THE CHURCH RETURNS TO ITS TRUE JEWISH HERITAGE AS IT DISCOVERS YESHUA AND CHRISTIANITY IN ANCIENT JUDAISM AND THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS

In his monumental fourth and long anticipated book, Full Circle, Israeli author Bob Fischer shares exciting new discoveries as the Church returns to its true Jewish heritage and discovers Yeshua and Christianity in ancient Judaism and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Included are:

• Many of the clear references to Yeshua and Christian Doctrine to be found in the Dead Sea Scrolls
• The Triune Godhead as a well documented ancient Jewish understanding
• An exposition of false teachers who have arisen in Israel and throughout the world as foretold in Scripture who are polluting the Church with salvation threatening apostasy and dangerous heresy.

306 Pages $15.00 Plus S&H

Foreword

The "Return to the Jewish Roots" movement within the Church may have, in a way, had its genesis in 1976 when author Alex Haley began a phenomenon with his book and subsequent miniseries, "Roots." With this landmark work, Haley caused a world-wide movement for it seems all people, everywhere, to discover who they are and from whence they came.

For Haley, whose passion to find his own identity ignited all manner of parallel movements, the result of his efforts was overnight fame and fortune.

For the Church, wherein the "Return to the Jewish Roots Movement" seemingly started spontaneously in the early 1990's, then quickly exploded into the ongoing revolution within virtually every denominational nook and cranny, the result has too often been utter confusion followed by despair, brought about by unbelievably bad doctrine foisted upon legions of spiritually starving, highly vulnerable seekers by a growing army of modern-day false teachers and prophets.

What rational, supposedly "born again," ethnically Gentile believer in Yeshua could swallow the notion that all Christians, and/or all of humanity are "Israelites," blood descendants of the supposed "Lost Ten Tribes" of Israel and therefore entitled, even commanded by God, to make aliyah (immigrate)to Israel where they are to claim their share of 10/12ths of the Land supposedly given to them as an "everlasting inheritance" by God?

Never mind the blatant physical impossibility of this proposition there are something like six million permanent inhabitants of this perpetually war torn piece of Middle East real estate that is about the size of New Jersey that would somehow have to make room for 2.2 billion "Christians," or, at the extreme of this view, something in excess of the 6 billion other folks that live elsewhere throughout the world.

What rational, "born again" Christian could believe such an outlandish proposal?
Let me tell you Astoundingly there are tens of thousands of them, perhaps by now even one hundred thousand, mostly in North America, who have already passionately embraced this incredible notion, and their ranks continue to grow by leaps and bounds.

However, let me quickly add that "only" tens of thousands or perhaps even one hundred thousand poor souls have so far thus been led down this particular "primrose path" out of the more than two billion who constitute the world-wide Body of Yeshua. Praise be to God, since the early 1990's countless other millions have begun listening, and responding to the Holy Spirit who has actively been causing both Gentile and Jewish believers alike to search for whom they are and from where and how they came into their Christian faith. The message that they are hearing is both consistent and clear.

It is this same Holy Spirit who ignited the spark and who is now fanning the flames of the "Return to the Jewish Roots" movement. And, it is this same Holy Spirit who is moving quickly, causing people to both discover and embrace the Jewish roots of Christianity.

For some, several of whom I know personally, they have found they are, in fact, ethnically Jewish after a lifetime of unknowingly walking and worshipping from a Gentile perspective.

For others, they are finding the truths of the Jewish underpinnings and beginnings of their Christian faith. These are those who have learned to look to Jerusalem instead of to Rome for the origins of their Church.

For still others, they are just now discovering the horrors and errors the attitudes and actions within the Church, beginning with the second and third centuries. They have only just begun to fathom this misdirection which has caused horrendous atrocities against the Jews. Rampant denominationalism has split the church into as many as 2,600 quarreling factions. Runaway liberalism has led the Church to abandon such foundational pillars as the Divinity of Yeshua, His virgin birth, and, to embrace all manner of other apostasy and heresy. All of this, yes all of it has, inexplicably, been done in the name of Jesus!

For all of these seekers of the truth, who have taken the time to search God's heart, they will find themselves being led by the Holy Spirit to discover that their Christian faith "began" with, and is indeed identical with the "faith of Abraham."

When I was privileged to introduce my second book, The Children of God, just two years ago, it was immediately embraced by several leaders of the Messianic Jewish movement. One such individual, who has very recently documented her own personal Jewish ethnicity, went so far as to describe this work as "the text book for the return to the Jewish Roots movement."

