Obama not the anti-Christ

White House shooting suspect to be held for trial

WASHINGTON (AP) – A man accused of trying to kill President Obama by firing several shots at the White House from long range will remain in detention pending trial.

U.S. Magistrate Judge John Facciola said at a hearing Monday that 21-year-old Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez is a “particularly dangerous individual.” He said Ortega must be detained to ensure the safety of the public and the president.

Obama and his wife, Michelle, were out of town on the evening of Nov. 11 when authorities say Ortega used an assault rifle with a scope attached to fire up to a dozen shots at the White House.

Ortega’s public defender argued Monday that the government has failed to establish that Ortega was the shooter or that the president was the target.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2011-12-19/white-house-shooting/52072246/1?loc=interstitialskip/a>

On December 21st, on a Coast to Coast broadcast, during the John Hogue segment, a caller compared the president to the anti-Christ. This belief is not only ludicrous and stupid, it is empty of any meaning. Despite the fact many Americans see the president as a socialist or worse, if any American president were hostile to Christ, that would be George Bush. Not only did he start a war that did not enhance America’s strength or security, Dubya believed it was necessary to thwart Gog and Magog (Sadaam Hussein), the eschatological enemy of Israel.

In the fourth century, the Goths represented Gog and Magog to St. Ambrose. When the Mongols swept unchecked into Eastern Europe and reached Vienna in 1241, it was thought that their name derived from Magog. In the sixteenth century, it was the turn of the Turks to play that role in the End Times. After the defeat of the Turkish fleet at Lepanto in 1571, Christendom was relieved, and saved.

God does not share wisdom with fools – neo-COINs.

The term anti-christ appears in the Epistles of John: I Jn. 2:18, 2:22, 4:3. “Many deceivers have gone forth into the world, persons not confessing Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist.” II Jn. 7. The author of these letters, or the school of thought, implies that a group of individuals who dissented from orthodox Christology in the province of Asia rather than a single person who personifies evil.

After Nero’s suicide in AD 68, there was a widespread belief, especially in the eastern provinces, that he was not dead and somehow would return (Suetonius, LVII; Tacitus, Histories II.8; Dio, LXVI.19.3). Suetonius (XL) relates how court astrologers had predicted Nero’s fall but that he would have power in the east. And, indeed, at least three false claimants did present themselves as Nero redivivus (resurrected). The first, who sang and played the cithara or lyre and whose face was similar to that of the dead emperor, appeared the next year but, after persuading some to recognize him, was captured and executed (Tacitus, II.8). Sometime during the reign of Titus (AD 79-81) there was another impostor who appeared in Asia and also sang to the accompaniment of the lyre and looked like Nero but he, too, was exposed (Dio, LXVI.19.3). Twenty years after Nero’s death, during the reign of Domitian, there was a third pretender. Supported by the Parthians, who hardly could be persuaded to give him up (Suetonius, LVII), the matter almost came to war (Tacitus, I.2). Such fidelity no doubt can be attributed to the magnificent reception (and restoration of Armenia) that Tiridates, the brother of the Parthian king, had received from Nero in AD 66 (Dio, LXII.1ff).

Nero had become an esachatological figure, not historical,

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/gladiators/nero.html

by the time the Book of Revelation was written during the reign of Domitian (AD 81 – AD 96).

He represented evil that could not die.

One of the Church Fathers, Hipppolytus (3rd century), believed Moses predicted “that dread judge, that son of the devil,” the anti-Christ, would be Jewish, from the tribe of Dan.

See:

www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/hippolytus-christ.html

Throughout history, numerous individuals have been identified as the anti-Christ: Martin, Luther, Mussolini, Napoleon, popes, Ronald -6- Wilson -6- Reagan -6- and William Jefferson Clinton, to name a few.

Give the letter “A” the value 100; the letter “B” 101; the letter “C” 102, and so on. Then plug those values into Hitler, and the sum is 666. Obviously, identifying Mr. 666 is not a science, though Hister would seem to be the most likely candidate to have replicated the wickedness of Nero, on an industrial scale. Nero was the original 666 character.

