February 8, 2024 Show with Jim Elliff on “The Lord’s Supper is a Meal”

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.

Christian Communicators Worldwide and Bible Intensives

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.

Christ Fellowship of Kansas City and Weekly Lord's Supper Meals

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?

The Lord's Supper at Gaius's House and the Problem in Corinth

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.

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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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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.

1 Corinthians 11, Acts 20, and the Weekly Practice of the Supper

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?