Now, when we think about Waves of Aliyah, of Jewish people coming back home to the land of Israel fulfilling the more than 700 scriptures that prophesied that they would return after being scattered all over the world, that once they were back here, then God would begin to move upon the dry bones that had been collected and brought back into the land.

And so if we look at history there in modern history there’ve been what I would see as three major waves of Aliyah, of Jewish people returning back to Israel. And as they began to search a little more about this I began to realize that each major wave of Aliyah was birthed, it didn’t just happen, it was birthed in prayer, it was preceded by a movement of prayer, that was powerful, that was deep, that was travailing prayer, that could birth the purposes of God for that wave of Aliyah to come forth and I believe we’re getting ready now for the fourth major wave of Aliyah.

The First Wave: 1881 – 1914

The first major wave of Aliyah happened from the years, 1881 until 1914. Many people are not aware that the man who wrote the very well-known hymn in the English speaking world, It Is Well With My Soul, Horatio Spafford, moved here, at a great cost, to Jerusalem in 1881. He began something that became known later as the American colony, but actually it was about half American and about half Swedish, but they were major intercessors who had heard the word of the Lord.

In fact, they were religious journals of the time that mocked them because they believed there would be a literal return of the Jewish people back to this land, that there would be a literal rebirth of a modern nation state of Israel in this homeland of the Jewish people and that eventually Jesus, Yeshua would come back to reign here, from this land.

And so he was mocked for his belief and these very literal interpretations of the Bible. But Horatio Spafford and the group of people who gathered around him, began to intercede, they were the first modern house of prayer in Jerusalem.

They would pray for hours a day in Jerusalem, for Jerusalem, for the Jewish people to return and to make Aliyah, and it’s interesting as they began to do this God began to say, well, be prepared. If you’re going to pray by faith, be prepared for them.

So they began soup kitchens, a hospital, they began an orphanage and they prepared for this wave of Aliyah and amazingly enough, quite a wave came of Yemenite Jews, Jews who lived in South of Saudi Arabia in Yemen. They were very very poor, when they arrived here having come across the desert, very poor, very ragged clothes, they were rejected by most of the few Jewish people who were already living here, who were more from a European background and wealthier and didn’t really relate to these Yemenite Jews who came.

But this group of intercessors, this first house of prayer that was praying hours a day, had prepared for them and they prepared food for them, they took care of them, they sheltered them, in fact, it was to such a point that the Yemenite Jews added a page in their official forever and ever prayer book to honor Horatio Spafford and to pray for the blessing of God upon his family who helped them to make Aliyah.

The Second Wave: 1948 – 1951

So this first great wave of thousands of Jews returned between 1881 and 1914, but it was birthed and it was sustained to this movement of prayer called later the American Colony. Now it waited many years again and there was a second major wave, of course after World War II when from 1948 to 1951, when huge numbers, tens of thousands of Jewish refugees had to leave Muslim countries, they were forced out and they had to return here, of course there were the Jews who had survived the Holocaust in Europe, but once again, this whole move of Aliyah had been birthed and prepared in prayer.

In the Bible College of Wales, there was a man named Reese Howells and he had about a hundred students and they would pray sometimes hours a day for the Jewish people to be able to come back to their homeland, for this nation to be reborn as prophesied in scripture and they believed what the word of God said.

They started at orphanages as well for Jewish children who had to flee from the Nazis, they took care of them and so there was this combination again, of prayer and practical love and comfort to the Jewish people and this great wave of Aliyah took place from 1948 through 1951.

The Third Wave: 1989 – 1990

Then there was a long time with a small amount of Aliyah but starting again in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin wall and especially by 1990, with the collapse of the what’s called The Iron Curtain of the communist hold upon the Jewish people of the former Soviet Union and its satellites, there was another great move of Aliyah, a huge move that happened but once again, it was prepared in prayer.

Some who are listening to this may be old enough to remember some pioneers in prayer, people like Shelley Schaberg, Gustav Scheller, Roland Smith and these people were used of the Lord to prepare the way, going into the Soviet Union on prayer journeys, going into East Germany, West Germany on prayer journeys and they prayed and they encouraged prayer movements in Germany.

