"There
are many books about the history of the first church. But The Children
of God is the best I have read. I learned things about specific
areas where Babylonian mystery religions have infiltrated both Protestantism
and Catholicism. With all I have read on the subject, I was shocked
at how much institutional religion has merged with paganism. Every
Christian in America must read this thorough, yet easily understood
book." (Sid Roth, Director, Messianic Vision Ministries)
"The Children of God is an absolute
masterpiece!!!!! Bob Fischer has made a contribution of immense
value and significance to the Jewish Roots Movement. We must applaud
his extensive research and insightful analysis which has produced
a foundational classic for all who seek to be a part of this move
of the Spirit in our day." (Barbara Richmond, Doctor of Religious
Education - Director, For Your Glory Ministries)
"A wonderful publication! I was very
blessed by the Lord! As an avid reader of 'Hebrew Roots' material,
I can honestly say that The Children of God is the best summary
that I've read to date about what God is doing in the 'Messianic
Jewish' movement and how it can benefit the entire body of Christ."
(Paul Jablonowski - SonsToGlory.com).
"Presenting clear answers to a two
millennia enigma, The Children of God is a timely work that signals
a bold new drive toward the final demise of Christian anti-Semitism."
(Reuven E. Schmalz, co-author of The Messianic Seal of the Jerusalem
Church.")
Author's Preface
You worship what you do not know; we know
what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour is
coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the
Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to
worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship
in spirit and truth. (John 4:22-24)
There is nothing optional in this deep
longing for worshipers expressed by the Lord God of Israel: YHWH
is His name. He created us, His people and the sheep of His pasture,
so that we might worship Him. He hungers for our worship, but
we must worship Him in spirit, and in truth, in the manner fulfilled
in the New Covenant, through grace, by faith, by direct access
to Him, made possible by the incredible sacrifice of His only
begotten Son, Yeshua, ha Mashiach (Jesus Christ).
If we are to worship Him in spirit and
in truth, there are, I believe, three great understandings that
must already have been put in our minds and written on our hearts.
First, we must know who He is. Such knowledge
is infinitely accessible: His identity is written on every page
of the Old and New Covenants. Look into the heavens with its multitude
of stars; listen to the roar of rushing waters; behold a suckling
child at its mother's breast. He is in all these things. He is
in every thing. He is everywhere to be found.
Secondly, we must know, with certainty
and clarity, who we are: not some make believe creation of our
own imagination, some non-existent person who we might desire,
or pretend to be; rather, who we really are: the flesh and blood,
filled with His Spirit, one of a kind son or daughter whom God
lovingly created.
Finally, we must come to perfectly understand
and joyfully accept the position, and substance of our own unique
and Divinely appointed place and calling within the Body of all
true believers: those brothers and sisters with whom we share
the glorious privilege of worshipping Him in spirit and in truth.
For as the body is one and has many members,
but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body,
so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into
one body--whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free-- and
have all been made to drink into one Spirit. For in fact the body
is not one member but many. (1 Cor 12:12-14)
This world-wide Body of many different
members is, I believe, beset by a satanically orchestrated "Identity
Crisis" of near epidemic proportions. Driven by the spirit
of confusion, this "Identity Crisis," has blurred the
vision of myriad Messianic Jews and Gentile Christians alike and
sent them groping in horrific disunity, even blindly in search
of their rightful, God ordained places within the Body.
Witness the growing segment of the Christian
Church that is crumbling in its own apostasy: poisoned by the
spores of paganism injected into its very heart at the time of
its second birth in the New Babylon called Rome.
Legions of disillusioned and broken-spirited
Christians are leaving their life long home churches and even
their main line denominations; unable to find solace or direction
from pastors and elders who have themselves fallen into apostasy.
In North America, for example, in the thirty years between 1967
and 1999, total membership in the top seven Protestant denominations
declined from 29 million to 22.9 million, a shocking loss of twenty-one
percent.
These are not just numbers. These are deeply
traumatized and bewildered brothers and sisters who are fleeing
their church homes in droves. These are among the Children of
God. Praise Him: for in His unfailing love and boundless mercy,
He has not forgotten these precious ones of His own creation.
