Others, though, look to earlier seismic studies that indicate the hunt for oil there isn’t a futile endeavor. In 1962, Lewis Weeks, Exxon’s former chief geologist, issued a report commissioned by the Israeli government that estimated that as many as 2 billion barrels could be recovered. A 1979 study conducted by a Shell Oil geologist, reached a similar conclusion. (Israel says it can only confirm proven reserves of 2 million barrels.)

Indeed, some Israeli geologists say the nation hasn’t had a fair test of its onshore oil potential, because only two dozen wells have probed as far down as the Permian layer, a stratum of rock 250 million years old located more than three miles below the earth’s surface. Seismic data hint that Israel’s oil is most likely to be found at this depth. But even those explorations were abandoned prematurely, due to technical problems and lack of funds. “Deep horizons have hardly been touched by drill holes,” says Yaakov Mimran, Israel’s petroleum commissioner.

This gives some credence to Zion Oil’s quest. By next spring, the company plans to break ground on a second well, which will be drilled to a depth of more than 18,000 feet, reaching the Permian layer. In any case, Israel is forced to cheer for its exploration underdog; in the face of the Arab boycott, faith-based independents have been virtually the only players in town. The government stands to earn a 12.5 percent royalty on any sales, and the country would gain another source of domestic production.
 
I catch up with Brown for the first time at Zion Oil’s Dallas office, a bland glass tower perched among the strip malls and billboards of the city’s radiating sprawl. He’s not exactly a swaggering Texas oil C.E.O. Dressed in nylon sweatpants, a white polo shirt, and sneakers, Brown is eating a Subway sandwich at an oval conference table. A large framed copy of the Ten Commandments hangs on the wall behind him. Despite his genial high-school gym teacher appearance, there is a combative intensity to his ice-blue eyes. “We’re going to get that oil,” he says emphatically, a statement that seems addressed not just to me but to his secular-minded skeptics. “And when we have it, you’ll have to decide: Is the Bible true or not?”

Between sips of Diet Coke, he begins to tell me his story, occasionally interrupting our conversation to leaf through his Bible, which is embossed with Zion Oil’s logo. Brown wasn’t born religious: He grew up in Utica, Michigan, where his father toiled at the local General Motors plant and his mother worked in a factory cafeteria. His childhood was shaped by Democratic politics and pro-labor sympathies rather than religious doctrine. Brown, who voted for George W. Bush in the past two elections, remembers, “Republicans were ‘those folks.’ We thought we were just going to be Democrats until the day we died.” After attending Fullerton College, in California, he returned to Michigan and married Hope Ulch, a Catholic girl who had grown up next door. By the late 1970s, with four children in the family, Brown was rising through the ranks of Valeron, a manufacturer of cutting tools that was acquired by General Telephone & Electronics in 1984. He had stock options, flew on the company’s Learjet, and shared the executive suite with the C.E.O. But his drinking, formerly social, eventually unraveled into blackouts and four unsuccessful tours through local rehab centers.

In 1981, with his alcoholism worsening, Brown’s marriage began to dissolve, and he moved into a one-bedroom apartment across town. The mover Brown had hired, a laid-off autoworker, began preaching Christ’s salvation as he unpacked Brown’s belongings. He invited Brown to accept Jesus into his heart. Brown says he wept uncontrollably at the young man’s words and, at the age of 41, became a born-again Christian.

Though he quit drinking, his wife filed for divorce. At one point, according to their divorce documents, she obtained a restraining order against him out of fear that he might “physically abuse” her. The documents also allege that Brown fell behind $13,500 on his child-support payments. The couple eventually settled, with Brown agreeing to pay $800 a month in support for their children. Hope, who remained single, went on to become a drug and alcohol counselor and write motivational self-help books. She and Brown have stayed in touch, and she hopes his Israeli venture pans out. “I pray for him and his cause,” she says, but notes she hasn’t invested in Zion Oil stock. “I know John well enough—that he’s a giving person when he has things. If he had a lot of money and I needed some, he’d provide.”

Soon all vestiges of Brown’s former life fell away. He began attending a nondenominational church after his divorce became final. A few months later, he sat in on a lecture by Jim Spillman, a journeyman minister who was traveling the country preaching that the Bible documented undiscovered oil reserves in Israel. Brown listened with rapt attention to Spillman’s exotic tales. On his first visit to Israel two years later, Brown decided he would quit G.T.E. Valeron to fulfill Spillman’s vision. Two years after that, in his resignation letter, Brown wrote that “it is with deep regret that I must resign. . . . However, I am involved in an oil project that God blessed me with in Israel, and will now devote all my time to the oil business and doing God’s work.” Brown says he spent his life’s savings in his effort to launch his oil company. By the 1990s, he didn’t have enough money to visit a dentist, and he even worked as a fitness-club janitor for a while.

In March, four chartered coach buses pulled up to Zion Oil’s white-stucco office building in an industrial park a few miles from the drilling site. In the unyielding glare of the midday sun, Hal Lindsey, author of the prophecy book The Late Great Planet Earth, discharged the 200 evangelical Christians traveling on his nine-day tour of Israel. As part of an itinerary that included visits to Bethlehem, Nazareth, and the Mount of Olives, this unusual, secular-seeming detour was especially thrilling. For Lindsey’s followers and Zion Oil’s evangelical backers, the company is not just a business to invest in. Rather, Zion Oil is evidence that the Bible’s prophecy is actually being fulfilled.