How I became involved with Israel

Rev Dr Nigel Woodley

How I became involved with Israel

Rev Dr Nigel Woodley explains the deep significance of Israel to him and how it is fundamental to his religious beliefs

My first visit to Israel was in 1985 when I crossed from Jordan into Israel at the Allenby Bridge. Most impressionable on that visit were the bomb shelters in the northern kibbutzim near the Lebanese border. The Garden Tomb, just outside the ancient walled city of Jerusalem, was also poignant--it contains what is believed to be the tomb where Jesus of Nazareth was buried prior to his resurrection. Near the tomb is a cliff-face resembling the shape of a skull, just as the New Testament mentions.

I also went to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre which is an alternative site for the resurrection, but I was impressed with the Garden Tomb more than by this site. I have since visited Israel four times. Most of these visits were for international conferences run by Ebenezer Operation Exodus--a worldwide Christian organisation which helps in the Aliyah process for Jews returning to their homeland. We help practically and prayerfully to show our support and belief in the modern restoration of Israel. I am currently the New Zealand chairman.

Nigel (4th from left) with the NZ Ebenezer Team at Ramat Rachel

Ebenezer Conference at Ramat Rachel, Jerusalem

Often Ebenezer partners with the Jewish Agency in that the Agency will fly  the olim from the international airport in the host country to Israel, but Ebenezer does much of the work helping them get to that international connection. It may involve practical help in filling out necessary forms for immigration etc., or helping in the packing and transferring of gear from one point to another, or in financially helping them being transported from wherever they are to that international rendezvous point with the Jewish Agency. Since its inception in 1991 Ebenezer has assisted some 190,000 Jewish people in their repatriation home.

From the time I began living the life of a committed Christian at the age of eighteen the Holy Bible became a focal point in my life. I believe it is divinely inspired and it offers humanity the keys for life, salvation, and prosperity. One thing that became clear to me in my early years of reading the Bible was that according to it the people of Israel and the Land of Israel are particularly important to God. I never had to be convinced of this as I read it for myself in the book I also regard as the Word of God. In the early years of my ‘religious’ experience I had no problem reconciling ancient Biblical Israel with the modern state by the same name. I was naïve back then but right in my outlook.

I discovered as time went on, as I became more knowledgeable on the subject, that indeed the Jewish people of today are the descendants of their Biblical ancestors, and the people of the Book, the Jewish people, are simply returning to their ancestral, historical, and Biblical land. As I continued reading and studying the Bible, I could not escape the fact that the things happening in our time were predicted by the prophets of Israel millennia ago. An example of this are the prophecies declaring an end-time Aliyah of the Jewish people. Both Isaiah and Jeremiah, among others, spoke of this:

Isaiah 11:12 NIV

He will raise a banner for the nations and gather the exiles of Israel; he will assemble the scattered people of Judah from the four quarters of the earth.

Jeremiah 30:3,24 NKJV

For behold, the days are coming,’ says the LORD, ‘that I will bring back from captivity My people Israel and Judah,’ says the LORD. ‘And I will cause them to return to the land that I gave to their fathers, and they shall possess it.’” … In the latter days you will consider it.

It is this understanding and belief that set the foundation for my journey with Israel. As a Christian minister, I had always ideologically supported Israel and the right of the Jewish people to live on their land. It was simply in my spiritual DNA. No-one needed to convince me of this, and I cannot be persuaded to think differently. One experience that had a big impact on me in my early years of ministry occurred when I was watching a documentary on the Holocaust. A Nazi propaganda film was portraying the Jewish people as vermin and the implication was that they needed to be exterminated. The scene in the film then showed an actual pogrom in eastern Europe during that terrible period where the Jews were being hunted down like rats and brutally treated. This upset me so much that I wept and wept, on my knees, because of what I had witnessed on the documentary. 

I had no control over what had just happened to me. I call it a ‘God moment’ where my eyes were opened to understand the true horror and nature of the Holocaust and what it meant for the Jewish people. Within a year I was at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem learning more about that dark period. As a result, I spent many hours studying the historical account of the greatest tragedy the Jewish people have experienced in their long and often painful journey through time. The result of my study was a book I wrote to educate the Church about the Holocaust and the subsequent birth of the Jewish State. 

A visit to Poland in 2011 to visit the sites of the former Nazi Death Camps was also hugely significant to me. My wife and I visited Auschwitz, Birkenau, Belzec, Majdanek, Treblinka and Chelmno. Sobibor was a little beyond our time-reach. We managed also to visit Lodz, Warsaw and Cracow which are also important places in the history of the Holocaust. One can only appreciate the Modern State of Israel if one also understands what happened in Poland during the darkest period of human history. I think all Christians should be like me - supportive of the Jewish people and the State of Israel.

Window from the train entrance, Birkenau 2011

I am a Christian minister who believes in the God of the Jews. I believe I know the Jewish Messiah, and I also believe in the people of Israel and the unique call Almighty God has placed upon them to be different among the nations and to be a witness to them. My journey with Israel led me into public advocacy for the Jewish people, to live on their historical and Biblical Land.

Nigel with friend Rami Sherman, an Entebbe Raid leader, Havelock North

Pastor Nigel Woodley Ph.D.

As well as being Chief Advocate for The Protection of Zion Trust, Nigel Woodley is the Senior Pastor of the Flaxmere Christian Fellowship Church in Hastings. He also sits on several Faith boards within New Zealand and overseas.