Ignatius Invented the Eucharist Doctrine to Establish A Paid Ministry
for A Special Priesthood of Hirelings
for A Special Priesthood of Hirelings
As long as the laity in Catholic Churches were considered priests and ministers, who could preach, teach, and minister to other saints, there was no need for a special priesthood of paid ministers. I am not diminishing the office of a bishop in any way, but I am placing it in its biblical and historical context. There is no place in the New Testament that reveals that any of God’s ministers, whether they are called apostles, bishops, or deacons, ever received a salary. The Bible does reveal that ministers did receive freewill offering from the body of Christ. The inordinate desire for money and power is the root of all evil. I do believe these are the reasons why Catholic pastors in Ignatius’ day, and I might add some Protestant and Pentecostal pastors today, have squashed preachers in their congregations whom God wanted to use. These pastors became afraid of losing their position, if one of the saints became a better preacher or teacher than they were!
Ignatius came up with a demonic plan to establish a special paid or hireling priesthood. He started by teaching the Lord’s Supper was actually the real body and blood of Jesus. The New Catholic Encyclopedia speaking of Eucharist stated: The early writers were absolutely convinced of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Ignatius of Antioch criticized the Docetists, who ‘hold aloof from the Eucharist and prayer because they do not believe that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior, Jesus Christ’ (Letter to the Smyrneans, chp 7). [34] Ignatius told the Philadelphians: Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is [consecrated] either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it. Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude [of the people] also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church. [35]
In the Nimrod’s Babylonian Religion, this doctrine of partaking of the bread and wine that the priests of Baal consecrated was called: “eating the gods.” The only ones beside the bishop, who consecrate the Eucharist, were the presbyters and deacons. In other words, only a so-called special paid priesthood, who would have to give up their secular jobs, so they would not be contaminated with the sinful world around them, could change the bread and grape juice into the actually body of Christ! This created a need for a special paid priesthood. But before Ignatius apostatized, any one of God’s children could consecrate the Lord’s Supper, which was not the actually body of Christ, but a memorial looking back at what Jesus had done at Calvary.
Once the Catholic laity believed Ignatius’ satanic lie, that the Lord’s Supper was actually the real body and blood of Jesus, he then convinced them that only a special and separate priesthood could consecrate the Eucharist and can change it into the actually body of the Lord Jesus Christ. After all, who among the Catholics of that day would doubt the teaching of this so-called infallible god! After this so-called miracle took place, Ignatius claimed that only this special priesthood had the power to actual crucify afresh the Savior, through the mysteries of the Babylonian Mass. Ignatius then taught that partaking of the Eucharist was the only way God would forgive the sins one committed after water baptism. Therefore, according to Ignatius, repentance and confession to God was not enough for a child of God to have their sins forgiven; they had to also receive the Eucharist.
Later on Catholicism taught that no one could confess their sins to God, for there were to sinful to commune with God, so they a to go through one of the hireling priest, who would act as a mediator between them and God! This ancient Babylonian doctrine was called in Catholicism Confession. According to The Encyclopedia of Religion, Ignatius called the Eucharist: the antidote of life. [36] Ignatius called the gifts of bread and grape juice the “sacrifices,” which the poor mislead Catholic people offered to him, the presbyters, and deacons to consecrate. The International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia speaking of this declared: The gifts themselves were called prosphorai, ‘oblations,’ or thusiai, ‘sacrifices.’ The sacrificial conception of the [Lord’s] Supper was thus gradually created (Ignatius, Phil., iv; Smyrna, vii, viii). [37]
In 150 AD, Justin Martyr confirmed that Ignatius’ Eucharist doctrine was an established teaching in the Catholic Churches. Justin wrote: And this food is called among us Eujcariatia [the Eucharist], of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined. For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Savior, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation [transformation] are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh. [38] By comparing the Old Testament sacrifices with that of the Eucharist, Ignatius came up with an idea for a new sacrifice. Harnack speaking of it says: the idea of the chosen bishops and deacons as the antitypes of the Priest and Levites, had been formed at an early period in connection with the idea of the new sacrifice. [39]
The new sacrifice of these Nicolaitans was the offering of the Eucharist for the purpose of removing of sins committed after water baptism. This meant that Jesus would have to die over and over again at ever consecration of the Eucharist. This was truly a satanic perversion of God’s grace. As the preceding paragraphs have shown, Ignatius, this demon-possessed bishop, came up with the idea of creating a new ministry in the church, which would require a special paid priesthood to fulfill. He compared the ministry of the Old Testament priesthood, that is, a Levi priest offering up daily sacrifices for the sins of the people, with their new special priesthood that offered up the Eucharist for the sins of the people. Later, these Nicolaitan-Balaamites, or followers “Nimrod’s Babylonian Religion,” invented a special Babylonian ceremony called the Mass for the purpose of consecrating the Eucharist. Thus, through these doctrines of devils, as the apostle Paul called them, Ignatius create a need for a paid or salary ministry. All this took palace at the end of the first century.
