Newsweek reports on the far edge of religion where fear and racism combine to accuse the President-elect of being the anti-christ. This rhetoric supports those who would make threats to the family and office of the President. This activity is hopefully under close scrutiny by hate-watch groups and the Secret Service.
On Nov. 5, Todd Strandberg was at his desk, fielding E-mails from around the world. As the editor and founder of RaptureReady.com, his job is to track current events and link them to biblical prophecy in hopes of maintaining his status as “the eBay of prophecy,” the best source online for predictions and calculations concerning the end of the world. Already Barack Obama had drawn the attention of apocalypse watchers after an anonymous e-mail circulated among conservative Christians in October implying that he was the Antichrist. Former “Saturday Night Live” ingénue Victoria Jackson fueled the fire when, according to news reports, she wrote on her Web site that Obama “bears traits that resemble the anti-Christ.” Now Strandberg was receiving up-to-the-minute news from his constituents in Illinois. One of the winning lottery numbers in the president-elect’s home state was 666— which, as everyone knows, is the sign of the Beast (also known as the Antichrist). “It is very eerie, and I take it for a sign as to who he really is,” wrote one of Strandberg’s correspondents.
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According to a 2006 study by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, a third of white evangelicals believe the world will end in their lifetimes. These mostly conservative Christians believe a great battle is imminent. After years of tribulation—natural disasters, other cataclysms (such as the collapse of financial markets)—God’s armies will vanquish armies led by the Antichrist himself. He will be a sweet-talking world leader who gathers governments and economies under his command to further his own evil agenda. In this world view, “the spread of secular progressive ideas is a prelude to the enslavement of mankind,” explains Richard Landes, former director of the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University.
No wonder, then, that Obama triggers such fear in the hearts of America’s millennialist Christians. Mat Staver, dean of Liberty University’s law school, says he does not believe Obama is the Antichrist, but he can see how others might. Obama’s own use of religious rhetoric belies his liberal positions on abortion and traditional marriage, Staver says, positions that “religious conservatives believe will threaten their freedom.” The people who believe Obama is the Antichrist are perhaps jumping to conclusions, but they’re not nuts: “They are expressing a concern and a fear that is widely shared,” Staver says.
Maybe they are not nuts – but in need of watching.
Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch, and PRA, Political Research Associates, are groups that keeps an eye on these groups and activities encouraged by them.
President-elect Obama has had a sharp increase in death threats since his election as reported on MSNBC
Googling the words anti-christ and the president-elect shows the seriousness of this movement.