Michele Bachmann, former Republican congressional representative from Minnesota, and fellow conservative Christians have been left outraged after United States President Barack Obama mocked their prediction that he was responsible for hastening the end of the world. Bachmann had addressed her apocalyptic concerns during a radio interview on End Times with a Christian broadcaster, Jan Markell, in April. Only a week after her interview, Obama joked about Bachmann’s fears of the encroaching apocalypse during the White House Correspondents Dinner.

“Michele Bachmann actually predicted I would bring about the biblical end of days,” Obama said. “Now that’s a legacy — that’s big. I mean, Lincoln, Washington — they didn’t do that.”

Bachmann said that the rapture is soon coming, thanks to Obama’s policies on marriage equality and Iran’s nuclear program.

“We need to realize how close this clock is getting to the midnight hour. We in our lifetimes potentially could see Jesus Christ returning to earth and the rapture of the church,” Bachmann had said. “We see the destruction, but this was a destruction that was foretold.”

Bachmann cited the Obama administration’s nuclear negotiations with Iran as a reason for the rapture, as the United States and five other partner nations have been negotiating a deal with Iran to prevent the latter from creating or obtaining nuclear weapons.

“We are literally watching, month by month, the speed move up to a level we’ve never seen before with these events,” Bachmann said. “Barack Obama is intent. It is his number one goal to ensure that Iran has a nuclear weapon. … If you look at the president’s rhetoric, and if you look at his actions, everything he has done has been to cut the legs out of Israel and lift up the agenda of radical Islam.”

The former Republican lawmaker also blamed gay marriage and abortion on Obama, saying God is punishing America for embracing pagan views.

“Any nation that accepts God and his principles is blessed, and those who push away are cursed. That’s what we’re seeing happen to the United States,” she said. “We will suffer the consequences as a result.”

After Obama’s mocking of her ludicrous views, Bachmann still decided to stand by her comments, although she did assure Christians that the end of the world would not necessarily be a bad thing.

“The Bible is filled with exciting information about living life today and in the future, both in this life and in the life to come,” Bachmann had said. “Any message that brings people closer to God’s wonderful plans for our lives is a good thing. God’s word is true and brings freedom and wholeness to all who read it and believe in Him.”

Janet Markell, host of the program, Understanding the Times, where Bachmann had made her predictions, defended the retired politician.

“What is there about a godly Christian woman that is so offensive to so many today when they are simply telling the truth as Michele is?” Markell said.

Other religious conservatives were less diplomatic in their responses however.

“Rarely has this nation witnessed the kind of hubris, arrogance and callousness as we did at the President’s Correspondents Dinner,” said Joel Richardson, an end times author and filmmaker. “President Obama and his left-wing supporters in the media think it is absolutely hilarious that his policies could have fostered in an apocalyptic atmosphere in the earth.”

Richardson said that the apocalypse had already arrived, since Iraqis have been suffering unforgivably under the Islamic State’s regime – which he once again blamed on Obama.

“Instead of laughing and mocking, our president and his supporters should be weeping because of the unfathomable agony and chaos that his foreign policy through the Middle East has produced,” Richardson said.

Carl Gallups, an apocalyptic author, said he appreciated a good joke as much as any other person – but in this scenario, Obama had crossed a clear boundary.

“I am rarely offended by good humor, especially upon consideration of the context in which it is spoken; but I think what is unnerving about Obama to so many Christians is his consistent mocking of Christianity, the scriptures, the basic Christian message, and even the Judeo-Christian heritage of America,” Gallups said.

Photo Credits: Jacquelyn Martin / Associated Press