The Lord’s Supper And The Breaking Of Bread

A few notes which reveal how grievously Christendom has erred from the Scriptures in regard to these two Institutions.

Preliminary Remarks

The keeping of Sunday as "the Lord’s Day", and the celebration of the, “Lord's Supper" weekly on Sundays, constitute the two main props by which religious Christendom has maintained her existence since the Apostles departed. The Lord did not rise on a Sunday but in the first hour of Monday; and the only Lord's Day revealed in Scripture to the Sabbath of a thousand years during which the Lord will reign over the earth.    In Isaiah 58:13, God speaks of the Sabbath as “My holy day. To associate any particular day of the week with Christianity is a grievous error and contrary to the positive teaching of the Apostle Paul, who chides both Galatian and Colossian saints for keeping days. Religious Christendom indulges its religious flesh by appointing a day in which to perform its own religious rites, whether this be called "the Mass". "the Holy Communion" or "the lord's Supper" (See Galatians 4:10 & Colossians 2:16). We know of no occasion when one day of the week has any significance above another for a true believer in Christ, and It matters not on what day of the week the annual celebration of the Lord's Supper, the midnight celebration of the Resurrection, or Pentecost occur.   The simple fact is that God fixed the Christian solar year at a length which exceeded an exact number of weeks by 1.25 days, so that the Church’s anniversaries cannot recur on the same day of the week, except at certain intervals.

Before embarking on any remarks about the Lord's Supper, it is well to call attention to the fact, which can be easily proved, that God so acted as to cause the elect nation of Israel to keep a Sabbath and the monthly and annual feasts one day later than those appointed by the Law.  To accomplish this, He allowed Israel to begin their months from the first appearance of the Moon, while He reckoned His months as beginning from the true New noon which was about one day previous to the phasis.   This meant that Israel's monthly and annual feasts were not as those of Jehovah, but were "feasts of the Jews” as they are called in John’s gospel. To preserve the holiness of the true Sabbath, God caused the sun and the moon to stand still (as recorded in Joshua X) for “a whole day”, knowing that Israel would reckon those 48 hours as one day. while He Himself regarded them as two days.  Thereafter, Jehovah's Sabbath became larael's Friday - the day upon which the Lord died. We thus see that when God detected the course that Israel would follow (see Ezekiel XX), He adopted a plan which preserved the sanctity of His own sacred days and which kept the nation of Israel from desecrating these and thereby involving themselves in crimes which of necessity would draw down wrath upon their heads. A notable proof of what we are saying is found In the fact that the very Passover Supper at which the lord instituted His own memorial Supper took place on Thursday, the 13^th of Nisan in Israel's calendar, whereas the nation kept "the Jews' Passover” the next night which was their 14^th of Nisan, a Friday.

If God 80 acted towards His people Israel, It will surprise no one to learn that He found a means of concealing from view the true facts concerning the Death and Resurrection of Christ, knowing, as He must have done, that religious Christendom would sink to lower depths of perfidy even than those to which the nation of Israel had sunk. To accomplish this He wrought another change in time when our Saviour was in the grave. The evidence of this is in the Scriptures but failure to discern It has caused Christendom to suppose that Christ rose from the dead on Sunday which day, from about the second or third centuries, has been held by all Christians to possess the qualification which, warranted its being called "the Lord's Day." This is a grievous error.

We now come to the question of the difference between the Lord’s Supper and the Breaking of Bread. The main question, however, is, does Holy Scripture reveal that the Lord's Supper - the memorial feast which He Himself instituted at the last Passover Supper - is to be celebrated annually, and not daily as the "breaking of bread" was, as recorded in Acts 2:42, 46; or as on the occasion of the anniversary of the Resurrection in Acts 20:7? If the Scriptures, by precept of apostolic practice, are to be our sole guide and we uninfluenced by the erroneous and universal practice of religious Christendom in this matter it can be asserted that the Lord's purpose in instituting his memorial Supper was that once a year, on the anniversary of the night of His betrayal, all His own in the world should meet together in companies in remembrance of Himself and of His Death and so remind the world that once again the anniversary had been reached of that fearful day in human history when Jew and Gentile in evil association rose up and put God's Son to death.   Paul, by revelation from the Lord, declared concerning this annual memorial, “for as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do shew (proclaim) the Lord's death till He come." (“As often an” = "as many times as" - Liddel & Scott.)

The Lord's Supper therefore has to be viewed in two aspects, namely, as a memorial of Himself and His death, and as a pronouncement to the world that once again the anniversary of that event had been reached. One cannot doubt that with this it was intended that a public testimony should be given of the unity of the members of the Church which is Christ's Body, with the result that many would believed on Christ for salvation (John 17. 21).

No one could understand the purpose of the Lord in instituting His Supper without recalling the occasion of its institution and therefore of its relationship to the Passover which the Lord was then celebrating with his disciples. First, let this fact be noted. There are only two occasions recorded in the Bible when the Passover of Jehovah was kept on the true fourteenth of the first month. The first of these was the original Passover at the Exodus, on the night of Thursday, May 11^th B. C. 1639, and the second, that recorded in the three Synoptic Gospels, when, on the Thursday night of April 30th, A. D. 33, the Lord eat down with the twelve disciples for the Passover Supper at which He presided as Host and after which he instituted the new memorial feast in the place of the Passover.

Let it be also remembered that when, on the occasion of the last Passover, the Lord eat down with His disciples at 6 p.m. on Thursday, April 30th, A. D. 33, 4000 years to a minute had passed from the Fall of Adam and from the start of the 6000 years of man's Redemption – a period which terminates at the opening of Christ's Millennial Reign, when also the earth will be redeemed from the bondage of corruption.