The carnal mind seeks to make a "ritual" out of ordinary "giving a cup of cold water" perhaps to show off one's spirituality or in the sincere but pagan belief that the "gods" or demons--departed dead--can be influenced by feeding, clothing, entertaining and even having sex with them through the "god's agent," the temple prostitute.
This tombstone shows that
the feasts meant that someone had to sacrifice animals and make other
forms of offerings. By pairing the agapae with the Lord's Supper
there is a Catholic confession for the need of not only remembering
the death of Christ but MAKING CONTACT with the dead to make sure
that normal human activity such as love and fertility of the goat
heard continues. Not wanting to continue sacrificing Jesus over and
over, some early reformers restored the Agape to replace a sacrificed
animal or other food produc which continued the pagan practice of
making sacrifices to pay, appease or AID the gods or demons as the
spirits of the dead.
Because the love feast had pagan roots it produced pagan results and where outrage was committed by bringing the practice into the assembly other that to feed the poor it was denounced and outlawed.
In an earlier time all festivals were religious in nature and someone has to pay the price. And the Marzeah and agape were sacrificial in nature. Some "animal" has to pay the price and in some cultures before you eat the bear you have to pay respect to it and worship it. In the Agapae animals were sacrificed and in the restoration the animals are sacrificed in a more sanitary way. Nevertheless, mixing the Lord's Supper and the Agape is mixing the roots of animal sacrifices along with the sacrifice of Lord Jesus Christ.
Tertullian wrote of the role of Agape as feeding the poor but this degenerated.
Appealing to Tertullian for authority for the Agape brings other judgments down on the head. For instance, the collection was only for the poor and ony those in prison for their faith were supported.
Religion goes about the taverns begging. You demand a price for the privilege of standing on temple ground, for access to the sacred services;
there is no gratuitous knowledge of your divinities permitted-you must buy their favours with a price.
In the Acts (2, 46-47) St. Luke writes that the believers "daily . . . (were) breaking bread from house to house" in relation with the practice of the Agapae, the loving-feasts, in the very first Christian years. The African Apologist Tertullian (3rd Century) (Apol. 39 Migne PL 1,538-541) describes the Agapae as an act of Christian brotherhood, worship and sobriety, thus defending the Christian standard of life.
The Agapae, the common supper, took place after the Lord's Mystic Supper.
Later, however, they were separated from each other because of discrepancies. Clement of Alexandria (3rd Century; in Paidagogos 3,1; Migne 8,384) uses austere language to criticize and condemn the practice of Agapae, loving-feasts, as a parody and desecration of the Christian Agape-love.
Basil the Great states in the 31st oros that, "neither the common supper (Agapae) to be eaten and drunk in the Church,
nor the Lord's Supper (the Divine Eucharist) to be desecrated in homes." He stresses the same opinion of the Synod in Laodicia (364 A.D.) that issued the canon 28 that
"not in the Lord's Supper nor in Churches the so-called agapae take place". Eastern Orthodox Resource
We should note that the Pentecost connection is not a pattern for church liturgy. These eating practices were to feed the pilgrims who stayed too long and ran out of money.
Jerusalem is not the pattern for much of anything: God dispersed the believers and allowed the city and temple to be destroyed because the church is to go back to its communities and not mass in the cities.
Background
Among the Mandeans it is said: "The danger to the flock lies within the fold rather than from wolves without."
The frailer, weaker and sensual part of man`s nature, it loves spectacles, phenomena, colour, song and the pleasures of the senses;
and are thus constantly in the grips of the worldly and darker powers.
With the nisimta, the higher part of man`s being, it survives, according to Mandaean tradition, by the help of the death rites performed, and eventually unite and travels with it to the realms of light."Then, from the Life (I ask) your mercy, your healing power, your radiance, your compassion, yours, Great First Life! Forgive me, make me whole, awake me, have compassion on this my soul, mine, Nimrus Zaina, for whom this prayer which I have prayed and these devotions shall bring forgiveness of my sins. When the bird uttered the name 'Nimrus Zaina', Hirmiz Shah understood that she was none other than Ruha herself for Nimrus Zaina is one of the names of Ruha. And he fell before her, crying, "l crave your protection and that of your son" The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran By E.S. Drower Clarendon Press,
Like the Marzeah celebrated and condemned in Amos 5, 6 and Isaiah 5:
Masiqta (Pr. Mass-ekh-tha) A commemorative sacrament for the benefit of the dead performed by priests only. It is performed with the cult-hut. The word means "raising up" "resurrection"
Masiqta - The Masiqta , or raising up are primarely celebrated for the recently dead. It is a Requiem Mass. Food is eaten in the name of the dead, and a priest takes his place, as proxy, in the rite.
