The Christians and Antichrists, Pt 1
1 John 2:18
We are in a study on Sunday nights, the epistle called 1 John, the first epistle of John. I invite you to turn in your Bible, if you don't have one there's one in the pew nearby, to the second chapter. Tremendous truth is available for us in this little epistle. Brief as it is, it is loaded. Looking forward as we work through the series to enriching my own understanding of this epistle in preparation for writing the commentary on, in fact, 1, 2 and 3 John as well. It was many years ago that I first taught this here and have been very thrilled to go back through it in a much richer fashion. And I hope you've been blessed as well.
We come in our study to chapter 2 verses 18 and following and I've titled this, "Christians and Antichrists," because that really does sum up the issue here. And for tonight we're going to focus, at least to begin with, on this matter of Antichrist. Let me begin reading in verse 18 and read a little bit of the section.
"Children, it is the last hour and just as you have heard that Antichrist is coming, even now many Antichrists have arisen. From this we know that it is the last hour."
And then down in verse 22, "Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ. This is the Antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son. Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father. The one who confesses the Son has the Father also."
Now without needing to go into all of the rest of what's in this wonderful section, we can sort of focus, to begin with, on this matter of Antichrist, a term that has become very familiar to Christians in this generation, as I'm sure in many other generations. The word Antichrist is well known to us. It occurs in the New Testament only in John's letters. It occurs in 1 John several times, and then it occurs in the seventh verse of 2 John. And though it is limited as a term to John's epistles, it expresses a widely known reality that is dealt with in other portions of the Bible, not only in the New Testament but even in the Old Testament as well. The term "Antichrist" which John uses is antichristos in the Greek. Christos obviously means Christ, anti can have two possible meanings. It is a Greek preposition that can mean either against or in the place of...against or in the place of. Antichrist can then mean either someone who is against Christ, or someone who seeks to replace Christ. Someone who is an adversary of Christ, or someone who is a false representation of Christ. We can take it then to mean the one who opposes Christ. In that case, the opposition is clear, it is plain. Or we can take it to mean one who seeks to be put in the place of Christ and then the opposition becomes more subtle and more disguised. And antichrist can mean either of those, or both. We don't need to choose between them. Clearly antichrist is one on some fronts who is openly and overtly against Christ. That is to say they speak lies concerning Christ, such as in verse 22 that I just read. They deny that Jesus is the Christ, a denial of the nature and identity and work of Jesus Christ. This is clearly an antichrist perspective.
Over in chapter 4 verse 3 John writes, "Every spirit that does not confess Jesus...that is, does not agree with what the Bible says about Jesus...is not from God and this is of the antichrist." This is the nature of the antichrist, or the spirit, or the attitude of the antichrist which you have heard that it is coming and now it is already in the world. It because it is an attitude, it is a spirit. Anyone who possesses any kind of opposition to Christ has the antichrist spirit.
In 2 John, I mentioned earlier, verse 7 John says, "Many deceivers are gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, this is the deceiver and the antichrist." Anyone who has an aberrant view of Christ as to the nature of Christ, as to the deity of Christ, or the humanity of Christ, is an antichrist. Anyone who attacks Christ. But it is not just limited to those who assault Christ. That's the emphasis that John makes, but that's not a limitation by any means because there are also those who put themselves in the place of Christ. For example, in Mark 13 and verse 22 where Jesus says, "For false Christs, pseudo Christs, and false prophets will arise and show signs and wonders in order if possible to lead the elect astray." Matthew 24 talks about the same thing. There are and always has been and will be in the future pseudo Christs, false Christs, those who impersonate Christ as well as those who attack Christ. The ones who attack, as I said, are clear and open. The ones who impersonate are more subtle. And, of course, impersonating Christ is an attack on Christ.
Now go back to our text for a moment in 1 John chapter 2 and verse 18. "Children, it is the last hour and just as you heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have arisen. From this we know that it is the last hour."
The last hour is here identified twice, at the beginning and the end of the verse. We can know it's the last hour because of the proliferation of antichrists. It isn't the last hour until you have antichrists. It isn't the last hour until you have opposition to Christ. It isn't the last hour until you have false claimants to messiahship. It isn't the last hour until that happens. When that happens you know it's the last hour. And you know that finally THE Antichrist is coming. And so this verse is very helpful for us. We know it's the last hour because we've heard that the final Antichrist is coming, we know it's the last hour because already many antichrists have arisen.
