McCain Ad: Support for the “Obama is AntiChrist Movement”? (Note: This is NOT Satire)

America has never faced so many different crises at the same time in living memory. The war with al-Qaida and Islamic terror, the Iran crisis, Afghanistan, nuclear proliferation, the rising price of oil, the falling dollar, enemy acronyms like OPEC, NAM, OIC, U.N. … Obama is correct in saying that the world is ready for someone like him – a messiah-like figure, charismatic and glib and seemingly holding all the answers to all the world’s questions.

And the Bible says that such a leader will soon make his appearance on the scene. It won’t be Barack Obama, but Obama’s world tour provided a foretaste of the reception he can expect to receive.

He will probably also stand in some European capital, addressing the people of the world and telling them that he is the one that they have been waiting for. And he can expect as wildly enthusiastic a greeting as Obama got in Berlin.

The Bible calls that leader the Antichrist. And it seems apparent that the world is now ready to make his acquaintance.

Hal Lindsey, “How Obama prepped world for the Antichrist,” World Net Daily, 8/4/08

It’s not silly season in Washington. It’s worse. Much worse.

John McCain’s campaign ad calling Barack Obama “The One,” and comparing Obama to a Charlton Heston image of Moses, is fueling on-going speculation that Barack Obama is the AntiChrist. This is not a joke.

In fact, there is actually a blog with the name Barack Obama the AntiChrist? The site says the McCain ad “is very funny, but frankly it must mean Obama really has been portraying himself as a messiah to people, and they have been buying it. McCain has recognized it, and I hope you have too.”

Is this just the work of a few crackpots? Consider this: the site has a poll which asks “Is Barack Obama the AntiChrist?” As I write this, 6100 people have taken the poll. Of that number, 47% answered YES, 33% said MAYBE, and just 18% said NO. That’s almost 5000 people who think Obama is or might be the AntiChrist.

And a rule of thumb is, if one person is talking about something on the Internet, tens or hundreds or thousands of people are thinking the exact same thing.

The AntiChrist theory has of course been knocked and mocked by numerous bloggers. Consider this from the site Knoxviews:

The new McCain ad has reignited a controversy that I completely missed the first time around.

There is a growing fundamentalist belief that Obama is the antichrist. They have scriptures to prove it. My favorite “proof” is that he comes from zip code 60606. I am not making that up. And these people are serious.

This has apparently been making the rounds for a while. It even has a Snopes page, where the “rumor” is deconstructed in a scholarly manner, with a straight face as if it’s something that MIGHT be possible.

Now, if someone is unhinged enough to believe in the Antichrist, Armageddon, and the Rapture, it’s not much of a leap to conclude that Obama is The One. And that’s exactly what analysts say the McCain ad is about.

If you tune your lizard brain to the right frequency and study the ad, you can hear Karl Rove’s dog whistle. It is carefully engineered to trigger deep-rooted, pathological fears and hatred implanted through years of religious indoctrination and programming. It has all the code words and imagery. It’s not even that subtle, but I guess you can’t be too subtle with the intended audience.

It’s hard to say what’s more ridiculous — that people believe this stuff, or that McCain would target these voters and welcome them as his core constituency. But I guess you have to dance with who brung you.

Again, it’s very easy to laugh this off as the musings of a bunch of way out of touch zealots. But a lot of people are taking this very seriously. At Beliefnet.com, a site from the pro-Obama religious group Matthew 25 Network, a write-in campaign against the ad is being mounted:

I don’t know about you- but I found this McCain campaign ad “The One” to be one of the most offensive ads we have seen in American politics to date.

At best, this ad implies that those who plan to support Senator Obama are looking for a new savior or a replacement Messiah. But many are reading it even more darkly as an attempt to portray Obama as an anti-Christ figure.

A vote for Senator Obama is a vote for the man we think will make the best President, not for a new Messiah. As Christians, we have one Lord And Savior. Jesus Christ. It is blasphemous to suggest otherwise.

And it is beyond offensive to suggest that Senator Obama is a false Messiah or the anti-Christ himself. How low can we go? It shows the McCain campaign is willing to make a mockery of our faith to feed people’s fears. Christians need to reject this out of hand.

We will be calling on the McCain campaign to repudiate this ad and take it down immediately. If you would like to add your voice to this effort, please email me at mara@matthew25.org.

All of this is happening amidst polls which indicate that 10% of voters think Obama is a Muslim. From USAToday in March: “…survey results released by the non-partisan Pew Research Center for the People & the Press… (indicate that)… while a majority — 53% — identify Obama as a Christian, 16% of conservative Republicans, 16% of white evangelical Protestants and 19% of rural Americans believe the Illinois senator is Muslim.”

