"He made him ride on the high places of the earth, and he ate of the produce of the fields; and he made him suck honey out of rock, and oil out of the flinty rock.” 
—ZION OIL & GAS VISION STATEMENT (Deuteronomy 32:13)

On a bend in the four-lane highway that weaves inland from the Mediterranean toward Megiddo, Israel, the ancient hillside town better known by its Latin name, Armageddon, the vertical silhouette of an oil derrick rises 12 stories above the patchwork of lemon groves stretching into the countryside beyond. This is verdant kibbutz land, dotted with grain silos and hayfields, and the curious sight of an oil platform stands out like a rusted nail hammered into a green quilt. The only sign of oil is a service station a few miles up the road. But according to an evangelical Christian from Houston named John Brown, who founded the little-known Dallas company Zion Oil & Gas, the Bible prophesied that this unassuming corner of Israel would yield untold riches of crude oil—enough to realign the combustible geopolitics of the Middle East.

Brown isn’t here at the moment, however. He’s back in Zion’s nondescript office, in traffic-choked northeast Dallas, doing what he does best: trying to raise money, shoring up the faithful, praying (literally) every day for a strike while getting regular updates from the field, courtesy of Zion’s president, Glen Perry, the laconic, twang-talking Texan who runs the drilling operation. Oddly (or perhaps not), the pressure on Brown to produce oil from this $8.5 million enterprise comes less from Zion’s 3,000 shareholders—most of them evangelicals like himself—than from his theology. Wildcatters guided by the Bible aren’t without precedent. Ancient texts have referred to asphalt seeps and natural-gas flares, key clues to the location of undiscovered oil reserves. Scholars believe that Iraq’s Kirkuk fields, which seep natural gas, played the role of the fiery furnace described in the book of Daniel, into which Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar cast the Jews.

What makes Brown’s quest more than a religious sideshow is that some clearheaded oil people don’t believe he is totally mad. For one thing, he’s drilling in northern Israel, a virtually unexplored region where, according to modern geological theory, there’s a decent chance of striking oil.

Which explains the presence of Perry, a mildly observant Jew. He is here in his chinos, aviator sunglasses, and golf shirt, patrolling the rig with a seasoned eye and chatting with the pair of Russian security guards who watch over the place. While not dismissive of Brown’s religious approach to finding petroleum, Perry is a solid old-school oil driller. Brown recruited him on the ground in Israel, where Perry was doing consulting work for Delek, a publicly traded Israeli energy conglomerate. Perry has brought in wells in hardscrabble places like Siberia and the Republic of Georgia. He signed on after reviewing Zion’s seismic data, not its Bible-based mission statement.

But on this windless day in May, things aren’t going so well. The rig is at a standstill; the drill pipe, now 11,000 feet down, is stuck by a cement clog. Perry can’t do a thing until repair equipment is trucked in from an oil-services company in Egypt, one of the only countries in the Middle East willing to do business with Israel. The delay is another reminder of the pitfalls of drilling in what Brown calls God’s country. Because of an Arab boycott that spooked the world’s major oil companies decades ago, logistics are hellish and production is expensive: Almost all of Zion Oil’s materials must be imported from non-Arab countries. Drilling a well in this area costs double what it does in Texas. And try finding an experienced crew in a land where only three drilling rigs are available, a land that has thus far produced only dry holes and disappointment, a land preoccupied by the chronic ebb and flow of conflict with its Palestinian neighbors. Still, Perry has managed to assemble a crew, most of them from Sderot, near the Gaza Strip, and he’s determined to complete this first well no later than the end of the summer—no prophecy or prayer involved. “The operations are done by experienced oil professionals,” says Perry, “not the guy preaching salvation on the street corner.”