First John 2:18-20 Last Hour - many Antichrists
1 John 2:18-20 · Andrew Molloy · May 8, 2022
Letters of John (2022), No. 13
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261926554558

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Okay, we're in 1 John, the first address, I call it, of John to believers. And then after this, he wrote 2 John, 3 John, 2 John and 3 John appear to be More letters, but this could be a letter too. It just doesn't have the earmarks of being a letter, this first epistle of John. So we're in verses 18 through 20 today of chapter two, first John.

So he says, children, it is the last hour. Just as you heard that Antichrist is coming, even now many Antichrists appeared. From this we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were really not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have remained with us. But they went out so that it would be shown that they were all not of us. But you have an anointing from the Holy One, as you all know, and you all know. So that's our two verses. In verse 18, he begins with this word children, and it's, it's Pideon.

Before when Bob taught. I think it was just last week, he uses the word technion when he talks about children and fathers and things like that. And he goes through that kind of addressing his hearer's spiritual maturity. This word paideon, Macaulay, has an element of being teachable, so they're little teachable ones, as Macaulay and Constable say. So it's a slightly different word from this Technion word. So I was thinking about this four-year-old we have with us currently, and we tell him to put on his listening ears. And I think that's what John is doing here, you know, put on your listening ears, because I have something extremely important to tell you about Antichrist.

So he's going to do that here in verse 18. He says that it's the last hour, or it is the last hour. So that you see the Greek words there, emi eskatos hora, is a verb phrase. You recognize that word emi, which is the same thing Christ said about himself, I am.

So it's a status quo. So their status quo in this hour. and me eschatos hora. Eschatos is last and hora is hour. And you might recognize eschatos as being eschatology study of the last times. Hora, of course, is an hour, but is it 60 minutes or is it a period of time? That's the question. Sometimes it's one and sometimes it's the other. We see in today's lesson that it's not 60 minutes, but it's just a segment of undetermined time.

Also, this phrase, it is the last hour, you can strike that word the out of there because there's no article. So it's really children, the last hour, it is, is what he's really saying. So it stresses not that the last hour is the last hour, it stresses the character of last hour, esketos hora. Macaulay says, it is the last hour kind of times is the kind of force of that, the character of times. And I'll stress again, not the definite article. So I looked in the interlinear and it has this, we know that a last hour it is, is how it reads.

So it's a quality of time. What defines the last hour? Macaulay says what defines it is two bookmarks, the incarnation or one time event when Christ came as a human to the earth. So that's the one bookmark and then his second coming. And so these two things have never happened before in the history of mankind and will never happen again. So those are the two beginning points and end points of this last hour.

And keep in mind from eschatology that we are in Daniel's 69th week presently. We're between, well, we're after the 69th week. We're in this period of time where the 69th week has passed, the 70th week is coming up, but we don't really know where we're at. You know, that's why I say, are we at week? Or are we at the point of time of 69.6 or 69.98? So we're somewhere in there before the rapture comes. And so that's the last hour.

Just as you have heard, and he, Jones says this a lot, as you have heard, So, he's saying both things that he told them in the gospel of John, and then other places that these believers have heard. So, he always uses this phrase, just as you have heard.

They've heard from Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2, about this man of sin coming, the Antichrist, in Daniel 7, 9, and Daniel 2, 3-5. Plus, When we're talking about the definite article Antichrist, he's also mentioned in Psalms, Isaiah, and Ezekiel. So that's, I think, why he's reminding them of all those Old Testament sources about this concept. So he says, and just as you would have heard, just as you heard that Antichrist is coming, even now, many Antichrists have appeared. So is this, is verse 18 talking about this Antichrist? And I've got a box up here with all the ways that scripture defines the man of sin in Revelation, in the tribulation. He's the bloody and deceitful man, the wicked one, the man of the earth, the mighty man, the enemy, the adversary, the head of many countries, the violent man, the little horn, the prince that shall come, the vile person, the willful king, the man of sin, the son of perdition, I think is what Christ calls him.

And that's from Arthur Kink. that list and yet it's got sources from Psalms, Ezekiel, and Isaiah. So it's not necessarily that Antichrist, that man, that singular man that we know. Note that each of those descriptions up above, and I didn't look them all up, but I think they all have a definite article in front of them. So it's referring to one specific man.

But this, when John uses this term Antichrist, he's again reviewing without the definite article referring to a quality or a character of Antichrist. In Matthew 24, Jesus talks about the man of sin. what we know as the Antichrist, but he refers to him and the ones before him as pseudo Christ or false Christ, pseudo Christos and not Antichristos.

