Watch: Israel police taser US tourist on 'Jesus-inspired' rampage

Footage of the unnamed man, who had claimed that Jesus had appeared to him in a vision, being subdued outside a village in the north of the country on Friday was released by authorities.

"In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, fire!" the 31-year-old can be heard in the video shouting at police, while grasping an iron bar in one hand.

"In the power of the Holy Spirit, fire! fire! fire!" he then shouted repeatedly at the security forces before they tasered him.

The unnamed tourist, who has reportedly been in Israel for two weeks with his family, had a religious vision, his wife said.

"Jesus was revealed to him and told him to go north and destroy the credit cards," she told police, according to local media.

He had attacked a security guard and damaged car outside a Kibbutz before fleeing into the woods, where he was apprehended.

The altercation took place hours before Good Friday, when Christians flock to the city of Jerusalem to commemorate the crucifixion and burial of Jesus.

Incidents of foreign visitors having psychotic religious delusions while on pilgrimage to Jerusalem have become a well-documented phenomenon known as the "Jerusalem Syndrome".

"Since 1980, Jerusalem's psychiatrists have encountered an ever-increasing number of tourists who, upon arriving in Jerusalem, suffer psychotic decompensation," an academic article on the phenomenon said.

Some examples include an Irish schoolteacher who came to a Jerusalem hospital convinced she was about to give birth to the Baby Jesus when in fact she was not even pregnant.

One American tourist thought he was the Biblical strongman Samson and tried to tear stone blocks out of the Wailing Wall, causing a terrible commotion.

Another South American tourist attempted to destroy Islamic holy places in order to replace them with Jewish ones in the hopes of prompting the Anti-Christ to appear and force the second coming of Jesus.