The Antichrists

1 John 2v18-27

12^th June 2020

This is our third study of:

1 John 2v18-27
Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.
But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth. I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth. Who is the liar? It is the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a man is the antichrist — he denies the Father and the Son. No-one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.
See that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you. If it does, you also will remain in the Son and in the Father. And this is what he promised us — even eternal life.
I am writing these things to you about those who are trying to lead you astray. As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit — just as it has taught you, remain in him.

When we started, I observed that we need to answer three questions about this passage:

What is the last hour?
Who is the antichrist?
Who are the antichrists?

We've seen that the last hour includes the time when Jesus and the 12 apostles were on earth. So either the last hour was the period before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, or the last hour is the whole church age.

We've also seen that John is the only Bible writer who mentions the antichrist by name, and he says nothing to suggest that the antichrist is some major historical figure, but that the antichrist is identified by many as the "man of lawlessness" mentioned in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-4.

This week, we'll answer our third question: Who are the antichrists?

Verse 18 tells us that many antichrists have come, so these people lived in John's time. Who were they then? And who are they now?

Verse 19
They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.

John describes the antichrists of his day as people who left the true churches to form false churches. He says that, had they been true Christians, they wouldn't have left. When we get to Verse 22 we'll see that they had adopted very damaging false teaching – what we call heresy.

It's not wrong to leave a church, so long as you join another church. Indeed, many of the members of my church left another a church before they joined us. We might leave a church and join another for perfectly good reasons, such as moving house. We might move church because God has called us to a role in a new church. We might move church because we've been badly hurt in a church, and need to find a church that won't hurt us.

My church tries hard to be a safe church, but I know some of us still hurt people with the way we speak, and it makes me sad. I and the elders are doing our best to address this, but we can't force anybody to be nice, and sometimes we sin, too. To those who've been hurt in my church or any other church, I can only say that I'm deeply sorry.

The point is, we can leave a church but we must not leave the church. Each of us has a need and a responsibility to be a member of a true church, and to do what we can to serve God there.

John is saying the antichrists are people who left a true church and didn't join another, but joined an organisation that's a substitute for true church, and teaches doctrine that is anti-Christian. That is, they left a true church to join an antichrist church. The came to believe, and to teach, heresies. They offer an alternative to Christ, and they stand against the true Gospel, and therefore the true God.

To do this is to commit a terrible sin. Instead of serving the kingdom of God, they're knowingly or unknowingly fighting against the kingdom of God. They're not Christian, they're antichrist - anti-Christ.

These are the people we should watch out for – people who look like Christians and sound like Christians, but who move away from the Bible and teach falsehood. They offer themselves as an alternative to Biblical truth. They are against Christ.

Of course, we all make mistakes. Of course, we're allowed to disagree. But some Bible teaching is so important that to deviate from it is anti-Christ, it's heresy.

And John says that people who do that were never really Christians in the first place, never truly born again, never truly repentant.

You might find that a bit controversial, but that's what the Bible says.