-Caveat Lector- from: The Philadelphia Inquirer, January 6, 1999 http://www.phillynews.com ========================================== The year just begun, thoughts turn to the next. For many, Jerusalem is the place to be By Barbara Demick INQUIRER STAFF WRITER JERUSALEM -- Karen Allen was a Las Vegas showgirl, an alcoholic and an occasional prostitute before she discovered Jesus. Two months ago, she flew to Israel on a one-way ticket, changed her name to the Hebrew spelling of Keren, and almost immediately met and married another born-again Christian. Her husband, a 26-year-old Californian who goes only by the name of Raymond, spent 12 years in juvenile detention and prison for petty theft and drugs before he moved to Jerusalem -- or as his bride puts it, was brought here by God. "God delivered us and cleansed us of the garbage of the world to prepare for the second coming of Jesus Christ," said Allen, 49, a native of Bradenton, Fla. The newlyweds are among nearly a hundred Americans who are living on Jerusalem's Mount of Olives, waiting, watching and praying for the second coming of Jesus. So convinced are they that the time is near that many have destroyed their U.S. passports and sold their earthly possessions. With the approach of the year 2000, Israel is girding itself for a deluge of Christian pilgrims. Four million visitors are expected next year -- nearly double the normal tourist trade. Although most will stay for only a week or two, there is a contingent digging in for the long haul. The arrival of the Christian pilgrims is a mixed blessing for the Holy Land. On the one hand, those in the tourism industry are smacking their lips with anticipation. One enterprising hotelier, a Muslim, faxed hundreds of U.S. church groups last year with the enticing advertisement: "How would you like to be staying at the Mount of Olives Hotel on the day that Christ returns?" At the same time, many Israelis -- as well as Palestinian Muslims -- are disinclined to welcome proselytizing missionaries and are understandably nervous about anything that could touch off disruptions in the notoriously volatile Holy Land. In anticipation, Israel has created a task force, informally known as the "millennium unit." The task force is working with psychiatrists to deal with what is popularly known here as "Jerusalem syndrome" -- delusions often suffered by pilgrims who find themselves overwhelmed with emotion in the city. It is also buttressing security at sensitive sites and working to screen out potential troublemakers. The task force made its first arrests Sunday, taking into custody eight Americans, acolytes of the Denver cult leader Monte Kim Miller, who has prophesied that he and his followers would be killed in Jerusalem in December 1999. According to Israeli police, there were suspicions that the cult might create a disturbance on the Temple Mount, the site of the Jewish Temple destroyed in A.D. 70, which now houses the Dome of the Rock and El-Aqsa Mosque. The Temple Mount has been a frequent target of violence by both Christian and Jewish zealots, who believe the destruction of the Islamic holy places will augur the coming of the Messiah. The cult members, along with their six children, are expected to be deported by the end of the week. Christian leaders, who have been working with the Israeli Tourism Ministry to prepare for the year 2000, hasten to point out that the Colorado cultists are not representative of the pilgrims visiting the Holy Land. "This is a time when Israel is making every effort to open its doors to as many Christians as possible. . . . We don't want them to think all Christians coming here are lunatics," said Clarence Wagner, international director of Bridges for Peace, a Jerusalem-based evangelical organization and charity. In fact, a small but growing community of American fundamentalist Christians has lived peacefully for some years on the Mount of Olives, the parched, dusty Arab neighborhood rising to the east of Jerusalem. The slopes are fabled for the spectacular view they give tourists of the Old City, with its luminescent gold-topped Dome of the Rock; but what interests the evangelicals is the biblical tradition that Jesus ascended to heaven from the Mount, and the prophecy that the mountain will split in two when the Messiah returns. "The Bible says that Jesus will return, that this is where he ascended and this is where he is coming back," said Brother David, 58, a preacher, who, in 1982, sold his trailer park in Syracuse, N.Y., and came to Israel with only a Bible and the clothes on his back. "When it happens, you can be in California or Australia, but Jesus is coming here and you might as well be here too." Although exact beliefs vary widely, the evangelical Christians believe that recorded history began in 4000 B.C. The next millennium, which by that count will be the