those elements, so when you said that's what it is, I would think you would want to actually bring that over into the actual meal itself. So I mean, that's way better than many people do, I think, connecting a meal to the same day as you eat those elements, have those elements rather.
But I think getting closest to what went on in the early church and what I think the Lord's Supper is, what it actually is, it's a meal with these elements highlighted, I think it might be better to actually think about moving it over into the meal itself.
So that's a partial answer, but I think you'd have to do some work on making that connection, if you know what I'm saying. So at least I would prefer that if I were in that church pastoring, I would move it over into the meal itself.
Okay, Charity. Well, you've also won a free copy—.
Good question.
You've won a free copy of the Lord's Supper as a meal. Make sure we have your full mailing address in Alaska so that cvbbs .com can ship it out to you. Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania asks, are you saying that you believe that the partaking of the hot dogs and hamburgers and the french fries and the salad are actually a part of the ordinance?
I'm saying that, yes, the Lord's Supper is a meal. Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying. The Lord's Supper is a meal. Now, we can pick the worst kind of foods, you know, better foods here to make this sound better, but it's not the point.
It's not about what we—in fact, let me make this very clear. Paul is adamant about saying, if it's about your appetite, you need to curb that appetite at home before you come and share your food with each other.
He makes that very clear in 1 Corinthians 11. It's not about the nature of the food. The food is the context for the fellowship that is created by the death of Jesus Christ. Does that help a little bit?
Oh, yeah. Paul is making that clear in 1 Corinthians 11. You can go and read. That's the text you really ought to read carefully, is 1 Corinthians 11. Because of this, he said, you have homes to eat in.
He's not saying don't eat the Lord's Supper as a meal, because he comes to the end of the whole thing, and he repeats again. So when you come together, you know, when you come together to eat, wait for one another, which means another definition of the word wait there, which you might find in the margins of your Bible is, you know, sort of play the host, you know, with each other.
In other words, share your food with each other. So it's not the food is the means of having fellowship. It's a context for fellowship. The important thing is the fellowship, and he's adamant about that in this text.
It's not about your appetite. So you're not coming in to stuff yourself with this meal, but you're coming here to share with each other and, you know, to, you know, share your lives together. In that day, it appears that they brought their meals in separately.
Some would go ahead and eat. Some even got drunk. That was amused, but it shows you what was happening. They were eating meal, but and some were lacking, and he's disturbed about that, and he says this is not the fellowship that was created by Jesus.
This isn't what Jesus did when he died. Sacrificially, that's your brother. That's your sister. You know, share your life with them. Share what you have and so it's that fellowship. The walls are broken down.
That fellowship we have is because of Jesus Christ's death. So food is there as a context, but otherwise it's the main thing is the fellowship itself. So that's what we're after. Food will be necessary because it's a supper.
It's an agape feast. So feast, you know, have the supper, have the food, but don't make it about your appetite.
Make it about sharing. Now, I can be honest with you that the first time I ever heard of the concept of the Lord's Supper being a meal, it was probably over a decade ago, and it was someone who at the time had a much stricter view of house churches.
I think at that time, the individual actually believed that that was required of people, of Christians, to be faithful to the biblical understanding of assembling together. I think that he has departed from that now and is actually—.
Yeah, I hope so. I hope so. That would be wrong.
I think he's meeting, actually, in a rented facility now, just like people would do as a church. But I don't know if he's—I'm not mentioning his name because he may have changed his view on this as well, but what turned me off to the idea of the Lord's Supper as a meal from this individual is he actually said to me that we put the bread and wine on the table right alongside everything else that everybody's eating, like the creamed spinach and the pork chops and everything else, and you just go up and you take whatever you want and slap it on your plate, and you take the elements, and you sit privately and partake of the Lord's Supper.
There's no more formal highlighting of those elements. Now, I'm assuming from what you said, you would probably be equally opposed to that.
Let me say there are different things you can do. Nobody's prescribed here what to do in the Scriptures. You'll have a hard time. All you find is the cup which we bless, the bread which we share. In Jesus' Passover meal, it was a Seder.
