I didn’t tell you what you think. I told you what you said.
Launching a personal attack on me doesn’t change what you asserted, which is that Jesus used a metaphor that misled the vast majority of his audience, causing them to abandon him—and presumably their hope of salvation.
Your theory makes Jesus not merely incompetent as a preacher, a poor communicator, but a liar, since, by using a “metaphor,” he ACTIVELY DECEIVED his audience about what he was “trying” to say, driving them away.
Jesus’ actions in John 6—letting his followers abandon him precisely because they took his words literally—demonstrate that Jesus’ words in John 6 were and are intended to be taken literally: He promises to give his flesh as food to be eaten and his blood as drink to be drunk.
Let's look at this...
54 Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.
Isn't it the teaching of Rome that you cannot be assured of having Eternal Life?
The FIRST part of Jesus' words are LITERAL and the last are NOT??
Jesus' actions in John 6--letting his followers abandon him precisely because they took his words literally--demonstrate that Jesus' words in John 6 were and are intended to be taken literally: He promises to give his flesh as food to be eaten and his blood as drink to be drunk.
Your statement is not a correct interpretation of the passage nor of the transactions in the context, Arthur.
How is it that you cannot realize that:
(1) only the hearers who were not spiritually discerning, who did not understand His words, who believed Jesus to be speaking literally and not figuratively, were the disbelieving ones who left, walked no more with Him, and were still on the path to eternal damnation;
(2) only the hearers who had accepted His teachings, were trained to understand parables, believed Jesus to be speaking in the figurative-literal sense, and were the only ones to remain with Him, being on the path to eternal security; and
(3) only one hearer who understood both methods of speaking, who continued to choose eternal damnation from before the beginning of being invited by Jesus as a member of The Company, though constantly secretly rejecting Jesus' words of life, remained behind with the eleven other believers?
Huh?
Do you get this?
And in which class does that put your line of thinking, Arthur? Hmm? With sincere concern . . .