seventh, is tantamount to the seventh day of the week, a Sabbath period of unprecedented world peace over which Jesus will preside. That will be preceded by an apocalyptic war, Armageddon. "Nobody can tell you a specific date or year. There are Scriptures that say it might be the year 2000. We don't know, but it is as good a date as any," said Brother David, who discarded his surname along with his passport upon moving to Israel. Brother David and his followers believe that Israel's founding in 1948 and its victory in the Six Day War of 1967 were prophesied in the Bible and that the events herald the end of days. Although Christian, they are ardent Zionists. Keren Allen, for example, wears Star of David earrings and pendant, and keeps her head covered in the tradition of religious Jewish women. Winston Rose, 65, a retired New York City schoolteacher, originally from Jamaica, has adopted the name of Solomon Ben David. On the Mount of Olives, the Christian fundamentalists live austerely in rented rooms of Arab houses. They live on their pensions and savings, or support themselves by teaching English or working in Christian charities. Brother David and his partner, Sharon, 52, a grandmother from Grass Valley, Calif., who are informally the leaders of the Mount of Olives group, conduct tours for other pilgrims and rent rooms in their apartments. They anticipate that their business will only gain momentum as 1999 winds down, piquing interest in the dawning of the new millennium, with celebrations beginning in 2000 and continuing until the actual millennium on Jan. 1, 2001. It is not only Christians who are getting in on the action. At the Mount of Olives Hotel, which is advertising itself as the best place to be for the anticipated second coming, the father-and-son owners readily admit they are not believers. "We're not Christians, my father and I. We are not even good Muslims. I guess you can say we are rational materialists," said Ibrahim Dawud, 34, who grew up in Detroit. "We are respectful of the various faiths because it is our bread and butter. Religion is our business." Like many Palestinians on the Mount of Olives, Dawud is mildly amused at the behavior of the evangelical Christians who bring in most of the business at the 60-room hotel. He and his father, Kamal, recall a British criminal lawyer who stopped taking an antipsychotic medication while in Jerusalem, and imagined himself to be the Messiah. There was another guest, an American woman, who believed herself to be the Virgin Mary. She was later discovered to have a brain tumor. Then, they recall the guest in Room 317 who came downstairs screaming that he looked out his window and saw the face of Jesus Christ. "My father had to calm him down. He asked: 'Why are you screaming? You came to the Holy Land. What did you expect to see out your window?' " � 1998 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc. ============================================== Kin fear for cult members' safety The group's leader has said he will die in Jerusalem before 2000. The worry is that he won't be alone. By Gwen Florio INQUIRER STAFF WRITER DENVER -- He claims to speak in the voice of a vengeful God, demands thousands of dollars from his followers, and vows to achieve salvation by dying in Jerusalem on the eve of 2000. Those who know Monte Kim Miller, head of a Denver-based millennial cult whose members were detained last weekend in Israel, say that such beliefs, especially the last, make them fear for the safety of their loved ones. Experts who deal with such groups say these concerns are justified. "In some of its more virulent forms, apocalypticism is perhaps the single most dangerous political belief extant," according to a report by the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University. "Those in its grip live in a world of paranoid dualism where good and evil prepare for their final battle and there is no neutrality." Indeed, said Brenda Brasher, an associate of the center, the arrests of eight adult cult members by Israeli authorities -- who feared they intended to provoke violence -- "may have fueled the millennial fever of this group. . . . If what you want is a peaceful resolution, without loss of life, then you don't act out these nightmare scenarios." Israeli authorities, wary of apocalyptic groups making their way to the country, raided two homes in a Jerusalem suburb Sunday, and held 14 members -- eight adults and six children -- of the Concerned Christians group that Miller, 44, founded in the early 1980s. They are to be deported. But the group's remaining 64 members are still missing. Miller -- a former Procter & Gamble marketing executive who has said he has no formal theological training -- left the Denver area with his followers in October, saying they were bound for Israel to prepare for the arrival of 2000. Although