Now let's talk about that for a moment. The Bible is clear that one man will be the final, most complete and powerful Antichrist. He will appear in the future history of the world in a time which is called the time of the Tribulation. This is a time that will end man's day. It is a time, a seven-year period of time divided into two three-and-half year sections in which Satan releases his power in the world, at the same time God releases judgment in the world. And there will be in that day a world ruler who is identified as the Antichrist. He is the culminating and final one, that's why we have here the singular "Antichrist is coming."
And I think most Christians know about the Antichrist that is coming. In fact, throughout the history of the church there's been a lot of discussion about that, a lot of study and even some speculation who that Antichrist might be. But he is not the only Antichrist. He is just the final one. He is just sort of the apex, the culmination, the last in a long line of antichrists that are also here in the last hour, many antichrists have already arisen. At the time John wrote this, of course, it was just the end of the first century. It had only been about well 60 years since Christ had come and so the last hour had only just begun 60 year s before because the last hour is to be associated with the arrival of Messiah, as I'll show you in a moment. And already in that first period of 60 years many antichrists had already arisen. That is to say already there was rampant opposition to Jesus Christ as well as pseudo messiahs trying to call attention to themselves as the true Messiah.
We learn then what we read earlier in chapter 2 to be the case and also in chapter 4 that this Antichrist concept is an attitude. It is a spirit. It is a way of thinking. It is not just one person, it is not just many persons, it is an attitude toward Christ that personifies itself finally in one person, but in the meantime in many persons. Any person who is against Christ, any person who attacks the deity of Jesus Christ, any person who is hostile to the true nature of Christ, His deity and His humanity, to the true work of Christ is possessing the spirit of antichrist. Any person who offers himself as the true Christ, the true representative of God against Christ, calling attention to himself as if he were the true Christ and Christ is not is the spirit of antichrist.
So you can think of antichrist not so much as a person, but as a force, as an attitude that incarnates itself or incarcerates itself in people in every generation since Christ first came. Anybody ad everybody who is against Christ, anybody and everybody who rejects Christ, they don't have to be false prophets, they don't have to be false messiahs, they don't have to be false teachers, all that is required to possess the spirit of antichrist is to be against Christ. To John this was simply another way to describe a non-believer. This is another way to describe a Christ-rejecter. Certainly it embraced false teachers and false christs. Certainly it embraced them. But it was not limited to them. Anyone who rejected Christ and in particular those who had known about Christ and having been told the truth about Christ rejected Him, therefore bore the name antichrist in a more direct way because they having heard of Christ, heard the gospel of Christ, took up a position against Christ. Anyone in that posture is an antichrist. Yes...as Mark 13:6 said...Jesus said, "Many shall come in My name saying I am Christ. And they'll deceive many." There are fewer of those who actually claimed to be Christ, but they're around, but there are many who are against Christ, who reject Christ.
So John says, "Look, I'm trying to distinguish here who is a believer and who is not." Throughout this epistle he is giving us tests, tests by which we could measure who is a true believer and who is not. And there are doctrinal tests and the doctrinal tests surround two areas. One, your own evaluation of sin, that is they have a sort of anthropological test to evaluate the sinfulness of man, and then the Christological test is to evaluate Christ. So if you want to know who is a Christian, you will test them on this basis. Do they have a true view of sin and a true view of Christ? Those are the doctrinal tests. And then we've also been learning that I guess we could call them has traditionally been the term moral tests, not just doctrinal tests, but true Christians are known because they have a right view of man as sinful and depraved, and a right view of Christ as the God/Man the Savior and the Redeemer, but they also can be tested on the moral level because if they are true believers their lives will be marked by two things...love for Christ and love for others and obedience to the Word of God. John also has thrown in, "They will love Christ, they will love others, and they will not love the world as we have seen."
So as we come in to verse 18, John cycles us back through these things all the way through his epistle, we move back in to the doctrinal test and the issue becomes Jesus Christ. True Christians confess Christ. And as I noted for you, he will say this again and again. As we saw down in chapter 2 verse 22 and over in chapter 4 verse 3, the doctrinal test involves a true assessment of who Jesus Christ is. True Christians confess Christ. False ones deny Him. They are antichrists. So the distinction is between Christians who affirm the truth about Christ and antichrists who do not.
