In his new book, Perfect Ending, fundamentalist Christian pastor Robert Jeffress said that President Barack Obama may not be the Antichrist, but that he is paving the way for the Antichrist’s arrival.

According to the Sacramento Bee, Jeffress wrote in Perfect Ending that Obama’s policies are readying the U.S. to embrace the Antichrist, particularly the president’s endorsement of same-sex marriage.

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“Although President Obama is certainly not the Antichrist, his policies are paving the way for the Antichrist,” wrote Jeffress in a press release for the book.

In an excerpt of the book published at Huffington Post, the pastor of Dallas, Texas’ 11,000-member First Baptist Church, Jeffress wrote, “For the first time in history a president of our country has openly proposed altering one of society’s (not to mention God’s) most fundamental laws: that marriage should be between a man and a woman.”

He continued, “While I am not suggesting that President Obama is the Antichrist, the fact that he was able to propose such a sweeping change in God’s law and still win reelection by a comfortable margin illustrates how a future world leader will be able to oppose God’s laws without any repercussions.”

Christians believe that the Antichrist is a figure who will rise to power in the last days of the human race. Uniting the world under one government, the Antichrist will persecute and imprison whatever Christians were left behind by the Rapture, the moment when all who are truly Christians will simultaneously ascend into Heaven.

According to Christian prophecy, Christ will return to Earth at the end of this period of tribulation and slay the Antichrist before taking the faithful to Heaven and destroying the world.

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In 2012, just prior to Election Day, Jeffress urged his followers to vote for former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) — in spite of the fact that he sees Mormonism as a cult.

“I believe the preservation of America depends on pastors,” Jeffress said. “This is no time for God’s men to be passive. It’s time to stand up and push back against all the evil in our country…Tell your people that they have a choice: to cast a vote for righteousness or vote for unrighteousness.”

People who don’t speak out against Obama’s “evil” are, he said, are “no different than German Lutheran pastors who didn’t speak out against Hitler’s growing influence in the late 1930s.”