The rise of the Agape from the earth comes after seeing the Exodus as a pattern for Christian worship and community. The Bible and all scholarship sees the event at Mount Sinai as musical idolatry and a feast with and for the various bovine agents of the Egyptian "gods and goddesses." Osiris was represented by Apis, the golden calf which was an idol of a real bull in Egypt. Hathor was the cow-eared woman and of course Miriam would have been a prophetess of Hathor by virtue of her connection with the court.
"the 'spectacle' most noted of all, and in highest favour is called a dutiful service... For, formerly, in the belief that the souls of the departed were appeased by human blood, they were in the habit of buying captives... and immolating them in the funeral obsequies. Those, therefore, whom they had provided for the combat, and then trained in arms as best they could, only that they might learn to die, they, on the funeral day, killed at the places of sepulture... Offerings to propitiate the dead then were regarded as belonging to the class of funeral sacrifices; and these are idolatry: for idolatry, in fact, is a sort of homage to the departed; the one as well as the other is service to dead men.
Among the Greeks men singing, dancing and playing instruments would place them lower then women who were the AFTER WORSHIP pleasure partners in the festivals all of which were RELIGIOUS in nature.
In Chapter Ten Tertullian, De Spectaculis noted:
They resemble each other also in their pomp, having the same procession to the scene of their display from temples and altars, and that mournful profusion of incense and blood,
with music of pipes and trumpets,
all under the direction of the soothsayer and the undertaker,
those two foul masters of funeral rites and sacrifices.The same remark will apply to the procession of the "Munus," as we look at that in the pomp which is connected with these honours themselves; for the purple robes, the fasces, the fillets the crowns, the proclamations too, and edicts, the sacred feasts of the day before,
are not without the pomp of the devil, without invitation of demons. What need, then, of dwelling on the place of horrors, which is too much even for the tongue of the perjurer? (Tertullian, de Spectaculis, Ante-Nicene, III, p. 85).
At Mount Sinai, the Israelites fell back into pagan, Egyptian musical idolatry. This was the same form of background to the Greek agapae:
"They sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play. They practiced rites in which they made themselves naked, perhaps similar to those which were carried out by naked Babylonian priests." (Woodward, p. 158).
"The triumphal hymn of Moses had unquestionably a religious character about it; but the employment of music in religious services, though idolatrous, is more distinctly marked in the festivities which attended the erection of the golden calf." (Smith's Bible Dictionary, Music, p. 589)
"Not to be overlooked here is the accompaniment of music and dancing which, with the character of the ensuing phenomena, makes the diagnosis (of idolatry) certain." (Schaff-Herzog, Ecstasy, p. 71).
"And the people celebrated this feast with burnt-offerings and thank-offerings, with eating and drinking, i.e. with sacrificial meals and sports, or with loud rejoicing, shouting, antiphonal songs, and dances, in the same manner in which the Egyptians celebrated their feast of Apis (Herod. 2, 60, and 3, 27)." (Keil and Delitzsch, Vol. II, p. 222).
And shall receive the reward of unrighteousness, as they that count it pleasure to riot in the day time. Spots they are and blemishes, sporting (the play at Mount Sinai sport or entertain) themselves with their own deceivings while they feast with you; 2 Pe.2:13
And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play. Exod 32:6
And David and all Israel played before God with all their might, and with singing, and with harps, and with psalteries, and with timbrels, and with cymbals, and with trumpets. 1 Chr.13:8
This was the rising up to play Paul warned against in 1 Corinthians chapter 10 and Romans chapter 10. This was the marzeah.
The Agape was a funerary feast with and for the dead much like the marzeah condemned in Amos 5 and 6. Like the abuse of the love feast by Jude, the false professional priests or preachers saw the marzeah at the various shrines in Israel as a way to LIVE OFF THE POOR while being "empty clouds."
That lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch themselves upon their couches, and eat the lambs out of the flock, and the calves out of the midst of the stall; Am.6:4
That chant to the sound of the viol, and invent to themselves instruments of musick, like David; Amos 6:5
From the Classics and Gnosticism
You should understand that the Greeks made gods and goddesses out of common words: Grace, Fear, Hate, Death and AGAPE. Therefore, the Agape honored this goddess who is the universal MOTHER GODDESS honored among Catholics as Mary.
"Several historical allusions are illustrated in this remarkable Invokation. Firstly, it is easy to misconstrue the suggestion of an erotic-spiritual element in the text (compare this with the poem by St. John of the Cross quoted in Artist of the Month, Vesta 1997.) This fact, combined with the observation that there were "deviant" Gnostic sects that incorporated certain aspects of Pagan fertility rites, then one can see why the Church Fathers felt so threatened by Gnosticism in general. Naturally, Gnostic Pagans Celebrate the Pagan connection with Gnosticism. Bearing these details in mind, one can also see the strong, positive influence Gnosticism had on the writings of Aleister Crowley.
Regarding the cultic associations and the Love-Feast, Rudolph comments:
...the ceremony only superficially resembles the Christian eucharist,
but rather continues older Greek and Hellenistic secret cults (like that of Eleusis and that of the god Sabazios,in which the snake was worshipped as a symbol of the chthonic deity and fertility). For the Ophites or Nassene gnostics the snake was a medium of revelation and mouthpiece of the most sublime... Resource GNOSIS: The Nature & History of Gnosticism by Kurt Rudolf p. 242
Notice that in Gnosticism, Sophia is identified with the SNAKE (wisdom) while her daughter ZOE (life) is identified with the BEAST.
The lust to have women
"stand over" the flock is directly related to USING them to exercise
authority which is AUTHENTIA which is "both erotic and murderous.
The Horae [Agape is another name for Easter, Ishtar, Inanna, Sophia, Zoe etc. In various forms she is MOTHER GODDESS.]
The Horae "Yet another version of Aphrodite as Triple Goddess, Agape 'love feast,' Irene 'peace,' and Chione 'snow queen.' Irene was also a Goddess in her own right, and she had an attendant named Opora 'autumn.' The Horae who 'greeted' her on the shores of Kyprus were her three high priestesses who carried her statue through the shallows, clothing it on the beach during Aphrodite's bathing and purification festival. Irene was the Crone, bringer of the peace of death,
"Agape the ruler of sacred sexual rites, and Chione was the new year, born at Winter Solstice, unapproachable and serene. The priestesses who served each avatar were the original angels, who developed calendars and sacred dances. While today their dances are mainly represented by the hora, an imitation of the spinning cycles of time, their work in the field of time keeping remains.
"The Horae were among the mathematici 'learned mothers' who defined the Zodiac and the star movements marking the seasons, one translation of the word 'hora.' Another is 'hour,' and the Horae developed various means to mark time. Hence the word for time keeping, 'horology' and the French word for clock 'horlogue.'
Agape as meaning "unconditional love" is popular among the feminist and justifies all forms of sexuality.
"The patriarchs became the most incensed over the sacred women of Agape. Among their symbols were the lotus, lily, and dove, all representations of the vulva. Among their mysteries was ritual cunnilingus, which demands respect for female pleasure and the female body. This aspect of the sacred feminine was among the first to be erased. The effort began early. Originally, the land of the 'Lotus Eaters' (a drug) was in the Amazon territories of North Africa, then was moved further away still, to beyond the Southern Sea. Source
And the fruits that thy soul lusted after are departed from thee, and all things which were dainty and goodly are departed from thee, and thou shalt find them no more at all.Re.18:14
Opora (g3703) op-o'-rah; appar. from the base of 3796 and 5610; prop. even-tide of the (summer) season (dog-days), i.e. (by impl.) ripe fruit: - fruit.
And the voice of harpers, and musicians, and of pipers, and trumpeters, shall be heard no more at all in thee; and no craftsman, of whatsoever craft he be, shall be found any more in thee; and the sound of a millstone shall be heard no more at all in thee; Rev 18:22
"The Goddess later remembered as the mother of Aphrodite is actually indigeneous to the Greek peninsula. She was the divine womb, the Deep (Tiamat in Babylon) referred to in the Bible, ruler of prophecy, sexuality, and inspiration. The dove, copper, and pigeons were sacred to her as they were to Aphrodite. Her name is related to Diana, well known as a Sky Goddess.