And John is always the master of contrast, isn't he? He's already contrasted light and darkness in chapter 1. He's contrasted love and hate in chapter 2. Again he's contrasted the family of God with the world in verses 15 to 17. And now he contrasts the struggle between truth and error regarding Christ. Those who have the true concerning Christ, and those who do not. John then presents the difference between Christians and non-Christians as having to do with their understanding of Jesus Christ. To say this is obvious but it needs to be said, a wrong view of Christ is the fastest path to damnation.
So let's talk about the antichrist concept tonight a little bit in verse 18. Let's look at the verse. "Children, paidia, children," used in verse 13 where he says, "I've written to you, children, because you know the Father." So there is the same word. We can assume then that he's talking to those who know the Father. Those who are children in the spiritual sense, they're babes, you remember back there that the children don't know much but they do know the Lord, they know the basics, and so he's writing to assist spiritual children with this very important understanding. "Children, you need to learn you are living in the last hour. It is the last hour. It is the last hour, you need to know that." And the order of the Greek is emphatic, "Children, last hour, hora, it is." Greek always places things in the sentence in order to lay the emphasis where it wants it laid. And that's why in the Greek it says, "Children, last hour it is!"
Well what does this mean the last hour? This is like two thousand years ago. What is this talking about?
Well as we have pointed out numerous times in the study of the New Testament, the last times, the last hour began when Jesus arrived. There's only two ages outlined for us in the New Testament. There is the present age and the age to come. The present age and the age to come. The present age is an evil age. Galatians 1:4 Paul characterizes it as evil. It is the age then from the beginning of evil to the end of evil. The present age is this evil age. That's what Paul calls it, this present evil age. The age dominated by evil. We're in it, all of humanity has been in it since the Fall. The age to come is the Kingdom when righteousness will prevail in the world and Christ will rule with a rod of iron, the great Millennial Kingdom, the thousand-year reign of Christ that's promised in the Old Testament, promised in the New Testament and described for us in the end of the book of Revelation. So you have the present age which is an evil age. You have the age to come which is the age of prevailing righteousness under the rule of the Lord Jesus Christ.
John says it is the last hour of this present evil age. It is the last hour of this age in which we live. How do we know it is the last hour? Because Messiah has come. And the prophet said that Messiah would come at the end of man's day, that He would come to set up His Kingdom, to set up the age to come. The Old Testament prophets, the Old Testament writers didn't know there would be a several thousand years between the original arrival of Messiah and the establishment of His Kingdom, that was not disclosed to them. Although it was disclosed to them in places such as Isaiah 53 that the Messiah would die and rise again, there was nothing in the Old Testament to demonstrate to them with any clarity this lengthy period of millennia between the arrival of Messiah and the establishment of the age to come. We are in this present evil age but we have this marvelous privilege of living in the last hour of this present evil age, living at a time when the end of the age has actually come and been inaugurated by the arrival of Jesus Christ.
This, just in case you need some passages to sort of undergird this, you remember that in the fourth chapter of Galatians and the fourth verse, "When the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son." It was in God's perfect timing when the exact moment came that He sent forth His Son, this really sort of inaugurated the fullness of time. This is the final chapter in human history. This brings this present evil age to its culmination, the arrival of Messiah. In 1 Corinthians chapter 10 and verse 11 it talks about the Old Testament. It says, "Now these things happened to them, in the Old Testament, as an example they were written for our instruction upon whom the end of the ages has come." We then are living in the fullness of time, the end of the age, just other ways to express the last hour. Hebrews chapter 1, "God...verse 1...after He spoke long ago to the fathers and the prophets in many portions in many ways," that's Old Testament, God spoke long ago to the fathers through the prophets in many portions, in many ways, "In these last days has spoken to us in His Son." With the arrival of the Son is inaugurated the lasts days. We are then living in the last days. In fact, for us today we're two thousand years into the last days. In fact, in Hebrews 9:26 it says, "Christ now once at the consummation of the ages has been manifested." Christ was manifested at a time called the fullness, the consummation, the last days.
Peter understood that. First Peter 1:20, "He appeared in these last times for your sake." And 1 Peter 4:7, again, "The end of all things is at hand." We're living at the end of the present evil age. The last times, as I said, have been going on for two thousand years.
