ISBN: 9659087403
Raymond Robert Fisher, the author of this work, passed on in 2011 according to his publisher’s site. Of course, as a believer in Messiah, it might be said instead that he “merely sleeps” and is awaiting a very specific alarm clock.
This work of Mr. Fischer takes on a monumental task–it seeks to create an understanding of how the early Gentile believers from the Decapolis–who were the witnesses of the demon possessed man that had the demons cast into the swine–created a community of believers before the apostle Paul sought to do the same by a factor of 20 years.
The narrative vehicle utilized for this story concerns two love stories–one between two people in the military in a more modern era, and another in the past between an Essene and an early Roman/Greek style of convert who witnesses the miracles that YHSVH, the Messiah, performs. The military story line in the modern era deals with a Jewish man who through generations assimilates into a Protestant system of belief but cannot, though he tries, leave behind the essential Jewishness that comprises his heritage. Eventually, he is called to Israel to a certain archaeological site with his wife despite the concerns and sometimes displeasure of their children. This happens at a financially inopportune time, as the Jewish man has moved up into a high ranking position as a military (Christian) Chaplain and stands to gain a substantial retirement with a rank increase if he will only delay what he feels to be the calling of the Lord by 6 years. In the meantime, his Jewish grandmother causes him various angst by needling him on who or what the Messiah is, and by inference who or what his identity is.
The Essene story line concerns early believers who, through the Essenes, knew of the prophecy of the coming of the Messiah and in specific one Essene who finds himself falling in love with a Gentile believer. Since no one yet fully understands the call of Messiah, the struggle becomes how to make “disciples of the nations” without also having those disciples be culturally Jewish. This is especially pronounced when the Essene believer begins to examine the nascent foundations of the emerging Church near the Decapolis and Tel Hadar. For one thing, the building used for gathering the believers was the former building used for the pagan worship of Helios. On the other hand, nobody has another building to use yet, and so the conversations begin about whether or not such an edifice ought to be used at all. The love interest of the Essene who becomes his wife is well-versed with this pagan structure, and so she lacks the same distrust of the edifice that the Essene believer instinctively feels.
Eventually, both story lines begin to converge and both spend a longer interval of time building up the love stories between the two parallel narratives in order to make the point that YHVH loves the Gentile believers in the same way the non-Gentiles love their significant others and through marriage the distinctions that make an identity “Gentile” or “Jewish” begin to disintegrate under the integration of what the Messiah has done for the remission of sins and repair of the relationship to the Creator of the Universe.
The work has some issues with pacing at the beginning, and it is easy to miss how many years have passed and what significant life changes have happened to the characters since the transitions are deliberately jarring and seek to move the story along. By the middle of the work, most of these issues are beginning to happen less frequently, and by the end, they disappear entirely. There are a few typos and stylistic issues that occur before this point as well, but then, that happens in most works in one way or another.
The end is easily the book’s strongest area of writing. This is probably because the end is the platform that allows Fisher to really advance his thesis as to what and why the early believers were doing what they were doing. It also casts light on the calling that the military Chaplain receives and why. Everything begins to come to a single point of resolution, and the reader is left with some pondering as well as a new finding made in reality in Israel in archaeology that comes to the attention of the author. The line between fiction, fact, and between author and characters is blurry, and one comes to understand that this book is really largely about the journey of one Raymond Robert Fisher more than a “fictional” foray.
What the work accomplishes is to put the reader in the early Church period and to consider what might have been the case before the “institution of Paul” took hold. If this Church had gained the momentum that the Pauline Church did, what differences would have been evident in the fruits? Perhaps for a called apart segment, this way needs more attention, and more people willing to read Fisher’s work and think about the implications.