GOD HAS CALLED THE GENTILES TO HELP

Day 14 of God Keeps Covenant: GOD HAS CALLED THE GENTILES TO HELP by Wendy Beckett

As the doors of the former Soviet Union opened in the early 1990s, those who had made the prayer journeys, and other Christian leaders recognized the above Scripture as a mandate to Gentile believers to be involved in assisting the Soviet Jews “home.” A number of Christian groups began making help available across the former Soviet Union.

Gustav Scheller, the founder of Operation Exodus, (Ebenezer Emergency Fund) believed God was calling him to use a ship as well as airplanes to help Jewish people “home.” After much prayer and intensive negotiation with the Ukrainian and Israeli governments, a shipping route opened. In 1991, a ship began carrying Jewish families and Holocaust survivors from the port of Odessa in the Ukraine, across the Black Sea, through the Bosporus, under the bridges of Istanbul, and past the Greek islands into the Mediterranean Sea to Haifa, Israel.

Isaiah 60:9 speaks of “the ships of Tarshish (or trading ships), bringing your sons from afar, with their silver and their gold, to the honor of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel.”

I remember the time in 1996 when my husband, our daughter and I had the privilege of accompanying these dear Jewish people as they made Aliyah on the ship. When they first arrived at the base camp in Odessa, some of them mistrusted those of us who were trying to help. (I don’t blame them – after all their parents and ancestors had endured at the hands of Christians.)  But after a few days at sea together, we couldn’t stroll the decks without being hugged and thanked for helping them to immigrate to Israel. Many of these Jews had the sense they were being drawn home. Some of them stated that it was definitely the God of Israel who was compelling them to return.

There were 172 sailings between 1991 and 2004. The Lord protected those journeys from stormy seas, from intransigent bureaucrats, from unlit fishing boats directly in the ship’s path and from many other dangers.

When helping Jewish people return by air, Operation Exodus and other groups work together with the Jewish Agency. This Israeli based organization, established to assist immigration, charters airline flights from the major cities across western Russia, Siberia and the Russian Far East. Western volunteers work closely with Russian Christians to help Jewish people find documents that prove they are Jewish. Often any trace of their Jewishness has been destroyed during the years of persecution. But the Lord is working miracles to help them find their documents in far-away archives, receive visas from Israeli consuls, and be transported by the volunteers long distances to the nearest airport.

Whether returning by ship or air, at the moment of landing in Israel, the new arrivals experience such a sense of joy and completeness. They know they are finally “home.”