1-3 John - 1st John 2:18-20 Last Hour - many Antichrist
1 John 2:18-20 · Randy Peterman · Apr 3, 2011
1, 2 & 3 John, No. 14
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492623022987

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

Alright, well, this scary drawing on the chalkboard is a brain dump. I don't have focus on the right screen. Let's try that. Here we go. This is what happens when I have to to teach a passage in my brain. I go and I read the passage and there's topics like we start out here we have this issue of the Antichrist and we have the last hour and children and the Holy One and out from us and anointing and then my brain thinks of all the other things that are related to that and we're not gonna cover this this way at all this morning but hopefully the handout is always more organized than what this is but One of the worst parts for me in teaching is having to trim this down because I get this crazy brain that connects all these dots and then suddenly we're talking about King David and Saul and Solomon and it's great and then we have judgment, wrath and hell and we'd never be able to get through all of it this morning. So hopefully we're going to go through some of the things. We're going to talk about end times, false believers and loss of salvation, or not loss of salvation, as well as charismatic theology. So we're going to get to touch a lot of material this morning.

That's just a funny picture my friend posted yesterday of he and his kids, but it fit well with the title. Hopefully this doesn't get too weird. Alright, let's take a look at the passage itself and see what John said. He was inspired by the Holy Spirit. I don't believe this was.

First John 2.18-20 Children, it is the last hour. And just as you heard that Antichrist is coming, even now many Antichrists have appeared. From this we know that it is the last hour. 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 not of us.

But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you all know. Alright, so what's been divided is three verses, but it's one good, solid, coherent thought, which is convenient as a teacher because then you don't feel like you're straddling too many things.

So he calls them children and we went over children a couple weeks ago on the 20th and so I won't belabor that too much other than to say that John has used this term already throughout the book and it's a term of endearment and he loves his audience and so we can know that they were comforted by this term and he wasn't belittling them.

He says it is the last hour. And so how many of you have studied eschatology or in time studies before? All right. So we have a moderate number of hands that go up there. The interesting thing is that John uses the phrase last hour. But the other texts in scripture tend to say these last times or these last days. So while they're probably synonymous, it is a different term than they use. I kind of like John using last hour. It's not like they took a vote and said, what does Randy think about which terminology we should use? But different terms are used.

If you turn with me and your Bible to 2 Timothy 3.1, we're going to do a lot of flipping around, so be ready for that.

2 Timothy 3.1, and we'll start at 1 and we'll keep going actually beyond that. With some in mind, I'm reading 2 Timothy 3, 1-5 when you get there. But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come, for men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, Alright, thank you very much, Tom.

So he starts it out with these last days, but then he goes on to describe a list of wicked things. This is a to-do list for some people. Obviously not for believers. in these last days, and he lists out those things. John just says in this last hour, and so I don't want to spend too much time looking at all the different things that are tied to the other vocabulary of last time or last days.

But I think it's important to recognize that the writers of the New Testament books, and frankly the writers of the Old Testament books, were anticipating something. What has been anticipated from Genesis 3? Or what was anticipated from Genesis 3, particularly verse 16? Christ. One who is going to come and crush the head of the serpent. And then as Scripture was revealed, there was what we call in the theological world, progressive revelation. As new things were revealed, we learn more about this coming Messiah.

One of my personal favorite books and chapters to go to is Isaiah 53. Usually if I read that out loud or read it privately I end up crying. I won't do it this morning just because it's outside the scope of this passage. But here's this prophecy of this Messiah who's going to take on the suffering of the world. And it's very big. It's a very heavy theological concept and it builds on and we finally come to Christ who came in person and took on this physical form and died on our behalves.

But then there was yet more anticipation. Did Jesus fulfill all the prophecies that were prophesied in the Old Testament? No, there was more. And so, some people will say theologically that there's a parenthesis in the church age, but what happens is that the writers of the New Testament are still waiting with anticipation.

Paul and Peter and John all say these last days or last time or last hour. Now the reason I like last hour is because when you think of last time, There's kind of a broad scope there. Last days, okay, I feel like, okay, we're getting to weeks and months. The last hour, I mean, now, any moment now, we could be ready and that's an exciting thing. So we have the last hour. Now, John tells us why we know it's the last hour. It's the last days, it's the last time. Why is it that we know the last hour? What does he tell us?

