Enough Already: Our Next President and the Book of Revelation

Last updated on: November 5, 2008 at 8:47 am by James F. McGrath

Enough Already: Our Next President and the Book of Revelation 2008-11-05T08:47:00-05:00 James F. McGrath

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I thought that perhaps after the election, the number of visitors to my blog who arrive here via search engines, searching for keywords like “Obama” and “Revelation 13” and “antichrist” would decrease and eventually stop. At the moment, it seems that there is, if anything, an increase.

If you’re interested in the Book of Revelation, you need to understand that it is first and foremost a critique of the Roman Empire in the author’s time. It uses Gematria to indicate the emperor Nero (and perhaps allude simultaneously to Gaius, also known as Caligula). Nero, as is well know, was the first emperor to actually become an “official sponsor” of the persecution of Christians. The book is unambiguous about that, and the only reason many American Christians cannot accept it is because of our sense of self-importance – that book has to be about us.

I’m not against applying the book to our time. But the greatest resemblance is between our nation’s wealth and arrogance and the depiction of the Roman Empire in Revelation 18. And we’ve just elected as our next president a Christian who gets something that is a blind spot for at least some American Christians: democracy and freedom are good for Christianity, and issues of poverty and social justice are key concerns in the Biblical literature.

Is Barack Obama the antichrist? I am willing to say with complete confidence that the answer is no. What Christians should be doing now, whether they voted for Obama or not, is to support him in making our nation seem less like the empire criticized in the Book of Revelation, and more like the place of freedom, liberty and justice that we claim to want to be as a nation.

If you need more information, you are welcome to do a keyword search on “Obama” on this blog. I’ve posted a lot more on this subject.

One last point. A lot of people are searching the web for information about Barack Obama, Revelations, Muslim, Islam and the like. Muhammad lived in the 600s. Revelation was written sometime before the year 100. There are (perhaps not unsurprisingly) no obvious references to or even predictions of the rise of Islam or anything to do with Islam.

Why not take this opportunity to read an actual book by a Biblical scholar (which is not the category into which Tim LaHaye is to be placed) about the Book of Revelation, and see what you’ve been missing by allowing idle speculation on the web be your guide, rather than the well-informed research of Biblical scholars from whatever denomination or stream of Christianity you may be connected with. And in the mean time, please join in the celebration of something historic and positive that has occurred in this country.

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