Pridefully, much too puffed up by this overstatement concerning the value of my work, I quickly concluded that my call to inform the Church about it Jewish roots was at last complete and that I could turn to another subject.

However, then, just two years ago, I could have had no knowledge of the profoundly important, foundation shaking, new truths that were about to be revealed to the Church in the most recently translated Dead Sea Scrolls(1). These monumental new revelations that point clearly to the actual Jewish roots of the Church are all the more exciting when taken together with the fact that the main line ancient Jewish precursors of the Essene Sect held a clear and widely taught Triune understanding of the Godhead as central to their belief system, an understanding that may have stemmed as far back as to our father Abraham (2). There is another tradition, perhaps fanciful or perhaps not, that this ancient understanding that encompassed the Doctrine of the Trinity "-- was first taught by God himself to a select company of angels---who most graciously communicated this heavenly doctrine to (Adam) the disobedient child of earth---From Adam it passed to Noah, and then to Abraham---." (3) Moreover, the Essenes, who were unquestionably the most ascetic and righteous of the three principal Jewish sects during a more than three century period before, during and immediately following the walk of Yeshua, confidently and reverently awaited Him as He was understood to be the thoroughly prophesied Davidic, atoning and eschatologic Messiah whom they had meticulously memorialized in the Dead Sea Scrolls they penned between 250 BCE and 70CE, then stored for safe keeping in eleven different caves near Qumran where they remained undiscovered for more than twenty centuries.

Up until these very recent revelations and understandings, I believe that most Gentile Christians and many Jews themselves could only look upon Judaism, from a theological perspective, as a more-or-less cohesive and generally agreeing body with respect to its fundamental spiritual understandings. Moreover, I believe that most who even took the time to give the matter any consideration would most likely have concluded that the sectarian division among Jews into the principal modern-day groups of Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, etc. was driven principally by the application and practice of the religion rather than by any significant disagreement along major issues of scriptural understanding.

Stated differently, it is almost universally assumed that all Jews of every stripe and practice stand in agreement on such fundamental matters as: the nature and substance of God (God is one, Ecaud); what constitutes the Word of God (the written Tanach and the Oral Torah ); and, the nature and purpose of the coming Mashiach (a priest, prophet and king who will set the world aright and bring peace).

It thus may come as a surprise to many Gentile Christians, as it did to me, a born again Jew, that, during the most immediate centuries surrounding the time of Yeshua, there were in fact major disagreements regarding virtually all of these core theological issues among the then three major sects of Judaism: the Sadducees , the Pharisees, and the Essenes. Further, that these disagreements had then, and are still having a profound impact upon both universally accepted Jewish and Christian theological understandings.

The historical fact is, as we will later explore in some detail, all branches of modern-day Judaism are rooted entirely in the theological understandings, practices and teachings of the Pharisees. The Sadducees were relatively few in number, left no written legacy and quickly vanished after the temple was destroyed in 70 CE. The third major sect, the Essenes, were a much larger group than the Pharisees and differed from them profoundly with respect to the above detailed three core theological issues (the nature and substance of the Godhead, the scope and limits of the Word, and the nature, character and purpose of the expected Messiah).

It appears patently obvious from both historical and biblical perspectives that Christianity arose directly and exclusively from the Essenes. Yet, there is an almost universal lack of understanding to this point that is just now coming to the attention of the modern day Church as more and more evidence becomes available through the continued translation, study and interpretation of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Recently, a Gentile Christian friend who was visiting Jerusalem shared a conversation she had had with a well known Israeli tour guide who is held by some to be an "expert" on the early church. When asked pointedly from which Jewish sect these Nazarene believers had evolved, this "expert" unhesitatingly and quite erroneously replied that Jesus was a Pharisee and therefore the early Jewish believers where largely converts from this sect. While there were some, perhaps even many, believers in Yeshua among the Pharisees, for example, the Apostle Paul was first a Pharisee, the new movement was overwhelmingly Nazarene/Essene.

Although some would argue to the contrary, there is a compelling body of biblical and historical evidence that Yeshua was, at the very least, intimately acquainted with the various detailed theological teachings and understandings recorded in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Virtually all of His central teachings, as they are prophesied in the Old Covenant and written in the New, are also found, sometimes even verbatim, in the Scrolls which were scribed long before His incarnation.

