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This is possibly only the beginning of sorrows for Israel as various loonies try to make prophecy come true. We must also assume that the Muslim Mosque of Omar is in peril. It is GOD'S power, and GOD'S acts that will determine how and when the events of prophecy are fulfilled. There is NOTHING exciting about this insane activity. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
I suppose I would only caution the Israeli police to avoid letting this fearless leader of the cult get hurt or killed. He would then become one of the witnesses in Revelation to his demented following.
Members of Denver-based group vanished in October
January 3, 1999
JERUSALEM (CNN) -- Crack Israeli police units swooped down Sunday on a pair of homes in quiet, wooded Jerusalem suburbs, nabbing 14 members of the U.S.-based religious group Concerned Christians who vanished en masse back in October.
Police say the arrests foiled a plot by the group to trigger a bloodbath they hoped would usher in the second coming of Jesus Christ at the turn of the millennium.
The drama, coming only three days into the new year, raised the curtain on what Israeli authorities fear could be months of turbulence leading up to the turn of the millennium -- considered a pivotal event by some religious groups with apocalyptic beliefs.
Police said they planned to ask the Interior Ministry to deport the eight adults and six children who were detained Sunday.
Concerned Christians is led by Monte Kim Miller, 44, who has described himself as a witnessing figure in the biblical Book of Revelations and prophesied his own violent death in Jerusalem this year. Miller was apparently not among those picked up in Sunday's raid.
In October, 78 of the group's members vanished from the Denver area and have since been the object of an intensive manhunt.
Relatives of some members of Concerned Christians said they fear that despite the arrests, the group will continue to work toward its millennial plan.
"What I really, really want is to see my mother away from Kim Miller's influence," Nicolette Weaver, 16, said. "The fact is, that as long as my mother is involved with him, she is not going to talk to me."
"It's nice the group got rounded up, but until the group gets its senses together, they are going to continue," said John Weaver, Nicolette's father. "They are going to build a fort for themselves somewhere, like what happened at Waco."
But Denver police investigator Mark Roggeman, who has tracked the group and tipped off the Israeli government that they were coming, said he believes the arrests may be helpful in breaking Miller's grip on his followers.
"It is something that is out of his (Miller's) control. It shakes them up emotionally," Roggeman said. "This shows he is not infallible and that God doesn't speak through him."
Sunday's separate, but carefully synchronized, ambush-style raids were carried out by dozens of uniformed and plainclothes police at two homes about a mile apart in the hills overlooking Jerusalem.
Members of the group offered no resistance. A U.S. Embassy official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a consular official would visit them in custody as soon as possible.
Police said the group had planned to provoke a millennial showdown by opening fire on officers, believing that their own deaths in the subsequent bloodbath would help bring about the Second Coming.
"They planned to carry out violent and extreme acts in the streets of Jerusalem at the end of 1999 to start the process of bringing Jesus back to life," said Brig. Gen. Elihu Ben-Onn, the national police spokesman.
A senior police source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said members of the group believed that being killed by police would "lead them to heaven."
Some of the planned violent acts were to have been carried out in Jerusalem's walled Old City, the source said, possibly including the hilltop known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary -- traditionally a flashpoint for religious tensions.
Police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said that the children were not in jail but were being held in an "institutional office" with their mothers. Ben-Ruby wouldn't say where the rest of the adults were, but said that the men were "in custody." He said the group would not necessarily appear in court.
sraeli officials fear the nearing millennium will bring many more threats to the nation's security from apocalyptic Christian sects such as the American group whose members were rounded up and deported last week.
The threat is being taken so seriously that all of Israel's security and intelligence services -- including the Mossad, which normally deals with foreign espionage --have formed a joint task force to deal with the problem.
With psychiatrists warning that as many as 40,000 visitors this year could require counseling for "messianic mania," security chiefs are worried that suicides or other violent acts at holy sites in Jerusalem could spark a broad conflagration involving Muslims and Jews.
Some extremist sects are believed to aspire to such a development in the expectation that an apocalypse would herald the second coming of Christ.
Last week's arrest in a Jerusalem suburb of 14 members of the Denver-based Concerned Christians was the first coordinated operation by the special task force. Authorities had feared the group might attempt mass suicide or even a suicidal shootout with police on the Temple Mount.
