The Return of IsraelSample

Day 5 – A New Exodus

In 1989 approximately three million Jews lived in the Soviet Union. Jews had been persecuted and hated for centuries in the Russian Empire. Because of this many, Jews had already left Russia in the 19th century. During that time, some of them already settled in Palestine, where the State of Israel would later be founded. But the Soviet Union almost never allowed Jewish citizens to emigrate to Israel. The ones who applied to emigrate were refused, earning them the name ‘refuseniks.' If a Jewish person was able to escape the Soviet Union, it was global news.

In Isaiah 43 we read that God says to the north, “Give!” Jeremiah describes that the days will come when people will speak of an exodus out of a land to the north. Besides all of the countries from which the Lord will bring back His people, the “land of the north” is named specifically here.

After the Soviet Union fell in the early 1990’s, more than one million Russian Jews moved to Israel within just a few years. Since Israel's exodus from Egypt (3,400 years earlier), there had never been such a massive immigration of Jews to the Promised Land as this! And Jews are still returning from the former Soviet Union to the Promised Land. This prophecy is being fulfilled as we speak!

Something to think about: In the Bible we see God’s miraculous workings in history. Political developments in that time turned out to be the work of God’s hand to fulfill His plan for His people. An example is King Cyrus’ decision to allow the Jews to return to Jerusalem. Do you believe that God still works in this way?