Click to see why the Spirit or that which exists between Father and Son is a DOVE. This repudiates the Mother of the gods and of the DAUGHTER. The dove or Rock Pigeon is the "carrier" of the seven spirits of knowledge (Isaiah 11) and not of charismatic sexuality of which music is a primary stimulant.
"The original inhabitants of Dodona were a tribe called the Selloi. Seven sacred priestesses led by Promeneia 'foremost in strength or speaking before the Moon' of the tribe founded Dione's oracle there, suggesting that the Pleiades may also have been associated with her. They also founded oracles at Epirus and Thebes. The oracles were established in oak or beech groves, because Dione was also a tree Goddess. The trees were treated with great care, pruned with golden sickles and protected by warrior priestesses. The sounds of the wind passing through their leaves or through bronze wind chimes hung from their branches were prophesied from, as were the flight patterns of sparrows, doves, and pigeons. The priestesses who interpreted these sounds and movements were old women called peleia 'wood pigeons' or 'ring doves.' The seven high priestesses were called doves, 'Pleiades.'
A further peculiarity of Dodona was the "bronze," a large gong set vibrating at every breeze by a scourge held in the hand of a figure standing over it;
the persistent ringing passed into a Greek proverbial phrase--Khalkos Dodones ("Brass of Dodona")--
for a continuous talker who has nothing to say.
The Re-Imaging women filling pulpits and colleges are promoting the worship of Sophia (ZOE's mother) and the EUCHARIST is accompanied with a love feast including honey:
"Almost every part of the female genitals eventually became personified as a Goddess, as did the fluids associated with them. The hymen was no exception, ruled by an eponymous Goddess later considered an emanation of Aphrodite.
She carried a torch in one hand, a flute in the other, and wore a crown of flowers, symbol of sexual self-knowledge and maturity. Hymen is the Greek word for veil, the same one that 'no man draws asunder' among the Amazon Goddesses Athena, Medusa, and Neith.
"Menstrual blood was the original blood shed on the honeymoon, once a literal month. The connection between bees, fertility, and sexuality begins here. In Greek bees are called 'hymenoptera' veil winged. At Eryx in Sicily, Aphrodite was represented by a honeycomb, and the priestesses were called Mellisae.
They presided over sexual and funerary rites, using honey and wax for embalming prior to burial in catacombs and beehive shaped mounds.
"The power and sanctity of menstrual blood 'Moon honey' was enshrined even in Olympian myths, for all oaths were sworn by the Goddess Styx, ruler and personification of the stream of Gaea's menstrual blood. Ambrosia and nectar were originally a mixture of honey and menstrual fluid provided by Aphrodite and/or Hera. Long after Hymen was masculinized in a piece or profoundly ridiculous revision, the Goddess was invoked by calling 'O Hymen, Hymenie!' exclusively by women. Source
The Ophites (from the Greek word ophis,
Specific Article: "serpent") reinterpreted the mythological theme of the Fall of Man in Genesis. According to the Ophite view, the serpent of the Garden of Eden wanted Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, to eat from the tree of knowledge (gnosis) so that they would know their true identities and "be like God" (Genesis 3:5). The serpent, thus, is interpreted as a messenger of the spiritual god, and the one who wanted to prevent Adam and Eve from eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge is viewed as the Demiurge. In their rejection of the God of the Old Testament, who gave the Ten Commandments, the Ophites flaunted their sexual freedom from the law and conventionality by extreme sexual license, a trait common to other Gnostic groups as well.The Phibionites in Alexandria were a Gnostic sect described by Epiphanius. They gathered at banquets that became ecstatic orgies. Married couples changed partners for dramatic sexual performances. Sperm and menstrual blood were gathered and offered as a gift to God before being consumed as the Body and Blood of Christ. By such erotic communions they sought to regather the elements of the world-soul (psyche) from the material forms into which it had been dispersed through a cosmic tragedy at the beginning of time. The regathering amounted to salvation, for all things would be gathered up into the one glorious body of Christ.
See the re-imaging or re-visioning of Rubel Shelly and Lynn Anderson and the Feminist- Lesbian Methodist women clergy connection with Gnosticism and the HONEY for the Lord's Supper.