Some credible scholars have even suggested that Yeshua Himself was an Essene, or even if He was not an actual member of the sect that in any case He most likely studied the scrolls at the Qumran library. Further, many scholars agree that Yeshua's cousin, John the Baptist, was himself an Essene who was raised and educated at Qumran. Moreover, it is reasonably certain that John baptized Yeshua at the nearby site on Jordan River, within easy walking distance of Qumran.

By no means do I mean to suggest that Yeshua first carefully studied the Messianic expectations recorded in the scrolls and then proceeded to fashion His ministry around these understandings. Quite to the contrary, I believe that the clear and detailed portrait of Yeshua's teachings that predate Him in the Scrolls is a Divinely orchestrated, multi-faceted Messianic prophecy pointing directly to its fulfillment in His later glorious life and ministry. How else, for example, can one explain His more than fifty astounding miracles as they are separately recorded in the New Testament but are in no way mentioned in the Scrolls?

While Yeshua's teachings were clearly in agreement with those of the Essenes, as they are recorded in the Scrolls, on the other hand He stood in strong and often heated opposition to many of the Pharisees' theological understandings, practices and teachings, as evidenced by many New Testament references. (4)

What is not generally understood, however, is that the Nazarenes, the first post resurrection Body of Jewish believes who met on Mount Zion, were not a new group but rather the much larger of two long-standing major divisions of the Essenes that were founded well before the time of Yeshua. (5)

The major relevance of all this to modern-day Christianity is that many participants in the ongoing "Return to the Jewish Roots" movement stand in significant error by looking, figuratively, to the Temple Mount, where a temple no longer stands, as the place from which the Church arose. (The Temple was virtually abandoned by the Essenes after it became desecrated in 173 BCE). They should, instead, be looking to the adjacent ridge called Mount Zion and to the Upper Room located on that holy summit where the early Jewish believers first met and awaited the promised Comforter. It is from there that the Church actually arose.

Moreover, in my view, it is absolutely certain from the recent evidence set forth in newly translated Dead Sea Scrolls, and from other sources, that Yeshua and His Body, the Church, arose from and reflected the very nature and substance of the Essenes, certainly not that of the Pharisees, the Sadducees or any of the several other minor sects of the time.

From an historical perspective, both the Pharisees and the Essenes vanished as viable Jewish groups in the early centuries of the then just concluded millennium. Both groups, however, left remarkable modern-day legacies that, interestingly, continue to stand in juxtaposition with respect to the above detailed core theological issues.

· The Pharisees principal legacy is modern-day rabbinical Judaism in all of its several forms, including the branch of Messianic Judaism that is rooted therein.

· The first roots of modern-day Evangelical Christianity are in the Essenes, through their sub-division of Nazarenes who evolved into the first believers in Yeshua and worshipped in the first "Messianic Kahala" on Mount Zion. These first roots are not to be found, as is generally misunderstood, in the pagan soil of Rome and the Roman Catholic Church.

How deeply sad and utterly perplexing it seems through the imperfection of human perception that these chosen ones of God, these Nazarene Essenes who at first rallied in droves to worship Him, so quickly succumbed to a wide range of political pressures and all too quickly fell away. At their peak toward the end of the third century CE, out of a total world-wide Jewish population of approximately 1,500,000 (6) there was a mighty force of over 400,000 (27%) believers in Yeshua.

At that time in history, nearly all of this ethnic Jewish population resided in the Land of their biblical inheritance, Israel, with about 100,000 (1/4th) of them living in Jerusalem and most of the other 300,000 scattered in several "believing communities" throughout the Galilee and modern day Syria.

Compare these encouraging evangelistic inroads with the heartbreaking demographic facts in the year 2002. Today, there are approximately 15,000,000 Jews in the world among whom there are only about 20,000 (0.13%) believers in Yeshua. Worse still is the tiny surviving handful of just over 2,000 (.033%) of these ethnic Jewish believers who reside among their approximately 6,000,000 non-believing brethren in the State of Israel. Here in the Galilee, where I make my home, there were once 300,000 ethnic Jewish believers. Today, there are now fewer than 500.

