Further, Jesus is the climax and recapitulation of all re- demptive history. He is the victorious Seed promised outside the gates of Eden, the miracle Child of Abraham, the true Israel, the Prophet greater than Moses, the Priest after the order of Melchizedek, great David’s greater Son. The whole history of Scripture is the history of Christ Jesus, and in the Supper we are inserted into this Christ and this his- tory. Redemptive history came to a climax when the Father sent the Son who gave Himself as the bread from heaven, for the life of the world.
Therefore, the meal in which we feed on Christ is the climax of salvation history. To put it yet another way, the Bible is about the
totus Christus, the whole Christ, Head and Body. Since the body of Christ is formed as body at the table, the whole Bible is about this meal.
The eschatological argument is this: Scripture teaches that the final order of things will be the kingdom of God, and Jesus consistently described the kingdom of God as a place of feasting. Better, the kingdom is not a place where feasting occurs, but the feast itself. The trajectory of human history was set at the cross, and it has been set to this one end: That the elect may feast forever in the presence of God.
At the Lord’s table, we receive an initial taste of the final heavens and earth, but the Lord’s Supper is not merely a sign of the eschatological feast, as if the two were separate feasts. Instead, the Supper is the early stage of that very feast. Every time we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, we are displaying in history a glimpse of the end of history and anticipating in this world the order of the world to come.
Our feast is not the initial form of one small part of the new creation; it is the initial form of the new creation itself. And this means that the feast that we already enjoy is as wide in scope as the feast that we will enjoy in the new creation. That is to say, it is as wide as creation itself.
Therefore, Lord’s Supper is the world in miniature; it has cosmic significance. Within it we find clues to the meaning of all creation and all history, to the nature of God and the nature of man, to the mystery of the world, which is Christ. It is not confined to the first day, for its power fills seven. Though the table stands at the center, its effects stretch out to the four corners of the earth.