In Paul's writing forbidding women to participate in the public worship of the assembly, the word "authority" is authentia which is sexual authority: both murderous and erotic. In modern Gnosticism the superstitious singing of PRAISE HYMNS is to exercise authority over the "gods."
"Tantric worship of menstrual blood penetrated the Greco-Roman world before the Christian era and was well established in the Gnostic period.
This worship provided the agape -- "love-feast" or "spiritual marriage"&endash;practiced by Gnostic Christians like the Ophites.
"Another name for the agape was synesaktism, "the Way of Shaktism," meaning Tantric yoni-worship. Synesaktism was declared a heresy before the 7th centuryA.D.53 Subsequently the "love-feast" disappeared,
and women were forbidden direct participation in Christian worship, according to St. Paul's rule (1 Timothy 2:11-12).
Epiphanius described the agape practiced by Ophite Christians, while making it clear that these heretical sexual activities filled him with horror:
"Their women they share in common; and when anyone arrives who might be alien to their doctrine, the men and women have a sign by which they make themselves known to each other. When they extend their hands, apparently in greeting, they tickle the other's palm in a certain way and so discover whether the new arrival belongs to their cult. Husbands separate from their wives, and a man will say to his own spouse,
"Arise and celebrate the love feast (agape) with thy brother."
And the wretches mingle with each other "after they have consorted together in a passionate debauch." The woman and the man take the man's ejaculation into their hands, stand up offering to the Father, the Primal Being of All Nature, what is on their hands, with the words,
"We bring to Thee this oblation, which is the very Body of Christ." They consume it, take counsel of their shame and say:
"This is the Body of Christ, the Paschal Sacrifice through which our bodies suffer and are forced to confess to the sufferings of Christ."
And when the woman is in her period, they do likewise with her menstruation. The unclean flow of blood, which they garner, they take up in the same way and eat together. And that, they say, is Christ's Blood. For when they read in Revelation, "I saw the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month" (Rev. 22:2), they interpret this as an allusion to the monthly incidence of the female period." See The Horae above
"The meaning of this Ophite sacrament to its practitioners is easily recovered from Tantric parallels. Eating the living substances of reproduction was considered more "spiritual" than eating the dead body of the god, even in the transmuted form of bread and wine, though the color symbolism was the same: When the semen, made molten by the fire of great passion, falls into the lotus of the "mother" and mixes with her red element, he achieves "the conventional mandala of the thought of enlightenment." The resultant mixture is tasted by the united "father-mother" [Yab-Yum], and when it reaches the throat they can generate concretely a special bliss
Clement of Alexandria: Pedagogue II
Love (agape ), then, is not a supper. But let the entertainment depend on love. For it is said, "Let the children whom Thou hast loved, O Lord, learn that it is not the products of fruits that nourish man;
but it is Thy word which preserves those who believe on Thee." "For the righteous shall not live by bread."
For it is the mark of a silly mind to be amazed and stupefied at what is presented at vulgar banquets ,after the rich fare which is in the Word; and much sillier to make one's eyes the slaves of the delicacies, so that one's greed is, so to speak, carried round by the servants.
The Holy Spirit, uttering His voice by Amos, pronounces the rich to be wretched on account of their luxury: "Those that drink strained wine, and recline on an ivory couch," he says; and what else similar he adds by way of reproach.
Let revelry keep away from our rational entertainments , and foolish vigils, too, that revel in intemperance. For revelry is an inebriating pipe , the chain of an amatory bridge , that is, of sorrow. And let love, and intoxication, and senseless passions, be removed from our choir. Burlesque singing is the boon companion of drunkenness. A night spent over drink invites drunkenness, rouses lust, and is audacious in deeds of shame.
For if people occupy their time with pipes, and psalteries , and choirs , and dances, and Egyptian clapping of hands , and such disorderly frivolities,
they become quite immodest and intractable, beat on cymbals and drums , and make a noise on instruments of delusion ; for plainly such a banquet , as seems to me, is a theatre of drunkenness .
For the apostle decrees that, "putting off the works of darkness, we should put on the armour of light, walking honestly as in the day, not spending our time in rioting and drunkenness, in chambering and wantonness."
Let the pipe be resigned to the shepherds , and the flute to the superstitious who are engrossed in idolatry.
For, in truth, such instruments are to be banished from the temperate banquet, being more suitable to beasts than men, and the more irrational portion of mankind.
From the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
The 74th canon of the council of Trullo (A.D. 692) forbade the holding of symposia known as agapes in church.