The end of the world industry, eschatology, can not establish precisely what will happen, according to prophecy – Rev. 20. Millenialists think Christ will establish his earthly kingdom and rule for a thousand years, to be followed by the Last Judgment. Post-millenialists believe there will be a Golden Age, followed by the return of Christ.

See:

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103530.htm

See also:

http://chiliasm.wordpress.com/2008/06/07/lactantius-on-antichrist-the-last-times/

The Book of Revelation or the Apocalypse of John, forms the basis of end times speculation, mention of the Beast, or anti-Christ and various scenarioes. Apocalypse (ἀποκάλυψις; apokálypsis) means an “unveiling”. This form of Jewish literature appeared after the time of the prophets. The Book of Daniel is the most well known apocalyptic work in the Old Testament. There are numerous examples of this type of literature such as the Apocalypse of Paul, the Apocalypse of Peter, the Book of Baruch the Book of Enoch, or I Enoch, as it is known in its Ethiopic form. Speculation in these works focused on the future of Israel, and then the Church. These writers were fond of bizarre visions and beasts to depict nations and individuals. According to these non-pneumatic visionaries, a world in rebellion to God would be judged and result in a New Age.

The Apocalypse of John, which describes itself as a prophecy, could not have been written by the Apostle John, or the Johanine school. Eusebius, the fourth century historian of the Church, preserved the commentary of Dionysius, a third century bishop from Alexandria. “The concepts, words, and syntax show two different writers. There is full harmony between the Gospel and Epistle, and they begin alike…”

Quoting the conclusion:

The style, too, shows the difference. TheGospel and Epistle are written not only in errorless Greek but in high diction, logic, and syntax. Not a barborous term, solecism, or vulgarity occurs, for their author apparently possessed, by the Lord’s grace, the gift of knowledge and the gift of speech. I will not decry that others saw revelations and received prophecy, but his style and use of Greek is inaccurate, and he uses barborous idioms and occasional solecisms. There is no need to cite these now, since I have not said this in derision – not at all – but only to prove the dissimilarity of the writings.

Ecclesiastical History 7.25

This book’s value is limited to the two chapters where heresies within the Church are described afflicting seven cities in the province of Asia. In sum, this book can not be taken seriously by any true student of the Word. In ch. 9, 200 million horsemen (twice ten thousand times ten thousand) will cross the Euphrates River to slaughter a third of mankind. Logistically, this is impossible and more importantly, the known world is not confined to the Mediterranean ouikoumene. Or consider the dimensions of the New Jerusalem that will descend from the sky (heaven) Rev. 21:2; it will be roughly the size of Australia.

“New Jerusalem’s measurements also correlate with the size of the earth. New Jerusalem is a cube 12,000 furlongs on an edge. Smith’s Bible Dictionary says one furlong is 220 yards (660 feet). Thus 12,000 furlongs ´660 feet = 7,920,000 feet. The New American Standard translates 12,000 furlongs directly into 1,500 miles (1,500 miles´5,280 feet to a mile = 7,920,000 feet). The diameter of earth is 7,920 miles and New Jerusalem is 7,920,000 feet on each side.”

http://www.heraldmag.org/2006/06ja_9.htm

“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”
–Albert Einstein

And the seventh angel sounded; and there followed great voices in heaven, and they said, The kingdom of the world is become the kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ: and he shall reign for ever and ever. Rev. 11:15.

In the mind of Paul, the Kingdom of God is not political but Spiritual: Gal. 5:16-26.

‘Obama the Antichrist’ and end-times doctrine

Alleged presidential assassin Ortega-Hernandez reportedly called Obama ‘the Antichrist’. So who put that idea in his head?

Sarah Posner guardian.co.uk, Friday 18 November 2011 14.29 ES

Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez, a 21 year old from Idaho Falls, Idaho was charged this week with attempting to assassinate Barack Obama by firing rifle shots at the presidential residence at the White House. The president, Ortega-Hernandez reportedly maintained, is the Antichrist.

Whatever Ortega-Hernandez’s actual motive or mental health, and regardless of whether he truly believes the president is the pivotal figure in an apocalyptic end-times scenario, the idea that Obama might be the Antichrist (or that President Clinton before him, or any unnamed president of the European Union) is a durable one in the evangelical imagination. As the historian Matthew Avery Sutton has noted, such apocalyptism “was fringe among conservatives 150 years ago” but “is now mainstream. It’s just the air they breathe.”

