Sid: My guest by way of telephone I’m speaking to Bob Fischer in Tiberias, Israel. We’re talking about his book “Full Circle” which explains what the Essenes believed. Those were the majority of Jewish people at the first coming of Jesus. There were 3 groups there were the Pharisees, Sadducees and the Essenes. So few understand what the Essenes believed, but now that we have the Dead Sea Scrolls of course man respected historians talk about them. But the Dead Sea Scrolls show us exactly what they believed. And so to me this is where Christianity came from. Now when we went off the air I was just discussing with Bob I’m really concerned about many Christians that are trying to go back to their Jewish roots, but they’re going back to the roots of the Pharisees the same group that Yeshua had problems with rather than the Jewish roots of the Essenes. And unfortunately many that go back to these roots are more interested in the roots than in the Messiah. So you were telling me about a mutual friend of ours Terri Morey.
Bob: Yeah Sid it’s rather interesting that Terri pointed out that it was important for us to understand that the root of our faith, you know the roots of our church, the roots of everything that we hold dear it’s certainly Jewish and it certainly has an Essene character. But the root is Yeshua himself. And that’s a rather profound thought because Yeshua was a Jew; Yeshua was a Rabbi, Yeshua was a mainline Rabbi if you will. He was a teacher, He was God Himself and He is the root of the first church.
Sid: Now I’ve known you’ve done a great deal of research on the first church we hear about it but I want to know based on your research what was it like? It was even remotely close to what is evolved called religious Christianity today so what was it like?
Bob: Well Sid from what I can determine nothing much changed; these people these Nazarene Essenes were meeting in the upper room on Mt. Zion if you will was a synagogue. They were meeting and they were worshiping in a synagogal ways.
Sid: So the only change is the Messiah they were talking about was coming He came but they kept everything else pretty much the same.
Bob: Essentially from what I can determine everything stayed pretty much the same. And they simply this Messiah who they had been anticipating; who they had meticulously described and documented in its every detail in these Dead Sea Scrolls; I tried to capture that in book we just don’t have time to talk about all of it now. But they… when He showed up they embraced Him because it was obvious who He was and so they came in. If you read in the book of Acts they started out a group of 120 and within days there was no time for evangelism they just simply saw Him and came into the faith by the 1000’s every day. There was 3000 in one day came in and this was almost immediately after Pentecost. So…
Sid: See I always thought they saw the miracles and that’s why they believed but yes the miracles… we’re they looking for a Messiah that would heal and have miracles?
Bob: Absolutely, they were looking for a Messiah who would be atoning in His nature and certainly Yeshua advertised Himself to be atoning this was what He taught. He came to redeem the world for its sin. That He would be from the line of David, and they had recorded that meticulously in the Dead Sea Scrolls. And that He would appear in the eschatological future. Well He appeared the first time and they then accepted that but they were looking for Him to come again. So they had written all of this down and when He showed up they recognized Him to be who He was. I find that there are very unique baptismal ceremonies. The initiation was fascinating to me and we learn about this through the church fathers. There was a grotto right behind the Upper Room, it’s still there today but it’s all closed up and locked up by the church there is a big padlock on the door you can’t get into it. But they went down into this….
Sid: Why is it locked up?
Bob: Because the Messianic seal of the Jerusalem Church is emblazoned on the wall it’s etched on the wall.
Sid: So what’s wrong with the seal of the first church?
Bob: Well they’re very concerned about it because it’d be…
Sid: The Star of David and the Menorah?
Bob: The Menorah and the fish. What it does it Judaizes Christianity; the Star of David being the central focus of Christianity and the church doesn’t like that so they basically blocked it off and Isolated. This was the initiation ceremony of the first Jewish believers that were coming into the church in droves. First they would go into a chamber where they would be in total darkness. They would turn to the west and they would renounce satan and repent for their sins. Then they would turn to east and they would make a statement of faith. Then they would be anointed with oil and after they were anointed with oil they would ignite dozens of Roman like lanterns that were fired by olive oil. And the whole room glistened and their faces glistened and it was an amazingly beautiful thing I would imagine. Then they went into part 2 of this they went down the way, they were in a catacomb at this point; they went down into a second chamber which was a traditional Jewish mikveh, that is to say a bath of purification.
