Apocalyptic Prophecy In A Five-Star Hotel
by Kevin Spence

Fatigue is too kind of a word to explain how I felt.

After touring Israel through a grant from the Scripps Howard Foundation, I thought I had seen it all. I visited the Church of the Holy Sepulcher where Jesus was laid to rest after his crucifixion. I slipped a prayer on paper into the Western Wall, one of the holiest places for Jews. I interviewed both Palestinian refugees and pro-Zionist politicians. I even climbed to the top of Masada-a mountaintop refuge-memorialized by many as a triumphant symbol of Jewish resilience. By the eighth day of exploring the Holy Land, I sat in the sauna of our hotel, content to meditate and decompress from our daily 12-hour sessions discovering Israel, led by Professor Ari Goldman.

Just outside the Old City in Jerusalem in the basement of the Dan Pearl Hotel, I reflected on all of our hard work: reporting religious stories, working on the class website and filing articles. The furthest thing from my mind in the hot box was more work, not to mention a message from God. Today was my "free-day," after all. As the sweat began to drip from my temples onto the wooden floor, I tried to increase the temperature in the sauna to help release the toxins from my body and soul.

Then, he walked in.

At first, I glanced up and saw a middle-aged man, overweight with light-colored eyes.

"Another tourist passing through Jerusalem on business," I incorrectly thought to myself.

As I would later discover, this middle-aged man was Greydus Van Eden. He was from Holland-a former real-estate mogul. He was also a messenger from God.

I was in no mood to partake in perfunctory conversation, yet not too tired, apparently, to be awakened by a prophecy from the message deliverer.

"Where are you from?" the man asked me.

"The United States," I replied.

"Well," he continued, "then you must be familiar with the way your elections turned out," referring to internationally known embarrassment of our Presidential debacle.

"Yes, I know what you're talking about," I mumbled back unenthusiastically, not ready for a political debate.

Then, he continued, "Are you religious?"

The conversation immediately turned spiritual as the brass cross around my neck, blessed with holy water, swung back and forth against my chest. He must have noticed it before he drew me into his psyche.

"Fair enough," I thought. He seemed amicable enough and, at that point, non-confrontational. I blurted out the rehearsed line about my spiritual existence, heard all over Israel countless times before.

"Yes," I said. "I am Catholic, and although I practice, I am not the quintessential Catholic."

"You know," he continued, "what happened in your country is another sign from God about the end of the world."

I learned about the Jerusalem Syndrome back in New York prior to our excursion. Mysteriously, pilgrims to Jerusalem become intoxicated with the religious aura of the Holy Land. Its definition was clarified to me at Columbia University in our safe, sober, seemingly secular classroom, as we studied the religions of Israel. And now, sitting in the basement of a very accommodating hotel, I was 3, 000 miles away from New York and all our Ivy League lessons. With only a towel wrapped around my waist, I was face-to-face with a man who was afflicted with a documented psychological condition.

Jerusalem Syndrome was first diagnosed by Dr. Yair Bar-El of the Kfar Shaul Mental Health Center in Jerusalem. In its benign form, tourists or pilgrims believe that they are long-dead prophets or biblical characters. Since the new millennium, others have flocked to Jerusalem to mark what, they feel, is the end of time. Some become violent. The most notorious case happened in 1969. Dennis Rohan set fire to the Al-Aksa mosque (a.k.a., Temple Mount) resulting in city-wide riots. The upheaval even spread to India. Just last January, a 37-year-man, thinking he was the Messiah, rode a white donkey through the gates at the Temple Mount. He was detained, reported the Jerusalem Post. Van Eden, however, did not seem violent, although he was persistent.

"Do you know of a mold that makes eggs? he asked me. My nostrils were becoming dried out from the heat in the sauna.

"What?" I asked profoundly, contributing to his conversation of higher meaning. I could not understand his English, his hard drawn-out vowels. I remained curious and polite. He raised his voice, sounding out his question again.

