as he is.”—Rom. 8:16; 1 John 3:2, NW.

However, even these must examine themselves so as to make sure that they are measuring up to what is required of them. There is no particular merit in the partaking of the emblems themselves, aside from an act of obedience, and therefore for one to partake of the loaf and the cup without living up to what these emblems represent would make him guilty of hypocrisy. While countless multitudes have professed to be sons of God with a hope of heaven at death, God’s Word tells us at Revelation, chapters 7 and 14, that the number that will share Christ’s throne in heaven is but 144,000.—Rev. 20:5, 6.

Because only those Christians who have this heavenly hope may properly partake of the Lord’s evening meal, of the 677,099 that attended its observance by Jehovah’s witnesses in 1952 only 20,221 partook of the loaf and the cup. Those not partaking recognized themselves as being of the great crowd that John saw standing before the throne with “palm branches in their hands”; the ones Jesus described as the “other sheep, which are not of this fold”, as the “sheep” who do good to Christ’s brothers and whose hope is not divine, immortal life in the heavens but eternal life in an earthly paradise where they will have the privilege of carrying out the original mandate given to Adam and Eve, namely, ‘fill the earth with a righteous race, subdue it and exercise dominion over the lower animals.’—Gen. 1:28; Matt. 25:31-46; John 10:16; 1 Cor. 15:53, 54; 2 Pet. 1:4; Rev. 7:9; 21:4, NW.

This year Jehovah’s anointed witnesses and their good-will companions will come together on March 30, after 6 p.m., to again celebrate the Lord’s evening meal or supper, to again memorialize Christ’s death. And you, dear reader, whether you profess to be a member of the body of Christ or to be one whose hopes are earthly, are invited to attend and receive a rich blessing.

Did Christ Institute the Mass?

“THE most perfect act of worship that can be made to God.” Thus the National Catholic Almanac (1951) describes the mass of the Roman Catholic Church. We further quote: “The Mass is the unbloody renewal of the Sacrifice of our Lord upon the cross. In it the priest, as the representative of Christ, offers to God the bread and wine, which he changes into the Body and Blood of our Lord at the Consecration, and then completes the sacrifice by consuming the Host and drinking the chalice at the Communion.” The mass, we are further assured, “is the perpetuation of the sacrifice of Calvary,” “is identical with the Sacrifice of the Cross.”

Did Jesus Christ institute the sacrifice of the mass on that last evening he spent with his apostles in the upper room, after they had celebrated the passover? There was a time when to raise such a question meant risking being burned at the stake. History records that an English tailor, a Lollard (follower of Wycliffe), John Badby by name, was burned at the stake in Smithfield Market, London, in the year 1410, because he held to the opinion that