He had told followers he would die in the streets of Jerusalem and be reincarnated three days later.Miller did not have a good record for prophetic accuracy. He had predicted that Denver would be destroyed on 10 October 1998. But the Jerusalem police did not intend to wait to find out just how literally his words should be taken. Just after the New Year they arrested 14 Concerned Christians, claiming, “They intended to carry out extreme acts of violence in the streets of Jerusalem towards the end of 1999 with the aim of beginning a process that would bring about the second coming of Jesus.” The Concerned Christians were deported back to the US.Gorenberg believes the police may have over-reacted.

Israeli security forces admitted that they knew little about millennial cults. Nor is there a definable line between Christians visiting Jerusalem, who believe in a general sense in the Second Coming, and those who believe that God wants them to do something to bring it about.”Jerusalem is a city charged with religious feeling,” says Father Sephane Joulain, a French priest at St Anne’s, a Crusader church on the Via Dolorosa down which Jesus reputedly carried the Cross. “People feel that here they have a direct connection with heaven Some take the imagery of the Book of Revelations seriously. Others are emotionally fragile: in one week three different women visiting Jerusalem said they believed they were the Virgin Mary.”Father Joulain is largely dismissive about the risk of millennial violence He says the real danger facing visitors is more prosaic. Jerusalem is notorious for the skill and number of its pickpockets. Parties of Christians making their way to the Garden of Gethsemane or the Church of the Holy Sepulchre provide easy pickings.

Usually the gangs work in groups of three, one diverting the visitor by trying to sell postcards while the other two steal wallets and purses. One notorious group of about 30 thieves is known locally as the Via Dolorosa Gang after the street where they normally operate They do not lack confidence. Soon after Father Joulain first came to Jerusalem their leader politely introduced himself, saying, “I am the head of thieves and drug dealers around here.”The danger in Jerusalem is less Christian fundamentalism than a lethal blend of nationalism and religion. Officially it is the eternal capital of Israel since the Israeli army conquered Palestinian east Jerusalem in 1967.

Bulldozers immediately destroyed the old Arab houses in front of the Western Wall, the remains of the Temple platform built by Herod, where Jews traditionally pray Others in the Israeli army had even more radical ideas. One senior officer, the late General Uzi Narkiss, recalled meeting Rabbi Shlomo Goren, the chief army chaplain, just after the army took over. “Uzi,” Rabbi Goren said to him, “this is the time to stick 100kg of explosives in the Mosque of Omar [the Dome of the Rock] and that’s it. Once and for all we’ll be done with it.” General Narkiss demurred, choking off Goren by saying, “Rabbi, if you don’t stop I’ll take you from here to jail.”Rabbi Goren was not alone in wanting a complete Jewish takeover. Small but violent Jewish movements – the cutting-edge of the settlers who moved into the West Bank – saw military victory in 1967 as a sign that God was returning Jerusalem and all of ancient Judea and Samaria to the Jews. Meir Kahane, a leader of the Jewish extreme right, expected the coming of the Messiah 40 years after the foundation of the state of Israel.

Gorenberg argues that when the Messianic vision was “torn up before their eyes” by the Oslo accords of 1993, which proposed returning much of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) to the Palestinians, the most radical settlers resorted to extreme violence. Within a year Baruch Goldstein, a settler in Hebron, walked into the al- Ibrahimi mosque in the town and fired his sub-machine gun into the backs of worshippers, killing 29 of them.No city in the world is as fought over as Jerusalem and all its communities are deeply sensitive about their “rights”. Jewish settlers take over houses in the Old City and Palestinians resist them street by street. The very presence of more than a million Roman Catholic pilgrims next year is resented by some rabbis because it strengthens the idea of Jerusalem as an international religious capital and diminishes its status as the capital of Israel.When the municipality tried to issue a medal to commemorate the conquest of the city by King David 3,000 years ago, ultra-orthodox rabbis protested vigorously.