Protestants Do Not Worship God at Their Churches

And Melchiz′edek king of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was priest of God Most High - Genesis 14:18

This is a highly controversial statement, but it’s true, and it’s important to explore why. 

Firstly, we have to understand what worship even is according to the Bible. In the Old Testament, God is worshiped when sacrifices are offered to Him. False gods or idols are worshiped when sacrifices are offered to them. 

Just as God is worshiped in the Old Testament via sacrifice, Catholic and Orthodox Christians worship God via the Sacrifice of the Mass. In this Sacrifice, Jesus gives Himself up and offers His body and His blood. Following an Old Testament sacrifice, the offering would be consumed, and similarly at Catholic and Orthodox Masses the offering is consumed. 

As 1 Corinthians 10:16-18 says “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. Consider the people of Israel: Are not those who eat the sacrifices partners in the altar?” 

The majority of Protestants do not believe that they share in the blood of Christ at their church services, and they do not believe they partake of the One Bread, which is Jesus Christ, when they have communion. They believe the grape juice and matzo they use are just symbols of Christ, not an actual sacrifice, in defiance of 1 Corinthians 10. They also have no altar in Baptist or Evangelical churches. So, they are obviously not partners in the altar who eat the sacrifice. 

While Protestants are separated brothers and sisters in Christ, we know that their churches do not belong to the Kingdom of God in the same way a Catholic (or Orthodox) Church does, because when Malachi prophesied the global spread of the True Faith through Christianity he wrote in Malachi 1:11 “For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name is great among the nations (note: this means gentiles), and in every place incense is offered to my name, and a pure offering; for my name is great among the nations, says the Lord of hosts.” This came true with the global spread of Christianity, as all Christians for over 1500 years offered a perfect offering, Jesus Christ, in the Mass, all over the world. This continues to this day at the Catholic and Orthodox Parishes worldwide. 

When Jesus meets the Samaritan woman in John 4 He acknowledges that worship happens in a specific location. The Samaritans believe it’s at Mount Gerizim, but the Jews believe it is in Jerusalem at the Temple. Jesus tells her “believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father” in verse 21. Worship did not occur in the synagogue, which was a place of prayer, praise and Scripture reading. Similarly, Protestant services feature corporal prayer, praise and Scripture reading, along with a sermon which is similar to a Jewish or Catholic/Orthodox homily. So a Protestant church is more like a synagogue than a temple. 

As Joel Heschmeyer points out on Catholic Answers: 

First, worship was inseparable from the concept of sacrifice. Everett Ferguson, Protestant scholar, in his book, The Early Church at Work and Worship, points us out. That sacrifice was the universal language of worship in the ancient world, that when we’re talking about worship, we almost always mean sacrifice because sacrifice is our way of honoring God. Saint Augustine points us out in Book 10 of City of God, he says, “Putting aside for the present the other religious services with which God is worshiped, certainly no man would dare to say that sacrifice is due to any but God.” In other words, yeah, sure, we can talk about other things as forms of worship, but the way of worship, par excellence, is sacrifice.

You could not sacrifice anything at a synagogue. It had to be at the Temple in Jerusalem, or if you were Samaritan, at Mount Gerizim. 

Now in the New Testament, it is mentioned that our bodies become temples of the Holy Spirit, and we can offer up sacrifices to God. How do we do this? Via good works. Hebrews 13:15 says “Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.” So this is another way sacrifices are offered all over the world now. The Christian body must become a living sacrifice. 

Thus Protestants will make the claim that God is worshiped in their services because they offer sacrifices of praise and their bodies are a living sacrifice, doing good works. But what they’re missing here is that the Bible promises there will also be a collective Christian worship, and a collective Christian sacrifice. Malachi 1:11 isn’t talking about individualized sacrifice. The best you can say happens in a Protestant service is that many individualized sacrifices occur, because while they might be singing in unison the temple in this case is only themselves, and of course they are not pure offerings. The Old Testament has the concept of individualized sacrifice and worship as well, but it never took the place of corporal worship and sacrifice at the Temple.

We know that the very first Christians saw things the Catholic way here. The Didache is one of the earliest post-Ascension documents we have from the early Church, written in the First Century. In it, it says on Sundays “come together, break bread and hold Eucharist after confessing your transgression so your offering may be pure. The Lord has said in every place and time, offer me a pure sacrifice for I am a great king. And my name is wonderful among the heathen.” The authors were looking to Malachi 1:11 of course. These Christians that lived just decades after St. John died held a Catholic view of the Eucharist, down to requiring attending Confession prior. 

St. Justin Martyr wrote in 150 AD, roughly 50 years after the death of St. John, “this shows how God anticipated all the sacrifices which we offer through this name in which Jesus the Christ, enjoined us to offer. I eat in the Eucharist, the bread and the cup, and which are presented by Christians in all places throughout the world.” Again, like the Didache, we see Justin Martyr quoting Malachi 1:11. This verse was very important to the early Christians. Malachi 1:11 shows that these sacrifices are also pleasing to God, and Protestants are not offering this sacrifice that God asks for. 

Protestants replace the corporal worship of God with a man or woman (depending on the gender of their pastor). They remove the altar and put in place a pulpit, as the center of a Protestant service is typically the sermon. They replaced worship with preaching. By removing the Eucharist, they have removed the sacrifice, and thus the primary way Christians worship God since the time of the Apostles. 

Finally, Lutherans and certain other Protestant denominations will object and say they do believe that the bread and wine become the actual body and blood of Christ at their services, and they do have an altar. Well, the issue there is they do not have a valid priesthood, many of whom are women for example. Their priests, if they call them that, do not get their authority from the heirs of the Apostles. They also do not have proper beliefs concerning the Eucharist. To worship God fully as God desires one must leave Protestantism.