So he says in 24.5, for many will come in my name saying, I am the Christ, and will mislead many. So there you see if someone says, I am Christ, he's a pseudo-Christ and not an anti-Christ necessarily. But he has elements or characters of being an anti-Christ, certainly. So it's a false Christ, and a false Christ affirms the fact that there is a Christ. He'll say that. But the pseudo-Christ will say he is himself Christ. Whereas the Antichrist that John uses, and John is the only one who uses the term Antichrist in scripture, in this three epistles here. So that's his term. The Antichrist denies there is a Christ.

Moreover, he sets himself up in opposition to Christ. and over against Christ, hence the prefix there, anti, A-N-T-I. Still on this phrase, the Antichrist is coming. So to some, it's Antichrist versus false Christ. In Matthew 24, 24, Jesus says, for there shall arise false Christs, so many false Christs, or more than one, and false prophets, and they shall show great signs and wonders. So there he's using the term pseudo-Christ. And that, of course, ends up in, there's one main pseudo-Christ, and that's the man of sin of Revelation.

So it's opposition to, that's the Antichrist, versus Matthew 24's Pseudochrist, which is exchange. So it's opposition to Christ versus exchange of Christ is the concept here that Thayer and Trench wrote about. So, And look now at what, let's define Antichrist or Antichristos. What defines the character of this person and these many persons that John says are coming?

So Macaulay says, for one, they depart from the truth. And then they have a series of denials. So they deny Jesus Christ's messiahship, his salvation, the salvation he brings, and his kingship, his messiahship. They deny the Father God, and that's from 1 John 2.22. And they deny the sonship of Jesus Christ. They deny that fact in 222 of 1 John. They deny the deity and the divine origin of Christ.

That's from 1 John 4.3.

Macaulay says that a proof of the deity of Christ is found in John chapter six, the gospel, where he says, I am the bread out of heaven. I am the bread, ek. heaven, which is out of. So, you know, he's talking about, you've heard your father's eight manna in the desert. Out of heaven, the manna came from heaven, and I too came from heaven, that's where I'm from, and that's my source, I'm from heaven, which is claiming his deity.

They also deny, another denial that the Antichrist has is his humanity. They say he did not come bodily in the flesh, and that's from 1 John 4-2. So this Antichrist spirit came then, when John was writing, and many are now Antichrist in the present times, and it's all over, it's ubiquitous. And it's more of a spirit of the age is Antichrist. If you're German, you'd say Zeitgeist, the spirit of the present age.

And a reminder that we're in this period between the 69th week and the 70th, week of Daniel, where we have antichrists all over the place that deny the deity and other things of Jesus Christ. John says, from this we know it is the last hour, or it is a last hour kind of time. It's his way of saying, because many antichrists are here, Therefore, or by this you know, it is the last kind of our times. The fact that there are many antichrists present is an indication that it is a last hour kind of time period.

And this is all clear in the Greek, and it's pretty clearly written in verse 18. But not as clear as what the Greek kind of fleshes out. Here we go on to verse 19, talking more about the Antichrist. these men, they went out from us, but they were not really of us, for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us, but they went out, so that it would be shown that they are all not of us. And that's a really kind of twisty verse, but it's actually really clear about who these guys were.

Macaulay breaks it down into three groups. Group one is us. You see the word us in verse 19. Group two is they. And group three is you. You doesn't, the word or the pronoun you doesn't appear until the next verse, verse 20. And we'll look at that. But us is the apostolic circle, John and the other apostles. And they are this group of antichrists. And you are the fellow believers with John, or us, and us too.

So, In the Greek, you know, I don't know this because I'm not that Greek savvy, but this is what they tell me. Out from us and of us are the same word, it's ek, ek, out of. But there's this, there's this, There's a sort of qualifying thing in the Greek that's kind of invisible. It's called, there's a difference of ablation of source, is what it's called. I think A, B, L, A, T, L, A, T, A, B, L, A, T. Ion or some ablation of source or ablation of separation.

And it's you, I think you have to be a have a master's degree in English to sort of know this concept. The question is, are these antichrists one of John's company of apostles in their inner circle? And the answer is no, even though it's the same word, e.k. Weist makes it pretty clear. He really spells it out like Weist often does.

He says, out of us, out of us they departed, but they did not belong to us as a source. For if they had belonged to us, they would in that case have remained with us, but they departed in order that they might be plainly recognized that all do not belong to us as a source. So that's this weird little concept of ablation of source and ablative of separation. Another way to say it is they were not of the same sources as us, even though they were associated with us and in our company at one time.