there has been occasional written contact with members, their families have not seen them since. In the last few days, they peered at television news footage in hopes of glimpsing their relatives among those arrested. At least, said Sherry Clark, if her daughter and son-in-law and their four children were in custody, they would be safe. "I'd be calm and confident. I'd feel a sense of peace," said Clark, 62, of Carbondale, Colo. She has not had that feeling for seven years, ever since -- at her daughter's urging -- she went to a Bible study session held by Miller. "I realized it was a cult, or the beginnings of one," she said. "He [ Miller ] was adding to and subtracting from what was really in the Bible." Miller outlined his creed in his newsletter, called Report From Concerned Christians. In one issue in 1989, he termed the beliefs of conservative Christian Pat Robertson "doctrines of demons," and in another that year he called a July 4 address by President George Bush "representative of Satan's plan to deceive the whole world." But when Clark confided her fears to her daughter, Malene, and son-in-law, Steve Malesic -- whose five brothers also are in the group -- they became enraged and cut off all contact with her, she said, describing a scenario echoed by other family members of Concerned Christians. She became even more frightened a few years later when, after she and Malene briefly reconciled, Miller asked to meet with her at a Denny's restaurant in Denver. There, surrounded by dozens of diners, Miller twisted his face at her and began speaking in what he said was the voice of Jesus. "You couldn't do it naturally if you tried -- to twist your mouth clear up to your cheekbones on either side," she said. "He was telling me that the wrath of God was on me, that I was going to be destroyed because I had gone against him, God's prophet," she said. But he told her that God would be appeased, she added dryly, if she wrote Miller a check for $70,000. "I just started laughing," she said. At least one of Miller's followers apparently complied with a similar injunction, however. David Cooper, 59, a Boulder, Colo., Realtor, said he thought it was a little unusual when his brother, John, began selling off properties he owned about 18 months ago. One of them was a house he had bought from Miller after Miller filed for bankruptcy in 1997. John Cooper then allowed Miller to continue living in the house until October, when he and the rest of the Concerned Christians disappeared. That house, said David Cooper, is still on the market, but his brother's homes in Boulder and in Ouray, Colo., were sold. He estimates that his brother may have given as much as a million dollars to Concerned Christians. "I thought his behavior was maybe strange or a little odd," he said, "but there was no single event that would really ring a bell. Of course, it all makes sense afterward." John Cooper's wife, Jan, is the mother of Nicolette Weaver, a 16-year-old who left Miller's group two years ago after her father, John Weaver of the Denver suburb of Lakewood, went to court and obtained custody from his ex-wife. He did so, he said, after Nicolette recounted a chilling conversation with her mother: Jan Cooper told her daughter that she was so devoted to Miller that she would kill the girl, if he ordered it. "Nobody joins a cult to drink Kool-Aid," Weaver said, referring to the 1978 mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana, in which more than 900 followers of the Rev. Jim Jones died. "But ultimately, that's what happens. They [ cult leaders ] have complete control." Like Sherry Clark, Weaver first went directly to Miller to discuss his concerns, but got nowhere. "He tried that 'voice of God' with me, but I didn't let him complete a sentence. I didn't want to hear his garbage. . . . I'm a retired police officer, and to me he's a very obvious con man." Clark, Weaver and Cooper all said that their fondest hope is that the detentions in Israel will defuse Miller's plans, whatever they may be. "I think this could seriously damage Kim Miller's credibility," Cooper said. "The whole premise of everything he's preached and said has just gone up in smoke. "Kim Miller is not going to get into Israel . . . and in terms of the coming millennium, dying on the streets of Istanbul is not the same as dying on the streets of Jerusalem." But he also voiced a darker scenario: "My biggest problem is that if his prophecy doesn't come true, he'll make it come true. . . . From this point on, we don't know what will happen." � 1998 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc. ================================= Robert F. Tatman [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Remove "nospam" from the address to reply. NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. 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