The Antichrists have come. They've raised up. And John is going to continue on and we'll get into the Antichrist section. He's going to continue on and tell us the characteristics of these Antichrists and who they are. But we're not quite there yet. So we do have this problem of the last hour.

I've got a question here and I hope that this stirs you to think. Does the last hour have the same tension for believers as it does for non-believers? So it brings joy to the believer when they know, hey, I'm going to be united with my bridegroom. I've never been a bride before but I can't wait. Personally, I mean that. The thing is, during the last hour, hey, this is impending, it's coming, and that's an exciting thing.

How many of you have watched any Kevin Costner movie in the last several decades? It seems, aside from Dances with Wolves, he had all these end times, kind of apocalyptic movies he did. Waterworld was one of them. And then he did The Mailman. So he got tired of swimming, I guess. I don't know.

But all these movies, Hollywood loves to dramatize this end time concept. But it's never really the end times. It's not how the Bible describes it. And it's always these things where it's like, whew, humanity survived and at least we got a superhero. But Scripture writes out a last hour that's a lot more. Last hour leading up to the wrath of God for seven years and then a millennium, a thousand years of Christ reigning. So that's little different than the end times movies but but there's always tension you know the 2012 movie came out I guess it was last year I don't pay attention movies enough but I mean if I mention Kevin Costner movies that's probably like you know a third of the movies I've ever seen because I haven't seen that many movies but here we have this this in times concept that's there and in the last hour Believers are told in Paul's letters to the Thessalonians, encourage one another with this.

Hey, the Lord is returning. Be encouraged. But the world gets scared in 2012. Oh, cataclysm. Oh, everything's ending. Believers go, okay. I do software development. Most of you know that. Not all of you know that. People have said, do you think the Mark of the Beast is a chip? Do you think it's a this, that, or anything? If I knew, if it was really explicit, and I knew I would go work for the company for free to bring on the return of the Lord sooner, if it was something that I could do, because I'm not going to be there, I'm not going to deal with those impacts.

But the last hours there, and John communicates this impending return of Jesus Christ for his bride. Okay, well we know from Pauline letters that it was the rapture, the return for his bride. So we have this last hour but then he is talking about you know that the Antichrist is coming and you know that the Antichrist is coming and you know that there are already Antichrists And so what I think is interesting is that John is the only one that uses the Greek word that we translate, Antichrist, which is actually a a transliteration of the Greek, because it's literally Antichrist in the Greek, and it's...

Letter for letter. Well, it's not quite, because it's Christos, but it's basically a transliteration, just straight from the Greek into English. But John's the only one that uses it. He uses it here in verse 218. He uses it in 22, which means next week you'll get to hear about it some more. He uses it in chapter 4 in verse 3, and then in 2 John he mentions it once. But he's the only author that uses the term Antichrist in the New Testament.

The thing with with First John here is that we're going to develop these theologies so we'll get into that here in just a moment. But where does the concept of the Antichrist come from? Because he wrote to them, he says, and you know or you've heard the Antichrist. Where does the concept of the Antichrist come from? Old Testament.

Okay, Daniel talks about an Antichrist and we can take a look at that in just a moment. Tom, were you going to? So let's take a look if you've got your Bibles. I've already assumed you've got your Bibles. Turn to Daniel chapter 7 and this is one place that seems to indicate an Antichrist.

It doesn't call him the Antichrist there, so I want to just make that observation. Anytime it's not explicit and you match something up, you need to observe that this appears to be that. But with prophecy, sometimes people jump the gun and I want to always be ginger with that. It's just my own personal study habit.

