Does the Bible really say that? Excerpt from my book, 29

[Continuing a discussion of End Times.]

Sometimes people try to identify the Antichrist. Hitler and Stalin were put forth as candidates years ago. One or more of the Popes also have been, at various times. Here’s a recent example, copied from a mass e-mail received during the 2008 Presidential campaign. Its purpose was to imply that Barack Obama was the Antichrist:

How long is the beast allowed to have authority in Revelations?

Revelations Chapter 13 tells us it is 42 months, and you know what that is. Almost a four-year term of a Presidency.

All I can say is "Lord, Have mercy on us!"

According to The Book of Revelations the anti-Christ is:
The anti-Christ will be a man, in his 40’s, of MUSLIM descent, who will deceive the nations with persuasive language, and have a MASSIVE Christ-like appeal....the prophecy says that people will flock to him and he will promise false hope and world peace, and when he is in power, will destroy everything.

I should point out something that Revelation says:

Revelation 22:18 I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book, if anyone adds to them, may God add to him the plagues which are written in this book. 19 If anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, may God take away his part from the tree of life, and out of the holy city, which are written in this book.

Now, back to the e-mail. Here’s the passage referred to:

Revelation 13:1 Then I stood on the sand of the sea. I saw a beast coming up out of the sea, having ten horns and seven heads. On his horns were ten crowns, and on his heads, blasphemous names. 2 The beast which I saw was like a leopard, and his feet were like those of a bear, and his mouth like the mouth of a lion. The dragon gave him his power, his throne, and great authority. 3 One of his heads looked like it had been wounded fatally. His fatal wound was healed, and the whole earth marveled at the beast. 4 They worshiped the dragon, because he gave his authority to the beast, and they worshiped the beast, saying, “Who is like the beast? Who is able to make war with him?” 5 A mouth speaking great things and blasphemy was given to him. Authority to make war for forty-two months was given to him.

11 I saw another beast coming up out of the earth. He had two horns like a lamb, and he spoke like a dragon. 12 He exercises all the authority of the first beast in his presence. He makes the earth and those who dwell in it to worship the first beast, whose fatal wound was healed. 13 He performs great signs, even making fire come down out of the sky to the earth in the sight of people. 14 He deceives my own people who dwell on the earth because of the signs he was granted to do in front of the beast; saying to those who dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast who had the sword wound and lived.

Revelation 13 refers to a “beast,” and the Antichrist is not mentioned. Forty-two months is almost the term of a Presidency. But so are 39 months, and 45 months. So what? As to Revelation saying that the Antichrist will be of Muslim descent, John didn’t say that. He couldn’t have, as there were no Muslims at the time John wrote Revelation. Nothing in Revelation tells us how old anyone is, or will be. Mr. Obama did have some powers of persuasion, or he wouldn’t have been the nominee of his party, but so do a lot of other people. He probably wishes that his powers were stronger than they are. (Actually, Revelation 13 doesn’t mention powers of persuasion, just power.) Some people think that Mr. Obama is a deceiver, and a destroyer. Perhaps. He has his faults, and I have no wish to defend them, or point them out, in this space, but to claim that he, or any other prominent person, is the Antichrist is a real stretch. Whoever wrote this e-mail should have been much more afraid of having violated John’s command not to add to the Book of Revelation than he or she should have feared for the election of President Obama.

With the advantage of hindsight, we can now say that Mr. Obama served as President for more than forty-two months!

It is as foolish to claim someone is the Antichrist as it is foolish to predict a date for Christ to return.

The above is an excerpt from my recently published e-book, Does the Bible Really Say That?, which may be obtained free of charge, or purchased from Amazon for $0.99, which is the lowest price Amazon lets an author set. Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain.

The previous post in this series is here. God willing, the next post in this series will continue a discussion of this topic, prophecy. Thanks for reading.

The US Presidential campaigns on Global Climate Change

I have examined the "Issues" pages of the Obama and Romney campaign web sites, to see what they say about global climate change.

