THE CRUCIFIXION AND RESURRECTION OF HOLY COMMUNION
It is the year 30 on the Roman Calendar. On the eve of the day of Preparation for the Passover, the day on which, simultaneously, the Passover lamb was slain in the Temple and God’s Substitute Passover Lamb was slain on Golgotha, Jesus had a special Passover meal with His disciples in the Upper Room.
The disciples did not realise it then, but that was a parting assembly, the words He spoke with them were His final teachings, the meal they shared was the last one He would have with them in the flesh, but in the meal, He left them (and to us) the greatest gift ever, indeed a parting gift to cling to: It was the Gift of an engagement ring the Bridegroom put on the finger of the Church, Christ’s beloved Bride-to-be.
However, as in every other engagement, there was a string attached to this Gift…
Before they ate, Jesus laid the foundation for this Gift by first demonstrating His oneness with them by washing their feet. Peter rebelled against his Lord and Master’s humility to bend down before him to do the work of a slave, but Jesus assured him: “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.” (Joh.13:8)
Then came the Gift. The Apostle Paul describe the moment Christ put the ring on the finger and thereby declared the Church His Fiancée like this:
1Co 11:23-26 “For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me." In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me." For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.”
Paul says that the believer “proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes,” but there is much, much more than just that in the Gift of the Meal. Yes, the Holy Spirit was sent to Christianity on Pentecost to be a stand-in Teacher and Comforter, but way more than the Comforter is present in the Gift: The Lord Jesus himself, in His Promise that He will collect every believer when they die away from this earth, to be ONE with Him in His Father’s House until the day of the heavenly Wedding between Him and the Church, and beyond into eternity. (see Joh.14:3, Mat.26:29)
THE STRING…
In the washing of their feet Jesus demonstrated his oneness with them, a oneness that cannot be cancelled by his death proclaimed in the Meal, but rather be amplified! The believer is bound to Christ in the sense that they must also be dead for sin and foreign influences and be alive for Christ as He is alive for them; (see Gal.2:20)
In 1Co 10:16-17 this oneness is again prioritised: “Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all share the one loaf.”
The branches must stay attached to the vine (Joh.14:4) to bear the fruit of the Spirit; (Gal.5:22,23) or…
1Co 11:27-31 “So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. Everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink from the cup. For those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ eat and drink judgment on themselves. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep. But if we were more discerning with regard to ourselves, we would not come under such judgment.”
Those who eat and drink “in an unworthy manner” will not share in the Blessing Christ attached to the Holy Communion: “That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep.” However, the Grace of Jesus Christ is never-ending, the reason why the believer is not to be judged together with the world: “Nevertheless, when we are judged in this way by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be finally condemned with the world.” (verse 32)
But, without the Christians even realising it, the Satan robbed them in broad daylight of this oneness!
A GIFT ABANDONED
Then came the first nail into the Hands of Holy Communion.
Not afterwards, nor at a different place, but right there in the Presence of Jesus. Satan, who spoiled the party in Eden (Gen.3) when the Seed was promised, (v15) was also present in the Upper Room where that Promise was about to be fulfilled. The Bible says the moment Judas took the bread from Jesus, “Satan entered into him.” (Joh.13:27) The rest is history! Judas abandoned the Gift that was also presented to him in the Meal.
Then came Pentecost and the Holy Spirit, and the Church was established in the Upper Room. Again, Satan was present. His presence became visible when the Fire divided and came down separately on the individuals in the room. The disciples were in apparent unison “devoted to the Apostles teaching and to fellowship…” (Act.2:42), but Satan was smiling broadly, because the seeds of division was sowed and would soon sprout fruit. The engagement ring was not a tight fit on the finger of the Bride anymore…
Large cracks of division started to appear in the structure of the Christian spiritual temple. In Act.15 one reads about an attempt to have the believers circumcised like the Jews. After long discussion they eventually settled for some compromise between the Law and the Gospel, “planting the field with two kinds of seed…” (Lev.19:19, “the parable of the weeds” – Mat.13:24-30) Some believers still followed the teachings of the Law, while others followed that of Paul. (Act.21:21) By the time Paul wrote Gal.1 he even went as far as pronouncing a curse (see Gal.1:6-9) over those false teachers that infiltrated their midst. Then the Roman Church usurped the Church of Act.2, brought with her a myriad of false teachings, and became the Roman Catholic Church.
More nails were driven through the Hands and Feet of Holy Communion.
THE UNHOLIEST OF UNHOLIES
The Holiest of Holies in the tabernacle and temple was the domain of the high priest on earth, but that was only a copy of the Heavenly Tabernacle where Jesus Christ is the Heavenly High Priest (Heb.9:24) and the Truth is proclaimed. However, there is also an unholiest of unholies where the Devil is high priest and its copy on earth where the Lie is proclaimed.
No, Lie did not build a separate church to proclaim its untruths, but uses the structures that was erected to proclaim Christ: The church buildings, its upper rooms, the pulpits the preachers… you name it! It began in the Upper Room of the Church of Act.2 but gradually expanded and eventually exploded into thousands of denominations and sects, in the aftermath of the Reformation which started on October 17, 1517. The Church became churches, the unfaithful Bride-to-be, unfaithful brides-to-be, the mirror that was supposed to reflect Christ into the world was totally shattered and as such, useless. In every shard a denomination and a sect with its own truth, its own cup, its own bread, proclaiming its own christ.
The Body of Holy Communion were taken from the cross and laid in a grave!