A senior police official said the seizure of the Americans was a "showcase raid" that authorities hope will deter other members of the sect from coming to Israel. The 14 were expelled from the country under a court order on Friday.
Experts, however, doubt that religious ecstasies of fundamentalist Christian elements will be dampened by such arrests. Dr. Yair Bar-El, chairman of the Israeli Psychiatric Society, predicted last week that some 40,000 of the 4 million tourists expected during the coming year will require psychiatric help as a result of messianic mania. Some 800, he said, will probably require at least temporary hospitalization.
"People with deep beliefs will be expecting to witness apocalyptic events that will change the face of humanity," he said. These events include the battle of Gog and Magog, the rising of the dead and the resurrection of Jesus.
Researchers at Boston University and Cornell have warned Israel to expect some pilgrims to try to catalyze the apocalypse by violent acts.
Dr. Bar-El was the first to apply the name "Jerusalem Syndrome" to a phenomenon he identified between the years 1979 and 1993 when he was director of the Kfar Shaul Psychiatric Hospital in the city. Some 400 tourists were hospitalized there during this period after seizures of aberrant behavior. Most had previous psychiatric histories, but about 10 percent did not.
Many pilgrims gripped by religious intoxication don white garb and identify themselves with biblical figures. Some will shout or otherwise call attention to themselves.
While such behavior may be nothing more than a nuisance or even a source of amusement, it sometimes takes a far more serious turn. In 1969, an Australian tourist, Dennis Rohan, gripped by religious ecstasy, set fire to the holiest Islamic shrine in the city, Al Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount. His action touched off riots, not only in Israel but as far away as India, in which many people died.
Dr. Bar-El said that most of those without psychotic backgrounds who are hospitalized return to normal within five to seven days and are usually embarrassed at what they have done.
"They don't like to talk about the experience afterwards," he said. "They simply don't understand what happened to them."
Because of the millennial element, there is concern that the level of religious intoxication will be greatly heightened during the coming year.
"If people are expecting the apocalypse to occur and it doesn't happen, how will they react?" Dr. Bar-El asked.
Israeli authorities have been warned by American experts on fundamentalist Christian sects that disappointment over a failure to witness the apocalypse or Christ's second coming could lead to mass suicides in Jerusalem.
There are also reports that at least one Christian sect would like to destroy the Muslim shrines on the Temple Mount in order to see the ancient Jewish temple rebuilt and thus pave the way for Christ's second coming.
Israeli police, concerned about Jewish as well as Christian fundamentalists, have in recent months installed sophisticated security devices on all the approaches to the Temple Mount and assigned a special force of 400 men to safeguard the holy site around the clock.
Comment: Steve Van Nattan-- Balaam's Ass Speaks:
1. During the time of Christ, historians tell us that proselyte and born Jews who lived in far places in the Roman Empire would move to Jerusalem at the end of their life. They would bring all their savings, cash out all their assets where they lived, and buy a subsistence plot outside the walls of Jerusalem. This was so that they could die in Jerusalem. Well, the superstitious and vain fools who inhabit the cults and Whorish churches of Christendom could well produce another wave of prophetic idiots who would want to either die in Jerusalem as the world comes to an end, or as Christ returns for them in the Rapture of the Church.
2. The Roman Catholic Church could well see many of its people surge into Jerusalem, as in the days of the Crusades, in order to do Israel some favor, like run the Arabs out of Palestine.
3. All sorts of self-appointed fools could come to Israel to try to press Israel into building the temple and doing more Messianic stunts which these fools imagine must be accomplished in order to convince Messiah Christ to return. This would include many Reconstructionists and the Jerry Falwell crowd.
4. In 999 AD, a prophet predicted that the world was going to end in a great flood in 1000 AD. Europeans peasants, as well as nobility, got ready to go down the Rhine River in "arks" like Noah. The frenzy was monumental, and as the new year dawned, there WAS a fierce rain and thunder storm all over central Europe. The people panicked and crowded onto the boats. Unbelievers drank themselves silly, and they ran into the streets and performed acts of sexual excess in the extreme. Everyone was affected in one way or the other. The storm ended, and sun came out, and they all felt like fools. This could well develop in Israel.
Dear Christian friend:
Please stay away from Israel this year. They don't need anymore trouble. Also, you may be certain that the Muslim terrorists will make the best of this raggedy era in Israel. I would go on a tour to China instead, if I had the cash.
