21-Dec-1999 Holy City Grabs Hold of Many
Nightline
Correspondent: Gillian Findlay
abcnews.virage.com
Stevens: It's a spectacular view
Findlay: Hayseed Stevens, Texas oil man. He says he's been called by God to help usher in the messiah. He can feel the time is coming.
Stevens: I'm feeling all these billions of barrels of oil and my spirit is just bubbling, bubbling, bubbling, bubbling. It's rolling, and it's just getting ready to go. Wow [laughs]!
Findlay: For nearly twenty years, Stevens has been after what he thinks is the largest reservoir of oil on the planet. Located, God told him, in the South West corner of the Dead Sea.
Stevens: We were planning to go to 10,500 feet
Findlay: WHen he finds it, there's no "if" in Hayseed's vocabulary, he plans to give his share of this treasure to the State of Israel, and to help build the Jew's third temple.
Stevens: Do you see the head and shoulders there?
Findlay: At the site of his first drilling attempt, he showed us one of the many signs, he says, God has shown him. This one, on a nearby rock.
Stevens: And right at the top you'll see that little crack. It looks like a crown of thorns on His head, and then you can see the hair. See the face. And there He is hanging on the cross 2,000 years ago, and we're getting ready in just a few days to celebrate his birth.
Findlay: The 2,000th birthday of Christ has inspired many Christians to come to this city, to walk where Jesus walked, to live where He lived, to see where He died.
Choir: Oh Jesus blessed redeemer.
Stevens Sites like the garden tomb, where some Christians believe Jesus was buried, provoke intense feelings, and Jerusalem is filled with such sites. The one square kilometre of the old city is a religeous hothouse. Christians, Jews, Muslims, all packed tightly together, their holiest sites cheek by jowl. Their faithful convinced that their God, their history, is the only real truth.
In a place like this, something has to give. And when it does, some people end up here. At the Kaffar Shaul [?sp]Psychiatric centre, they have a special staff for those suffering an overdose of religeous belief. And a special name, the Jerusalem Syndrome.
Doctor: They have a revelation, and they speak about the revelation. Revelations from God. Revelations from Jesus.
Findlay: Sometimes, says Dr. Ramona Durst [?sp], they believe they are Jesus or one of the other prophets from the Bible and that they have been sent here on a crucial mission.
Doctor: That is why they come now. So they have to deliver it now. It is urgent. If they don't do it, a disaster will happen. worldwide.
Findlay: With treatment, the affliction usually goes away quickly. |