So Daniel 7 verse 8 and then also verse 21. Okay, so Daniel 7, 8, forgive me for being so slow. The worst part about using my computer all the time is that I'm always slower in finding it than I'm actually capable of finding it. So Daniel chapter 7 verse 8 he says while I was contemplating the horns because he's in the middle of a vision of four beasts while I was contemplating the horns behold another horn a little one came up among them and three of the first horns were pulled out by the roots before and behold this horn possessed eyes like the eyes of a man in a mouth uttering great boasts and then he continues on to describe what goes on but in verse 21 he says I kept looking and the horn was waging war with the saints and overpowering them. Verse 22, "...until the Ancient of Days came and judgment was passed in favor of the saints of the Highest One, and the time arrived when the saints took possession of the kingdom." So the Antichrist, as we look through the Old Testament prophecies and in Revelation, the Antichrist comes and he is trying to dominate against the saints. Now, there are contexts for that in the Seven Years of Tribulation, which is, again, any time we go into End Times theology, it's like it should be its own class, so I always apologize.

If you go online, the Revelation series is up on the website. It has really good materials, and it tends to be a good place to start for going through things systematically. Have there been plans to do a Prophecy Intensive? We haven't talked about that. I don't know. You could. I always like to ask the elder. Put you under the spotlight. What do you got? It hasn't been a topic recently. But it is definitely something that is revealed in scripture. So we have this Antichrist problem.

Additionally, and this is where I think this applies to John's text, if you turn in to John 15, 18, the Gospel of John, not this epistle. And Christ is speaking and he says, if the world hates you, you know that it has hated me before it hated you. In verse 19, if you were of the world, the world would love its own. But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this, the world hates you.

And of course, we could keep going because usually there's a broader thought. But the principle there is that Christ is telling His disciples, the world's going to hate you. They hated me and they're going to hate you because we're of a heavenly type.

And that's an important concept. See, there is a movement within the popular church, and I say this very carefully because I don't want to get finger-pointing and get people's feathers all ruffled up, but there's a movement within the popular church to try to be more like the world. And we're going to do it for evangelistic purposes. If we're more like the world, they'll want to come to church more. But the problem is that we're not like the world.

The thing that I think is funny is that in most other parts of culture, you want to find a niche. That's the way that marketing works. If you go and look at marketing, the idea is that you need to be special and you need to be different. For a long time Apple had this slogan, think different, be different, buy Apple products and do this thing, be like us. be your own little niche.

Of course now they're popular and now they stop using think different. They want you to think like everybody else. But the thing is that with that, you have this problem where the Antichrists come in and they hate Christ. They hate Him. And they want you to think like they do.

When we looked at the last day's passage in 2 Timothy 3, what were the things of the world? What were they doing? What was that list? That wasn't the righteousness of Christ being lived out, that was the works of the flesh being amplified and promoted.

Romans 1, 18-32. They suppress God, they trade in the Creator for the creation, and then they pursue the lustfulness of the flesh and they invent new kinds of evil. They turn it up to 11. So we have these antichrists that are here. And Christ says these people are going to be haters of you because they were haters of you.

And I always feel bad about that because just my personality, I like to like people and I like people to like me back. But just because that might be your personality doesn't mean you get to compromise on God's word. So that applies to me. It hits home every time because I just want everybody to be friends and that would be great. But it doesn't work.

It does seem like in our culture today that more and more people are afraid to say that I'm a Christian. Sure. Out in public, and that's a shame, but I am very grateful that still in this country that we can worship God openly and in public. But the antichrist that we see today, everything, things that were meant for good, somebody's always going to twist it.

It's got to spin. Just about name almost anything. Yeah. Raw youth. for me. And I think in that way he could be considered at that point in his life an antichrist. And Christ tells him that. And he remembers that for the rest of his life. That's an important point. That's also an important point. Roy always gets ahead of where I'm teaching. I know at least I'm thinking through things systematically and if other people get there before me that just means that they're thinking too or at least we're both approaching it from the same perspective.

So yeah, Paul is persecuting him, and when Paul persecutes Christ, he is an Antichrist. And the thing about Antichrist is that we need to look at the way John treats the plurality of Antichrist in this passage. He says, you know that there is an Antichrist coming, but there are Antichrists in plural. So we have to ask ourselves the important question, what is an Antichrist?

Is it just someone who... Because the singular person that's described both in Daniel and that John is anticipating in this epistle, he's doing some things that are powered by Satan that are pretty supernatural in description. So we have to assume that not everybody that John's writing about in the plural of Antichrist is doing those extreme things that are described in the prophecy.

