"I can't speak for God, but I believe there was something for Mr. Obama to do, and he was called to do it," Christine King Farris, the 81-year-old sister of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King, told Saturday's Chicago Tribune.

"It is powerful and significant on a spiritual level that there is the emergence of Barack Obama 40 years after the passing of Dr. King," added Lawrence Carter, dean of the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel at Morehouse College in Atlanta. "No one saw him coming, and Christians believe God comes at us from strange angles and places we don't expect, like Jesus being born in a manger."

Other 1960s associates of King said they also see the hand of God at play in Obama's historic win.

"We were called by God to preach the word and to minister (in the 1960s)," Rev. Joseph Lowery, 87, president emeritus of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, told the Tribune. "Obama was not called to preach, but he was called to lead."