Sefander Knotts is a believer and willing to back her conviction up with money.

Although Knotts describes herself as broke, she finds enough spare money to invest in a Dallas company that's never earned a dime in its 17-year search for oil in a country that produces almost no oil.

With the Bible as its North Star, Zion Oil & Gas has spent more than $150 million of investors' money on a "special task, in a special country" — Israel.

Knotts became a backer of Zion after watching a promotional video on YouTube of its quest to find oil in the Holy Land. Through the years, thousands of believers like Knotts helped Zion with the millions of dollars it needed to keep drilling dry holes in the prophesied land.

Sefander Knotts sits in a camper she and husband Kenny often use to travel throughout middle Tennessee. Knotts, 43, a supporter of Zion Oil & Gas, wears a "WWG" pin that stands for "Walking with God." (Sanford Myers / Special Contributor)

"I'm going to keep investing for as long as it takes," said the 43-year-old Knotts, who splits time between a rental and RV in middle Tennessee with her husband. "I've had visions before. Every vision I've had has come true."

In June, Zion started drilling its latest well at a location in Israel that some Christians believe will be the site of the eventual battleground of Armageddon. Each of its drill sites is imbued with biblical significance.

For Israelis, a Zion discovery would mean a 12.5 percent royalty and less reliance on petroleum "mostly produced in countries that are unfriendly or even hostile towards us."

‘Blessings of the deep’

Zion's foundation is rooted in John Brown’s belief that God called upon him to help Israel.

“Zion at its inception was a faith-based company, founded on a biblical foundation,” said CEO Victor Carrillo, a petroleum geologist and former chairman of the Texas Railroad Commission. "His [Brown’s] mission and vision, which is ours, is to bless Israel by finding and producing oil and gas to help make Israel politically and economically independent.”

Zion’s genesis can be traced to the 1980s, when Brown was a Michigan tool company executive and a newly recovering alcoholic and born-again Christian. Soon after his conversion, Brown heard an evangelical preacher who insisted that the Bible (“blessings of the deep" — Genesis 49:25-28; Deuteronomy 33:13-16) pointed to oil in the Holy Land.

The company acknowledges that most mentions of oil in the Bible refer to olive oil. But Brown believes that in some instances, the Scripture is talking about petroleum.

Brown, now in his late 70s, knew little about oil exploration when he started out. But he had a true believer’s passion and Bible verses to guide him. Unlike traditional wildcatters who studied geophysical data, Brown’s initial research involved poring over Bible verses and praying in Jerusalem.

After spending about a decade backing other drilling companies, Brown founded Zion in 2000. So far, Brown — who declined The Dallas Morning News' interview request — has had no luck in his quest for oil.

"I expected the first well I drilled to find oil," Brown said in 2015 on Christian TV show Beyond History. "In the last well, we spent $33 million on it. The night that we decided that we had to close it down as a dry well, it about killed me."

But Brown wasn't the first explorer to meet with disappointment in Israel, which has a long history of dry holes.

More than 500 exploratory wells have been drilled in Israel since 1948, according to Justin Dargin, an independent oil analyst and former research fellow at Harvard University's Dubai Initiative. He said the conventional view was that there weren't any commercially viable oil fields.

"That view has changed significantly," Dargin said by email. "The natural gas finds stimulated the idea that where there is natural gas, there could perhaps be undiscovered oil fields as well."

Zion's latest drilling site in the Megiddo-Jezreel Valley being prepared in January. (Zion Oil & Gas)

Houston-based Noble Energy discovered massive gas fields off the Israeli coast in 2009 and 2010. One of those gas fields, Tamar, started commercial production in 2013 and a second one, Levant, is expected to start in 2019.

Dargin also said technology advancements, such as fracking, have expanded the industry’s assessment of what’s now commercially available.

Christopher Schenk, a research geologist for the U.S. Geological Survey, said the agency found the potential for significant amounts of oil but no guarantees. The USGS report estimated a range of possibilities with 800 million barrels of oil as an average. Those numbers are for land-based reserves.

"That's a considerable resource, but there's lots of uncertainty on that number," he said. "Someone first has to find it."

Brown's mission is unusual but not unique. Over the decades, other evangelical Christians have led missions to bury the old Israeli joke about Moses taking his people to the only place in the Middle East without oil.

In the 1980s, Houston oilman Andy SoRelle, spent millions drilling for oil in Israel. Texan Harold “Hayseed” Stephens raised money in the 1990s to explore near the biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.

