Most commentators have treated the McCain campaign's "The One" rather lightly, calling it"a little bit of humor," "juvenile," a much-needed parody.

Yet, beneath all this light fun some have found symbolism that would give it a different meaning among many evangelicals and fundamentalists. Specifically, several observers have noted that it contains imagery and language resembling that of the Left Behind series -- Revelation-inspired end-times literature that has sold over 70 million copies.

A couple of examples:

---the conspicuous and remarkable resemblance between images in the ad and apocalyptic pictures used in cover art for the Left Behind books. Specifically, the orange cloud depicted several times in the ad unmistakably evokes the cover of Kingdom Come, the final book in the Left Behind series.

---The title of "The One," and the attribution of the title to Obama, is analogous to "The One World Religion" set up by the anti-Christ, Nicolae Carpathia, a junior Senator who rises to power with the aid of Satan and a message of unity and hope in the book series.

Given the incongruity between eschatology and our soundbyte-driven political culture, it's easy to either dismiss this ad or evaluate it as entertainment, but there might be more to the "The One" than meets the eye. What some might see as parody could also be seen as a coded message meant to portray Obama as an anti-Christ. What do you think?