Company founded by Christian Zionist is first new listing of the year
President claims spiritual beliefs “have been confirmed by the science”
From dBusiness:
NEW YORK — Eugene A. Soltero, Chief Executive Officer of Zion Oil & Gas, Inc., of Dallas, Texas and Caesarea, Israel, announced today that the company has issued 436,907 shares of common stock in the first round of its initial public offering. Mr. Soltero and Richard Rinberg, Zion’s President, rang the AMEX opening bell today to commence trading as the first new listing of 2007. Zion’s ticker symbol is “ZN.” Zion’s offering is being underwritten on a best efforts basis by Network 1 Financial Securities, Inc. of Red Bank, New Jersey. The shares were issued at $7 per share, and the amount raised in this initial round was $3,058,349.
Zion Oil & Gas, as readers of this blog may recall, was founded by an American businessman named John Brown, who believes that the Bible prophesises that he personally will be the man to discover huge oil reserves in Israel. Brown also claims that that Bible contains the information needed to find the oil; Christian Zionist supremo Hal Lindsey agreed, and explained the supposed Biblical basis for oil in the Holy Land to his credulous WorldNetDaily readers:
[Genesis 49] predicts [Jacob’s] great blessing [to Joseph] will come from “the deep that lies beneath” his land. And specifically on “crown of his head.” The land that was allotted to Joseph’s two sons forms the profile of a man’s head.
Now listen to another prophecy about the blessing of another of Jacob’s sons whose land adjoins Joseph’s.
Moses proclaimed blessings on Jacob’s sons just before he died. He predicted concerning Asher:
Asher is most blessed of sons; let him be favored by his brothers, and let him dip his foot in OIL. – Deuteronomy 33:24
What Lindsey didn’t mention when puffing the company (and which was revealed exclusively on this blog), was that his cousin Ralph DeVore was a major shareholder. However, a few months later DeVore left Zion in acrimonious circumstances, and Hal has been quiet about the subject since then.
The Zion Oil website links to an AMEX video clip of Soltero and Rinberg ringing the AMEX bell, followed by a brief interview with Melanie Jacobus. Apparently there are now 2,400 shareholders in Zion Oil, and Rinberg is confident that Brown’s Biblical guide to oil discovery is accurate. As he told Jacobus:
“[Brown’s] original spiritual beliefs have been confirmed by the science.”
Given that Zion has so far drilled only one well, with underwhelming results, that could be seen as a slight overstatement.
The quest for an oil bonanza in Israel has been going on for some years now; the Skeptical Inquirer has an article on a previous effort, here.
(Pic via Jesus’ General)
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