The saddest thing about all these developments is the fact that the faithful are led to believe that when they sit at the table of their particular holy communion, it is the Table of the Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing can be further away from the truth. The Table of the Lord is made redundant by the tables of the denominations and sects. Satan sure is a factor in the “upper room” of every denomination and sect.
“…there are divisions among you… So then, when you come together, it is not the Lord's Supper you eat…” (1Cor.11:18-20)
When a lie is repeated many times over it starts to fall softer on the ears, later even becomes acceptable and in due time even replaces the Truth. This is exactly what happened to Holy Communion in Christianity. No wonder Paul writes:
Th 2:9-11 The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason, God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie…”
The divisions even goes deeper than those of the Universal Church. Even the divided denominations and sects found it difficult to stay united in their own community. Satan was sure working ceaselessly in the upper rooms, like he did in the Dutch Reformed Church where their Cup of Unity was eventually refused to the members of colour, which resulted in the total disintegration of any semblance these individual holy communions had to the Table of the Lord!
The Table of the Lord that was already reduced to become a table of the denomination, was now taken the full circle, and even further reduced to become the table of the sect with, at its head, the Father of the Lie. To complicate matters even more, there is even division within the ranks of the sects!
But, like Jesus had a plan with resurrecting a rotting Lazarus from the grave, he has a Plan of Resurrection for His Bride-to-be!
THE RESURRECTION OF HOLY COMMUNION
Hos. 6:1-2 "Come, let us return to the Lord. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds. After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence.”
“Believing the lie” is all part of Gods Master-plan to bring the world to heel and roll out the red carpet in preparation for the Return of Christ to the world. So, God provided a way out of this maze. Apostle Paul writes in Rom.3:3 – “What if some were unfaithful? Will their unfaithfulness nullify God’s faithfulness? Not at all! Let God be true and every human being a liar…”
FIGHTING FIRE WITH FIRE
Believe it or not, but God’s way out of the maze is tantamount to fighting fire with fire! God will use the Lie to fight the Lie. That plan started to come together on April 6, 1652, when a stowaway landed with Jan van Riebeek at the Cape of Good Hope. That stowaway was The Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) walking on to the Cape shore with the two-headed monster of Spiritual and Physical Apartheid on a leash.
The monster was at first doing its thing in the background of the South African society, but in 1881 it stepped to the foreground in the upper room of the Dutch Reformed Church when the people of “colour” were forced to a separate cup from that of the “mother” church, which was already a separate cup that separated from a separate cup that separated from the Cup of the Table of the Lord.
This is all south African history and I am not going to repeat it here. I short, the Dutch Reformed Sendingkerk in South Africa (DRMC) (for coloureds), the Dutch Reformed Church in Africa (DRCA) (for blacks) and the Reformed Church in Africa (RCA) (for Indians) all broke away and became “daughter churches” of the “mother” DRC. Then, in 1994 the DRMC enlarged her territory with the addition of many congregations of the DRCA and adopting the new name of Uniting Reformed Church in South Africa (URCSA). This, however, cannot be called an act of reuniting, simply because the DRCA is still operating, albeit in much reduced numbers.
Make no mistake, God wants the Churches to reunite into a single worldwide Unit, and God wants this process to begin where Apartheid rocked the boat, but on God’s terms. The picture in the header tells the story. The sticker on the left shows the DRC with her three “daughters” each with their own holy communion and the motto: ONE BODY AND ONE SPIRIT. That is a Lie and I have struck off the two “ones”, because unity is still a far-off dream and the Worldwide Church can only begin this process of reunification once the Family of DRC Churches have reunified.
THE ENGAGEMENT IS ON AGAIN
In the sticker on the right everything is brought into its correct perspective. The “coloured daughter” of the DRC is the hub around which the reunification of the DRC Family will revolve with the four “sisters” sitting around one Table which will again be privileged to be called the Table of the Lord with all the Blessings that goes with it. The day when the reunification process is finished and the DRC becomes the UDRMC (United Dutch Reformed Mission Church), that is the day when a Resurrected Holy Communion will walk out of the grave and Christ will slip the engagement ring back on to the finger of his Bride-to-be and the Foundation will be laid for His prayer in Joh.17:21 to come to pass.
ELIAH AND A SECOND MOSES
Reuniting the Church is just remoulding the spiritual aspect of Christianity into “one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism; one God and Father of all and through all and in all.” (Eph.4:5-6) This is what must happen for the spiritual world to begin healing. The other side of the coin is the reunification of physical humanity, that will also begin in South Africa when all the Afrikaner tribes will be reunited as one Afrikaner Nation, with one national flag, one national anthem and one national language.
God has made provision for someone like Moses to be appointed to lead the South African multicultural society out of this spiritual exile into a new dispensation, like the 12 tribes of old were united in one Israel. This person will at the same time be Eliah, to fulfill the prophecy of Mal.4:4-6 in “turning the hearts of the fathers and children back to one another,” by reuniting the Dutch Reformed Family of Churches and bringing the rest of the religions of South Africa together in "one mansion with many rooms" (Joh.14:2), like one university with many faculties.
In this manner Moses/Eliah will lay the cornerstone for a New World Order in preparation for the Return of Christ.
We are not going to discuss these subjects here in this article, but in the following articles we will discuss the DRMCSA and its Mission, as well as the URCSA and Belhar, the New World Afrikaner, the Two Eliahs of the end-time and many more. We will also lift the veil from this Person with many hats. I hope to see you there.