I found no evidence that Governor Romney's campaign site so much as mentions global climate change. The Issues page of that site does include a link to an Energy page, which is here. However, lest I mis-characterize Mr. Romney on the subject, I quote my own blog, from July 1 of this year: ". . . Republican Presidential candidates Mitt Romney and John Huntsman believe that the climate is changing globally, and that humans are influencing that." At that time, when the Republican candidates for President were interested in support from my state, South Carolina (There was a debate between them in South Carolina) the state's most widely circulated newspaper had an article which was my source. That article is no longer available, as far as I can determine. I don't know if Romney still holds to that view. He has changed his views on several issues, apparently. The other Republican candidates for President, at that time, did not agree with Romney and Huntsman, but Romney is the candidate.

President Obama's campaign site also has an Energy page, under Issues, which is here. The only mention of climate change is a graphic, which says "climate change is not a hoax."

In case you didn't know it, there are some people who believe that "Global warming is the liberal hoax that the world is becoming dangerously warmer . . ." 

Both major party candidates said more about global climate change, leading up to the 2008 election, than either of the candidates are saying this time.

The Green Party, as would be expected, has a lot more to say about the subject than the two major parties.

Thanks for reading.

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Added on October 19, 2012: Shell, Chevron, and BP all state that there is such a thing as Global Climate Change, and that using fossil fuels contributes to this. So does Exxon Mobil.

Passing on political rumors can be a sin

I don't know which presidential candidate I'm going to vote for. I'm sure that neither Obama nor McCain are going to bring the promised land to the US, much less to the world.

Whatever their flaws, such as Obama's inexperience and McCain's ignorance of the economy, they deserve to be treated fairly in this election. Unfortunately, they haven't always been. There seems to be fairly general agreement among the press that they treated Hilary Clinton unfairly because she is a woman, and that may have contributed to her loss to Obama.

I can't do much about the press, but I can try to do something about another type of unfairness. I am all-too-often getting e-mails from (I hope) well-meaning people who pass on various lies about Mr. Obama. There are probably similar lies being circulated about McCain, but so far, I haven't received any. (Here's a Slate article about some of those lies, about Obama, and John Edwards.)

Here's a response, in advance, to some of these messages:

I checked some of the material you sent, and, according to snopes.com, a widely recognized rumor-checking source, the statements in the e-mail you forwarded to me are mostly or entirely a fabrication. This is not the first time that it will happen, but it shouldn't. I recall the Internet circulated claim, before the 2000 election, that Al Gore didn't know John 3:16. Gore had been a lifelong Southern Baptist , and had written a book that was enough related to Christianity that Christianity Today interviewed Gore a couple of years before the election. I don't believe that interview is available on the Internet, but I read the article myself, in Christianity Today. There was also a false claim, in the same election year cycle, that John McCain had an illegitimate black child. This rumor was widely circulated in South Carolina, and apparently contributed to McCain's loss in the primary here that year -- he might have been the Republican candidate for President, rather than Bush, if he had won in SC.

Both candidates have their weaknesses, and neither of them is going to bring us the millennium on earth. Both of them deserve to be fairly heard. Whoever starts these rumors is guilty of a sin that the New Testament condemns in at least four places, namely slander. Whoever passes them on may be equally guilty. (Matthew 15:19, Ephesians 4:31, Colossians 3:8, 2 Peter 2:1 ) I don't want to be guilty of slander by passing on such material.
I'm not sure I've got the courage to send this, rather than just deleting the e-mail. We'll see.
Thanks for reading!

August 3, 2012

I'll leave the above as is, but, if I were writing it today, I would have made some reference to Mr. Romney, and also mentioned Facebook as a common medium for passing on political slander and libel.

Thanks for reading! Pass it on. 

Ben Witherington on Barack Obama

Ben Witherington, a conservative Christian scholar (see also here) has, says his web page, ". . . been seen on the History Channel, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, The Discovery Channel, A&E, and the PAX Network."