"Do YOU know of a mold that makes eggs?"

He sounded irritated. Of the 150 or more people affected by Jerusalem Syndrome each year, one of them was cornering me. I was kind of flattered, really. I wanted to understand him.

"No," once again I muttered, becoming incensed at his relentlessness. He was overbearing.

"That's because a mold cannot reproduce as the Divine can," he said. "Scientists have been trying to figure out this for years." It made sense to me. I did not argue with him.

He went on to explain that God told him the world was going to end, as we know it. Although it would be cataclysmic and involve widespread war, as predicted by God, there would be a great peace later.

"That's reasonable," I thought to myself, not being facetious. God chose him as a prophet, Van Eden said. God spoke to him several times with this message, amongst others: mad-cow diseases (including foot-and-mouth disease) will teach us to avoid meat; we will come closer to each other in the world; and finally, God will reveal to humanity, in a scientific equation, the meaning of our existence-but not before a revelatory pain, not unlike a baby being born.

I was frightened, although I appeared calm. My weary look was not feigned, especially since we were in temperatures above 120 degrees. I asked him why he was chosen as a prophet. He looked straight ahead, as if in a trance. I felt the conversation was unfair.

"Why am I answering all these questions for you and you don't answer mine," I asked Van Eden.

"Because I am the one leading the conversation," he replied.

I asked him if he would be willing to let me interview him. I told him that I was a journalist, interested in what he was telling me. I thought I had a story. He refused. He said the last interview made him look bad. I understood.

The inspired spokesman looked at me, his nose in the air. He attempted to enlighten the American infidel, the skeptic from New York City. Van Eden said he had seen God in the human form, here in Jerusalem. God also appeared to him in Brazil and China. God, in flesh, was the same person in all the places that Van Eden seen him. By now, the sweat was pouring off me--droplets of irritation and languor.

He was cocky. I was testy. In the very least, I thought, an oracle from God should be humble, sympathetic.

I excused myself in a gentlemanly fashion as I secured my towel and left the sauna. After I emerged from a refreshing cool shower, I thought about what Van Eden said.

Drying my body off, his presence emerged--again. He was shaving, drawing a razor through the shaving cream on his neck. He told me that he was speaking at Oxford University soon. His name, he said, was Van Eden, as in Garden of Eden-a sort of "chosen" surname. Bidding farewell to him again courteously, I left the locker room. My back was barely dry.

When I returned to school a few days later, my investigative training taught me to check his facts. Three different theologians at Oxford University returned my emails and, as I suspected, they hadn't heard of Van Eden (nor of God's) impending arrival. I did find the article though in which he was quoted in the Daily Express, an English publication. It must have been the same portrayal he loathed. Van Eden said last year that devastation from an earthquake in Turkey was a sign from God, indicative of apocalypse, wrote the Daily Express reporter, Marina Benjamin.

Last week, however, Van Eden told me that the great transition was quite near. I did not refute his news. I could, nor would I, discredit him spiritually. His revelations were plausible to me. Him seeing God, to me, was the hardest factor to digest though.

I do avoid eating meat now, more and more. According to a New York Times article from March 27th, "a senior military officer called foot-and-mouth disease 'apocalyptic.'"

Ehab Sabbah, the 30-year-old Head of Strategic Planning of Nazareth, told me in an interview that war between Palestinians and Israelis would occur within one month. A reporter with the Jerusalem Post for seven years, Elli Wohlgelernter, told our class that a regional conflict will erupt soon, most likely within six months or less. It will be, said Wohlgelernter, unlike any confrontation we have witnessed in the past.

Maybe Van Eden's prophecies were true. Or maybe Van Eden is a typical example of someone affected by Jerusalem Syndrome.

Surely, the hatred and intolerance in the Middle East (and around the world) has and continue to result in the end of the world for some.

According to Van Eden, we have two months before it is all explained.