I’ve seen some members of the press say that with all the troubles the country is facing, it’s mystifying that a change agent like Obama doesn’t have a wider lead in the polls. But when you consider the below the radar race and now religious attacks on him, it’s a wonder that Obama is competitive in the first place.

My question is, if the McCain campaign is going so intensely and disturbingly negative now, how bad will it get in last few months of the election season? This is not going to be a pretty sight.

9 thoughts on “McCain Ad: Support for the “Obama is AntiChrist Movement”? (Note: This is NOT Satire)

  1. Re: “At best, this ad implies that those who plan to support Senator Obama are looking for a new savior or a replacement Messiah.” Well, his supporters certainly behave like Jesus’ followers in movies about the life of Jesus. They expect Obama to fix oil prices with a wave of his hand, and maybe they also think he can heal the sick and raise the dead. Obama has created a personality cult, or perhaps it may have been created for him by the real powers behind his campaign. (George Soros and the Daley political machine come to mind.)

    I don’t believe in a literal Antichrist, and I don’t think Obama has what it takes to be Nicolae Carpathia from the “Left Behind” series. I do equate him to Puzzle the Donkey from C.S. Lewis’ “The Last Battle,” in which a foolish donkey is persuaded to impersonate Aslan, the Jesus-like lion whom all Narnians revere. Obama is not the real villain, he is just a front for them.

  2. From http://www.twoagespilgrims.com/doctrine/?p=349
    “Antichrist: Is it Obama… or Barney?”

    Throughout church history, Christians, no thanks to mostly premillennial dispensationalists, have speculated who this Antichrist might be: Nero, the Roman Pope, Islam, Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler, JFK, Anwar el-Sadat, Henry Kissinger, Juan Carlos of Spain, Ronald Wilson Reagan (6 letters in 3 names), Mikhail Gorbachev (has an uncanny birthmark on his forehead), Bill Gates, and most recently, Saddam Hussein. Like the heretic Montanus who predicted Christ’s return about 150 A.D., today’s dispensationalist false prophets who speculate about the identity of the Antichrist, such as Lindsey, Lahaye, Hunt, Kirban, Whisenant, etc., are also habitual date-setters.

  3. I think that the bible saids it clearly. Why would people even think about voting for him if the description in the bible clearly tells about him. I think Mccain would be a wonderful president and work hard to make this country better. He has been in wars, and even taken by the enemy for 5 years. He could of left by the third year but didnt because he wouldnt leave his fellow army members. Thats the man we need!

  4. The comments about Obama being the anti-Christ have been debunked many times.

    Obama is not the anti-Christ. Political operatives in the Republican Party are cynically and callously using this talk as a way to get more people to vote for McCain.

    If you want to vote for McCain, fine. By don’t do so as a result of being duped by the politicians.

  5. I am not going to make an absolute defenitive assumption toward Obama. That would be wrong to do and also unfair. However, some of Obama’s policies are questionable. It also seems strange that people are in such a daze over him for no apparent
    reason. If he had great accomplishments behind him you might be
    able to understand the excitement, loyalty, and trust a little bit better, but his resume is thin, he is basically new on the political scene and people are in a trance over him which is abnormal behavior and makes you wonder. Whenever a question that is worth of asking about Obama comes to our attention people just ignore the facts and continue with this strange behavior toward him. Its like they are blind to the facts. Its creepy to say the least. I won’t make any accusations as of yet, I can only say that I am aware of what is going on around me and time will tell the story. Thankfully, I am far from obsessed with Obama and did not vote for him for many reasons which I felt were vitally important.

  6. In times such as we are now living and when the bible has been so accurate in predicting events that have brought us where we are today, it is understandable that people might get the vibrations toward Obama that they do and begin to make the assessments that they do. This however, does not necessarily mean that that Obama is the antichrist that is due to rise to power about this time. His popularity is not normal and he does have many qualities that might leave the impression of the antichrist. However, at this time nobodoy can predict that as a fact. Its important to not to let your guard down and keep your eyes wide open, but also remember to keep an open mind, because if you are looking in the wrong direction he may appear on the scene and you won’t recognize him. My suggestion is not to accuse but to watch. The antichrist will come, but he may also come when people are looking elsewhere.

  7. It is true that Obama seems to be a candidate for the antichrist. This is because of the behavior toward him that many people have taken. People act toward him as if he were a savior instead of an ordinary, inexperienced man who had the abiility to convince people he should be president. In addition he has set extremely high expectations in order to get people to vote for him. I am not sure Obama even believes he will be able to solve all the problems he is facing. He wanted to be president very badly and because of his inexperienced he knew he needed a drastic strategy that most candidates for president would not have to resort to. Lets wait and see if his actions are prophecy related then we will know for sure who he is.

  8. Not that I’m impressed a lot, but this is more than I expected for when I stumpled upon a link on SU telling that the info is awesome. Thanks.

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