How do we know it's the last times? People have a right to ask that question. How do we know we're living at the end of the age? How do we know this is the last days of this present evil age? How do we know that?
Go back to your text in 1 John chapter 2, it couldn't be more clear. "Children, it is the last hour." How do we know that? "Just as you heard that antichrist is coming, he is a feature of the last hour, even now many antichrists have arisen from this we know that it is the last hour." Anybody ever ask you, are we at the end of human history? Tell them yes and take them to that verse. You can't have antichrists until you have Christ, and as soon as you have Christ, you have antichrist and that identifies that we're living in the last hour.
The Jews even knew this. They knew that the end of the present evil age would be the arrival of Messiah. Messiah would come and bring a kingdom of righteousness and glory. They knew that knowledge would fill the earth and peace and Messiah would reign, righteousness would prevail. And so we know that when the Messiah came, when the Lord Jesus came, He inaugurated the last hour of this present evil age. With Christ came antichrist and the opposition didn't take very long to form, did it? It didn't take very long to form. He announced His messiahship and three years later they crucified Him on a cross and launched the antichrist spirit which has continued to flourish in this two thousand year period.
In fact, one of the great proofs that Jesus is the Messiah is the antichrist spirit. Jesus Christ is the most loved person who ever walked on this earth, and the most hated...and the most hated. There is so much opposition to Christ that He has to be the Messiah. The dominant world attitude that is against Jesus Christ, that resents Him, that hates Him when He's truly presented and represented, that dominant world attitude is proof that He's Messiah, that it is the last days and He indeed is the true Messiah.
So to be simple about John's eschatology, he says, "Look, you have heard that antichrist is coming, and I'm telling you there are already many antichrists." Let's talk about the antichrist for a minute. "You have heard that the antichrist is coming." How have they heard that? How did they know there was going to be a final antichrist if in fact the word doesn't appear anywhere except in John's epistle? This is the first New Testament mention of the term antichrist here. But John says you already know about him. You already know about him. Because he has a lot of other names, how would they know about him? How would these people know about him?
Well, if they knew the Old Testament they would know about him because he is very, very carefully presented in the book of Daniel chapter 7, chapter 8, chapter 11. But even more than that, John writes his epistle in the nineties of the first century, some time in the nineties, dying I think around 96 he wrote his epistles as well as receive his revelation at the end of his life. This then is at least 40 years after the writing of 2 Thessalonians. These are believers who very likely knew the contents of 2 Thessalonians. And in Paul's second letter to the Thessalonians written in about 51 or 52 A.D., there is a very clear presentation of this coming antichrist though that's not the name that's given to him, it is clearly the one in view. And we're going to look at that tonight to see what it says about him and what they knew and what we need to know.
But before we do that, let's finish off at least a look at the verse. "Even now many antichrists have risen." The final antichrist is not solitary figure. He is just the final one in a long line of antichrists. Anyone in opposition to Christ, as I said, anyone who offers himself as a false replacement to Christ fits the term...false Christs, false prophets are going to be around, pseudo Christs are going to be around and so are those who attack and assault Christ. The world is full of antichrists, full. Any liberal theologian who denies the deity of Christ possesses the spirit of antichrist. Charles Manson in his bizarre demonic attempt to identify himself as Christ manifests the more bizarre spirit of antichrist. Anyone who attacks the deity or the humanity or the work of Jesus Christ is antichrist. And all of that is going to culminate in the final antichrist. That's one of the reasons we know we're in the last hour.
Let's look for a moment at this final antichrist. Turn over to 2 Thessalonians because I want to follow up on what John writes, "Just as you heard that antichrist is coming." They would have heard that because they would have had opportunity to be exposed to the material in 2 Thessalonians. Now without going into all of this, and that's a strong temptation for me since I've been working on 1 and 2 Thessalonians now for months and months and just this week received the First and Second Thessalonian commentary, so I've been writing this commentary and I'm prone to draw all the things that are in my mind, I'll try to restrain myself. But anyway, 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 and verse 3, "Let no one in any way deceive you, it will not come." What will not come? The day of the Lord, chapter 2 verse 2, the day of the Lord mentioned there, the day of the Lord. Some of the Thessalonians were afraid the day of the Lord had already come, they were suffering a lot, there was a lot of persecution. They thought they had missed the Rapture of the church and they were now stuck in the day of the Lord and they were feeling the heat of divine judgment. And so Paul is saying, "Look, the day of the Lord has not come. The day of the Lord has not come, and don't let anyone tell you it has." Verse 3, "Because it won't come until the apostasy comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of perdition or the son of destruction."
