In the final days of the election, the anti-Obama rhetoric from the religious right has reached a fevered pitch. One religious right leader says that conservative evangelicals would rather vote for the devil than Barack Obama and a religious right author says Obama could be the anti-Christ, but Obama doesn’t know it yet.

“Barack Obama could be running against the devil and you’d still have high turnout among values voters,” said Mat Staver, of Liberty Counsel, a Christian legal entity affiliated with the late-Jerry Falwell. Staver is also the dean of the law school at Falwell’s Liberty University.

“Obama has, by virtue of his liberal positions on values issues, energized values voters to show up and cast a vote against him,” Staver told Politico.

In addition, Staver sent out an email this weekend implying that “America will be cursed” if voters don’t pick John McCain.

The future of America is at stake and its future rests with us … If we elect leaders who will not stand up for innocent unborn children, then America will be cursed. If we elect leaders who will not defend marriage as one man and one woman, the people will groan, and our great nation will decay … We could not have a more important election about America’s future than the one will we face this year. I am so burdened about this Country and our future that I cannot begin to express my concern. We already have the most liberal, pro-abortion, pro-homosexual Congress in the history of America. We cannot afford to unleash an unbridled leftist, secular, anti-religious agenda on America and our children. We must stand up now! … God has called each one of us to the Kingdom for such a time as this. Each of us are called to different roles, but all of us are commanded to be good citizens. To be a good citizen, we must vote. It is not an option. And, we must vote our Christian values. The future of America, our children, and grandchildren, are depending on us.

Meanwhile, Michael O’Brien, author of several Christian end-times novels including Children of the Last Days, shares his view of whether Obama is the anti-Christ.

He is indeed a powerful manipulator of crowds, even as he appears ever so humble and wholesomely charming. I doubt that he is the long-prophesied ruler of the world, but I also believe that he is a carrier of a deadly moral virus, indeed a kind of anti-apostle spreading concepts and agendas that are not only anti-Christ but anti-human as well. In this sense he is of the spirit of Antichrist (perhaps without knowing it), and probably is one of several key figures in the world who (knowingly or unknowingly) will be instrumental in ushering in the time of great trial for the Church under its last and worst persecution, amidst the numerous other tribulations prophesied in the books of Daniel and Revelation, and letters of St Paul, St. John, and St. Peter.