Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez, 21, who is accused of firing an assault rifle at the White House, believes he is Jesus and President Obama is the Antichrist. If you do a search on the internet and check the anti-Obama comments on hundreds of websites, you will soon learn that there are lots of people who believe the president is the antichrist.

There is a long history of identifying some political leader as the antichrist. Going back 2000 years – from Caligula, Nero, and Domitian in the first century to Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, and Joseph Stalin in the twentieth century to many in between. The best place to start in identifying the antichrist is the Bible. What does it say on the subject?

1. The antichrist is a “liar . . . who denies that Jesus is the Christ” and “denies the Father and the Son” (1 John 2:22; cf. 2 John 7). It’s most likely that the antichrists were first century Jews who did not believe that Jesus was God in human flesh (e.g., John 8:31–59). They were not political leaders and did not possess preternatural powers.
2. Antichrists had already “gone out into the world” when John wrote his second epistle (2 John 7). Earlier he had written “even now many antichrists have appeared; from this we know that it is the last hour” (1 John 2:18). The “last hour” is most likely a reference to the events surrounding the destruction of Jerusalem that took place in A.D. 70.

Attempts to create a “composite” antichrist are pure speculation. According to the popular view of antichrist, he is “the king of Babylon” (Isa. 14:4), “Lucifer” (Isa. 14:12), “man of lawlessness” and the “son of destruction” (2 Thess. 2:3), “the prince who is to come” (Dan. 9:26), “the little horn” (Dan. 7:8; 8:9), “the beast” (Rev. 13), and several other biblical characters all rolled into one. Tim LaHaye’s understanding of antichrist is typical: “Many titles are given to Antichrist in the Scriptures — at least twenty in number.” This futurized composite antichrist supposedly will make himself known during the seven-year Tribulation period, after the rapture of the church. LaHaye, who is co-author of the mega-seller Left Behind series, maintains that he is European, specifically Roman (this disqualifies Obama), since he arises out of the midst of the “ten horns” on the head of the “fourth beast” (Dan. 7:7–8, 19–26).

Oswald J. Smith claimed that Mussolini was the antichrist in his book Is the Antichrist at Hand?, a book that was published in 1926! Mussolini was executed in 1945. There have been countless named antichrists throughout the centuries. Even Ronald (6) Wilson (6) Reagan (6) was one of them. So were Henry Kissinger and Mikhail Gorbachev. It’s time that Christians study the Bible and not the newspapers. It’s embarrassing when Christians claim they have identified the antichrist.

Obama is not the antichrist. He’s not that clever. He’s just a poorly schooled politician who can’t even deliver a speech to elementary students without using a teleprompter. Let’s concentrate on getting him out of office in 2012 and a lot of liberals with him.

For more information on this and related subjects, see Last Days Madness: The Obsession of the Modern Church and The Day and the Hour: Christianity’s Perennial Fascination with Predicting the End of the World.