What’s unique about Zion has been its ability to attract and retain investors who believe in the company’s faith-based mission more than wanting “to make a quick dollar,” as Carrillo puts it.

The Biblical prophesy that surrounds the company’s latest drilling location helps, too.

Valley of Armageddon

Last month, Zion started drilling at its fourth site in Israel: Megiddo, in the Jezreel Valley, where some Christians believe the final battle between good and evil — Armageddon — will be fought.

Here is how Brown describes the importance of the location in the company's vision statement: "We believe that God has promised in the Bible to bless Israel with rich accumulations of oil and gas, to be found on the Head of Joseph, in the Megiddo-Jezreel Valley (referred to in Revelation as Armageddon)."

Zion's drilling site in Megiddo-Jezreel Valley in May (Zion Oil & Gas)

CEO Carrillo downplayed the significance of the location, saying the site was chosen for its geology rather than theology.

"I'm an evangelical Christian and believe the Bible to be the inspired word of God," Carrillo said. "At the same time, I don't necessarily apply that directly to where we're going to explore for oil and gas."

Aside from drilling exclusively in the Holy Land, Carrillo said the NASDAQ-listed company is much like any other wildcat oil outfit — it depends on geophysical and seismic research to identify promising sites.

The news of Zion’s first drilling site since 2010 created social media hype and helped the company attract small investors. They buy a few hundred dollars' worth of shares and persuade some of their friends and family to do the same.

One such investor is Jeb Fisher, a 42-year-old truck driver from Garland. He heard about Zion on the business networking site LinkedIn a few years ago. With the news of the latest drilling site, Fisher decided to take the plunge.

"We feel like it was God's timing to get in at that point and possibly make a big profit. Profit is not my sole interest there, but if that comes, then I gladly accept it," said Fisher, who doesn’t consider himself a savvy investor.

Now, Fisher said, at least 10 relatives and friends have bought Zion shares — despite a stockbroker cautioning some of them that it's a highly speculative and risky stock.

"We can't lose our money," he said. "Even if they don't strike, even if the company were to go out of business, the fact is that we've invested in Israel."

News of high demand for its shares is like manna from heaven for Zion, which needs about $11 million for its 90-day drilling schedule at Megiddo.

Cashing in on end times?

The renewed investor interest in Zion, in the weeks since drilling started in Megiddo, has pushed the stock to a new high. The company issues new stock to pay for expenses and sells directly to the public.

Even when there is no drilling, the company has significant expenses. The top four executives in 2016 received nearly $1.4 million in salary, bonuses and other compensation.

Zion started started the year at around $1.30 per share and closed at a high of $5.88 per share on July 7, the highest in nearly seven years. On Thursday, the stock was trading at above $3.50, valuing the company at more than $170 million.

Fisher, who describes himself as a Christian Zionist, said his initial decision to buy about 900 shares was half religious and half financial. Ultimately, he said he credits “divine intervention” and “divine direction,” but not for any end-times reasons.

Unlike Fisher, other Zion supporters aren’t as ambiguous about the company’s role in the rapture and the second coming of Jesus Christ.

One of them is Hal Lindsey, an evangelical Christian writer, TV personality and author of 1970s apocalyptic bestseller The Late, Great Planet Earth, which linked end-time prophecies in the Bible with then-current events to predict events leading to the rapture. Lindsey, whose donation hotline is 1-888-RAPTURE, has championed Zion to his large audience.

Zion also has funded pro-Israel events organized by influential San Antonio megachurch pastor John Hagee, who pointed to a series of "blood moons" coinciding with Jewish holidays in 2014 and 2015 as a sign of the rapture's approach.

Those taking a literalist approach to the Bible, said John Howard Smith, a history professor at Texas A&M University-Commerce, often view Scripture through the lens of current events.

"For those who are strong believers and those who are fairly knowledgeable about the Scriptures, Megiddo is going to be the most compelling spot,” he said of Zion's latest drilling location.

As of last week, Zion had drilled to a depth of about a mile — the most promising range at this site is 1 to 2 miles. The company plans to drill to a maximum depth of nearly 3 miles.

Whether or not the well turns out to be dry, Zion doesn't plan to stop looking. Zion, CEO Carrillo said, could eventually explore elsewhere — but not until it has succeeded in Israel.

"Those are the hands that were dealt to us," he said.