Sid: I just recently got such encouragement it’s almost like at times I feel like I’m a voice calling in the wilderness and wondering is anyone getting it, is anyone out there beginning to understand God’s plan for the next move of God’s Spirit. See I was involved in a move of God’s Spirit; I came to be a believer at the end of the Charismatic movement as a Jewish person that Jesus walked into my bedroom and He became real to me. I was one of the pioneers in what became known as the Messianic Judaism; I know what it is to fight for a vision, but I see something bigger, something greater, something that’s about ready to happen that doesn’t make any of the former moves wrong, they are right, they are of God. There is something bigger that is coming, and some of the missing blanks to my questions have been filled in by my guest. I have him on the telephone; I’m speaking to him at his office in his church, Glory of Zion Outreach Center in Denton, Texas, Pastor Robert Heidler. Robert it was an interesting God coincidence that I got to meet you, at least by telephone; that is a mutual friends the Schneier’s who have a Messianic Congregation in Odessa, Ukraine; told me about an unpublished manuscript and the more they told me about it the more I said “Can I borrow it?” They lent it to me; I devoured it and got you on the phone, and I said “We have got to get this to our Mishpochah.” You have a picture from your studies, and I might add, you have a Master’s in theology, from Dallas Theological Seminary. You have a scenario from your study of the scriptures and history of what the first church was like. Many times I wondered this, what happens when a thousand, two-thousand, three-thousand Jewish people that don’t even have a copy of the New Testament are struck with the reality of Jesus, and believe there can’t be much organization; there’s certainly aren’t church buildings; what was the first church like? If we can grasp what that first church was like maybe we can get some of the power that’s been missing for too long.
Robert: Amen, amen. You know when I began to study the early church and really began to read what was written about it at the time. It was a revelation because it was unlike anything we have ever seen or even imagined. So many people today think of the early church, you know, the day after Pentecost Peter went out and rented a building and put a steeple on top, and put up a sign that said “First Baptist Church of Jerusalem.” We don’t stop to think what the early church really was because most of the things we think of as church, would not be invented for another thousand years; yet they had a life and a power that the church today has not even imagined.
Sid: Paint me a picture from the best of your research of what the first church looked like.
Robert: Well I think there was several things that would characterize the early church. One was, it was a church overflowing with joy; I mean they met in homes, they met in the temple courts, they met in out in the fields. Basically, the meeting place was not significant; they just met wherever they could. There gatherings were filled with joyful singing and dancing. One of my favorite quotes about the worship of the early church comes from Clement of Alexandria about 250 A.D.; he described their worship this worship this way “The daughters of God lead in a ring dance; the righteous are the dancers; the music is a song of the King of the universe; the maidens strike the lyre; the angles praise; the prophets speak; the sound of music issues forth; they run in pursuit of the jubilant band; those that are called make haste eagerly desiring to receive the Father.” So it’s just a picture of just an overflowing joyful celebration in the presence of God.
Sid: When he spoke about dancing in a circle, the first thing that came to mind is the Israeli dances, the Hora etcetera, they are all circle dances.
Robert: Yeah that was very typical of the early church. They would begin by doing those circle dances. We picture the angles around the throne of God in heaven; in Revelation 4:5 we picture them all standing there, in the early church they picture them all doing ring dances around the throne. So when they got together they would join in with the ring dances of the angels.
Sid: That’s interesting because some of my friends that have the gift of discernment that can see angels, they say when they go into services and they see people dancing they see angles all around the people dancing. Dancing the exact same way that they are, which almost like this quote you had from Clement.
Robert: Yeah. It’s such a different picture of church than most Christians today have because most Christians think of the early church as sad and somber; it really was not. You read the quotes and joyful celebration dancing… St. Basil in the fourth century said “Could there be anything more blessed than to imitate on the earth the ring dance of the angels.”
Sid: Okay, let’s suppose you’re going to visit, and according to your manuscript these were house churches. So you go to a house church, tell me what you see with your eyes as you’re entering.
Robert: Well I think as you come in, if we were to walk into a house church back in the late first century, it would look like there’s a party going on. People are just rejoicing, they’re dancing, they’re celebrating, and after a time of praise and worship the presence of God comes into the meeting. At some point they’ll bring out food and they’ll eat together, it’s a big family celebration.
Sid: You know I was telling you that I’ve just started One New Man Shabbat celebrations. What you’ve just said has triggered me now because there was a presence of God from the very beginning of the last one we had of our Shabbat celebration. There was point where all of a sudden there was a release of God’s glory and healings broke out like popcorn.
Robert: That’s what you see in the early church. It talks about in the early writings, and even in the New Testament that the presence of God would come down… when they came together they formed a temple and the glory of God came tangibly down in the midst and the result was an outflow of the miraculous. Irenaeus wrote about 195, and he said that “When they got together it’s very common for prophetic words, tongues, miracles of healing,” and then he added “The church frequently saw people raised from the dead by the prayers of the saints.” That’s sort of an exciting church to be in.
Sid: Yeah tell me where they meet and I’ll be there! By the way, when did they meet, the first church?
Robert: Well it’s interesting, first of all they met a lot of times in places, but they had their weekly reunion usually in the first century at least, on Saturday night. It was really sort of a picture, I think, of the Friday night Shabbat where they were used to meeting together in homes for Shabbat, and they would sing and eat together, and praise and worship God, as part of their Jewish background. So on Saturday night, which really began the first day of the week, they would meet back together in small groups and do the same thing in celebrations of Yeshua.
Sid: So to understand the Shabbat dinner in a home on a Friday night, in a Jewish home, would give us insight as to what they naturally did in the first church.
Robert: Exactly. It’s interesting down to details, like if you read early writings there was a special prayer, or a special song that was sung at the beginning when the church came together; it was a special song or prayer as they lit the lamps. Just as Shabbat was welcomed, when the mother of the house would light the Shabbat candles, so they would welcome the presence of the Lord with a special prayer to light the lamps at the start of the church service. So in detail, I think they learned how to worship together as a church through the Friday night Shabbat times.
Sid: This is Sid and I’m speaking to Pastor Robert Heidler about his unpublished manuscript.
Tags: its supernatural, Sid Roth