By Dan Gilgoff and Eric Marrapodi, CNN Belief Blog Co-Editors
(CNN) - On our sister blog The 1600 Report, CNN's Alex Mooney notes a discrepancy in the official White House transcript of a California fundraiser Monday night, during which a person who heckled President Barack Obama was escorted out by security.
Here's the White House transcript's account of the heckler:
AUDIENCE MEMBER: The Christian God is the only true living God, the Creator of the heavens and the universe.
But Mooney observes that the White House pool report records the heckler as being much more blunt, yelling "'Barack Obama is the Antichrist!"
The president interrupted his remarks at the fundraiser, held at Los Angeles' House of Blues, to respond to the heckler.
"First of all, I agree Jesus Christ is the Lord," Obama said. "I believe in that. I do have a question, though. I think the young man may have left his jacket... "
Ironically, the remark about Obama as the Antichrist came the same day that The New York Times ran an op-ed arguing that the Antichrist is assuming a bigger place in the public discourse, as evangelical Christian ideas about the end times gain traction.
In a piece titled "Why the Antichrist Matters in Politics," Washington State University history professor Matthew Avery Sutton argues that, for some Christians, Obama fits into ideas about the Antichrist, whose arrival is believed to be a portent of the end times and Jesus' second coming:
For some evangelicals, President Obama is troubling. The specious theories about his place of birth, his internationalist tendencies, his measured support for Israel and his Nobel Peace Prize fit their long-held expectations about the Antichrist. So does his commitment to expanding the reach of government in areas like health care.
The op-ed was the most e-mailed piece on nytimes.com for much of Tuesday.
In the 2008 campaign, Republican presidential nominee John McCain released an anti-Obama ad called "The One" that ridiculed Obama for what it said was his messiah complex. Some critics claimed the spot was a veiled attempt to paint Obama as the Antichrist, though the McCain camp denied it.
What do you think? Is there a gathering movement to paint the president as the Antichrist? Are such charges overblown attempt to discredit Obama's critics?
Read Mooney's full report here.
Look,no further than china.
adults and their fairy tales. im glad i dont make decisions based on my imaginary friend, thats called psychotic
Yes, it's so much more intelligent to believe in unstable and unproven theories, isn't it? Evolution and the 'big bang' are scientific versions of mythology.
Clay, you assume we believe the big bang as absolute truth. Wrong. Though xtians preach to their children that jesus and the god crap are fact, that is not only lying, but teaching your kids that it's OK to lie.
Get it right and stop harming kids with religious lies. Let kids be kids, PLEASE!
@Clay I'd be skeptical about Evolution too if I was dumber than an ape.
Are you saying that everyone who believes in God is psychotic?
Are you serious!
So you’re saying that great and good people like Lincoln, Mother Teresa, Fred Rogers, Gen Rober E. Lee, Michelangelo, C.S. Lewis, et. al were psychotic?
Such a comment is foolish, at best, and could even be indicative of paranoia or grandiose thinking. Either way, this is reason for concern.
Lincoln was about as skeptical about god, religion and the afterlife as you could get away with in his day. Of the rest, Fred Rogers was a little creepy, but ok. Mother Teresa had, um, issues. Robert E Lee was just the guy you needed if you were looking for someone who opposed secession but who was so over the top loyal to his state of Virginia that he led the South into one of the most unspeakably bloody wars in history, a war his military genius prolonged. Indeed, there were times when it looked like he might win the war on behalf of slavery. Our man Bob! Michaelangelo lived in a time and place where you could get burned alive for turning away from church dogma. So he did a remarkably clever job of using Christianity as a vehicle through which to sublimate his ho-mose-xuality. C.S. Lewis was a delusional fanatic, a truly reprehensible person in many ways.
how many more generations do we have to put up with the delusional believers – chritians and muslims, more specifically.
There is no christ, there then cannot be an anti-christ
Can you prove that there is no Christ? I doubt it.
There is more historical proof for Jesus Christ than you can imagine. So don't say there wasn't a Jesus Christ when you speak out of ignorance.
You don't prove imaginary things aren't real, that would be delusional. Oops., you are delusional.
@really? Name one piece of evidence that proves there was someone named Jesus who was the son of an actual God, and who had all of the powers Christians attribute to him. And don't insult our intelligence by quoting the Bible – that's like quoting "The Wizard of Oz" to prove the existence of flying monkeys.
Remember the words you just wrote.
Remember the last days and hours of Voltaire, who held similar views, until the last hours of his life; and, remember your words, when trouble and evil come and overwhelm you.
Death and the grave are before you.
Go ahead and mock, now!
Why are you so worried about proof?...Are you running scared, Clay...? JohnJacobJingleheimer Schmidt! That's my name too!
Imagine that...
Barry G.
, you are silly
There is a long history in evangelical Christianity of calling a powerful opponent to the Christian worldview "the Anti-Christ." Obama should not feel overly favored as he is in good (or perhaps bad) company.
I'm more concerned about how Joe Biden seems to resemble a large mass of fettuccine alfredo. Has anyone else noticed this? I'm worried that he might be the Anti Flying Spaghetti Monster.
just until he gets his stroganoff
I remember the left stating that Bush was the anticrist. Hitler truly was one of them. and remember he was all about blaming the Jews for the terrible conditions of the country. Heck he got the whole country to attack them.
Mary,
Think about what you wrote.
The term “anti-Christ” is found the New Testament epistle known as First John and refers to a group of former Christians, who left the church and began teaching that Jesus did not actually come in the flesh. (They seem to have held that Jesus’ body was spiritual, not fleshly and not entirely human.)
How does this apply to our President?
