Polling results from New Jersey indicate that 8% of the population think Barack Obama is the Antichrist, whilst 13% aren’t sure. Purely Republicans respondents poll marginally higher, with 14% answering ‘yes’ and 15% ‘not sure’. In other words over 1/5th of respondents think he is, or might possibly be so.
This is Obama not as a Muslim, or an atheist, or born in Kenya, or wanting to kill off your elderly relatives, but the physical embodiment of evil, falsely claiming to be the returned Christ, and the adversary of Jesus.
I’d like to pretend I’m surprised at the result, but really I’m not. Not even for a relatively liberal state. It’s certainly not the first time that the characterisation has been made. The Public Policy Polling group who carried out the survey admitted it took them six or seven attempts to record the question (suggested as a comment on their website) without bursting out laughing.
So what’s your view? Does anyone here consider such a result as unexpected? And are you resigned to this state of affairs or can anything be done to reverse these figures?
For such a question, I’d seriously have to wonder how many were a) joke answers, or b) checked it in the sense that he’s “bad” not in the sense of 666.
I don’t find this at all surprising. I’d be very interested to see the results of a similar poll in the rural areas of Idaho, Wyoming and Utah. I’d bet that combined “yes” and “not sure” answers would approach 50%
According to the poll, 10% of the people who voted for him either think he is the anti-Christ or are not sure. Can’t imagine how that worked in the voting booth. “Hmmm…Obama as President may hasten the coming of the Rapture, but on the other hand Universal Health Care sure sounds nice!”
Anybody who seriously concerns themselves with looking out for a true Biblical antichrist probably suffers from a degree of nuttiness that will continue to exist no matter the tone of American politics. I have a hard time believing that most of those who answered yes truly believe that Obama is literally the embodiment of the Biblical antichrist.
I believe it. There is a wide streak of eschatological wishful thinking prevalent among America evangelicals right nw – people who want the world to end. People who laugh at the suggestion that Obama is the Antichrist are really laughing at the very notion of an Antichrist in itself (and rightly so). Those who have already bought heavily into (and are emotionally invested in) the idea of an end of the world, an Antichrist, a “Rapture,” etc. have no trouble at all seeing Obama as literally being Satan incarnate because they think that somebody has to be, and they see no better candidates. Swallowing the notion of an Antichrist at all is swallowing an elephant. Putting a name on it is just a gnat.
If you’ve ever know any Left Behind types, you know they’re dead serious about believing this End Days stuff. They want it to happen. They can’t wait for it. it even makes sense that some of them would vote for Obama because their whole lovely pageant can’t begin if the Antichrist can’t take power.
It also helps to remember the basic 'crazification factor" in America today. You can find 15% of any group who will believe anything. There is a “guidance” factor in the polling questions that augments this type of behavior. Good pollsters adjust for it. Most do not, because it makes the results more “newsworthy.”
Well, Baracus, coudn’t the conviction that he is The Antichrist (or the uncertainty over him definitely not being such) have come to some individuals well after voting for him? It has been over ten months since the election.
Diogenes, you bring out the possibility that some people may be over-the-top enthusiastic about end-of-world possibilities. I really wonder about that, because I’ve even met some secularly-oriented folks who somehow seem eager for it.
Maybe a fresh poll is needed.
What Sage Rat points out makes sense to me.
Some people may be thinking in terms of a whole group of folks representing the Antichrist system, rather than an individual.
And, yes, some might have checked that box as a joke.
Initially Luther had a low view of the books of Esther, Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation. He called the Epistle of James “an epistle of straw,” finding little in it that pointed to Christ and His saving work. He also had harsh words for the book of Revelation, saying that he could “in no way detect that the Holy Spirit produced it.”[6] He had reason to question the apostolicity of Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation because the early church categorized these books as antilegomena, meaning that they were not accepted without reservation as canonical. **Luther did not, however, remove them from his editions of the Scriptures. **His views on some of these books changed in later years.
Luther chose to place the Apocrypha between the Old and New Testaments. These books and addenda to canonical books are found in the Greek Septuagint but not in the Hebrew Masoretic text. Luther left the translating of them largely to Philipp Melanchthon and Justus Jonas.[7] They were not listed in the table of contents of his 1523 Old Testament, and they were given the well-known title: “Apocrypha: These Books Are Not Held Equal to the Scriptures, but Are Useful and Good to Read” in the 1534 Bible.[8]
The number of people who actually believe that Obama is the anti-christ is probably roughly equivilant to the number of people who “worship” him. Vanishingly small, but big enough to be noticed and used to demonize the opposition.
I’m pretty sure you could repeat those results for any contentious leader in a Christian country in history, going back of course to the original contentious leader unpopular amongst the Christian community, the Emperor Nero (who the whole antichrist thing is believed to be a coded attack against)
I believe the polling organisation is currently expanding the areal extent of the survey on the basis of these results, though I’m not sure if they are adding any further questions for clarification.
Presumably some people answered ‘yes’ just to be asinine, which ideally would be corrected for, if at all possible. However you can’t simply discount the respondents simply on the basis that they are batshit crazy. Knowing the extent of this insanity is important in and of itself.
I suppose eight percent is higher than I expected in New Jersy, and there’s no way to tell if survey respondents are telling the truth. But a lot of people are just plain crazy.