Macaulay gives an example, different circumstances, these aren't Antichrist, these are more Judaizers, but in Galatians 2.12, it says, for prior to the coming of certain men from James, Peter used to eat with the Gentiles, but when they came, he's talking about Peter, Peter began to withdraw and hold himself aloof, fearing the party of the circumcision. So when it says certain men from James, they came from James, who is an apostle, but they were teaching false doctrine. And so the same concept is here, John is giving, they're coming from the circle or the association of apostles, but these guys in, in 1 John are actual anti-Christ, denying the actual deity of Christ, and denying that he even exists.

So, Galatians 2.12 illustrates how, in sum, in close association with an apostle, can come from the apostle circle.

How do you say it? Apostolic. Apostolic. Apostolic, yes. I was like, I've never seen that word before. What is apostolic? I was putting the wrong slobber on. Yeah, yeah. The apostolic circle, they were coming from that, but they weren't sourced from it, you know.

So the importance, this ablation of separation too is also important. The fact that they separated both physically and doctrinally from John and his company. And they went out and they did not come back. So the difference, yeah, I've said this before, but the difference of this verse 219 from Galatians 212 and other things like Acts 15, Acts 15 says there were certain men from Judea, and that means that they were from the circle of apostles because the apostles had stayed in Jerusalem when everyone else scattered. So same thing of these men coming out, but they weren't of the same source.

Now the phrase, so that, there's a purpose clause, so that it would be shown that the Antichrist were not all of us, is a very important clause. the fact that they separated. The King James reads that they might be made manifest, that they were not all of us. And the word manifest has, you know, you make manifest, you lay bare, you open it up for review. It, it means to be made shown, to be made abundantly clear, is that word manifest. But what is the significance of it being made clear or being shown or being made manifest that these Antichrists were not of John's apostolic company? The significance, I guess what I'm asking is, who is doing the manifesting or who is laying this bare, making it shown that these guys were not John's company? And it's an extra credit. Extra credit, right? Yeah, extra credit. Can we say it's actually the Lord that's doing that? Oh, good, yes.

Yeah, I think it's God himself. And Macaulay says, hey, God himself is doing this, making manifest. It's his purpose to do this. to make this abundantly clear. And so Macaulay asks, if this happens in a local church, and a body splits, and it's made manifest that there's a stock mineral issue, is that always a bad thing? And it's not necessarily. If it comes down to this question, which these men were anti-Christ, they were denying the personhood of Christ, the deity of Christ, the humanity of Christ, the fact that he was the Messiah, and all this. So it's a good thing that this is laid bare, and God himself is doing it. Yeah, so point E here is something I've just said, so that's good.

Oh, so circle this verse 19 back to If you go back to 1 John 1.3 and 1 John 1.7, and in those two verses, it says, so that you too might have fellowship with us. And verse seven, if we walk in the light, we have fellowship with one another. And I just thought that verse 19 here ties into that because it's a question of fellowship, isn't it? these men are breaking fellowship and John is making clear that you should not have any fellowship with these antichrists that are in the world or around them. So I think it's a question of fellowship as well as just being a very bad doctrinal thing.

On to verse 20. 1 John 2.20, but you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you all know.

Some instances of anointing in the New Testament come from Mark 6 and Luke 7. And it's just what you'd think it is, anointing with oil to heal the sick in Mark 6. In Luke, it's Mary anointing Jesus' feet with perfume. And then this word anointing with the ing. is also, the third time it appears is in this verse, 220. And then the fourth and final time it appears is 1 John 227, coming up.

And the word anoint occurs a few more times in the New Testament, once in Revelation and once in a verse of Paul's. But it's not a, I was surprised that it doesn't, The word anointing isn't very, there's not a lot in the New Testament about this word.

And the Greek word is chrisma, from creo, and it means to endue a believer with the gifts of the Holy Spirit. They used the word chrism in the Middle Ages as a consecrated special oil used in baptism. And I thought it was related to charisma or charis, but it isn't. So I was kind of going that way a little bit, but then I said, oh, it's a different word than charisma or charis. It has the idea, I think, of applying the Holy Spirit to a brand new believer in Christ as a medicinal healing balm or ointment, equipping him for the service for the Holy Spirit's work.

Anointing makes every believer a priest, as we see in 1 Peter 2.5.

And this is John's preferred way of looking at the entry of the Holy Spirit into a believer. Whereas Paul looks at more, Paul is more of a seal guy, isn't he? He talks about being sealed with the Holy Spirit quite often, and sealed with the Holy Spirit as a pledge.

But I found that the two go hand in hand. as Paul here in 2 Corinthians 1, 20 through 22, so we must have covered that a couple months ago in the 2 Corinthians class, but he says, for as many as are the promises of God, in him they are yes. Therefore also through him is our amen. to the glory of God through us. Now he who establishes us with you in Christ and anointed us is God. So we're anointed by God, who also sealed us and gave us the spirit in our hearts as a pledge. So you see there are two different things, but they go hand in hand. And that's what Paul tells us.

And the anointing of the Holy Spirit is a blessing, is one of the first fruits of the Spirit. And it's, I looked it up on the Schaeffer, his 34, this list of 34 things, riches in Christ, and it's number 31. And it's down at point E of number 31 of 34 things. So there it is, if you look it up, it's there. the unfathomable riches of Christ is being anointed with the Holy Spirit.

Finally, we're gonna look at this last phrase, and you all know in verse 20. The anointing or installation of the Holy Spirit brings one thing, oh, The Holy Spirit brings another thing, and that's knowledge, or knowing, when the Holy Spirit enters a believer. What kind of knowing is this? Is it Gnosko knowledge or Ido knowledge?

And there's your second extra credit. And I'll tell you here. It's Ido. And prior to this... Bob mentioned it a couple weeks ago, knowledge, and he said that this Greek word, ido, came up. And I was just, I was perplexed because I thought knowledge is always gnosko or epignosko. And so I thought, what is this ido word?

But there's two words for knowledge. So ido, in verse 20, is to know absolutely and finally what we says. Whereas Gnosko is to know by experience, and that's also the least. But this is important because John uses the word know 36 times in 1 John. So it's all over the place, 36 times in 29 verses. And it's a mix between Gnosko and Ido.

Gnosko, and here's Vine, He says Gnosko is taking in knowledge to come to know, to recognize, come to a complete understanding. Whereas Ido, he says, is to see, perceive, to have knowledge of. And if it's absolute, if it's absolute Ido, it's divine knowledge. God has Ido knowledge, divine knowledge. And so does the Lord himself.

So I went down, because this was very interesting to me, so I really went down this path, and I think it's going to hold. We'll see if it holds. when we study more First John and look at the difference between Gnosko and Ido. And Gnosko frequently suggests progress in knowledge, and you can frequently insert the phrase, to come to know, whereas Ido suggests a fullness of knowledge, or just, you know, just, you know, or you don't know, and not a progressive thing. Gnosto employs deductive or inductive reasoning to come to know, whereas Ido is intuitive, so it's intuitive knowledge versus deductive and inductive reasoning. And Darby says it, two Greek words, to know, our Gnosko, and he says, Oida, I think that's the same word as Ido. Gnosko signifies objective knowledge, what a man has learned or acquired. The English expression being acquainted with perhaps conveys the meaning. He said, Oida conveys the thought of what is inward, the inward consciousness in the mind. Intuitive knowledge is Oida, not immediately derived from what is externally.

So someone on WordPress was also interested in this, this difference. And there's a little section in vine to the difference between the two. So it's kind of a yeah it's kind of a very and this, you guys might say oh, I've known this all along. And, but I can say, I'm just coming to this. So, so I learned it. So yeah. And it's always good to kind of go back over this again, because we, we tend to throw these things out this very loosely. Well, that's good. And you think, well, what does that mean? So it's better to go back and look at the definitions and kind of, Oh, so I'm right. Right. You're saying I'm late to the party.

No, no, no, no, no, no. I'm saying that, that, um, We have to be careful when we talk about certain Greek words or say, you know, like agape. Oh, that's agape love. Oh, that's Philadelphia love. And then we throw it out and don't give the background. And I probably heard it before, but maybe it got buried in my noggin so deep. And it's probably touched on often, but you know. Well, sometimes some verses are challenging. You look at that and you say, well, I don't know.

Yeah. So you wonder, why is it Gnosko? Why is it Oida? And it's interesting because, geez, I think it's in John 8, 55, he uses the two, oido and... In the same passage. Yeah, in the same verse. Right. And it's cool because you can see it. He's saying, you, and he's talking to maybe Pharisees, you say you know God. Right. And it's gnosko. Right. And he says, but I know, I know him. And that's oido. So it's this... Yeah, that's cool. So yeah, he has this perfect knowledge.

They have, you know, they've, through their studies, they haven't come to the truth. So the anointing of the Holy Spirit happens only one time at the new birth, and I'm making this claim, imparts us with Idaho. or Oida, the intuitive, eternal, divine knowledge into our spirit. And thus we know divine things without having learned them. But we, eventually we grow in grace and we learn things by Gnosko. And believers, and the believers John writes to knew intuitively that they were anointed by the Holy Spirit.

