SID: Hi, Sid Roth here with Pastor Robert Heidler, graduated Dallas Theological Seminary, who has studied what the first church was like. Now why would we want to know what the first church was like? Well, they had intimacy with God; they heard God’s voice, they didn’t value anything compared to intimacy with God, they walked in signs and wonders and miracles, the least believer walked in these signs, it was not a superstar system, they all had the superstar inside of him, Jesus. And we found out that this fellow Constantine had a merger of paganism and Christianity, and the vestiges are still with us today, so question is postured, Robert Heidler, paint a picture to me about what it was like before the mixture came in.
ROBERT: Okay, well Sid lets imagine we are walking down a street in the city of Rome, it around the year 90 AD, and you are going to visit an early church, of course they met in homes, there weren’t church buildings, doesn’t mean the church building is wrong, but that is not want they chose to do, but they, we walk up to a house and we walk in the door, and what we see is not like anything we have ever imagined church to be. There is no special clothing worn, there is no hymnbooks, there is no pews, there is no pulpit, the building doesn’t have a steeple on top
SID: Crosses?
ROBERT: No crosses. As we walk in through the door what we see, we look around
SID: Is there a platform built for them at least?
ROBERT: Not a platform built, as a matter of fact, the church takes place in the large open courtyard, which most homes had at that time, and there was an open courtyard in the middle of the home, we walk in to it and there looks like there is a party going on. They are playing flutes and lyres and tambourines, they are dancing Jewish style ring dances. And we look around and we think, did I come to the right place this doesn’t look like church.
SID: They are really having fun?
ROBERT: They are having fun, it is exciting. And we walk in and we really listen to the words and we realize they are singing about Yeshua, this is church. And you read many, many historical descriptions of the early church, and it was typical for them to begin with just a prolonged period of joyful singing, dancing, that was just a typical way for them to start church.
SID: Did they have a worship team so to speak like we have today.
ROBERT: I imagine they knew who could play…
SID: But I don’t think they were all set on a band stand.
ROBERT: They probably didn’t have, no, no. It was very free, it was very open, it was very joyful, and if that didn’t surprise us enough, the next thing they would do would surprise us even more because when they slow down and stop the next thing they would do, was start bringing out food. And people would sit down together and have a meal together it is called the agape, and the New Testament describes that. And they would eat together, they would fellowship together, they would share about the Lord in the process. And because it was a family, they knew each other, they loved each other.
SID: You know I like to use the word, mishpochah, which is Hebrew word that means family, and in studying your manuscript, that is what we lost, by substituting the Greco Roman roots for Jewish roots. The whole family thing, I mean he was so rich.
ROBERT: Yes.
SID: I mean I feel robbed.
ROBERT: You should, you have been; things that God wanted us to have.
SID: So they had this, and let me tell you, Chicken matzo ball soup, potato colugo, you don’t know, gefilte fish with horse radish, you don’t know what heaven is until you have had Jewish food. Now you don’t have to like the Jewish food, however what else happened? Well as they continued on, they would worship, they would sing and at some point and the Bible describes this, It says when the power of the Lord is present, there will come a time in the midst of this, when the Spirit of God will just drop down, in a very tangible way, and as that happened, miracles began to take place. Iranaist describes even at the end of the second century it was very common for healings and tongues, prophetic words, miracles, he said it was even common to see people raised from the dead by the prayers from the church. The Spirit of God would I sort of picture it this way, You know you are sitting there and you are looking and there is a family in the back and they are looking very uncomfortable and they have never been here before, they have come because their daughter has contracted a disease, that has left her blind and they have no one else to turn to, but they have a friend that is a Christian and invites them to church and they bring their daughter in, and when the Spirit of God falls people gather around and they begin to pray for her, And suddenly she begins to weep and cry and she says “I can see, I can see.”
SID: Could you picture her running throughout the neighborhood saying “I can see, I can see.” “I just went to Shlomo’s house over there it was so good the gefilte fish and Chicken matzo ball soup. And miracles happen, never happened in my synagogue. Okay,
ROBERT: And you assume that the whole family is saved. And we think that sounds like a dramatic thing, but you read that is what saved most people, in the Roman Empire. Even the historians say it is the power of the church to heal and deliver that cause people to want to brave the threat of persecution to come to meet Yeshua.
SID: Now in Israel, were many people becoming believers?
ROBERT: Oh yes, when you look at the church in Jerusalem, it started with 120, moved up to 3,000, and by Acts chapter 4, it was probably up over 10,000, they said there were 5,000 males at the church at that time. And many estimated that by the martyr of Stephen it would be up to 20,000 when Paul comes into Jerusalem, in Acts chapter 19 or 20, James comes up to him and says look how many tens of thousands of Jews have come to believe in Yeshua, and are zealous for Torah.
SID: Can this be recaptured again? I believe yes, I was so fascinated with this unpublished manuscript by Robert Heidler, we are making it available, and I believe that if we stop changing and go back to the way God created it to be, we will get the same results, makes sense? Makes sense to me. Don’t go away you are going to find out some mixture that came into the church, which is robbing us of miracles be right back.
