Expelled from Israel for beliefs?

JERUSALEM — Ernest Frank Mauck, 68, is considered one of the most dangerous men in Israel, if not the entire Middle East.

And yet he carries no weapons of any kind — no guns, no knives, only a Bible.

Undoubtedly, the Ultra-Orthodox Jews — the Haredim — with their stern appearance and black hats considered him so dangerous they apparently had the Israeli lawmen hustle him off to the stark
confines of the Kfar Shaul mental hospital on the outskirts of Jerusalem and locked away for eight days.

Today, this grandfatherly figure, who answers to the name of the Prophet Elijah, with his wild mane of white hair, will be banished to Athens, Greece on an El Al flight. His crime? Mentioning the Name of Yeshua (Jesus) and issuing pronouncements that God was going to judge the city of Jerusalem and Israel unless “they repented of their evil ways.”

However, he was accused of “threatening to blow up the mosque (on the Temple Mount) among other things.”

Mauck isn’t the only Christian that has been harassed and threatened by the Haredim. And, shockingly, in a so-called democratic state, the Israeli police seem to bend to their wishes. There are almost weekly reports of vandalism against established Christian worship centers and
serious physical threats against Messianic Jews (Believers in Jesus).

Although he has been mocked constantly for his appearance and even derided by Christian and Messianic Jews for his eccentricity, Mauck has gained thousands of supporters. He’s considered a kind and completely sane man despite the fact he has been lumped with the Denver-based cult that was thrown out of Israel and also with those with “Jerusalem Syndrome.”

Late yesterday afternoon, he was released from the mental hospital at the insistence of Pastor Tom Carlson of Des Moines, Iowa, attorney Robert Solomon of Jerusalem and retired U.S. Army colonel Jim Ammerman. A special website also had been set up and Carlson claimed more than 1,000 e-mails had been received on Elijah’s behalf.

There was no official comment from police, hospital or any religious organizations concerning Mauck’s confinement.

When he emerged from the mental hospital dressed in a white T-shirt and black slacks, he was whisked away to a secret location. There he explained his eight-day ordeal that began late Tuesday night, Aug. 3.

Mauck, who had been staying at Carlson’s Jerusalem home, was resting when he heard someone ring the doorbell. A young woman asked if she could use the phone, so he gave her one. “At that
moment four Gestapo-like (Ministry of the) Interior policemen burst through the door and grabbed me,” said Mauck. “They hauled me off to the police station and made me sign a paper under duress. It was in Hebrew.”

One of those policemen, whom he claimed “entrapped” him was supposedly a friend, named Moses, whom he had met in a downtown mall where he sat daily, handing out literature.

He re-iterated that the police claimed he was “terrorizing people by things I was saying.” Mauck insisted that he never said he was going to blow up anything. “I’ve got no power, so they fabricated all these lies.”

On Wednesday, Aug. 4, the soft-spoken Mauck was taken from the cell and placed in the hospital’s main area, where 14 other men joined him. He said there were between seven and eight women in another section of the hospital. “Some of the people in there were very bad
with their screaming and one man was walking up and down knocking on doors.”

Mauck said one of his key grievances during his eight-day confinement was that he and the other patients were given pills and medicine three times a day that caused him great discomfort. “They thought I was psychopathic, but I told them I hadn’t taken pills in 20 years.”

Yesterday afternoon after Dr. Alex Teitebaum signed his release, he couldn’t help but smile. “I told them (the policemen and the mental hospital officials) that I was willing to leave the country right at the beginning. In fact, I had a flight reserved for Athens for August 20. My
visa was due for renewal then.” Now, he’ll be leaving for Greece seven days early.

Although the Prophet Elijah — aka Ernest Mauck — may be deported to Greece, his warnings he claims are from God remain.

“The greatest famine this world has ever seen is going to hit this land (Israel) unless they repent. I pronounced there would be a shortage of water and they laughed and mocked. I warned Jordan, Syria and Israel and told them to forget about their wars and build a big dam in the
Golan Heights,” he said. He believes Israel and the entire Middle East is in the third year of a seven-year Great Famine. It was reported in the April 23, 1999 edition of the Jerusalem Post that Israel had officially declared a drought.

In addition, he pronounced that God would judge Israel because they hadn’t pulled their armies out of southern Lebanon and also the Golan Heights. “God said ‘I will be your defense.’ They started to do that and then they stopped. They were to get out of there completely.”