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Sacred Mission? A local counter-missionary leader condemns Florida's Holy Land Experience.
From an architectural point of view, the Holy Land Experience, a new 15-acre theme park in Orlando, Fla., is put together quite well, says Mark Powers, director of the Pikesvill-based Jews for Judaism, a national counter-missionary organization.
But the park's theme, according to Mr. Powers, who last week visited the Holy Land Experience, is not about holiness but converting Jews.
"From the time you step up to the window to get into the place until the time you leave," he said, "it's one proselytizing program after another."
The Holy Land Experience was conceived by Marvin Rosenthal, founder of the Orlando-based Zion's Hope Ministry, which Mr. Powers says is a Messianic Jewish group. The park is a proselytizing tool of the ministry, he said.
For example, Mr. Powers pointed to the Holy Land Experience's presentation of the Wilderness Tabernacle, the portable temple used by the Jews during their travels through the desert. The actors in the presentation explain the sacrifices and rituals of the Jewish priests, but at the end of the program, according to Mr. Powers, one of the priests muses, "I can't help but think that this is the foreshadowing of something else." Then, an image of Jesus...