In his S4*h homily (torn. v. p. 365) Chrysostom describes how after the eucharistic synaxis was over, the faithful remained in church, while the rich! brought out meats and 'drink from their houses, and invited the poor, and furnished " common tables, common banquets,
common symposia in the church itself."
Note: not eating in church buildings was not invented by modern conservatives.
The council of Gangra (A.D. 355) anathematized the over-ascetic people who despised "the agapes based on faith."
Only a few years later, however, the council of Laodicea forbade the holding of agapes in churches.
The 42nd canon of the council of Carthage under Aurelius likewise forbade them, but these were only local councils. In the age of Chrysostom and Augustine the agape was frequent.
In the east Syrian, the Armenian and the Georgian churches, respectively Nestorian, Monophysite and Greek Orthodox in their tenets,
the agape was from the first a survival, under Christian and Jewish forms,
of the old sacrificial systems of a pre-Christian age.
Sheep, rams, bullocks, fowls are given sacrificial salt to lick, and then sacrificed by the priest and deacon, who has the levitical portions of the victim as his perquisite.
See John Chrysostom showing that the feasts was the MARK God put on Israel as a result of the musical idolatry at Mount Sinai. Before this there was no feasting seen as a religious exercise.
Therefore, the Agape like the Marzeah was a secular, legalistic attempt to commune with the dead gods or perhaps with personal lostness.
The Canons of the Council in Trullo; Often Called the Quinisext Council.
Canon LXXIV.
IT is not permitted to hold what are called agapae, that is love-feasts, in the Lord's houses or churches,
nor to eat within the house,
nor to spread couches.
If any dare to do so let him cease therefrom or be cut off.
Agapae are not to be held in the churches, nor shall beds be put up these, let them be cut off. Whoso refuse to give up. This is a renewal of canon xxvii., of Laodicea, on which canon see the notes.
Canon LXXV.
WE, will that those whose office it is to sing in the churches do not use undisciplined vociferations, nor force nature to shouting, nor adopt any of those modes which are incongruous and unsuitable for the church:
but that they offer the psalmody to God, who is the observer of secrets, with great attention and compunction.
For the Sacred Oracle taught that the Sons of Israel were to be pious.
Agape
The celebration of funeral feasts in honour of the dead dates back almost to the beginnings of the worship of the departed - that is, to the very earliest times. The dead, in the region beyond the tomb,
were thought to derive both pleasure and advantage from these offerings. The same conviction explains the existence of funeral furniture for the use of the dead.
Arms, vessels, and clothes, as things not subject to decay, did not need to be renewed, but food did; hence feasts at stated seasons.
But the body of the departed gained no relief from offerings made to his shade unless these were accompanied by the obligatory rites. Yet the funeral feast was not merely a commemoration; it was a true communion, and the food brought by the guests was really meant for the use of the departed. The milk and wine were poured out on the earth around the tomb, while the solid food has passed in to the corpse through a hole in the tomb.
This gives insights to the harps in the book of Revelation. Lucian of Samosata ridiculed these festivals because while trying to feed the dead or gods the people actually celebrated and ate the food and drank the wine.
Lucian also makes fun of the Seeker Center like that of Apollo (Abaddon, Apollyon) by saying that all you had to do was play the flute and fleece the fat heads and simpletons.
Schaff History
Afterwards (at evening) they assembled again, to eat ordinary and innocent food (the agape).
This account of a Roman official then bears witness to the primitive observance of Sunday,
the separation of the love-feast from the morning worship (with the communion), and the worship of Christ as God in song.
The Agape adopted by early reformers was a substitute for the Catholic Mass. As the Agapae was based on pagan animal sacrifices, the reformers adopted that rather than visualize the continuing sacrifice of Jesus in the heathen Mass.
Zwingli Werke, II. B. 233. Bullinger, I. 263., IV. 64.
"The mass was gone. The preaching of the gospel and the celebration of the Lord's Supper by the whole congregation, in connection with a kind of Agape, took its place.
