The Last Hour
1 John 2v18
29th May 2020
John is the only writer in the Bible who uses the words "antichrist" and "antichrists", and the longest passage is which he does so is:
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.
In studying this passage, we need to answer three questions:
- What is the last hour?
- Who is the antichrist?
- Who are the antichrists?
This week, we'll answer the first of these questions: What is the last hour? The first two sentences of the passage say:
1 John 2v18
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.
Ever since I because a follower of Jesus Christ, I've heard people saying, "I believe we're in the last days", as if "the last days" was a period that only started a few years or perhaps decades ago. And that's strange, because many of the people whom I've heard say this know their Bibles pretty well. But the Bible tells us clearly that we've been in the last days ever since the time of Jesus.
In 30 AD, at the first Christian Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came on the church, Peter said:
Acts 2:16-17
this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:
"In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and
daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream
dreams."
In the context of instructing Timothy how to lead the church at Ephesus, Paul wrote:
2 Timothy 3:1-5
But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days.
People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive,
disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy,
without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the
good,
treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God —
having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.
None of this is new. Paul told Timothy to dissociate himself from sinful people who would be alive in the last days. So Paul knew that he and Timothy were living in the last days.
Some might want to say that we're now in the last of the last days, but hear what John says. John doesn't just say he was living in the last days; he says he was living in the last hour. So far as I'm aware, there are only two ways to understand this. And they both require us to think quite hard.
The first is to say that John didn't mean that he lived in the last hour before Jesus returns; he meant the last hour before some other event. The best candidate for that other event is the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. That is, John wrote this letter just before the Romans besieged Jerusalem, broke down its walls and destroyed the temple. The destruction of Jerusalem was a terrible time for the Jews, and it was effectively the end of Jewish political power for over 1,800 years. It was, if you will, the final end of the Old Testament age. So John was living in the last hour of that age.
This interpretation gives us a problem; most commentators believe this letter was written 20 years or more after the destruction of Jerusalem. Of course, they could be wrong about that. There is no certain proof of that date.
I'm not as ready as some of my readers might expect to dismiss this idea. What might be thought of as the standard present-day interpretation of end-time prophesy, which is usually called Dispensationalism, was only invented around 1840, and I find it very unconvincing. I accept that I'm in the minority about this. It's not the only way in which I'm in the minority. Baptists are in the minority over the question of infant baptism. Charismatics are in the minority over spiritual gifts. And, of course, Christians are in the minority. Minorities are right sometimes.
The second way to understand this idea of John writing in "the last hour" is to see that no major spiritual events, similar in significance to the Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection or Ascension of our Lord, will occur before the second coming of Jesus. As John Calvin said, "No more remained but for Christ to appear for the redemption of the world". As John Stott says in his commentary, "It is still ‘the last hour', the hour of final opposition to Christ". Human history since the Resurrection is the story of the devil's and the world's doomed attempt to hold back the kingdom of God.
Many of us might also find that interpretation difficult. But it would explain why Jesus told us that we won't know He will return before He does return. During his prophecy in Matthew 24, Jesus said:
Matthew 24:26
No-one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son but
only the Father.
Matthew 24:42
Therefore keep watch, because you don't know on what day your Lord will come.
Matthew 24:44
The Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.
Some say that John was not living in the last hour; he was simply mistaken. But that option is not available to us. The Bible is true, and it means what it says. So John did live in the last hour. Thus we have two choices: either "the last hour" is the last hour before the final end of the Old Testament period, or "the last hour" is thousands of years long.
I can't find any other explanation that makes any sense, and that can be called sound exegesis – that is, a valid interpretation of the words that John wrote. Some of you might be outraged that I would say this, but please consider the possibility that much of what you've been taught about end-time prophecy is mistaken. And if you can't do that, then please just allow me to have a different view of these things.
We'll look at our other 2 questions in the next two weeks.