As if this greatly disappointing result of 2,000 years of attempted outreach to the Jews isn't in itself bad enough, there is an even more dismal reality Even among the tiny world-wide group of some 20,000 ethnic Jewish Messianic "believers," there is a sizable and growing number who are being led by satan to return to their Pharisaic (modern day orthodox Jewish) roots and thus embrace various heretical, Pharisaic rooted theological messianic understandings of rabbinical Judaism regarding the nature and Person of Yeshua, such as:

· Yeshua, as the promised Messiah of the first covenant, came first to the Jewish people as a High Priest and Prophet (not God) to teach them about the nature of God and to reveal to them the mysteries of the Scriptures. He will return once again, this time to reign as a secular King for 1,000 years in order to bring peace and otherwise set things right inset things right in the material world.

· While Yeshua may be, figuratively, "the Son of God" and as such He reflects the Divine nature of God, He Himself is by no means God. Only God is God.

· While both Jews and Gentiles may be saved by the blood sacrifice of Yeshua, "works righteousness" provides yet another means of such justification for Jews salvation for Jews, they believe, can also be achieved through prayer, fasting and by the giving of alms to the poor.

· The Trinity (Triune understanding of the Godhead) is not made up of three equal members but rather is a hierarchical arrangement with God the Father in a superior position to the Son and the Holy Spirit.

These misunderstandings are by no means trivial, a passing concern or a figment of my own exaggeration. They are very real, current, profoundly dangerous and threaten the very eternal salvation of those unfortunate many who have already been led down the river of fire by their false teachers to embrace them.

Again, to make certain that I have made my point, the apostatical (salvation threatening) understanding that Yeshua is not Divine arises from a central understanding of modern day rabbinical Judaism that took it, in turn, from the Pharisees who gave it birth. More specifically, this profoundly serious error can be laid directly at the doorstep of Rabbi Maimonides (Rambam), the 13th Century Sephardic Jewish pillar of modern day rabbinical Judaism whose "Thirteen Articles of Faith" pervert biblical understanding in a way that does not allow the possibility that God is in fact a Trinity.

As disconcerting as this orthodox Jewish rooted Messianic misunderstanding of the nature and person of Yeshua may be, it has yet another, equally perplexing dimension: there are a growing number of "Christians" who have already figuratively fallen into this Jewish originated, salvation-threatening, spiritual abyss from the strangely crowded and compelling Gentile Christian Church precipice on the other side of this bottomless pit.

When I am given the opportunity to teach Jewish roots to groups of Gentile believers abroad or to meet with such "pilgrims" here in the Land, I not infrequently hear the heartfelt yet misguided assertion: "I love Israel and everything Jewish so much that I must be Jewish!" I recently received the following e-mail inquiry from a Gentile believer in the southeastern United States: "I am a born again Christian who would like to become a Messianic Jew. Please send me any free literature on the subject."
Such misguided understandings, no matter how sincere, are symptomatic of an exploding cross denominational identity crisis that is currently sweeping the worldwide Church. It is, I believe, an identity crisis spawned by satan himself yet another evil weapon on the black side of the never ending spiritual battle; a weapon that is nothing more than a modern day manifestation of the age old evil of "replacement theology" that teaches:

1. Israel has failed God, and therefore the Church has replaced Israel.
2. The Church has become the "spiritual" or "true" Israel.
3. Gentile Christians have become the "spiritual" or "true" Jews.
4. Therefore: Ethnic Jews and the State of Israel have become irrelevant.

The Roman Catholic Church officially adopted "replacement theology" at the Council of Nice in 325 CE and continues to state this position even today, a position which is, sadly, widely shared across the entire Protestant spectrum. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia:

Other doctrines, specifically Christian, are not added on to Judaism to develop, but rather to supersede it. In reality, between the New and Old Testaments there is a direct but not revolutionary succession as a superficial observer might be inclined to believe; just as in living beings, the imperfect state of yesterday must give way before the perfection of to-day although the one has normally prepared the other. If the mystery of the Trinity and the spiritual character of the Messianic Kingdom are ranked among the peculiarly Christian dogmas, it is because the Old Testament was of itself insufficient to establish the doctrine of the New Testament on this subject; and still more because, at the time of Jesus, the opinions current among the Jews went decidedly in the opposite direction. (7)

Then also, there are relatively new and prominent purveyors of a repackaged long standing "replacement" understanding that I introduced at the beginning of this foreword suggesting that the church has somehow replaced Israel and, variously, all Gentile believers, all Anglo Saxons, and even all of humanity are genetic descendants of the "Lost Ten Tribes of Israel" who are called by God (as many as all 2.2 billion of them) to take up their rightful everlasting inheritance by repopulating the ten 12ths of the Land of Israel to which they are eternally entitled.