The Antichrist, as depicted in the end-times imaginings of prominent American evangelists, is the demonic figure who deceives the world with false promises of peace, but instead, installs a “one-world government”, “one-world economy”, and a “one-world religion“, captivating the planets’ inhabitants before Jesus returns with the Truth and vanquishes the Antichrist at Armageddon.

That, in turn, has fuelled a dizzying parade of conspiracy theories. Might the Antichrist be gay? Jewish? European? The instigator of peace between the Israelis and Palestinians? A Georgia man has even sued his employer over its firing of him for refusing to wear a sticker that showed his factory had been accident-free for 666 days, because that number is the mark of the Antichrist. In the apocalyptic imagination, the Antichrist is a deceiver, so who knows?

Left Behind author and end-times entrepreneur Tim LaHaye said in 2008 there’s no evidence in the Bible that the Antichrist is American, so it couldn’t be Obama. Imagine how LaHaye’s 2008 statement was construed by Armageddon seers who insist Obama isn’t a real American, particularly since they believe the Antichrist is a deceiver.

The American televangelist John Hagee, who believes that military intervention against Iran’s nuclear ambitions is foretold in the Bible as part of the sequence of events that will culminate in the Second Coming, has taken his own guesses at the identity of the Antichrist. In his 2006 book Jerusalem Countdown, he writes “one need only be a casual observer of current events” to see the one-world government, economy, and religion “are coming into reality.” He concludes that the “demonic world leader” consolidating such control is the head of the European Union.

But the suggestion that Obama might be the Antichrist endures. Last year, Douglas Levesque, founder of the Michigan-based Bible Nation Society, whose promotion of the King James Bible has attracted the affections of members of Congress, maintained that Obama has a high “Antichrist quotient”. At the BNS’s 2010 Bible in Culture conference, Levesque observed that despite God’s “purposeful ambiguity” in describing the Antichrist, one could nonetheless determine a person’s “Antichrist Quotient”. Obama, said Levesque, “twist[s] the word of God”. The presidential motorcade is called “the Beast”. Barack “means thunder and lightning”.

But most damning in Levesque’s view, Obama “has a mouth speaking great lying things”. That’s straight out of the Book of Revelation, in which the Antichrist is described as a great blasphemous beast who rose out of the sea with seven heads, ten horns and ten crowns. The beast was given power and authority by a dragon, who also gave him “a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies”, according to Levesque’s favored King James translation.

Some believers in the Obama-as-Antichrist theory have a less concrete understanding of what the Bible has to say on the matter. Behold this video I took of a couple at Glenn Beck’s seminal 12 September 2009 Tea Party rally on the National Mall, in which the man is holding a sign with a decidedly more pedestrian depiction of Obama’s satanic leanings (mere horns rather than seven heads and so forth). Indeed, this man’s companion could not cite chapter and verse, but insisted, nonetheless, that the Bible tells us that Obama is the Antichrist:

We don’t know yet exactly which apocalyptic brew Ortega-Hernandez was imbibing. But tasting it to guess whether the Antichrist is a human dwelling among us is more than a harmless parlour game.

Almondjoy
18 November 2011 07:38PM
In the 1980′s the antichrist was supposed to be the Ayatollah Komenei. Maybe its not an actual parlor game, but just a ceremonial post with a stipend, like the Nobel Peace Prize. Wow that would goive Obama the exacta.

NeverMindTheBollocks
18 November 2011 07:47PM
I think we get the point here.
This CIFer doesn’t like evangelists and is using this potentially fatal event to express her dislike of evangelists.
But there are many other people that can be blamed using this same reasoning.
The founding fathers of the US for creating a political system with a president (why didn’t he try to shoot the clerk at the local gas station? Although in that case, clearly it would have been the fault of “Big Oil”)
The NRA for their promotion of gun ownership and use in the US.
John for writing the Book of Revelations and introducing these concepts.

…
The list of people who *could* be blamed goes on and on.

treefrog123
18 November 2011 07:48PM
if the antichrist is a deceiver then surely he/she is a republican?

