Pastor Bobs never ask: “Who were the first Protestants to jump ship?” That history is clear.
Catholics and Protestants are, and always have been, separated by interpretations of Christ’s instruction to believers of every age in John 6:53-66 wherein Jesus repeated twelve times: “If you do not eat My Body and drink My Blood you do not have life in you.”
The extraordinarily bizarre command leads some to consider, contemplate, and conclude that John 6: 53-66 is the most important passage in the entire Bible. Incorrect interpretation of the clear, direct words separates the souls of sheep from from the souls of goats for all time, identifying and winnowing the innermost natures that make wheat differ from weeds:
“Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is food indeed,[a] and My blood is drink indeed. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me. This is the bread which came down from heaven—not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever.”
The first Protestants to jump ship followed Jesus because He had just fed 5,000 men and their wives and children with a few loaves and fishes. They saw, and believed, that Miracle, but were too vain to let their minds accept the real meaning of “If you do not eat My Body and drink My Blood you do not have life in you.”
They loved their own thinking more than God. They sought to justify conventional reason and reality: “Therefore many of His disciples, when they heard this, said, ‘This is a hard saying; who can understand it?’”
When Jesus knew in Himself that His disciples complained about this, He said to them, “Does this offend you?”
Jesus makes it clear to Protestants in every age that there is something more at risk. 62 “What then if you should see the Son of Man ascend where He was before? 63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life. 64 But there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who would betray Him. 65 And He said, “Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father.”
Maybe that’s why some Protestants are so virulently anti-Catholic. “God has not granted me the faith to believe ‘If you do not Eat my Body and drink My Blood you do not have life in you.’
They know, but will not admit: “God dares to tell me that I am a second-class citizen, unable to get into Heaven because I believe in me more than Him? I resent that! I’m just as good as that Pat O’Malley or Manuel Rodriguez or any other Catholic! God is not being respectful of me. I resent Him for that!”
Then, in the miraculously numbered passage, John 6:66, we see the staggering symbolism of those digits that describe the motivator of the first Protestants to jump ship:
“From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more.”
The disciples stayed loyal to Him. God had chosen well. He does, in every age. At The Last Supper, Jesus turned bread and wine into His body and Blood.
Today, as in every age, Protestants prefer Conventional Reality rather than accept those testing words of Jesus. Protestants “modify” His words to have the meaning they want them to have. That is one mistake. A bigger mistake is made when they accuse the more fully believing and obedient Catholics of “not being Christian.” The biggest mistake of all is in using a self-serving distortion of those words to lead others astray.
It is better, before Judgment, to more fully obey Jesus by striving to worthily receive Communion in The Only Church He Founded.
After death, it will be too late for many, especially those who have led others to disregard “If you do not eat My Body and drink My Blood you do not have life in you.” False shepherds end up, as the first Protestants to jump ship, lost “life” because they followed their vain thoughts, rather than Jesus’ Great Winnowing Command.
