The prophet Elijah and King David are alive and well and preaching in Jerusalem, writes Alex Benwell
‘We filled him up so much with the Holy Spirit, he could hardly walk,” chuckles Elijah. He climbs down from the wall from where he’s been preaching God’s word to another doubting tourist in the Old City of Jerusalem.
With his face shrouded in grey hair and looking as biblical as his name suggests, Elijah (aged 68 – real name Ernest Moche) has all the symptoms of a religious psychiatric condition called ”Jerusalem syndrome” (JS).
The Israeli mental health services claim JS has been around for a number of years. It is described as a temporary state of mind whereby somebody believes they have become a biblical character. Jesus, Moses and the Virgin Mary are the most popular.
Originally from the United States, Elijah used to be an executive for a large building firm. ”God sent me to Jerusalem,” he explains. ”There are a lot of religious people here who don’t like to let in certain people and I’m on their list. But when I arrived in Tel Aviv God sent a man from the government and they let me stay.”
Back at the Petra Hostel where he spends most of his time he has become a bit of a celebrity. A week doesn’t go by without a journalist interviewing him about Jerusalem and his relationship with God. Among the hostel’s other Christian residents are Elijah’s ”disciples” Jim and David. They haven’t assumed biblical characters yet, but Jim is attempting a 40-day fast to make his faith stronger and David, who is a former Hollywood film star, finds any excuse to ”lay his hands on” somebody’s head and pray for them.
As you walk around Jerusalem jostling with the tourists it’s not rare to bump into more biblical characters. King David is a popular sight at the Zion Gate. Dressed in a white robe and gold crown he randomly strums his out-of-tune harp while singing hymns with enough vibrato to shatter glass at 20 paces.
King David’s real name is John Ligtenberg. Aged 56, he is originally from Brisbane, Australia, but he’s lived in Israel for the past seven years and makes his living out of busking.
While he talks to me he tunes his harp and looks out for tourists. ”Unless there is a real revival in repenting and people turn back to God, society will get darker but the people who love God will grow brighter. Ah, time for a chorus.”
King David launches into another tuneless rendition of his favourite hymn, Majesty, for a group of German tourists. By the time he’s finished he’s a few shekels richer.
The JS sufferers are gathering in Israel to celebrate the 2 000th anniversary of Jesus’s birth. They believe Jesus’s second coming will coincide with the turn of the millennium.
In Bethany, a small Arab town outside Jerusalem near the Mount of Olives, I met Brother David. Brother David, originally from New York, believes Jesus, who lived for a time in Bethany, will return to the Mount of Olives. ”We’re getting close to the time,” he says, ”and God is drawing his people to Jerusalem.”
Brother David sold his mobile home business 15 years ago and came to Israel on a one- way ticket. ”The Lord spoke to me and said that I should move my ministry to the Mount of Olives to prepare the way for his coming,” he says. He now accommodates born- again Christians in 10 furnished apartments in Bethany.
”Nobody knows the day nor the hour of his return, but there are three major signs,” he explains. ”It was prophesied that a nation would be born in a day and in 1948 that’s what happened to Israel. Next, you have Jerusalem being given back to the Jewish people in 1967 and thirdly, God says in the Bible, ‘I will gather them from the north, the south, the east and the west,’ and if you go to Tel Aviv airport you will see Jews coming from all over the world.”
In Bethany Brother David’s lodgers have come from all over the world and half of them will stay until Jesus arrives. Marilyn Dock (56) from Georgia, in the US, used to be a software technician working on the Y2K bug. Now she has sold all her possessions and rented an apartment from Brother David with her friend, Patsy Logue (64).
”We’ve got front row seats for the Book of Revelation,” she boasts. The view from their porch is rather ordinary but up the road you get a fantastic view of Jerusalem’s gold-domed skyline from the top of the Mount of Olives.
These people all seem fairly stable, maybe a bit eccentric, but Israel is worried the millennium will attract a small but significant number of more sinister JS cases. The members of one such American doomsday cult reportedly sold all their possessions and headed for Jerusalem at the instruction of their leader Monte Kim Miller. The 45-year-old former marketing manager claims he is God’s last prophet and has been instructed to go to Jerusalem where he will ”die on the steps of Jerusalem” sometime this year and, just like Jesus Christ, rise from the dead three days later. The cult, imaginatively called Concerned Christians, was discovered by the Israeli authorities and extradited before its members could do any harm to themselves or others.
Brother David doesn’t consider them to be Christians. ”There’s nothing in the Bible which advocates people committing suicide or harming others,” he says.
There are four hospitals in and around Jerusalem taking in all types of JS sufferers. Professor Eliezer Witztum, a psychiatrist at Jerusalem’s Herzog Memorial hospital explains that many Apocalyptic Christians (suffering from a new condition called ”millennium fever”) regard Jerusalem as the site of Armageddon.
”There is a realistic chance of another fundamentalist Christian sect coming to Jerusalem and causing trouble,” he explains. ”This is not a problem for us doctors but for the military and secret services.”
If some do slip through the net, the consequences could be dire. After all, the Israeli Tourist Board is claiming Jerusalem to be the official destination for the millennium and four million tourists are expected over the next year. Even the Pope is planning a visit.
”We average one hundred cases a year but with more and more people visiting we expect the numbers to rise dramatically.”
Back at Petra Hostel, after a day of relentless preaching, a tired Elijah has a curious but interested audience – even the guy at reception is listening to what he has to say.
”We know that Jesus said, ‘I’m going to come back,’ and the people who are going to see him at this time are going to have the eyes to see him and the ears to hear him” he explains. ”Most of the world will never know he came.”
Elijah decides he’s had enough for one day. No doubt he will be seen and heard tomorrow on some soap box preaching to some more heathens.