Witherington has weighed in on the claims that Barack Obama, Democratic candidate for President, is a closet Muslim, with the implication that he may even be a terrorist, I guess. (If you are interested in seeing the charges raised against Obama, see my previous post.)

Basically, he says that Obama should be given the benefit of the doubt, and thinks that some right-wing and/or Christian organizations have been on a witch-hunt over this. Those of us who claim the name of Christ should be ashamed of such behavior. His blog post (see first link in the previous paragraph) indicates that Witherington has been on the Fox TV network, too.

Witherington has more to say, all good, as far as I am concerned, and he responds to a number of comments.

I didn't intend to get back into politics so soon, but a commenter guided me to Witherington's post, and I changed my mind.

Thanks for reading.

Barack Obama, Muslim?

Two good people -- Christians, church-goers, people I want praying for me -- have forwarded me an e-mail message which claims that Barack Hussein Obama, Democratic candidate for President of the U. S., is a Muslim in disguise, with the underlying implication that no Muslim is fit to be President. This message, and others I've heard about, but not received, even imply that any one named Hussein, or with a name that close to Osama, must be a terrorist.

I have checked this with the usually reliable Urban Legends Reference pages, (the previous link quotes one version of the e-mail) and they conclude that this message is, at best, a serious distortion. (Added Jan 24, 2006: CNN has investigated the charge that Obama attended a radical Muslim school in Indonesia, and found it to be false.)

People who run for office should be evaluated on their fitness for the office, their character, and their stands on the issues. Their religious beliefs make up part of their character, to be sure.

I remember the election season of 2006 with dread. We do watch TV some, and network TV was full of ads (That's hardly news -- that's the purpose of network TV). Way too many of the ads were political. They made wild claims about what their candidates had done for us while in office, which is bad enough, but more often made outrageous claims about why opposing candidates were not fit for office. In many cases, if the implications of these claims were true, the opponent should have been in jail. Generally, there was no way suggested to check either sort of claim, and the TV news, nor the newspapers, usually gave much help, either.

We have, so far, a black man with some Muslim background, a woman, a man with Hispanic ancestry, a Mormon, and many others running for President of the U. S. (We also have a man whose last name is very close to "brownbag," and another with an Italian name. Isn't the mafia an Italian organization?) I am sure that all of these have some qualifications that would make them good Presidents. I am also sure that they all have some weaknesses in their qualifications, and that none of them would be a perfect President, if elected. Mr. Obama, and the Mormon, Mitt Romney, for instance, don't seem to have any significant experience in foreign relations. (George W. Bush didn't have a lot, either, when he became President.) It is possible that there are dangers in electing a Mormon as President. (There were fears that John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic President, would somehow transform the White House into a branch of the Vatican, when he ran for President. It didn't happen.)

It is said that Obama joined a Christian church a number of years ago because he knew that it would enhance his chances of election to office. Well, maybe. If so, he wouldn't be the first person who has exploited religious affiliation to political advantage. (For example, Richard M. Nixon used religious conservatives to his advantage. It is doubtful if he was, at heart, one of them.)

The real problem, it seems to me, is that many people, including good people, are prejudiced against anyone who is not "like them," because of their race, or their name, or their religious background, and will vote accordingly. Others are prejudiced against having any woman in the office of President. (We currently have females who are two and three heartbeats from the Presidency, should something happen to Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney.) I probably have some unacknowledged prejudices myself. I shouldn't. I should be voting on a person's qualifications for an office, including their character and their positions on the issues, regardless of sex, ancestry, or religion. That includes Mr. Obama. He sounds good, so far. He says that he wants to bring us together. I hope somebody does.

While we're talking about politics, let's don't forget that I am running for President of the U. S. I have one plank in my platform.

Thanks for reading.

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Added, Jan 27, 2007. A commenter below suggested a post by Ben Witherington on the same subject. Mr. Witherington is a noted conservative Christian commentator, and, indeed, had some important things to say about the attack on Mr. Obama, and on other things. Here is a link to his post.