Queries.—The Lord's Supper.
REVIEW AND HERALD: Wishing always to have correct ideas of my religious neighbors' views, and not sure that I fully understand the S. D. Adventists as to their position and teaching with reference to the Lord's Supper, I would like an answer to the following questions:— 1. What is the Lord's Supper? or, do you designate the breaking of the loaf and drinking the cup in memory of Christ's death by a different term? 2. Who has a right to sit at the Lord's table? 3. How often are we to attend to this institution? 4. On what day of the week, if on any particular day, are we to attend to it? 5. Is it material to the institution to partake of it at any particular hour of the day? 6. What is the antitype of the passover? 7. What is the antitype of the table of shew-bread in the Jewish tabernacle? Fraternally,
PETER VOGEL. REPLY. To the foregoing queries we will briefly respond in their order. 1. We designate the breaking of the loaf and drinking the cup, by the term, the Lord's Supper. 1 Cor. 11 : 20. We regard the bread and wine as emblems of the broken body and spilt blood of our Lord; the ordinance being a memorial of the crucifixion of Christ, to be celebrated in memory of him till his second coming. 1 Cor. 11 : 26. 2. He has a right to sit at the Lord's table who has scripturally put on Christ; first, by dying to sin; secondly, by being baptized into Christ's death: Rom. 6 : 2–6; Gal. 3 : 27: baptism being a memorial of Christ's resurrection, as the supper is of his crucifixion. 3. The Bible gives no instruction to show how frequently this ordinance should be celebrated. 4. Neither do we think there is anything to confine it to a particular day. It was instituted on the evening of the night in which Christ was betrayed, probably our Thursday evening, certainly not the evening of the first day of the week. Only once have we any account that it was celebrated on the first day of the week. That was at Troas, when Paul was about to leave them, purposing to depart on the morrow. Acts 20 : 7. Being instituted on one day of the week, and at a certain time celebrated on another, without one word being said as to the duty of celebrating it on any particular day, and the inference from 1. Cor. 11 : 26, being clear that its frequency was left to be a matter of inclination or convenience, we see not how it can be made a matter of faith to confine it to any particular day of the week. 5. In regard to the hour of the day in which it should be celebrated, certain facts exist from which an inference can be drawn. It is called a supper. It was instituted in the evening; and we have one instance in which it was celebrated in the evening. From these facts, it would seem that the evening is the most appropriate part of the day for its celebration. 6. Christ is the antitypical paschal lamb. 1 Cor. 5 : 7. By his blood destruction will be averted from his people, or the destroying angel pass over them, in the day of vengeance. 7. Without presuming to be able to tell definitely what the antitype of the table of shew-bread is, we can, to a certain extent, tell what it is not. It does not find its antitype in anything here on earth; for no part of the Jewish tabernacle or its vessels of service constituted a type of anything here on earth, unless the priesthood of Christ can be performed here on earth. But the Scriptures expressly inform us that Christ cannot be a priest on earth. Heb. 8 : 4.