But they are doing things motivated by the same life. And that's something that John's going to get into in 1 John 4, 3. So we won't belabor that ahead of time. But that principle of life is there, and I think that's important. Their life is not in Christ. And because their life is not in Christ, their life is in Satan, basically. And that's their power. That's their motivation. And that leads them to hate those whose life is in Christ.

Tom? It kind of sounds stale these days, but in this topic it means a lot. Beware of imitations. Yeah. Well, and I think that's an important thing. Satan is a master imitator. Deceiver and manipulator. Let's take a look at the characteristics of the Antichrist. They're there on your handout.

Looking at the four places that John uses Antichrist in the text, 1 John 2.22, Satan is a liar, and in 2.17, he's a deceiver. but also the Antichrist is a liar and a deceiver. And so the spirit of Antichrist carries on that same tenacity. It denies that Jesus is the Christ, okay, so he repeats that in 1 John 2, 22 and 4, 3.

And then it's a life that is already in the world. It's a spirit that is already in the world. And, oh, Gail? Yeah, you asked, and I think you're getting there. Maybe I can steal your thunder this time. Do it. Please. Say it again. The cookie eater. Doesn't the word Christ mean the chosen one or the anointed one? The Messiah or the anointed one. In other words, God has chosen this particular person, deity, whatever you... to do a specific thing and to be what he is. And so if we say against Christ, it seems to me that that means the Antichrist himself as well as the individuals who are against him. It's like, no, that isn't what we're going to have. We're going to have this over here. We don't want God's choice. We're anti your chosen one, and we think it should be done this way. And the thing is, what's interesting is there's a... This is stirred up conversation. Roy, you go first. No, I was just going to add to it. Oh, add to it, and then I'll say... When I say anti, it's against.

Right, but it's also false. Or pseudo, or imitation. There's an implication of a desire to replace, So there's the falseness and there's a hatred of the true one that they're replacing. So it carries with it both concepts that are there. But if you think about it, a liar and a deceiver, a liar saying, don't follow that, that's wrong, and a deceiver saying, follow me, because I'm the one. And so that's a big problem.

If we take a look back to the Gospels, Christ promised us that this would happen. We'll take a look at those in just a minute. While the prophecies of the Antichrist as one specific person in history are clear from the Old Testament, and John affirms this with this verse, the actual spirit of hatred for who Christ was and is and will be, within the earthly time-space continuum, spreads to a generation. Christ says that there's a generation or a collective group of people that are going to hate Him. So let's turn to Matthew 24 and we'll take a look at verses 5 and 11. In Matthew 24, verse 5, Christ says, For many will come in My name, saying, I am the Christ, and will mislead many.

And he continues on talking about these end times things. And in verse 11 he says, many false prophets will arise and will mislead many. And of course, if we take a look at the full context of that passage, that's an entire lesson. So we'll have to avoid the rabbit trails, even though I love them. The principle there is deception and falsehood and leading people away.

Now what I think is interesting about false prophets is that false prophets come in and I think of Mohammed as being one of the ultimate false prophets. He was really good at what he did. The interesting thing about Mohammed's so-called ministry, and I'll put air quotes around that because I certainly don't believe it was a true ministry, is he came in talking about peace. He wanted to unify, he was kind of a Unitarian where he was trying to unify various religious ideas and then he really didn't get any traction. So he changed cities and he found a militant group of folks that really were spurred on by the militant things and he became a prophet of militant jihad thinking, which of course we're more familiar with since 9-11.

And what's interesting through that is that we have a false prophet who came in and he taught peace. Islam is the religion of peace. How many times has Oprah somehow brought that into her message? Actually, there's probably a finite number of those. But the idea is that we have this false religion of peace and then later on he brings in warring. And so there's this false prophet who comes in who's lying and he's deceiving and Americans are just ignorant enough about spiritual things anymore that if Oprah says that Islam is a religion of peace, it must be true.

Or anyone else for that matter. But we don't recognize it. See the thing is that they have a concept of progressive revelation too. And anytime Muhammad taught something newer, which might have involved war, that trumps the older stuff which might have been about peace. But they can still take you. Look, it's peace here. See, Mohammed said peace.

