Birther Pastor: Obama Is The Anti-Christ And Is Mentioned By Name In The Bible

The Book of Revelation: Chapter 13

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation+13&version=NIV

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Alan: The Book of Revelation (which I knew in my youth as "The Apocalypse") is an impossibly complex writing, full of ancient Jewish numerology and horrible images seemingly rooted in the destruction of Jerusalem - most shockingly, the one and only Temple - by Rome's army of occupation in 70 A.D. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_jerusalem#Destruction_of_Jerusalem

In a personal communication, University of Notre Dame theologian, Fr. Michael Baxter, said that the destruction of The Temple dis-integrated the Jewish psyche far more than the destruction of the Twin Towers undid the American psyche. If this view is correct, the Book of Revelation uses the destruction of The Temple as a springboard for exploring ways of resistance, endurance and fidelity in the face of a world that has completely disintegrated around one.

Without taking sides, I will say that any attempt to impute one specific interpretation as the definitive interpretation is a fool's errand whose outcome is to make fools of self-certain interpreters. 

Consider the final verse of Chapter 13 which reads: "This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. That number is 666."

I think it likely that the number 666 is a gnostic interpolation (of which there are many in the New Testament) whose presumed esoteric meaning means nothing, and that any fixated attempt to make its "meaning" central to one's worldview will lead to delusional thinking that diminishes the actual meaning in one's life. 

Here is an illustration of "the displacement of substantive meaning" by the blindness of religious mania - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ths-TAqD8mM

I encourage readers to browse Wikipedia's entry on the Book of Revelation to glimpse the extraordinarily wide range of interpretations that have crystalized around the text and how this proliferating thicket of proposed meanings cannot be reduced to any definitive order. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_revelation

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A birther minister who gained Internet notoriety for his claim that the Bible foretold Barack Obama as the anti-Christ says he doesn’t deserve the mockery.

Carl Gallups advanced the theory, based on Aramaic translations of biblical texts, that Jesus spoke the current president’s name when he prophesized in Luke 10:18 that he “saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.”

According to the theory, which Gallups says he did not develop but promoted, the Aramaic translation of that passage would be: “I beheld Satan as baraq u-bama.”

But Gallups insisted during an appearance Monday on the nationally syndicated Dr. Laurie Roth Show that he had never claimed that Obama was the anti-Christ.

“I’ll tell you what Obama is,” Gallups told Roth. “He is an anti-Christ, he is a depiction of some of the characteristics of the anti-Christ who is to come. It could be in the future that we’ll discover he fits all of them, or it could be someone else. But I’m telling you there are many characteristics that he displays.”

It would appear that he’s given those characteristics a bit of thought, because he launched into a lengthy description of the biblical figure that closely matches some of the most feverish characterizations of the president.

“Satan coming to the earth in the form of humanity, many Bible scholars have, of course, equated that with an anti-Christ figure or Satan indwelling a man in the last days who’s given this, these supernatural powers of deceiving the world and everything he says is a lie but people believe it and truth is thrown to the ground,” Gallups says, pausing for breath. “The scripture tells us that he causes astounding devastation wherever he goes and attacks Christians and Jews in the final days and actually brings down all manner of tribulation. Yeah, the anti-Christ.”

Earlier in the program, Gallups suggested that the Affordable Care Act had proven his and Roth’s prior warnings about Obama’s destructive nature because it would ultimately destroy the Democratic Party along with public health.

“We’re not lying to you, we’re not tricking you,” Gallups said with a chuckle. “This man is evil. He’s surrounded by evil people, he has evil designs for this nation, and again, we were called racists and conspiracy theorists and tinfoil hat (wearers).”

But he said more Americans had started to agree with his dire warnings now that as many as 100 million people had suffered under Obamacare, although Gallups warned that he was still subject to unfair attacks for his beliefs.

“There are people who are, especially those who are in the tank for Obama and those that want to lampoon anything a Christian says, who have jumped all over this,” Gallups said.

But he said those critics were wrong, because Obama’s not the only president he’s speculated could be the anti-Christ.

Gallups said he previously wondered in sermons and during Bible study sessions whether former president George W. Bush could be Satan in human form, although those speculations weren’t dispersed across the Internet.

“The Bible says there will be an anti-Christ, right?” Gallups said. “So one day, in some generation, there is going to be an anti-Christ. The Bible also says that we are to be watchful, we are to be mindful, we are to know the season in which we live, so it’s my job (to speculate), and I don’t care if people like it or not, Dr. Laurie.”

Watch this video posted online by Paul Simmons: