For a few intense but wonderfully glorious years, the church experienced and operated in prophetic dimensions where God Himself and the words of the Old Testament prophets guided our steps! God said: “Take the Jews out of the Soviet Union” and suddenly the church’s already enormous missionary task in the old Soviet Union took on additional dimensions – now with the historic ancient promises God had made to His own people to return to their ‘Eretz’ Israel (Heb. “the land of Israel”) – as a mission!
“Operation Jabotinsky” (after Zeev Vladimir Jabotinsky, 1880-1940) was founded in 1993 and became one of many Christian pro-Israeli organizations formed around the world at the time, committed to helping Jews from the former Soviet Union return to Israel.
We witnessed a moment in world history – the collapse of the mighty communist Soviet Union – when millions of Jews in the region were suddenly given the opportunity to leave the country and make ‘Aliyah’ (Hebrew for ‘going home to Israel’).
From the perspective of the biblical Kingdom of God, this era was nothing other than a heavenly greeting from God himself with enormous prophetic dimensions. So great that only in retrospect will we be able to sense what we were actually witnessing. It was as if God wanted to show that he alone is on the throne and only he can do what to us humans looks impossible. We experienced what the prophet Daniel says: “Praised be the name of God from everlasting to everlasting, for wisdom and might belong to him. He changes times and seasons, he removes kings and sets up kings, he gives wisdom to the wise and understanding to the prudent. He reveals what is deep and hidden; he knows what is in the darkness, and the light dwells with him.” (Dan. 2:20-22)
So many of the parish’s own members – plus many people from other parishes, communities and countries – were involved and contributed in various ways to the project! A large ship, lots of equipment, buses and large financial gifts were donated to the project. While the ship was being prepared for the mission of receiving the Jewish passengers in the Russian port city of Sochi and sailing them home to Israel, team after team now began to travel into the old Soviet Union and act as “fishermen” based on the words of Jer. 16:16 “Behold, I will send for many fishermen, says the Lord, and they will catch them”.
Bases were established in city after city across virtually the entire former Soviet Union. Many hundreds are all the local Christians in these cities – along with many migrant Western workers – who carried out this whole great amazing mission the Lord gave us! More than 18,000 Jews we helped to return to Israel and our prayer and faith was – and still is – that they would not only come home to their rightful homeland but also come home to the God of their fathers: the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob! Just as we believe that all these Jews had their lives transformed, I also believe that we who were involved in the project had our lives transformed! I know that my life was totally transformed, and I thank God and the Word of Life Church for every day I had the opportunity to be part of this exciting and prophetic mission.
Lennart Fjell