And of course, they're like, you know, let's cover this verse over here. Yeah. And so it is a problem. But these prophets come in and they're anti-Christ and they don't accept Christ for who he is. Mohammed said Christ was a prophet. You're all familiar with that? How many Muslims you know are like, yeah, Jesus was a prophet. Really neat guy. But let me just show you a quick logic trick. Does a prophet have to be 100% accurate?

In the Old Testament he did. In the Old Testament he did. They'd kill you if you weren't. Okay, Jesus said I'm the only way to get to God the Father. Does Muhammad say that Jesus is the only way to get to God the Father? No. So one of those two prophets is logically wrong. And it has to always be Muhammad. Here's why. If Jesus is the only way, according to Jesus, Muhammad's wrong. If Muhammad says that Jesus is a prophet, but Jesus is wrong, then Jesus isn't a prophet, and so Muhammad's wrong. So either way, Muhammad is wrong.

Just don't tell that to your Muslim friends. They might want to, you know... No, I don't assume everyone... No, there's too many liberals in the United States for there to be everybody declaring Islam to be ready to... take you to Allah. But we have these liars and deceivers and false prophets. The thing that John says is that God sent the Antichrists out, which I think is gracious for a lot of reasons. One, that leads to confusion within the body.

But two, it allows us to recognize something that I think is important and I want to talk about, and that is eternal security. How many of you are familiar with the term eternal security? Hopefully everybody is. If not, eternal security is the idea that once you are saved, you are eternally saved. You are locked in with Christ. You can't be unsaved. You can't lose your salvation.

What John says about them, and let's read it again just because I think it's important, what John says in verse 19 is, they went out from us, but they were not really of us. For they have been of us, or if they had been of us, they would have remained with us, but they went out so that it would be shown that they all are not of us. Okay, so he's not saying they were once part of us, They were once believers and they lost their salvation. He says they were mingling with us and then they went out.

But they're not Christians who walked away. These are people who are not believers. Culturally at the time, that would not have been shocking. See for us, it's not too much different culturally in the sense that there were lots of mystery religions at the time. And people were always kind of checking things out. There was a general sense of spirituality in the Roman culture. So, oh, you guys have something going on here and I can come in? Yeah, all right, cool. Hey, that sounds really neat. That's a nice idea.

But they never believed that Jesus Christ was the Son of God sent to die for their sins according to scriptures, rose again on the third day according to scriptures. They didn't believe that, but they went out. And so that is an important thing. He's not talking about loss of salvation. Sometimes people hear, oh, somebody left the church, and they're not believers. They lost their salvation. That's not what John is saying. It's not the message that he was conveying to the people reading this book.

Before we jump past the Antichrist, I just want to make sure I scan over this list here and make sure we don't miss an important topic. Can you cover how are we called to respond to this? Ah, yes. So I'm going to ask the first question ahead. So should we be surprised by the spirit of the Antichrist? No. Okay. We should be on the lookout for it. We should be aware that it's there. See, that's the thing.

If you believe human beings are basically good without Christ, and Tom laughs, I have to say that a lot of people actually think that. How many times have you watched a Hollywood movie where in the end the basic message is like, everybody's good and everyone should just live up their potential? But really, the spirit of hating Christ is that of Satan. That's what he brings out.

So as believers, we shouldn't be surprised that we have this group of people that hate us for being believers. The atheists mount attacks on Christianity all the time and in our culture of the internet and what I would call socialized religion through the media. That's not an official term, I just made that up. But what happens is that media tries to poll and see who represents different ideas and they kind of socialize it and they They bring out talking heads and it has nothing to do with truth. A relativism that comes up.

The atheists mount an attack and they want us to respond. They want us to respond by walking away from Christianity, one. But they want us to respond by showing how dumb we are. The atheists really want to show how dumb Christians are. You're dumb because you believe in a God. Well, they believe in something and that's that they believe in themselves and that's that's the promise is they're not faithless They're not faithless. They have faith. They walk by faith.