They just did various ceremonial things all the way through that meal, so it's hard to use that as a model. I don't think the Lord was telling us to do Seder, Passover Seders. I think we're required to highlight that however we do it.
The one thing to think about is that it is possible in that context, that culture, when bread was the utensil, all right? That's how they ate their meal. When you had a banquet with other people, you almost always had wine.
It had to be fermented because there wasn't a way to keep it from being fermented, but that's another question. I don't care if it's wine or grape juice or whatever. You had that, and these were the staples of every meal.
It's a little bit difficult question to say how that was on the table already. Is he saying, for those of you who are believers, this bread, this cup, which we're highlighting here, is to remind us of the death of Jesus Christ, his body, and his blood?
In other words, I would say that there's nothing inherently wrong with putting it there with the food, in a separate place, but what you need to do is highlight it. We take some trouble to do that. We talk about it.
We open the scriptures together. One of the different brothers will share something every week. We often sing together. We pray together. We remember those things, and so we're highlighting that. Then they're eating them like the early church probably would.
They'd probably be eating them along with their meal, but if we don't do that, we can do something else. I think one of the congregations does a little bit differently than that. I think this is something you need to work out in your own mind, but remember, we're not trying to repeat.
We ultimately need to seek to obey what the Lord has revealed in scriptures and not past experiences of ceremonies the way they've been handled. We can get that mixed up and think, well, we've got to do it like that in order for it to be sacred enough or something.
I just say we have to be careful about that. I think it was just a pretty simple idea. This bread and this wine, which we always would have with a meal, this, for us believers, is about the death of Jesus Christ and reminds us that we are together and we have fellowship because all the walls are broken down because of Jesus Christ's death.
I'm not too concerned about whether it's at the end of the table or on a separate table or done together. I've done all of those things. I've done everything. I've especially done together or not together at the end of the meal.
I can do those things because I'm finding different ways that I might want to highlight that. There's no formula here in my view, no ceremony that he's describing. I think we need to be careful about mixing up the ceremonies that have developed in the 3rd, 4th century as the Church began to institutionalize, as there were priests, the things that developed and that we have some hangover from.
I just think we need to be careful not to think that's the only way that we highlight what's going on here.
Okay, we have to go to our final break. Don't go away. We're going to be right back.
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Everything's free, and so please send me your free registration to chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com. Okay, Jim, we have Ray J. in Watts, California, who asks, if you visit a church that has a more traditional Lord's Supper that is a part of a liturgical service separate from any meal, would you partake in it?
I believe I would if it was a true church. I mean, in other words, there are many progressive churches that I don't think understand the gospel, and if they're not representing the true gospel, I think that would be a problem.
I think I would, but I would be I'd be thinking to myself, this is a mighty small meal.
So this has not even happened yet? You haven't visited, like, a Reformed Baptist church,.
For instance? I have been, yes. I have been, and where God is honored, and they're preaching the gospel, and, you know, I would take, I did that not long ago in Shreveport, for instance, so I would do that, but I would encourage them to a fuller understanding, you know, everybody to a fuller understanding of this.
I think we're missing, missing something, and so yes, I would, and I wouldn't, I wouldn't think that would be a reason to, I wouldn't think I would not do it if they were true church and preaching the gospel through it, in a sense, so that's my position.
Others may have a different position, but I don't think that, I think that's the right way to handle that. In other words, we see a good part of it alike, but the context that is created by Christ's death is missing, so that's a big miss to me, but it would keep me from, you know, eating that very small meal.
Well, Jim, we are now out of time, and I really loved the interview and found myself having a lot more in common than I perhaps anticipated with you about this very subject, and I want to make sure that our listeners have your contact information.
First of all, if our listeners want to find out more about Christian communicators worldwide, you can go to ccwtoday .org, ccwtoday .org, and if you want to find out about more about Christ Fellowship in Kansas City, Missouri, christfellowshipkc .org, christfellowshipkc .org.
It was such a joy to have you on, Jim. I look forward to many frequent future returns by you to this program. I want to thank everybody who listened, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.
Thank you, Chris. Thank you, brother.