Our Guest Robert Heidler
Sid: I want to read a quote from my guest this week his name is Robert Heidler and he is Senior Pastor of Glory of Zion Outreach Center in Denton, Texas. He has a very prominent prophet who is in his church Chuck Pierce who many of you are familiar with. I’m quoting from his brand new book it’s called “The Messianic Church Arising.” And when I talk about one new man there are missing ingredients and my guest Robert Heidler is an apostolic teacher.He has captured the best presentation of one of major missing ingredients of the church today. Let me read you from the manuscript. “Paul would go into a city; start a church the presence of God would come and then within a few years tens of thousands of people would be saved, and then the entire region would be affected. By the end of the 1st century the church is spread everywhere because the pagans didn’t have anything that could stand against the power of God in his church. For 300 hundred years that’s what the church looked like. Then around 325 the church began to change.” Robert with all of your studies on the Messianic Church on the first church one of the things that I recall in reading your book it really struck me it says you were so excited about the writings of the first followers of the Messiah that just so pulsated with the glory of God. And then when you got to seminary and you read many of the latter church fathers there was something different about their writings would you explain?
Robert:Yes Sid when you begin from the apostles who wrote the New Testament, who were Jewish, over to the first gentile church fathers there’s a dramatic difference in what you see because they quote from the New Testament and the Old Testament but they don’t understand it. There’s very little insight that they show as a matter of fact one church historian commented that going from the apostles in the New Testament to the early gentile church fathers is like going from a beautiful well watered oasis out into a stark dry desert. And that’s the feeling that you had that there’s something the early church had that the early gentile writers really didn’t know how to grasp hold of.
Sid:If you were put that in one succinct thought what is that missing ingredient?
Robert:The missing ingredient is the life from the root. God spent 2000 years imparting into the Jewish people a knowledge of Himself and how to walk in His presence but the Gentile church beginning at really very early rejected much of that. And it’s like taking a tree and cutting it off from the roots and slowly the leaves begin to shrivel up and die because they don’t have the life that it needed from the root in order to thrive.
Sid:Well I am so excited about your book because it explains the missing ingredients of how the church could go from such glory, such power that literally the pagans couldn’t stand up against that power to what is today. We’ll get into that a little later on in the week, but I especially am intrigued by a word that you use and a lot of your writing it’s got the word is called “cycles.” And in particular the cycles of God which call God’s key to increase and blessing. Explain first of all what is a cycle.
Robert:Well a cycle I like to describe it like this a cycle is something that goes around and moves you to a destination. God gave us certain cycles of life and that was one of the things he used to keep us on track to keep us in tuned with his timing so that we would be able to fully enter into what he had for us.
Sid:Now tell me when we take the biblical festivals and I’m going to read a little bit about it right now from Leviticus chapter 23 verse 2. “Speak to the children of Israel and say to them the feasts,” and the Hebrew word means the appointment or the appointed times. Or as you put it the appointed cycle of the Lord,“which you shall proclaim to be holy convocations these are My feasts.”Then He proceeds to say to do them forever over and over again He says this. Now a Jewish person that doesn’t know the Messiah knows that you just follow what it says; you do what it says you do it forever. But a Gentile Christian that reads some of the teaching in the New Testament combines it with some of the traditions and they don’t know diddlyabout these I like to call it “God appointments.” What have you found the purpose of these God appointments are because you’re a Gentile Christian; what is the purpose for Gentile Christians?
Robert:Well Sid I see, I think it’s important to see that the feasts were not just rituals and they weren’t just holidays but they were appointments with God they were times when God wanted to meet with His people to accomplish some very specific things in our lives. And I know as a pastor I have seen that there’s some people that they get saved and they come to know the Lord and they’re very excited but you look at them 5 or 6 years down the road they have drifted away, they’re not excited about the…
Sid:Sounds like the church in the book of Revelation
Robert:Yeah!
Sid:It says “You’ve lost your first love.”
Robert:No one sets out to do that, no one says I think I’m going to drift away for the Lord it’s just something that happens. Living in the world that we live in is like being on escalator going down and if you don’t do anything you will just naturally drift away. And so God said “Every year I want my people to go through this cycle and I’m going to do something very specific things in their lives that each year is going to keep them drawing closer, keep them moving forward in their relationship with me. So each year as we go through this cycle it draws us closer and closer into God’s glory, closer into His presence. And now that doesn’t happen necessarily if we’re just going through as rituals or the holidays, but if we really see what God intended in each of these then we really see that there was a specific spiritual transaction that He wanted to do in our lives at each of these holidays.
Sid:Now you are not saying that if someone doesn’t observe the biblical festivals it has anything to do with their righteousness, anything to do with salvation so whatdoes it have to do with?
Robert:Well, it’s a very practical thing, take Passover for example.
Sid:Which is this evening.
Robert:Which is this evening;what Passover is all about is simply this knowing that you are redeemed by the blood of the lamb out of the hand of enemy.That’s what Passover was for the Jews in Moses day, that’s that Passover was in the early church with Jesus as our Passover Lamb. It’s knowing that we are redeemed by His blood out of the hand of enemy.You know take the area of deliverance ministry I remembered Derek Prince once saying that the number one, the strongest profession that a person can make with their mouth is “I am redeemed by the blood of the Lamb out of the hand of enemy.” And he said, “Ifhe can bring a person to say that and say it in faith what that does that breaks the power of the enemy in their life.” And so every year at Passover God wants to bring that around make it very firm in our memory, firm in our life that we are going into this year knowing that we are, the power of the enemy is broken the oppression of the enemy does not have to be on us during the year but we can walk in the power of redemption through the blood of the Lamb. And that does something each year as you go through that it allows you to go into the year in a new level of faith every year.
Sid:Now Robert in your book “The Messianic Church” this is so revolutionary to most Christians, what kind of reaction are you getting; you did the book in booklets previously and then added a lot of new things and put it together in a book. What reaction are you getting?
Robert:I am having people write and call and just say “This book changed my life.” Peoplesense that they’re not experiencing what the Bible promised; they look at their lives and their saying there’s something missing and of course there are a lot of things missing because we have lost a lot over the years. But this is one of those things, it is one of the things that God had intended us to have, he gave it to us. He gave us our Jewish roots, the feasts, the Sabbaths, the understandings of God that He imparted into Israel. He gave those as resources as gifts to strengthen us in our walk with the Lord.If we don’t have those things it doesn’t mean that we’re going to Hell but it means that there’s something missing and we’re not able to experience the full blessing God wanted us to have.
Sid:Robert one last thought.
Robert:Well, Sid I am just so excited at what God is doing in the church because He really is restoring the One New Man and the Jew and the Gentile when they are brought together in God’s covenant there is a strength and there is a wholeness there that we can never have separated. And it really truly is creating a sanctuary, a tabernacle where the presence of God can dwell and where the power of God can be released in the earth.
Sid:Listen you are saying such powerful things…