It's just in themselves in the flesh and then basically fundamentally Satan How are we recalled to respond to the spirit Okay, with the truth? We have to know what the truth of God's Word is and respond with how He... When Satan came to Jesus in the wilderness, I think this is a very important lesson by itself, but also the implications of the way that Christ dealt with things. When Satan came to Christ, he came with lies. Satan's a liar, that's not a big surprise. How did Christ respond? With Scripture. He said, but it is written. And he responded with scripture.

When the atheist comes to you, he's coming or she is coming from a totally different worldview. If you respond with scripture, they're going to just reject it outright. But if you buy into their argument, you are responding to them on their playing field. And you have to remember that this Faith is based on a whole bunch of assumptions and presuppositions.

So if you buy into their argument and you start fighting, if you will, or arguing in their realm, you've jumped to a place that is not tenable. You have no footing there. Does that make sense? If you go to a place where you have no footing, you lose. all I have to do is walk up and just ding and push you and you're going to fall over because you have no footing. You don't get to go play.

If you go and play on their playing field, then you will lose every time. When we look at cosmology, the beginning and origins of the universe, they look at Genesis and they laugh. Oh, the universe is billions of years old. It didn't take seven days to create, six days to create, and a seventh day for God to rest. That's ridiculous. And here's why. And they ask you, and they invite you, come in, play on my playing field. And as soon as you go and play on their playing field, they win. Because they're asking you to play on their terms. Is this clear?

I'm talking about philosophical things. So are we not to engage with them? It isn't that we don't engage with them. It is that we don't play in their playing field. They want to come to you and say, I don't have faith. I'm a man of facts. I'm a woman of facts. I don't have faith. Except for they do. They have faith in themselves. The simplest way to ask this question is ask them, can they prove to you absolutely, without faith, that unicorns have not, did not, and will not exist in all of the universe? They cannot do that. Fundamentally, I can't do that by science.

I can tell you what God's Word has revealed, and I can say that God has the authority of all cosmology. He is the source of cosmology. But they walk by faith. As soon as you get someone to recognize they walk by faith, you have taken them out of their stronghold and they have to recognize that they're making assumptions about the world around them. Our assumptions come from the Bible. that's the faith and the reliability of Scripture and the things that line up in Scripture. Their assumptions come from themselves and the science community around them who has suppressed their knowledge of God. Is an agnostic just as bad as an atheist? That's a philosophical question. So the problem with agnosticism is that Basically, it comes from the Greek concept of without knowledge. It says, I don't know.

But instead of saying, I'm going to wrestle through the facts that we do know, I'm going to wrestle through the revelation that we do have and compare, they're saying, I choose not to do the legwork and I choose not to make a decision. As far as salvation is concerned, they're just as lost and still filled with deception. But they're also walking by faith. It's just like they put a blindfold on and turn the lights off and walk around in the dark and say, I don't know, and I like it. But they're not even sitting the fence. They don't actually get to sit the fence, that's the problem.

Well, Randy, you know, if you look at Romans, from Romans' perspective, from God's perspective, everyone knows inherently within himself. So there are no agnostics. I mean, people claim to be agnostic. Scripture says they're not. So once again, if you can focus back that direction, you say, well, you're not agnostic. Of course, they'll vehemently object to that. The thing is that they're claiming to know enough to say that they don't know, which is just logically...

Well, when you say how do we respond to the spirit, I have just another thought, which is that sometimes, maybe it's not a person, maybe you just feel the spirit, I don't know if you've ever been in that position, but when that happens, In my life, I have to just say, God take over, this is beyond me. Well, and that's where we look at Ephesians chapter 6, where he talks about the sword of the Spirit and the armor that's there, we're to stand in our position in Christ. And so that's our thing, God take over, because I'm in you, I'm positioned in you, and I trust in you. This was specifically in the context of the culture and the world around us, was geared towards that question.

Gail? Yeah, I wanted to go back a minute to what you said about playing on their playing field. And I'm trying to figure out what that means and I think... Can I draw on this chalkboard and everyone can see it? Because I'd hate to erase numbers, Kate. Okay, but let me finish what I wanted to say. Please do it.

