as members gave up all personal belongings. They emphasized daily bathing in running water which was most unusual in those days. Dur ing the summer in Judea it was dif ficult to find an available source. They tried to live up to the law of Moses. At Jerusalem's destruction in 70 A.D. they hid copies of the Old Testament in caves before they fled. Their expectation was to return after the Roman persecu tions were over. Evidently, they were wiped out for they never did return. Their main village has just recently been excavated. It had been completely demolished and covered by the debris of centuries. It was these Dead Sea scrolls which were unearthed in 1947. They have proven to be of such tremendous value and significance. Because of the dry, barrenness of that partic ular area these manuscripts were very well preserved. We do not believe that our Saviour had any thing to do with the Essenes. There are no specific indications that John the Baptist had any relation ship with them either although there have been conjectures of various types on the subject.
and had a model for his statues. Over the years, he decided that maybe he would change the ap pearance slightly to see if anyone noticed. It did not seem to matter so he continued to experiment. It suddenly hit him that if his hands could make the idol and change it without any dire effects he was really as wise and as worthy as the idols he fashioned. This brought him to the proper assumption, "If I have hands to make things, may be somebody else has hands and has made me." It so happened that during this time there was another individual being prepared here in the United States to go out to that particular area to present the Gos pel. When the missionary came to the village his opening comments were, "I have come to tell you about the God who has made your hands." That made such a tremen dous impact that the idol maker was transformed. There was a re vival which swept that particular tribe. This points out again the fact that man, either in his concepts of God or that which he makes his gods to be, cannot even begin to compare to the person, the Son of God Himself, the Lord Jesus Christ. Q. " Will you please explain the Essenes priesthood? What rela tionship, if any, did Christ have with them? Was John the Baptist an Essene priest? Is this some form of cult?" A. It was just south of Jericho, along the Dead Sea, where the Essenes had their headquarters dur ing the time of Christ. At that point in history there were about 4,000 of them who lived an ascetic form of life. In isolation they hoped to escape ceremonial defilement. There was a communal type of life
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