Eilat: Messianic Jewish Fellowship in Eilat, Israel

“On a recent trip to Israel I rented a car with one of my daughters and drove south through the desert to the port city of Eilat. … On our first evening I contacted a messianic Jewish fellowship that I knew had a large, successful ministry in Eilat. Following dinner (at our first kosher Burger King restaurant), we drove to a nearby neighborhood and found a large home whose living room had been designed as a worship center.
“Following the usual greetings and introductions we sat transfixed in a room packed with Russians, Chinese, Rumanians and Americans (all with a Jewish heritage – except the Chinese). Following a time of worship, a gifted teacher gave an evangelistic message based on the thieves on the cross: one who asked for mercy, another who refused. As the teacher spoke in English, translators around the room converted his words into Russian, Chinese, and Rumanian. When the translators came to an impasse, they lapsed into Hebrew with the teacher in order to straighten out his meaning. The international flavor of the scene was fascinating.
“I wondered where these people had come from. The Rumanians and Russians had come to Israel as Jewish refugees, leaving lands with historic records of persecution. They could tell stories of the collapse of the Russian economy and the rise of corruption, as well as the frightening threat of renewed racism and anti-Semitism. Few of them were piously orthodox, and Judaism was chiefly their ticket to get out of Russia, a chance to discover a new start. The Chinese were laborers building the many high-rise hotels found throughout the city. Over the years hundreds of them had become Christians (thanks to these messianic congregations) and had taken their faith back to China. And the word had spread. Laborers were coming and discovering Christ every week. The irony of God’s plan stunned me. Who would guess that the desert streets of Eilat would be at the forefront of Chinese evangelism?
“My attention was drawn to a particularly upset young woman of eighteen or nineteen, who had just left Russia to join her young fiancé in Eilat. She still wore the traditional clothes of the Russian countryside while he now sported jeans and a T-shirt. She had left everything behind: family, home, tradition, language, security, and job. Her world had been overturned. For the first time, in the confusion of her personal storm, she was hearing the gospel. Her fiancé had become a Christian weeks earlier, and now he wanted this young woman to discover the same. She wept through the entire Bible study.
“Nicodemus was challenged to think about the frontier between what is above and what is below, between the darkness and the light. This Russian woman was learning the same. Her new world in Israel came with something unexpected: It now was offering her a new birth.”

Gary M. Burge. John. The NIV Application Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2000. p. 129-130.

Story was submitted by Pastor Josh Broward