In West Germany there was such a great movement of God confessing the sins of the Nazis and asking God to heal their land and in the end they ended up washing the feet of Jewish believers and confessing the sin of their forefathers and to everyone’s great surprise, the Berlin wall that looked so impossible suddenly came down.

There was a sudden reversal, in fact, I have a piece of the Berlin Wall that I was given in 1990 when we went just shortly after the wall had been torn down and it thrilled my heart because I had been telling along with others in Europe, God is going to bring down the Berlin wall, God is going to bring down The Iron Curtain and God is going to allow his Jewish people to come home again to Israel.

People would scoff and laugh at the prayer leaders who were saying this. I was just a younger one being mentored by some of these older prayer leaders like Roland Smith but God did what he said he would do and that Berlin wall came down. The Iron Curtain came down and there was this huge Aliyah again of the Jews who came from the former Soviet Union and from those nations.

Vision of a Fourth Wave

Now, there’ve been many years of some Aliyah, but men once again, prayer leaders throughout the earth are sensing God is saying soon, there’s going to be another great wave a fourth great wave of Aliyah. And we believe this fourth great wave will be primarily from the West, primarily from Europe, primarily from Great Britain, from the United States, from Latin and South America.

In fact, the Lord showed me a vision one time of Jewish people returning here to Jerusalem on a bridge that God had built. It looked almost like a rainbow that he had built this bridge and they had kippot on their head the little, it’s called cap, the prayer cap but there were tongues of fire at it and so there’s something very special for this time that God is preparing and we believe there’s going to be a massive, massive Aliyah of Jewish people coming from the West.

We believe it’s important to pray that they will come before political situations turn in such a way that they lose their money, that they lose their finances and have to be helped to escape in a time of great duress but it’s better to pray now that they would quickly hear the word of the Lord and return here to the land that God has provided for them.

The Call to Travailing Prayer

Now, if we talk about these three waves that have happened they all came through travailing birthing prayer and we believe it’s time again for travailing birthing prayer. I’m talking to you as now filming this before Passover here in Jerusalem.

The other day I was near the garden of Gethsemane for a filming about Passover and it struck me once again, how Jesus, how Yeshua cried out, sweat drops, sweat blood, drops of blood, He travailed so strongly and this was His habit, in Hebrews it talks about in His lifetime, He often would pray out with tears.

He would pray out with cries and groanings and I know that this type of travailing prayer is part of what has birthed the great move of God and the great harvest in places like Korea and mainland China, Indonesia, certain countries of Africa like Uganda that have seen a great move of God.

But I believe this is a time where God wants Christians all over the world to say Holy spirit, teach me how to weep, how to travail, teach me how to groan and travail not to make something up in our own power, but to allow the Holy Spirit to come upon us to birth something.

The word “travail” it means like in labor, it’s like a woman giving birth and we believe just as these three previous waves of Aliyah were preceded by travailing birthing prayer, it’s time again for the body of Christ to receive this priority of travailing prayer.

Now Yeshua, Jesus himself it says in Isaiah 53, it says He will see the fruit of the travail of His soul and the word travail there can mean sweat like He did in the garden of Gethsemane. So it’s even, Jesus could not bring forth, could not see the great harvest of souls worldwide, without travailing prayer and He set that example for us, He leaves it for us now.

A Prophetic Act

So today I would like to end this time with a prayer at a prophetic action. I’ve made a little altar of stones here that even as Elijah repaired the altar of the Lord and brought 12 stones to restore and repair a movement of intercession in Israel in his time, we’re believing the Lord to bring intercessors together and that we will rebuild an altar of prayer, of travailing prayer for Aliyah, that this last great wave of Aliyah from the nations will be born, will be birthed through people worldwide.

This time, a global movement of people building altars of prayer for Aliyah to the Lord to fulfill His word.

We bless you from Jerusalem, to be part of this movement, to hear the voice of the Lord and to receive a fresh infilling of the Holy Spirit to fulfill this assignment, in the name of Yeshua. Amen.