Professor Harnack, in his book The Mission and Expansion of Christianity, speaking of the financial structure for ministers in the local Church wrote: Church-officials were not, in the first instance [meaning in the beginning], obliged to abandon their civil calling, and so far as that provided them with a livelihood, they had no claim upon the church’s funds. Harnack then spoke of the change that took place in Catholicism after Ignatius brought in his Nicolaitan-Balaamite priesthood. He declared: From the very first, the president [the Monarchical Bishop] appears to have had practically an absolute control over the donations; but the deacons had also to handle them as executive agents. The responsibility was heavy, as was the temptation to avarice and dishonesty; hence the repeated counsel, that bishops and deacons were to be ‘no lovers of money. [40] According to Otto Heick, in his History of Christian Thought, the Catholic bishop Clement of Rome in 100 AD taught: Almsgiving is therefore excellent as a repentance for sins, fasting is better than prayer; but almsgiving is better than either. [41]
The inordinate desire for money and power has always been the roots of all evil. Jerome speaking of this informs us that even though the office of presbyter in Catholicism is a greater and higher office than a deacon, for some mysterious reason deacons were paid more. Jerome said it this way: If… it is the deacon that is ordained presbyter, this latter should recognize that, although he may be less highly paid than a deacon, he is superior to him in virtue of his priesthood. [42] Therefore beloved, it is not hard to understand why a deacon was paid more than a higher-ranking presbyter, for evidently the bishop willed it so. After all the deacons were the people who collected and distributed all monies of the Church. In other words, the deacons not only gave the Monarchical Bishop his salary, but also keep quite when he wanted more than his salary.
Even though Ignatius’ Eucharist doctrine was invented long after the apostle Paul’s death, God had Paul to write against some Christian Jews in his day, who wanted to continue some of the ordinances of Judaism, such as offering up animal sacrifices for sins (Acts 15:1-2, 5; Ga 6:12). This was a perversion of God’s grace as the apostle told them in his Epistle to the Hebrews. Praise God that this great book not only corrected the Jewish problem in Paul’s day, but the Holy Spirit has used it to keep God’s Apostle Pentecostal Church in the truth and away form Ignatius’ Eucharist Doctrine!! Lets examine Paul’s teachings on Christ dying for the sins of all mankind once and for all time. The great apostle wrote: “When Christ came as High Priest... He entered the Most Holy Place once [not daily] for all by His own blood, having obtained eternal redemption.... Nor did He enter heaven to offer Himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not His own. Then Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world” (Heb 9:11-12, 25-28).
Paul went on to reveal that it was not God’s will for Christ to die daily, or offer Himself up on the cross over and over again! It was for this reason why Jesus: “appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of Himself.... Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people…. [Jesus our great High] Priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins... because by one sacrifice He has made perfect forever those who are being made holy” (Heb 10:12-14, NIV)!! Paul then warned those Christian Judaizers who wanted to continue with the Law of Moses, and animal blood sacrifices by saying, “If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.... How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace” (Heb 10:26-29). This warning without doubt also applies to the priests of Catholicism!
If Catholic priests, like these Christian Judaizers in Paul’s day, keep on sinning by continually to mock the crucifixion of Christ on Calvary’s cross, day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year, then they, like these Christian Judaizers, will be trampling on the blood of Jesus, and doing away the atonement Jesus made for their sins, and the sins of the Catholic people! If they do not repent of this satanic Babylonian tradition, then they will earn for themselves and those who follow them a place in the Lake of Fire. I say this in love, for if I truly love you, I will tell you the truth. Catholics need to repent of this abomination and all other sins against Christ. They need to confess their sins to Jesus and not some priest, for Jesus in His humanity is our High Priest, and the one and only mediator between God and man (1Ti 2:5).
Friend, the precious blood that the humanity of Jesus
shed is the only mediation God will honor for sin (1Jn 2:1-2). Therefore, there is no other sacrifice for sins except the one and only sacrifice Jesus made at Calvary. Once a believer repents of their sins, is immersed in water in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and receives the Holy Spirit with the initial evidence of speaking in tongues, they are in Christ. From that time on, they are covered with the precious blood of Jesus, and all they have to do to receive forgiveness of any sins committed after their New Birth, is to ask Jesus to forgive them and repent, which means to turn your back on sin and your face towards God. This is the one and only way God can remit sins after the New Birth!
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