Not so very long ago, the American Consulate in Jerusalem was visited by Jesus Christ. At least, that's what the visitor, clad in flowing white robes and sandals called himself.
"He strolled in, didn't make any fuss, presented his business card and said, `I just wanted to let you know that I'm here, if you need me call me on my mobile telephone,' " said a consulate official.
Right now, somewhere in Jerusalem, Jesus is probably having more business cards printed: or perhaps Jesuses, Mary Magdalenes and John the Baptists, because the millennium is drawing near and the Holy City is attracting strange characters from all over the world like moths to a candle. Most are completely harmless, like the elderly English lady who daily used to visit the Mount of Olives - where the Messiah is scheduled to return - with a thermos of hot water, teapot and tea bags because she wanted to have a nice cup of tea ready for him.
On average, three or four pilgrims are treated every year for an affliction dubbed, as recently as 1987, Jerusalem Syndrome. Overcome by the Holy City's emotional intensity, sufferers first begin to ritually purify themselves, then wrap themselves in sheets and make their way to sites linked to Jesus's life, singing psalms and hymns. Two Easters ago, Givat Shaul psychiatric hospital treated three Virgin Marys.
Up on the Mount of Olives, Brother David is making his own preparations for the Lord's return. The founder of the House of Prayer ministers to tourists and finds cheap accommodation for other Christians who want to stick around for the End-Time. The Muslim-owned hotel where we meet has sent out a flier to 2,000 congregations in the United States with the beguiling question: "How would you like to be staying at the Mount of Olives Hotel, the day Jesus returns?"
Brother David used to own a trailer park in Syracuse, New York State, until one evening 20 years ago. "I was standing in my kitchen, thinking, "I have a boat and a snowmobile, but I just feel so empty."
He sold everything, gave all the money away after purchasing a one-way ticket to Ben Gurion Airport to begin his holy life.
He believes that the fulfilment of God's plan is on hand and that the political and news events, both global and local, which he reads about every day in the Jerusalem Post point to the approach of mighty change. The year 2000, or Y2K as some call it, is zero-hour and the Mount of Olives, a pretty location for viewing the Old City's spectacular Haram al-Sharif mosque complex, ground zero.
Brother David is calm and considerate and clearly of some service to the poor of Jerusalem. It is only when he reads you the first four verses from the Old Testament Book of Zecharia that any non-Born Again Christian would begin to feel a little chilly.
"Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, and thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee. For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken . . . and half of the city shall go forth into captivity . . . Then shall the Lord go forth and fight . . . And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives . . ."
Over the other side of the Mount, down a rubble track behind the church of Bethpage, which threatens to tear the axle out of your car, you reach the House of David, presided over by Brother Solomon - a Jamaican by the real name of Winston Rose.
His church, in a medium-size villa above the Palestinian village of Abu Dis, has around 40 members, all vegetarians, all calling themselves Christian Jews and all seemingly from Brooklyn, New York, save the Haitian who has just turned up and is leaving it to God to decide how long he should stay.
The House of David's message is essentially the same as that peddled by Brother David over the hill, except that it is even scarier. "We teach that the Gentiles' time is up since March 1997 and that the Seventh Seal and Judgment of the Living began in 1970 with the Peruvian earthquake . . . Christ is coming at the end of the world and the wicked will be destroyed by the brightness of the Coming . . . We expect a war real soon . . . Only the ones who don't wish to comply with God's righteousness will be spewed out . . ."
For the present, the profile of these fundamentalist fringe groups is so low in Jerusalem that the authorities profess no interest in "millennial panic". Officials are still struggling to get a budget for providing clean water, toilet facilities and enough beds for the six million visitors expected between the summer of next year and the end of Y2K.
Doubtless, the Christians on the Mount of Olives are being discreetly monitored, along with the fervent activity taking place on the Internet.
There are millennial predictions to suit all tastes in Cyberspace, from Prince Charles turning into a demon, to the Antichrist arriving in a UFO. According to an Associated Press survey, nearly one in four adult Christians in the United States believe that Jesus will arrive in their lifetime.
The assassination of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and the election of Benjamin Netanyahu are integral components of many apocalyptic scenarios. The popular US evangelist preacher John Hagee - author of The Beginning Of The End: The Assassination Of Yitzhak Rabin And The Coming Antichrist - says that the Middle East peace process will lead to the worst war in Israel's history, followed by the coming of the Messiah.
Netanyahu met Hagee in Washington in January as part of his controversial session with evangelist leaders, many of whom form the backbone of rightwing US support for Israel. Richard Landes, head of Boston University's Centre for Millennial Studies, believes that Israel does not understand the forces that Y2K may be about to unleash.
Given the political problems in Jerusalem and the areas around it, the complications presented by a massive Christian pilgrim presence in 2000 are unimaginably complex and potentially dramatic, says Landes.
He proposes that the Israeli government should establish channels of communication with the Christian groups while monitoring their key players and finances. He suggests that all pilgrims should be made to sign a pre-landing agreement.
All well and good, but just supposing, for a nanosecond, that Brothers David and Solomon are actually onto something.
However thorough the security officers at Ben Gurion airport are, will they be able to wrest from the Messiah an undertaking that once the celebrations are over he will quietly go home rather than establish a 1,000-year reign of peace after conquering all his enemies with plague and fire? It could be the Shin Bet's finest hour.