Here we are introduced to the antichrist under the title, "The man of lawlessness, the son of perdition, or the son of destruction." Further referred to down in verse 8, "That lawless one will be revealed." It goes on to say the Lord will slay him. Verse 9 identifies him as the coming one, in accord with the activity of Satan with all power and signs and false wonders, with all deception of wickedness for those who perish. Clearly Paul is saying you can't be in the day of the Lord, you can't be in that judgment because the lawless one hasn't come, the son of destruction hasn't come and he hasn't committed the apostasy.
Now let's just take that term "apostasy" for a minute because that's how he starts the discussion. The day of the Lord won't come until the apostasy, the apostasia. Short definition, the revolt, the rebellion. It is so used in Joshua 22:22 in the Septuagint of a rebellion against God. A longer definition, short definition-revolt, rebellion; longer definition, a deliberate abandonment of a formerly professed position, a defection, a deliberate abandonment of a formerly professed position. It's a defection. But it's not just a general defection, it's not just a general abandonment of God or of Christ, the kind that you would expect to see in the church as people come and go and shallowly believe and then defect. This is not an apostasy, or this is not general apostasy, this is THE apostasy.
There will be defection. There will be always through the history of the church Laodicean churches that have a superficial identification with Jesus Christ but He spews them out of His mouth. There will be those churches who leave the true faith. There will be escalating defection from the truth as time goes on. Churches that once held to the truth will be led astray, they will be seduced by demons. First Timothy 4, "In the latter times, times we're living in, the end of the present evil age, some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits, doctrines of demons, lying hypocrites, seared in their own conscience will lead them astray," and so forth. In 2 Timothy 3 he talks about the same thing, there will be a turning away from the truth, there will be a drifting away from the truth, from the reality of the gospel among those who profess Christianity. Peter writes about that, 2 Peter, "False teachers will come and people will abandon the truth." Jude writes about it, Jude 17 and 18, "Defectors." That's not what he's talking about. He's not talking about some sort of general flow of apostasy, he's not talking about churches that abandon what they once believed or Christianity in general defecting in some kind of a sort of general overall decline, although that definitely will be the case. There will be a general defection. There will be a decline. There will be a Christianity that has literally lost its trust in the faith and exists only in name. He doesn't have that kind of general idea in mind, although that is reality.
He's talking here about THE apostasy. This is an event. This is an identifiable unique event. He's saying, "The day of the Lord can't be here because THE apostasy hasn't happened." And he identifies THE apostasy as coming first and being led by the man of lawlessness, being revealed this son of destruction. There's an event that has to happen. There's a climactic act of apostasy. There's a climactic revolt. There's a climactic rebellion that's going to take place. This man of lawlessness, this man of sin, it's actually anomia, lawlessness. This man who lives without regard for God's Law. This man who openly defies God's Law, who openly defies God's rule. This is a man of sin because all sin is lawlessness, 1 John 3:4. There have always been millions of lawless people, the whole human race. There's always been millions of blasphemers and God-rejecting and Christ-hating people through history since Christ came. There are many who feigned an interest in God, feigned an interest in Christianity and defected. But this is THE apostasy led by THE man of lawlessness and THE son of destruction. This is emphatic. Points to a definite time, a definite event done by a definite individual. This is the final and ultimate apostasy by the man of lawlessness, son of destruction.
That's an interesting term. Man of sin, or man of lawlessness is sort of his own approach. He is lawless, God-defying, has no regard for the Law of God. That's his own title. He will take God on in flagrant revolt and rebellion and disobedience. But God's title for him is Son of Destruction. That is an old Hebrew way to speak meaning he is one headed for destruction, he is doomed for destruction. He literally is the Son of Destruction to say it is part of the fabric of who he is. When you're the son of somebody, you bear their image. He bears the image of destruction. He carries the spiritual genes of destruction. He belongs to destruction by nature, like a son belongs to his father by nature. He belongs to hell and he belongs to torment and he belongs to apoleia, he belongs to perdition. This is a man of ruin, human trash for the dump of hell. By the way, Son of Perdition only a title given only one oth