Beelzebama: Is McCain signaling to Evangelicals that Obama is the anti-christ?

After a hard day on the campaign trail, Barack Obama occasionally likes to let his horns down.

At first glance this suggestion might sound like a paranoid liberal fantasy. But Time magazine’s Amy Sullivan, who is hardly known as a lefty ideologue, makes a compelling case that John McCain’s recent ad “The One” is channeling exactly that message to conservative Christians. Sullivan notes that the ad — which is only being run on the web and has been viewed more times than the infamous celebrity/Paris Hilton/Britney Spears ad — utilizes phrasing and imagery strikingly similar to Tim LaHaye’s “Left Behind” series, a fictionalized account of the end times that’s sold a remarkable 70 million copies worldwide since debuting in the mid-90s.

The Antichrist of the “Left Behind” books is Nicolae Carpathia, a charismatic young political leader who founds the One World religion and promises to heal the planet after a time of deep divisiveness. Sullivan notes that references to Obama as the Antichrist are nothing new. A google search for “Obama” and “Antichrist” turned up more than 700,000 hits.

Then there’s the ads use of Obama’s much mocked (and quickly abandoned) campaign seal. Sullivan explains the symbolism:

Perhaps the most puzzling scene in the ad is an altered segment from The 10 Commandments that appears near the end. A Moses-playing Charlton Heston parts the animated waters of the Red Sea, out of which rises the quasi-presidential seal the Obama campaign used for a brief time earlier this summer before being mocked into retiring it. The seal, which features an eagle with wings spread, is not recognizable like the campaign’s red-white-and-blue “O” logo. That confused Democratic consultant Eric Sapp until he went to his Bible and remembered that in the apocalyptic Book of Daniel, the Antichrist is described as rising from the sea as a creature with wings like an eagle.

The Obama campaign has worked hard to reach out to Evangelicals in recent months.  The hope is to at least tamp down fears that an Obama presidency would be antithetical to Christian beliefs. Certainly convincing Evangelical voters that he is the Antichrist would be a sure-fire way to make sure they show up to vote for McCain on election day.