South Florida Sun-Sentinel religion editor by James D. Davis May 16, 2001 - Now that the furor has died down about some covert plan to convert Jews, it's possible to look at Holy Land Experience as its owners wanted people to: as another theme park in Orlando.........

Two features are still ahead for next year. One is the Qumran Cave, a copy of the caverns where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in 1947. That's planned for a July opening. The other is the "Scriptorium," a museum of biblical manuscripts planned for an opening early next year. An extended loan from the Robert Van Kampen family of Michigan, the collection is so large that only 20 percent of it will be on display at any given time.

[ Source: http://chicagotribune.com/travel/destinations/sns-holyland-themepark.story ]

They found a densely wooded 19-acre site that was tangled up in a bankruptcy proceeding. Rosenthal offered a flat $1.2-million -- a fraction of the land's worth. A few weeks later, he got a call from the real estate agent. The offer had been accepted.

There was a problem. Rosenthal ran a nonprofit organization that conducted religious tours to Israel. The organization, Zion's Hope, didn't have $1,000 to put toward the land, let alone $1-million.

Rosenthal was scared, he said. Then he told some friends, millionaire investor Robert Van Kampen and his wife, Judith, about the project.

"Buy it," Rosenthal remembers them saying. "We'll put a check in the mail to cover the cost." The couple's collection of rare Bibles and manuscripts will become part of a museum to open at the Holy Land Experience next year.

When it was time to start design and construction on the project, another backer wrote a $1-million check.

"We had the dream for the Holy Land Experience, and we had no funding," Rosenthal said. "And there were friends of this ministry who said, 'How much is it going to cost?' "

The blessings kept coming, Rosenthal said. About four years ago, state officials needed about four Holy Land acres to build a new interchange from I-4. It would be Exit 31A. The state paid $1.4-million for the 4 acres -- more than the ministry paid for the entire site.

[Source: http://www.sptimes.com/News/020501/Floridian/Whose_Holy_Land_.shtml ]
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Robert Van Kampen was the founder of Van Kampen Merrit, an investment banking firm that he sold to Xerox in 1984 for about $200 million. The family now controls assets of about $79 billion and is lavishing £12 million on the restoration of Hampton Court and its gardens and parkland. But they have no plans to live at the house and regard the whole project as the fulfilment of Robert Van Kampen's lifelong dream and interests...

Private munificence on such a sale invites the question - why? A partial answer can be found in Sola Scriptura, the non-profit making Christian trust founded by Van Kampen to affirm the authority of the Bible, which owns Hampton Court.

Van Kampen was a Christian fundamentalist, with a famous collection of biblical manuscripts. He was also known for applying biblical strictures to the running of his business and there was a strict code of personal conduct among his many employees: divorce was frowned on and hard liquor-drinking discouraged. Hampton Court, which is always referred to by Scott Pierre as "the facility", is being developed as a temperance conference centre, in line with the founder's beliefs. When I visited this summer, the house was full of young Americans - friends of the Sola Scriptura - on retreat.

Scott Pierre, who runs the trust, remarks, "We are a family with strong Christian roots and after all, Christianity began in a garden." Unfortunately, Robert Van Kampen died, aged 60, in October last year, awaiting a heart transplant, a few months before the Hampton Court project was launched to the public. "I don't think any of us, including Bob, had any idea of the scope of the place and what work we had undertaken," Pierre says. "If we had, we might never have done it. But now we have, we are delighted and proud of what the team has achieved. My only regret is that Bob couldn't be here to see it."

[Source: http://www.hamptoncourt.org.uk/news_articles.htm ]

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The prime mover behind Pilgrim's Run is Robert Van Kampen, a financial maven who made a fortune with the Van Kampen Mutual Fund in Chicago. He now summers near Grand Haven in a sumptious home overlooking Lake Michigan while also keeping an office nearby. Over the last several years, he and his business associates_including then superintendent designee Kris Shumaker_looked into building a course in Grand Haven. That didn't happen because the right property just wasn't found.

[ Source: http://www.michigangolf.com/pilgrams.html ]
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Book: Fourth Reich by Robert Van Kampen: http://www.signministries.org/books/4reich.htm

List of books by R. Van Kampen and Rosenthal : http://www.signministries.org/books.htm