And in 1 John 5.19, John says, we know we are of God, and that's Oido. So it's intuitive knowledge. God's knowledge is intuitive, Oido.

He does not... And I'm going to make this claim. I think it'll hold, but we'll see. I could be proved wrong. He does not come to know things by inductive or deductive reasoning or acquiring knowledge. And just FYI, Schaeffer uses that logic a lot in some of his writings, and it just astounds you because God is not like man. He doesn't learn anything. He's not learning anything. He already knows it. So, you know, we learn about something. God doesn't have to learn about anything. He knows it. Right, yeah.

And it's just kind of a cool thing, that last little phrase. was just interest very interesting so i don't think god is connected with that concept of conosco and i think this i'd justin sparks in what is man makes a statement that seems to agree he says that human spirit isn't the organ an organ of spiritual knowledge and spiritual knowledge is very different from natural or soul knowledge How does God know things, and by what means does God come to his conclusions or his decisions? On what basis does he run the universe? Is it by reasoning, inductively, deductively, philosophically, or logically, or comparatively? And he's, I like this phrase, I like this.

Surely all this laboriousness of brain, or laboriousness of brain activity is unknown to God. His knowledge and conclusions are intuitive. Intuition is that faculty of spiritual intelligence by which all spiritual beings work. And he says that even angels, angels serve the will of God by intuitively discerning God's will. And they aren't, it doesn't come with angels by being argued with or reasoned conviction.

So yeah, our spirit has ido knowledge. And I assume that our soul and our mind, you know, part of our flesh is what kind of utilizes Gnosko knowledge. Okay, so time. Then I thought, oh, I'll go back to verse 18 and look at this. From this we know that it is the last hour. And it turns out that that's Gnosko.

So I say, God has implanted his divine knowledge, Ido, into this spirit and dwelt believer so that he can have proper divine viewpoint regarding the cosmos. Because as you remember back in verse 15, John says, do not love the world. So our broader kind of subject here is not loving the world or things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. This leads, having this idol knowledge imparted in us leads to a correct observational knowledge, gnosko, using what we hear and see.

You know, he says in verse 18, look around, you see that antichrists have appeared and they are coming. So put those two facts together and know, and then know that it is the last hours, that's Gnosko knowledge. And it has the purpose that they know experientially what kind of last times they are living in. and to remain in him, in Christ, until the end of the age comes, looking for his appearance. And jumping ahead a couple verses to 2.28, John says, now, again, little children, abide in him, so that when he appears, you may have confidence and not shrink away from him in shame at his coming. So that kind of ties it to where we're going and to where we've been hopefully a little bit.

But yeah, we'll end there for the morning. That's great, Andrew. Yeah. And I was thinking as you were talking about this, you know, in our world today, we see men denying Christ. So really, the concept of anti-Christ shouldn't be that foreign to us because we see it all around us, men denying Christ all the time. I mean, it's almost commonplace. So we live in this situation right now. Right, exactly.

And I was continuing on that thought, and it makes sense, but, you know, Jesus talking about these false Christs in Matthew 24, we don't see many of those, you know, guys who come and say, I am the Christ. You don't see many pseudo-Christs right now, but you see a lot of antichrists. But in the tribulation, it sounds, There's going to be a whole bunch of false Christs coming up and saying, I'm the Christ, and look here, look at me, I'm the Christ. And that's not until the real antichrist is revealed. The abomination of desolation is when he outs himself as the man of sin in the middle of the tribulation. So yeah, yeah, it's very, and scripture is true, you know, you see it observationally here in our present world. So, great, well, I'll close. Yeah.

I just looked up Oida in Mountess Greek Dictionary Knowledge in 1 John 2.20, and he has a little note here that says, Oida is actually a perfect form functioning as a present So, I'm not perfectly clear about what he means by that, but it seems to make sense.

Yeah, like it's perfect, and I assume by... Perfect tense, maybe? Jim, could that be the perfect tense, maybe? Probably, yeah. It's actually a perfect form functioning as a present. So, Oida is basically perfect knowledge. that's given to us at the present time, isn't it? Could be, yeah.

I don't know, it might be his point is about, you know, verb tenses, the perfect tense is past completed action with abiding results. Right. So if it's that, and he says, well, it's not acting that way in the Greek, it's acting as the present tense, that's a different, he's making a different point. Yeah. How much should I? It's complicated. It is. It's all Greek to us. Okay. I'll close in prayer.

Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for this study in your word and just be with us throughout the week. Keep us safe and healthy and thank you for salvation in your son, Jesus Christ, and we thank you for all the blessings that occur in conjunction with that wonderful fact. In Jesus' name, amen.