Luke 24:35
And they told what things were done in the way, and how he was known of them in breaking of bread.
GEORGE OFFOR (1787-1864): Reader, can you call to mind the peace and holy enjoyment which took possession of your soul when—having passed through the fears and hopes, the terrors and alarms, of the new birth—you sat down, for the first time, at the table of the Lord, to celebrate the wonders of His grace? Then you rejoiced in hope full of immortality; then you could exclaim, “O tidings! glad tidings! glad tidings of good, and of great joy to my soul!”
ROBERT FLOCKHART (1778-1857): Seated at the Lord’s Table for the first time, I had faith to discern the Lord’s body broken for me, and His blood shed for me. By faith I ate His body, and drank His blood, and in doing so, He made Himself “known” to me in the “breaking of bread.” By the “ear of faith” I seemed to hear Him saying, Eat, O friends, and drink abundantly, O beloved.” I said in my heart, “O Lord God, this not after the manner of men!” The more of His glory I saw, the lower I lay, and I was convinced that whatever I was or hoped to be, I owed it all to sovereign grace and redeeming love.
SUSANNAH WESLEY (1669-1742): While my son Hall was pronouncing these words in delivering the cup to me, “The blood of our Lord Jesus Christ which was given for thee,” these words struck through my heart, and I knew that God for Christ’s sake had forgiven me all my sins.
COUNT NICHOLAS VON ZINZENDORF (1700-1760): As the [first] time came for me to go to Communion, I experienced a stirring in my soul and promised my Saviour to be eternally true and follow Him. Twenty years later it is as fresh to me as if it had happened today―I have not lost what I found there then.
Happy, thrice happy hour of grace! I’ve seen, by faith, my Saviour’s face:
He did Himself to me impart, and made a cov’nant with my heart.
A. W. TOZER (1897-1963): The fellowship of God is delightful beyond all telling…We know the intercourse between God and the soul in conscious personal awareness.
ISAAC AMBROSE (1604-1664): Communion with Christ is a foretaste of heaven. Here we enjoy His person and all the sweet relations to His person. We enjoy His death and all the saving fruits, privileges, and influences of His death. We are also brought into Christ’s banqueting house, held in His galleries, His banner over us being love. We are carried up to the mount with Christ, that we may see Him (as it were) transfigured, and may say with Peter, “Master, it is good for us to be here.”
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): We know what it is to feed on Jesus, but we cannot speak it or write it…
[But] when I joined the Baptist Church at Cambridge—one of the most respectable churches in the world, and one of the most generous—nobody spoke to me. On the Lord’s day, I sat at the communion table in a certain pew; there was one gentlemen in it, and when the service was over, I said to him, “I hope you are quite well, sir?” He said, “You have the advantage of me.” I answered, “I don’t think I have, for you and I are brothers.” “I don’t quite know what you mean,” said he. “Well,” I replied, “when I took the bread and wine, just now, in token of our being one in Christ, I meant it, did not you?” We were by that time in the street; he put both his hands on my shoulders—I was about sixteen years old then—and he said, “Oh, sweet simplicity! You are quite right, my dear brother; come in to tea with me. I am afraid I should not have spoken to you if you had not first addressed me.” I went to tea with him that evening, and when I left, he asked me to go again the next Lord’s day, so I went, and that Sabbath evening he said to me, “You will come here every Sunday evening, won’t you?” That dear friend used to walk with me into the villages when I afterwards went out to preach, and he remains to this day one the truest Christian friends I have, and often have we looked back, and laughed at the fact I should have dared to assume that Christian fellowship was really a truth.
J. W. ALEXANDER (1804-1859): Those with whom we hope to spend eternity in heaven are such as we should seek out here. Those who are worthy of Christ’s fellowship, are worthy of ours.
