The Lord's Supper

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Michigan · Jul 4, 1865

The Lord's Supper.

IS IT TO BE CELEBRATED WEEKLY?

A CORRESPONDENT makes inquiry on this point. Having read works on present truth, somewhat, he so far endorses their teaching, as to acknowledge that the New Testament furnishes no evidence in favor of the first day of the week as a day of religious rest and worship. But he seems to think that day is pointed out as the one upon which the communion should be celebrated, and refers to Acts xx, 7. And having belonged to a class of professed Christians who hold that view, he inquires what the text does mean, and where there is direction for the time of celebrating the Lord's supper, if not there.

Acts xx, 7, reads, "And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread," &c. Assuming that the words, "to break bread," here refer to the Lord's supper, we take the position distinctly that the New Testament gives us no stated period for its observance. If it was confined to any particular day of the week, that day would undoubtedly have been chosen upon which it was instituted. But this is commonly supposed to have been Thursday. Certainly it was not the first day of the week. And if Acts xx, 7, is an instance of its celebration on that day, it is sufficient proof that no particular day is designated for the ordinance. And this view is further confirmed by Acts ii, 46, which declares that at one time the church in Jerusalem broke bread daily.

But the expression, "to break bread," certainly does not always refer to the Lord's supper. When the two disciples returned from Emmaus they told the eleven and others, at Jerusalem, that the Lord had risen, and that he was known of them in "breaking of bread." Luke xxiv, 35. What was this occasion of breaking of bread? It was as verses 29 and 30 inform us, when they had reached Emmaus as the day was far spent, and constrained the Saviour to stop with them, and had taken their seat to partake of the ordinary and closing meal of the day. This was called breaking of bread; but this was not the Lord's supper.

Come back now to Acts xx, and read verse 11. After Paul had been down and healed the young man who fell from the window, we read, "When, therefore, he had broken bread and eaten, and talked a long while, even till break of day, so he departed." Here the breaking of bread did not take place till after midnight. When it did take place, Luke describes it by the term eating. When he had "broken bread, and eaten." Is such language as this ever applied to the Lord's supper? We do not come to the Lord's table to eat. Paul sternly rebukes any such irregularity, in 1 Cor. xi. "What?" says he, "have ye not houses to eat and to drink in?" And again, "If any man hunger let him eat at home, that ye come not together unto condemnation."

It would seem then that Acts xx does not refer to the Lord's supper at all. Dr. Bloomfield in the notes to his Greek Testament, admits that verse 11, does not refer to it, and gives this as the general opinion of commentators this side of Grotius, A. D. 1600. And the only method he proposes of finding the Eucharist in that chapter, is to suppose that it was celebrated at the commencement of the meeting. But the record does not state this; nor is there any necessity or any place for such a supposition. The first thing Paul did was to preach. Next he healed the young man after midnight. Then he broke bread and ate, and then continued with the disciples, probably in social intercourse (for the word rendered talked, in verse 11, is different from the word preached in verse 7), until break of day, and so departed. If this view is correct, Sunday-keepers need never again refer to Acts xx; for all the fact they have to work upon in that chapter is the Lord's supper; and that is not there.

But allowing verse 7 to refer to the Lord's supper, does not the language denote its regular weekly recurrence? We answer, No. Some try to make this appear by laying great stress upon the word when. "Upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread." And they have argued that this expression denoted a regular meeting, just as we would say, "And on the fourth of July when we celebrate our national independence," denoting that it is a regular yearly occurrence. But there would have been no opportunity for this play upon the word when, had not the translators here taken a singular liberty with the original. There is no word in the original that corresponds to the word, when. The Greek reads simply and literally like this: "And on the first day of the week, the disciples being assembled to break bread, Paul preached," &c. Whiting and Sawyer so translate it. It is a simple announcement of what then took place, without any intimation that it had ever taken place before, or ever would take place again.

Another proof that the New Testament does not fix the time of celebrating the Lord's supper, is found in Paul's language in 1 Cor. xi, 26: "For as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till he come." What language could intimate more clearly that this institution was left, as to the frequency of its occurrence, to be regulated by the church.