There seems to be no end to the offerings of such malicious and dangerous nonsense spewing forth from the sewer of satan posing supposed enigmas (the answers to which are readily and clearly available to any true seeker in the Word of God) such as: "Who is Israel?" "Who is a Jew?" and "Who has inherited the Land of Israel?"
In summary, I have three primary purposes in this present writing:

· First, to share in considerable detail the exciting presence of Yeshua as He can be seen deeply ingrained in the very fiber of the Dead Sea Scrolls; while offering as background an exposition of the little understood historical fact that the Triune nature of the Godhead is a solidly documented Jewish heritage (not some new derived "Christian" theology that was dreamt up by the Church Fathers, then later codified by the Church itself) as many as eighteen centuries after it was first taught by main stream rabbis as a central Jewish understanding. All of this will be focused on illuminating a much deeper revelation that the roots of the Christian Church are not simply Jewish but they are rather most pointedly deeply planted in the spiritually rich Nazarene/Essene soil of Qumran, Jerusalem and the Galilee as evidenced by the Dead Sea Scrolls and other historical reference.

· My second purpose is to expose and address the flood of error that has been and continues to be promulgated on both the orthodox rooted Messianic Jewish and Gentile Christian sides of what I see as an extremely deep satanically authored spiritual abyss, with particular focus on those issues that speak directly to the Person of Yeshua or otherwise have salvational impact. I do so with the earnest prayer that at least some who might otherwise be eternally doomed might thus be snatched from the precipice of the "bottomless pit." Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!' (Matt 7:22-23 NIV)

· My third purpose is to address those derivatives, although not necessarily salvation impacting, yet very dangerous and misguided doctrinal positions that pertain to the nature and constitution of the Body of Yeshua, the Land of Israel and to "Who is Israel?"

In summary, my central, underlying purpose is to provide all believers with a well documented further understanding of the very Jewish history, nature and substance of the Gentile Christian Church. Then, having established this understanding as a base line, I earnestly seek to alert those dear ones who sincerely believe they are saved but are not those who are thus lost because they have so grossly misunderstood the Person of Yeshua.

And, I also cry out to those others who have been so grossly misled regarding the nature, substance, inheritance, calling and faith of the Jewish people to be acutely aware of the false prophets and teachers who are prowling the Land like the ferocious beasts they indeed are, ready to consume them. Collectively all of these, my potential brothers and sisters in Yeshua, have either unwittingly and unknowingly already joined, or stand in imminent danger of taking up their places in the eternally doomed congregation of synagogue of satan.

I know your works, tribulation, and poverty (but you are rich); and I know the blasphemy of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. (Rev 2:9)

But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction. (2 Pet 2:1)

(1)More than 800 Dead Sea Scroll Documents and some 40,000 fragments were found in eleven different caves near the shores of the Dead Sea in Israel between 1947 and 1956. While all of these documents were finally published in November 2001, to date, only about half of them have been translated and studied.

(2)William Wynn Westcott, "An Introduction to the Study of The Kabalah," a lecture from a series published in London (1910) by J.M. Watkins ( Soror S.J. ) page 2. Found at http://www.hermeticgoldendawn.org. Legend has it that this ancient doctrine was too sacred to be written down and that it was given directly to Abraham by God to be transmitted orally from generation to generation until it was finally recorded in written form in about 200CE

(3)Samuel L. McGregor Mathers, "Preface and Introduction to "The Kabbalah Unveiled'"

(4)There are more than 80 such references in the four gospels, for example: Matt 3:7, 9:34; Mk 2:16, 7:5; Lk 5:21, 11:39; Jn 7:32, 9:16

(5)Epiphanius , Parion 29 makes reference to the smaller celibate group called the "Ossaens" and the much larger group, the "Nazarenes." Josephus elaborates on the two divisions, one, the much smaller of the two who lived as ascetic celibates at Qumran, and the larger, known as the Nazarenes, who were widely scattered throughout the country, especially in several major centers in the Galilee. See Wars Book 2, Chapter 8, 2-13. Also see Philo, The Works of Philo:New Updated Edition, Translated by C.D. Yonge, Hendrickson, 1997, pp. 689-691 and 745-746

(6)Dolpin, Lambert, "World Population Since Creation," article found at www.ldolphin.org

(7)The Catholic Encyclopedia, Article: "The Church." Article: "The New Testament."

Copyright 2011 by Raymond Robert Fischer