Sid: What Christians would call baptism.
Bob: Exactly only the Jewish manner of baptism is to self-immerse they would squat in place literally with a deacon or deaconess supervising this to make certain to make certain they were fully immersed in the water. The first immersion was in the Name of Father Yahweh, the second immersion was in the name of the son Yeshua. And the third immersion was in the name of the Holy Spirit, the Ruach haKodesh.
Sid: So the whole idea of the sprinkling verses immersion is just tradition it’s not reality. (Chuckling)
Bob: No yeah but the way the first church did it the way the Jews did was a 3 part full immersion of the body in the Name of all Three. As Yeshua said “Go and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit there is a precisely what they did. So any way they went into a third chamber where they were…
Sid: So the Jesus only doctrine they didn’t know.
Bob: Absolutely.
Sid: Okay, go ahead.
Bob: They finalized this ceremony by going into a 3rd chamber where they were baptized in the Holy Spirit. They were left speaking in tongues in the Pentecostal manner.
Sid: So like there was no delay; did this happen just immediately?
Bob: Simultaneously they went from…
Sid: Boy what is this big delay to make sure everyone could come?
Bob: Absolutely and then interestingly enough they were given a lameena, it was called. It was a silver thing that looked very much like a military dog tag about the same size. It was made out of silver; it had emblazoned on it a description of the ceremony that they had just gone through and the words “lashem rakhone” in Aramaic meaning “The oil of the Holy Spirit” which is an interesting phrase. Anyway, they were given this and they carried it with them all of the days of their life and when they died it was placed underneath their tongue as a passport to heaven if you will. You know that this was kind of an interesting thing.
Sid: Is there any research as to where they were baptized in the Holy Spirit that they spoke in unknown tongues?
Bob: They did speak in unknown tongues. There is a…
Sid: You know a lot of these doctrinal differences would be solved if we went back to the authentic Jewish roots rather than the Pharisaical Jewish Roots.
Bob: Well Sid as we’ve discussed here in Israel during your visit I’m in the process of researching a book called “The Ways of the Way.” Where I intend to do a systematic theology about who they were, what they did and what they thought but something close to that that would detail what they believed exactly. And how they did their baptisms and how they did the Lord’s Supper and as in a great a detail as we could possibly research and find it you would be astounded at the information that’s available in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in other sources now.
Sid: Now you’ve been teaching at Bible Colleges and you’ve been blowing them out of the water with some of this research especially the Dead Sea Scrolls information. Bible Schools don’t know the information that is in your book. Bob I have to ask you in your book you say at the end of the 3rd century AD there were approximately a million and half Jewish people would wide. And there were 4½ thousand of this million and half total that were believers in Yeshua. I’ve never heard that mentioned before.
Bob: It’s amazing it was something like 27% if I could remember the figures correctly that were believers at that point in time. This was at the height of the Nazarene-Jewish Movement, The First Church.
Sid: Now you call it the Nazarene-Jewish Movement but was this Essenes that believed in Jesus?
Bob: Absolutely these were Nazarene Essenes if you will. These were the folks that came out of the Galilee-Judea-Samaria what is today Syria and of course Qumran. And of course these were Nazarene Essenes if you will they were one sect of the Essenes. I don’t want to confuse it by talking about the sects of the Essenes. But they were Essenes that had embraced Yeshua and they were a movement. They were meeting in the synagogues, they were meeting at the Temple Courts, they were meeting in homes, they were the first Jewish Church.
Sid: Okay, let me ask you about your book, why did you write it really? Why do want this in the hands of people immediately?
Bob: Because they need to understand the Jewish Roots of their faith and they need to understand that the first believers were Jewish, that Yeshua Himself was a Jew. They need to understand that the Christian faith did not come out of Rome first. It was polluted by a lot of paganistic practices.
Sid: Mishpochah we’re out of time.