HarshTruth
18 November 2011 07:48PM
On the Irish side of the spectrum, we’ve also had our resident loud-mouth, Dr. Paisley, claiming that the pope has been the anti-christ (though given the actions of the current one, he’s certainly not holier than I or thou).
I think our friend Forrest Gump said it best though; Stupid is as stupid does…

Mercurey
18 November 2011 07:50PM
Why anyone would wish to attack him, when he is doing such a magnificent job of trashing his reputation is beyond me.
I think it may have more to do with access to guns and poor health service.
Two things the Americans want to keep on the insane side of the fence.

yobro
18 November 2011 07:52PM
What you say is an interesting excursion in evangelicalism’s fringe, and is valid as far as it goes. There are two things that need to be added, however. One is that paranoid schizophrenia disproportionately affects young men, and its main symptom is hearing voices telling you to do things. The second is that schizophrenics, convicted felons, minors and other people who should not have access to high-powered firearms actually do, so laughable are existing laws and enforcement (thanks, NRA). There are nutters, extremists and other dangerous folk everywhere. Here they are also heavily armed.

Bifocal
18 November 2011 07:53PM
If Obama is a pivotal figure in the end of times it will be because of his unpreparedness for the job.
He got it without being properly vetted by the media.

horemheb
18 November 2011 07:57PM
I am convinced that Obahma is not an antichrist!

Strummered
18 November 2011 07:58PM
Fox News is the antichrist and the number of the beast – These demented loons freak me out, I’m off for a pint.

PeleMcAmble
18 November 2011 07:59PM
The Rev Ian Paisley always reckoned that the Pope was the antichrist but which one I wonder?
These religious nuts are simply bonkers and the men in white coats should take them all away.

NatashaFatale
18 November 2011 07:59PM
I miss the old days, when everybody knew the antichrist was the pope. Who started this newfangled stuff, anyway?

Whitt
18 November 2011 08:03PM
If Obama is the Anti-Christ then I for one will sleep more soundly at night, secure in the knowledge that he’ll be no better at that job than he is at his current one.

brianboru1014
18 November 2011 08:07PM
Another clueless uneducated nutter with a gun in the USA.
So rare

sfgirl42
18 November 2011 08:36PM
I’m not into anti-Christs but being American disqualifies Obama? Who ever proved he’s an American? I think the antichrist is suppose to be a leader who fools and betrays his countrymen as he destroys them. Could be anyone.

LinearBandKeramik
18 November 2011 08:37PM
Okay, I’m confused. Isn’t Christ supposed to vanquish the Antichrist at the final battle?
So, if one were to believe that Obama were the Antichrist shouldn’t you leave him for Jesus to deal with when He comes again? I mean, trying to shoot him first would be interfering with God’s plan, no?

southlondonerabroad
18 November 2011 08:52PM
The nonsensical gobbledegook of Christian eschatology has over and over proved damaging to gullible or deranged individuals. The number of the beast, the antichrist, 666, so on, just a lot of demented nonsense and anybody who has made the slightest study of the NT knows that all of its writers expected the “end times’ in their own lives, They were wrong, the prophecies were false, they did not happen then, they will not happen in the future, the snake oil merchants peddling this idiocy to the credulous should be shamed into silence.

petergauhar
18 November 2011 09:00PM
Does the Bible refer to only one antichrist?
1 John 2:18: “Young children, it is the last hour, and, just as you have heard that antichrist is coming, even now there have come to be many antichrists; from which fact we gain the knowledge that it is the last hour.”
2 John 7: “Many deceivers have gone forth into the world, persons not confessing Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist.” (Notice that the “many antichrists” of
1 John 2:18 are here referred to collectively as “the antichrist.”)
Is the coming of the antichrist reserved for some future time?
1 John 4:3: “Every inspired expression that does not confess Jesus does not originate with God. Furthermore, this is the antichrist’s inspired expression which you have heard was coming, and now it is already in the world.” (That was written near the end of the first century C.E.)
1 John 2:18: “Even now there have come to be many antichrists; from which fact we gain the knowledge that it is the last hour.” (By “last hour” John evidently meant the end of the apostolic period. The other apostles had died, and John himself was very old.)

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/nov/18/obama-antichrist-end-times-doctrine

Obama not the anti-Christ