The Lord God of Israel has laid out a heavenly
highway for this satanically displaced Christian remnant of His
people who would worship Him in spirit and truth: a highway leading
from the depth of the apostasy of Rome to the glory of the heights
of Jerusalem. He is pointing the way to Mount Zion: to the sacred
Jewish roots of the Christian Church; to the rich Holy ground
from whence Nazarene Jewish believers came forth like "shoots"
in the Church's first birth.
In rejecting the apostasy of the second
Church in Rome, countless thousands of lost, confused and earnestly
seeking Christians have taken to this heavenly highway. Some are
proceeding slowly and with caution; others are marching as if
they were a conquering army set upon a new third millennium crusade;
still others are running, blindly, without direction or clear
understanding of where they are going and what they can expect
to find at the end of their quest.
Recently, a dear Christian sister in the
Lord, who temporarily resides in Jerusalem, and is trying to gain
permanent residency by relentlessly struggling with a seemingly
intractable Israeli Department of Interior, cried out to me in
her profound confusion and frustration:
"I don't know what to do. I know I've
been called to Israel, but I don't know where or how to worship.
Should I worship only with you Messianic Jews? How much of the
Law should I keep? Should I act more Jewish; dress more Jewish;
associate myself only with Jews; try to make myself more Jewish
in every way? I know that I am not Jewish, but I have this deep
longing to identify with you and your people; to be more like
you."
It has taken a great deal of chutzpah (presumption)
for me to write this book: to have dared to conclude that part
of my own unique place and calling as a Messianic Jewish member
of the Body of Yeshua is to endeavor to make lighter the burden,
more pleasant the journey; to better illuminate the way for those
legions of Christians who are, figuratively, coming home to Mount
Zion; who are seeking to find, then gain spiritual nurture from
the natural Jewish roots of their faith.
In the past there have been those who have
accused me of being "anti-Gentile," and "against
the Christian Church." Nothing could be further from the
truth. Although I am entirely Jewish, I was raised and educated
in a completely Christian world. I sought and found Jesus Christ
in an entirely nondenominational Christian Church.
I married a "born again," Christian. We raised three
daughters in the Church who, until recently, have had absolutely
no understanding of their father's Jewishness or what if anything
this meant.
After I had already finished one career
and was well established in a second, I was, to my own enduring
amazement, called to and graduated from a wonderful conservative
Christian Seminary. There I gained an entirely Christian orientation
that I have come to appreciate and treasure more and more each
day.
It was only after all of this that God
in His mercy began to unfold His plan for me by taking me by the
hand and introducing me, by way of a highly blessed Messianic
Jewish Congregation, to my own Jewish roots. It was only then,
after I had finally come to understand who I was, that He called
us home to Israel, and it became natural for me to think of His
son as Yeshua, the Jewish Messiah.
By no means am I anti-Christian or an adversary
of the Christian Church: I love them more than life itself because
they led me to my Messiah. My present calling, as I have been
given to understand it, is to illuminate and attempt to correct
the apostasy introduced by Constantine and those who followed
him; to show that the roots of the true Church are in Jerusalem,
not Rome; to point the way and facilitate the journey for my Christian
brothers and sisters as they enter upon and proceed along the
heavenly highway leading from Rome to Mount Zion.
It is my deep and abiding love for Christians and the Church that
has motivated me in this work: it is with this love that I now
reach out to all of my brothers and sisters, Gentile and Jewish
alike. My most earnest prayer is that none of this will be understood
as having any other purpose.
LORD, my strength and my fortress, my refuge
in the day of affliction, the Gentiles shall come to You from
the ends of the earth and say, "Surely our fathers have inherited
lies, Worthlessness and unprofitable things. Will a man make gods
for himself, which are not gods? Therefore behold, I will this
once cause them to know, I will cause them to know my hand and
My might; and they shall know that My name is the LORD. (Jer 16:19-21)
In my earlier work, The Messianic Seal
of the Jerusalem Church (Part Two) I recalled the mathematical
axiom, "the whole is equal to the sum of its parts."
My approach then was to first examine and explain, in turn, each
of the three separate elements of the three part First Century
Messianic Jewish symbol (an interlaced Menorah, Star of David
and Fish), then to put these separate interpretations together
as a means to better understand the symbol's total meaning. I
have used this same "component integration" approach
in this work. First, I have examined and defined the two top level
"members," of the Body: Jews and Gentiles.
Copyright 2011 by Raymond Robert
Fischer
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