The first celebration of the communion after the Reformed usage was held in the Holy Week of April, 1525, in the Great Minster. There were three services, first for the youth on Maundy-Thursday, then for the middle-aged on Good Friday, and last for the old people on Easter. The celebration was plain, sober, solemn. The communicants were seated around long tables, which took the place of the altar, the men on the right, the women on the left. They listened reverently to the prayers, the words of institution, the Scripture lessons, taken from the 1 Cor. 11 and the mysterious discourse in the sixth chapter of John on the spiritual eating and drinking of Christ's flesh and blood, and to an earnest exhortation of the minister. They then received in a kneeling posture the sacred emblems in wooden plates and wooden cups. The whole service was a commemoration of Christâ
In the liturgical part he retained more from the Catholic service than we might expect; namely, the Introit, the Gloria in Excelsis, the Creed, and several responses; but all were translated from Latin into the Swiss dialect, and with curious modifications. Thus the Gloria in Excelsis, the Creed, and the Ps. 103 were said alternately by the men and the women, instead of the minister and the deacon, as in the Catholic service, or the minister and the congregation, as in the Lutheran and Episcopal services. In most of the Reformed churches (except the Anglican) the responses passed out of use, and the kneeling posture in receiving the communion gave way to the standing or sitting posture
The communion service was to be held four times in the year, at Easter, Whitsunday, autumn, and Christmas. It was preceded by preparatory devotions, and made a season of special solemnity. The mass Zwingli furnished also in 1525 an abridged baptismal service in the vernacular language, omitting the form The Zwinglian and Calvinistic worship depends for its effect too much upon the intellectual and spiritual power of the minister, who can make it either very solemn and impressive, or very cold and barren. The Anglican Church has the advantage of an admirable liturgy.
Sin of Offering to God and the Eating for Yourself
The Mass was replaced in some protestant churches with the Agapae: replacing the literal repeated sacrifice of Jesus with the sacrifice of food animals. This way, as God warned, you make the sacrifice to God but then eat the food yourself.
Because the Lord's Supper is not Eucharist or Mass or animal sacrifice but a memorial of the DEATH of Christ, the FOOD concept did not exist in the Passover and Paul excluded normal eating and drinking in connection with the Lord's Supper. You simply cannot have your mind of a Suffering Saviour and singy-clappy MOCKERS and anticipating the FOOD at the same time. And this writer believes that while people cry Lord, Lord, they will do anything in their power to keep the people's minds off the completed work of Jesus.
Like the altars of the Marzeah or feast with and for the dead in Israel which ultimately ended in a separate temple, most places of worship were intended to be PLACES TO GO AND SIN and "baptize" it with the name of God and mock and spit in His face: music always tells God that "we are not interested in hearing what you have to say about You."
Because Ephraim hath made many altars to sin, altars shall be unto him to sin. Hosea 8:11
I have written to him the great things of my law, but they were counted as a strange thing. Hosea 8:12
They sacrifice flesh for the sacrifices of mine offerings, and eat it; but the Lord accepteth them not; now will he remember their iniquity, and visit their sins: they shall return to Egypt. Hosea 8:13For Israel hath forgotten his Maker, and buildeth temples;
and Judah hath multiplied fenced cities: but I will send a fire upon his cities,
and it shall devour the palaces thereof. Hosea 8:14Speak unto all the people of the land, and to the priests, saying, When ye fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh month, even those seventy years, did ye at all fast unto me, even to me? Zech 7:5
And when ye did eat, and when ye did drink, did not ye eat for yourselves, and drink for yourselves? Zech 7:6
Should ye not hear the words which the Lord hath cried by the former prophets, when Jerusalem was inhabited and in prosperity, and the cities thereof round about her, when men inhabited the south and the plain? Zech 7:7
Because the Agape or pseudo-love feast is seen as a means to SHOW LOVE and heal the wounds of sowing discord by sowing more discord, John Calvin notes that they are really MOCKING GOD.
"When we only read, The sacrifices of my gifts, which they ought to have offered to me, the sense seems frigid; but when we read, "The sacrifices of my burnt-offerings! they offer flesh", the meaning is, So palpable is their contempt, that they cannot but be condemned even by children. How so? Because for burnt-offerings they offer flesh to me; that is they fear lest any portion of the sacrifices should be lost: and when they ought, when offering burnt-sacrifices, to burn the flesh, they keep it entire, that they may stuff themselves.
Hence they make a great display in sacrificing: and yet it appears to be palpable mockery,
for they turn burnt-offerings into peace-offerings, that the flesh may remain entire for them to eat it."It is the same with the Papists of our day, when they celebrate their festivals; they indulge themselves, and think that the more they drink and eat, the more God is bound to them.
This is their zeal; they eat flesh,
and yet think that they offer sacrifices to God.
They offer, then, their stomach to God, when it is thus well filled. Such are the oblations of the Papists. So also the Prophet now says,
They eat the flesh which they ought to have burned."
The feasting at Jerusalem was the worship of the S.U.N. God. God through Isaiah warns the musical festival keepers in Jerusalem by warning against Egypt and Assyria. In the end, God will MOCK and triumph over them as the enemy takes them captive to the beat of musical instruments. Throughout the Bible and secular history music is a MARK that people have already been lost beyond redemption.
See how the Septuagint version (Jesus read that one) defines this festival with and for the dead as they offered child sacrifice just as surely as modern imitators sacrifice their own children by taking their minds off God and His Word and the sacrifice of Jesus.
Must ye always rejoice, and go into my holy places continually, as they that keep a feast? and must ye go with a pipe, as those that rejoice into the mountain of the Lord, to the God of Israel Isaiah 30:29 LXX
"The ritual observances at the Hebrew and at a Canaanite sanctuary were so similar that to the mass of the people Jehovah worship and Baal worship were not separated by any well-marked line... A sacrifice was a public ceremony of a township or clan... Then the crowds streamed into the sanctuary from all sides, dressed in their gayest attire, marching joyfully to the sound of music, and bearing with them not only the victims appointed for sacrifice, but store of bread and wine set forth the feast... Universal hilarity prevailed." (Gurney, O.R., Some Aspects of Hittite Religion, p. 37, Oxford University Press, 1977)
and the Lord shall make his glorious voice to be heard and the wrath of his arm, to make a display with wrath and anger and devouring flame: he shall lighten terribly, and his wrath shall be as water and violent hail. Isaiah 30:30 LXX
For by the voice of the Lord the Assyrians shall be overcome, even by the stroke where with he shall smite them. Isaiah 30:31 LXX
And it shall happen to him from every side, that they from whom their hope of assistance was, in which he trusted, themselves shall war against him in turn with drums and with harp. Isaiah 30:32 LXX
And in every place where the grounded staff shall pass, which the Lord shall lay upon him, it shall be with tabrets and harps:and in battles of shaking will he fight with it. Isaiah 30:32KJV
Hear, O my people, and I will speak; O Israel, and I will testify against thee: I am God, even thy God. Psalm 50:7
I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices or thy burnt offerings, to have been continually before me. Psalm 50:8
I will take no bullock out of thy house, nor he goats out of thy folds. Psalm 50:9
For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. Psalm 50:10
I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are mine. Psalm 50:11
If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof. Psa 50:12
Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats? Psalm 50:13Offer unto God thanksgiving; and pay thy vows unto the most High: Psalm 50:14
And call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me. Psalm 50:15
The restoration of the Agape is rooted in pagan animal sacrifices to feed the "gods" or demons or spirits of the dead.
In the Catholic church it continued for a time but was banned because being devoted to the sense appetites it destroyed the worship IN SPIRIT and produced a host of excesses. By nature, scholars note that when you participate in demonic practices the "spirit" of the dead steal in and destroy you.
Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Rom 1:21
Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, Rom 1: 22
And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. Rom 1: 23
And food for the belly!
Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Rom 1: 24
Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. Rom 1: 25
We worship whatever we "give heed to" or give our attendance to. If we are giving heed to the "worship minister" then we are worshiping the leader.
And if we are giving attention to the Agape even as we pretend to participate in the DEATH of Christ, then we are worshiping the food motivated by the lust of our human appetites.
For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: Rom 1: 26
And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. Rom 1: 27
And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Rom 1: 28
In church history the adoption of pagan festivals was more a MARK of being rejected by God than a cause of that rejection.
Church is not legalistic, paganistic "worship rituals" but it is a SCHOOL OF THE BIBLE. Anything we add beyond the New Testament examples can do nothing but detract from that goal.
And celebrating the "eucharist" on Wednesday or some other day intends and will SOW DISCORD AMONG BRETHREN. The "MASS" on days other than the Lord's Day was a product of the often-daily Agape which had good roots in feeding the poor but ritualistic or liturgical roots in pagan animal sacrifices which were a FEAST WITH AND FOR THE DEAD.
See the Book of Ecclesiasticus on feasts
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