Barney and Obama

What do Barney the dinosaur and US President Barack Obama have in common? They were both accused of being… hold your breath… the Antichrist! Check out Barney first. We all know he is a “CUTE PURPLE DINOSAUR.” Now, let’s change all the U’s in that description to V’s (which converts it to Latin form). So we now have “CVTE PVRPLE DINOSAVR.” When we extract all the Roman numerals, we end up with “CV VL DIV”. If we now convert it to its Arabic numerical values, we get 100 + 5 + 5 + 50 + 500 +1 + 5. Add it all up and the shocking result is… [Psycho movie theme in the background, please]… 666! Yes, the mark of the Beast. Proof positive that Barney is the Antichrist! (Source: http://bible.org/illustration/barney)

Of course, that’s outrageous. It’s really crazy. That’s exactly what entered my mind when I saw the YouTube video that claims Obama is the Antichrist. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlQJ2neOG_I&feature=player_embedded) The basis for that accusation is a (contrived) word study of Luke 10:18. Our Lord Jesus said, “I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.” (KJV) It claims to be factual. Allegedly, Christ revealed the name of the Antichrist. Making much of the fact that Jesus spoke in Aramaic, it digs into the Hebrew equivalent of the clause “as lightning fall from heaven.” It conveniently swept under the floor the fact that God chose to use Greek, not Aramaic, in writing the New Testament. It points out that the word “lightning” is “baraq” (pronounced as baw-rak’) and then the phrase “from heaven” is “bamah” (bam-maw’). You already smell where this is going, right? Then, the video now concludes that Jesus declared that… [Again, Psycho theme please!] Barack Obama is the Antichrist! Move over, Barney! The last time I checked, this video got 26,020 hits already in YouTube. It is also making the rounds in Facebook and other social networking sites.

Sadly, I believe there will be people (including Bible believers) who will swallow this lie. My dear professor, Rev. Stephen Go Tan, commented, “This is really bad exegesis [or, Bible interpretation] and a real stretch.” I can’t blame people for seeing Christians as wild-eyed fanatics because of this video. We cannot share the Good News using such videos that make dubious accusations. We should just preach the Gospel, the whole Gospel and nothing but the Gospel. Like the apostle Paul, we should declare, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Rom. 1:16, ESV)

Brethren, point people to Christ, not the antichrist!

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