He never claimed that Jesus did not come in the flesh.
John refers to the individuals who, were saying that Jesus didn’t come in the flesh, as anti-Christs.
Apparently these individuals (whom John calls the anti-Christs) were also hating their brothers and sisters, much the same way you seem to be doing.
John condemned such behavior and said: How can anyone love God, who does not love their brother or sister, who, incidentally, are made in the image of God?
John and his community of faith were not only Christians, but they were also Jews; and, the Jews knew that the Ten Commandments forbid anyone from bearing false witness, as you seem to be doing.
John’s point: Jesus did take on the form of a human being, just like the rest of us, and he died as a sacrifice on the cross, experiencing all of the pain and suffering any human would experience.
John’s point was, therefore, love one another.
Yeah, all those godless liberals on the left were *really* claiming that Bush was literally the spawn of Satan. Sure.
There is a pretty big difference between someone who doesn't believe in the Anitchrist calling someone the Antichrist and some who believes it's a real thing calling someone the Antichrist. Person A is calling someone evil. Person B is saying this is fulfillment of prophecy.
It's a bit like one frustrated, unarmed person saying "I could kill that guy", and a frustrated man with gun in hand saying "I could kill that guy". Odds are you only need to worry about that second guy. Context matters. The speaker matters.
If you believe President Obama is the Anti-Christ, do the world a favor and jump off a bridge. The world has enough stupidity in it already without someone calling the president the Anti-Christ. Disagree with him all you want, but this kind of extreme thinking is more like the Taliban than anything else. The guy isn't even doing anything unprecedented, and by historical standards is a centrist..
We have real problems to solve, so how about less Revelations and more Sermon on the Mount?
Well stated!
The Nazis were a Christian organization.
That is quite true.. In fact the vatican protected hitlers prized possessions.
First of all, not all Christians are Republicans or crazy lunatics. I'm an evangelical Christian. I have a brain and it works. Second of all, I've never heard any of my evangelical friends say Obama is the Anti-Christ. Who makes up this stuff?
Alice
First of all........ I'm an evangelical Christian.
------–
This makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
Most (by far) Christian "fundamentalists" (bible is literally true} are socially ignorant....and Republican.
Did you chose your brain? No
Therefore oes Free Will exist? No
Is religion a scam to manipulate people? Yes
If you believe that jebus crisco is your lord and saviour, you are just the same: delusional, delusional, delusional.
If you haven't heard of it, you must be out of the loop then. Have you heard that god hates fa gs? How about god says it's OK to have lot's of underage wives? No? You really are out of the loop. God also indicated that it's OK to kill abortion doctors, anyone who draws pictures of mohammed, entire families when things go bad (kids especially so they don't have to live with the humiliation), and anyone who has different beliefs than you.
The emotionalized fixations around U.S. presidential politics in regards to the spiritually frowned upon, is great for the lowly allegiances who subvert the economic transitioning. Obama is but a pawn to the Globalized Secularists, plain and simplly put.
Dear Richard: What is a "globalized secularist"? Do you have any idea. Does it mean a person (in the world) who is less specific about god than you are? My. My. How erudite.
Hell visits people at night in silent black heleicopters....the axis of evil is alive and growing...
your and idiot
@Mort
You sound like the future head of a religious terrorist organization..
Whatever gets us closer to the Kingdom of Heaven is fine with me. Not sure why people want to prevent the Apocalypse, to be honest...
Not that I buy this is true.
Wydok: Take a cold shower and relax.
Did you hear about how Obama was actually aborted as a fetus by his mother? It's absolutely true. But he didn't die. The doctors don't know, but somehow, his heart would start beating again every time they tried to abort him. They finally gave up and let him live, and now this? They should have seen that one coming, I tell you.
So what is your story?
how did you survive?
I'm starting a rumor dumba ss, play along with it will ya'.
Just an irrelevant comment, but even Satan would agree (believe) that Jesus Christ is Lord .. at least that is what someone told me once.
somebody once told me that a fat man in a red coat brings me presents.....
I'm laughing at the branding of our dumb a$$ed president as the anti-christ. I don't like O or his policies but I'm pretty sure he isn't the A-C.
I would love to know though how he feels at end of the day, as he puts his feet up and sips the tax payers Scotch, and realizes that some people view him as the AC. I suspect he's like the Honeybadger and we all know.....honeybadger don't care.
'
and the Anti Christ called it a piece of paper..
I think we have really lost it in this Nation. Now the president is the anti-Christ. The only person that actually wants to bring about some social justice must be the anti-Christ. While there are great Christians in this nation in the tradition of what Jesus would have done, there are many that now ware the lable as a marketing logo. For the latter, nonthing in their actions resemble that of Christ or true Christianity. Unfortunately we are faced with a Nation where more are falling into the poverty line, the middle class is shrinking rapidly, and the top 10% is controling 90% of the assets and those who are hurt the most by that unfair distribution of wealth and socio-economic disparity, are the ones that are fighting for that top 10%.
It is sad as to how confused we are.
May God bless us all, because there are many amongst us who have simply become blind!
Yup, blind as a christian, that's what I always say.
Thank you. Well said. Much of our nation has been dumbed down to the point they think irrationally.
And you are buying the Obama line, give me a break. He has spent more money in the 2 years in office and any other president in history. He is here to destroy this country. That is his agenda. Belive it!
Midnight, you are absolutely wrong. Please educate yourself.
only the stupid taliban right wingers would come up with such a rertarded acusation. typical of them.
Be careful who you call a retard... drool
I think a very small number of deluded people believe this BS and the media is giving them a bullhorn with idiotic articles about it... much like this one!
Rock on!