"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