The Rev. Robert Jeffress, the Southern Baptist pastor of a Dallas church of 11,000 people, is coming out with a book that claims President Barack Obama is clearing the way for the Antichrist. Photo by David Edmonson, courtesy of First Baptist Church, Dallas.
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(RNS) Already no stranger to controversy, the Rev. Robert Jeffress, a Dallas megachurch pastor, is coming out with a book that claims President Barack Obama is clearing the way for the Antichrist.
Jeffress, head of the 11,000-member First Baptist Church of Dallas, writes in his book “Perfect Ending” that he does not believe Obama is the Antichrist, yet he links Obama’s support of gay marriage to the coming of the Antichrist. Many Christians believe Jesus’ Second Coming will feature a confrontation with an enemy called the Antichrist, based on interpretation of passages 1 John and 2 John.
“For the first time in history a president of our country has openly proposed altering one of society’s (not to mention God’s) most fundamental laws: that marriage should be between a man and a woman,” Jeffress writes, according to an advance copy provided to RNS.
- READ: How the Antichrist reflects an era’s anxieties (RNS)
“While I am not suggesting that President Obama is the Antichrist, the fact that he was able to propose such a sweeping change in God’s law and still win reelection by a comfortable margin illustrates how a future world leader will be able to oppose God’s laws without any repercussions.”
Jeffress said on Wednesday (Jan. 8) that he’s particularly concerned with issues such as the current battle over whether organizations will have to provide free contraception to employees.
“I’m not saying the president is an evil man who’s trying to destroy our society, but Americans are willingly giving up their freedom for what they’re told is a greater good,” he said. “A future world dictator will assume power under the guise of the greater good of the world.”
Jeffress said whether it’s the National Security Agency’s surveillance on American phone calls or the implementation of Obamacare, he sees a gradual encroachment on Americans’ freedom.
“How it can be that this leader is able to usurp freedom of speech with little or no opposition?” he said. “People will be conditioned to surrender personal rights for the so-called greater good.”
Last year, Pat Robertson said on the Christian Broadcasting Network that Islam is the Antichrist, and he has linked security cameras to the end times and “the mark of the beast.” Christians have interpreted Revelation 13:16-18 to mean that there will be a marking of humans, or a “mark of the beast.”
Pointing to the idea of the Antichrist has not been uncommon for so-called “dispensationalists,” who understand God to work in a series of “dispensations,” or periods in history. In the 1960s and 1970s, dispensationalists “had a field day identifying who was the Antichrist,” said Scot McKnight, a New Testament scholar at Northern Seminary in Lombard, Ill.
“Mercy, when I was in college, the dispensationalists were doing this all the time: Henry Kissinger, etc., were all identified as the Antichrist. Gorbachev was one, especially with that funny birthmark (of the supposed beast) on his head,” McKnight said. “People today have stopped identifying the beast and the Antichrist because the former generation was completely wrong, obviously.”
A dispensationalist, Jeffress says what happens in the future should impact what Christians do today.
“It is foolish to try to identify the Antichrist, but what we can do is see how what is happening now is paving the way for what may come in 10 years or may come in 1,000 years,” he said.
In his book, Jeffress makes his case that Christians should study prophecy more closely. “Evangelist Billy Graham once observed that ‘the most neglected teaching in the church today is the second coming of Jesus Christ,’” he said.
Though he never lived in Dallas, Graham was a longtime member of First Baptist Dallas before he switched memberships in 2008 to a church closer to his home in North Carolina. Graham joined First Baptist Dallas during his first Dallas crusade in 1953. At the time, the Rev. W.A. Criswell led the church, considered by many to be the pre-eminent church in the Southern Baptist Convention, according to The Dallas Morning News. Jeffress has been senior pastor of the church since 2007.
The outspoken Jeffress has made controversial claims about Mormons, Muslims, Jews, Catholics and gays and lesbians in the past. He ignited a controversy at a summit hosted by the Family Research Council when he introduced Texas Gov. Rick Perry by calling Mormonism a “cult,” referencing the faith of Perry’s opponent for the Republican presidential nomination, Mitt Romney, before the 2012 election.
In a sermon at First Baptist ahead of the 2012 election, Jeffress urged people not to vote for Obama, saying that the president was making it “relatively easy for the Antichrist to take over.”
Jeffress wasn’t claiming that Obama is the Antichrist, and said he was not questioning the president’s faith. “But what I am saying is this: the course he is choosing to lead our nation is paving the way for the future reign of the Antichrist.”
Last year, former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow was scheduled to speak at First Baptist but pulled out after the resulting controversy.
The church owns and operates a school, a college, several radio stations and Dallas Life, a mission for the homeless on the southern edge of downtown Dallas. Last year, the church completed a $135 million building campaign to renovate its downtown campus.
KRE/MG END BAILEY
The post Pastor: Obama is paving the way for the Antichrist appeared first on Religion News Service.
Its so clear that Obama is paving the way for the Anti Christ…. Obama is not a Christian… He’s a Muslim
Obama is a practicing Sunni Muslim and all his foreign policy decisions and attitude toward Israel reflect that. I believe that he is a prototype of the antichrist for all the reasons that Jeffress mentions and more. You can’t acknowledge all the lying he’s done and defend his great character. Even that identifies with Islam, which condones lying if it furthers the faith.
Identifying Mormons as a cult has not always been that controversial, only lately in our tolerance toward anything but biblical Christianity. Mormons believe in a different god, different Jesus, different basic doctrines than biblical Christianity that holds to a high view of inspiration. God is shaking out the true from the false.
Wow. It is really disturbing to me that the fact that a president’s policies go against your politics and this hack preacher wants to call him the incarnation of evil.
Even worse, YOU GUYS deny his religious identity by calling him a Muslim.
Obama lies? Name a president who doesn’t lie? It’s part of the job.
I disagree with many of Obama’s policies. I think he’s selling our nation out to the corporations and banks (not the Muslims, that’s just stupid). But this doesn’t mean that he’s any different than any other president in history. ALL presidents do shitty things.
But here’s the thing that different with you right wing WHITE Christians: There is no other president in history who you have hated more, because you just can’t accept that, like him or not he’s YOUR PRESIDENT. He’ll always be “the other” in your book, and this jingoistic evil preacher is telling you exactly what you want to hear: fear, hate and superstition.
This is how religion controls your mind: It teaching you to hate and fear the wrong things.
Paul S., first off, please don’t lump me in with the first two commenters. 🙂
I am a Christian, but I do not believe that President Obama, (and I do believe we should all give him the respect of his title when we refer to him) is making way for the antichrist. My Christian beliefs have much more to do with how I live my life rather than my telling others how to live theirs, or even worse, trying to predict a future that only God knows. I agree that at least part of the furor over Pres. Obama’s election stems from racial prejudice, and as we all know, true understanding of the positive or negative outcomes of a presidency will not be known for decades to come.
I wish Christians spent more of their time reflecting on their faith and how it affects their behavior and actions in the world. I believe that was the central message of Jesus’ teaching.
There you go Paul Susac bringing up race again…. You White Liberal… See what I did there?… When someone does not agree with a person from a different race he’s lumped in as a racist…. that trick is so old… Paul you might want to find a new one that isn’t so obvious ..