Okay, so if I leave the word off and try to talk to this person from his playing field, from what he's using as his foundation, and try from human viewpoint and reasoning, and all of that stuff, to prove that God is, and that Christ is the Christ, and so on and so on, and you must be saved because you're a sinner. You can't prove those things from their playing field. So, what you're saying is, that if we step into that kind of reasoning, we're going to lose every time, and come away looking stupid. Yeah.

But I would go on to say that a friend of mine on Facebook said, and he claims to be an agnostic, and he said, did God bless Japan after the tsunami? Well, that ate at me for days. Bless Japan or curse Japan? Did God bless Japan? And it's coming from the idea of, well, all you Christians out there say that God is love. You know, well, was that a blessing?

And, you know, where do you go with that? I was finally another person who's not a believer at all, said to him on Facebook, read the Bible. And so, you know, and at that point I decided to get into it a little bit. I was afraid I was going to lose. Because where do you go with that? I moved my chalk. Why did that happen? So here's the problem.

Inside of humanism, everything is based on faith in the rationality of human beings and logical order of sequence and consistency. Mathematical equations, basically. derived in various places. But the idea is that if we continue to learn we will continue to know and we will find truth, lowercase t, but everything is malleable.

Bob is an exception to that in the science community. He's one of our teachers. Bob understands that God made the universe and he put an order in place but that he also works supernaturally inside of the universe. Colossians tells us Christ sustains the universe.

So it's different from humanism, but humanism says we're going to continue to learn infinitely until either we destroy ourselves or the universe ends. So humanism is based entirely on faith. These are all columns of faith. Based entirely on faith in what humans can know and what we will continue to know. The problem with humanism is that it is entirely malleable and flexible. When they ask you a Christian question, they're baiting you into a debate like that. They're asking it based on humanism foundations.

Oh, I am showing you the righteousness of intellect above scripture, outside of the context of scripture. So they've tried to jump over into Christ, but if you take them into scripture and you say, well, Adam fell for all mankind, God saved the universe through Noah, it's a miracle that we're not facing the wrath of God in hell immediately and imminently or never, because we shouldn't have been born because God wiped out the earth. So they don't want to face it in scriptural context, where we deserve the wrath of God. They want to take it outside and get you to pull into their humanism worldview and then they win because everything is based on the faith of human rationality.

There's a middle view and this is where I would lump Buddhism, I would lump Islam and various Hinduism and other religions into deism where they're still by faith but they reject humanism because they think there's something greater, but they have not embraced Christ, who is obviously from a Christian worldview, greater and perfect and he's sustaining universe and he's creating order. So that's a different worldview. Anytime you engage with a new age person in the United States that are probably in Buddhists are probably the more common, at least historically, that in the last couple of decades, that's been the case. Islam is on the rise, obviously.

We need to not come into their worldview, because when you're using rationality to logic someone into something, at some point in time, they're going to try to get you to step into the bear trap of their worldview. And that's the problem. And so I often don't respond to somebody who tries to bait me into those kinds of questions because they're not asking you a question out of respect. They're not asking you a question that says, your worldview is consistent within itself. Please explain it to me. They're trying to get you to switch worldviews. God did not bless or curse Japan with the tsunami outside of the context of the Christian worldview, but they're asking you to do that. They're trying to woo you into this deceptive place where they've got a logical trap.

But all three of these are based on faith, and the thing is that humanism always wants to tell you that they don't have faith. Atheists will tell you over and over again, I don't have faith. Don't tell me I have faith. I reject faith. except for that they're having faith in themselves. They're still believing in themselves that they can do something of their own accord.

And again, I go back to the unicorn just because it's a simple illustration of, show me, Mr. Scientist, who's utterly rejected God and faith as a whole, that unicorns do or do not exist. Make an absolute statement. Why can't? Why? Because it's malleable. They're always collecting data. They're never done.

So that's hopefully somewhat more clear. The problem is that this is a philosophy class where we talk about worldviews. There are some classes online that we did. It was the first time I taught at Holly Hills. My dad and I co-taught a class. And I went into this some. This is a quick overview of it. But fundamentally, people will reveal their worldview, this is a good thing to look out for, with their absolute statements.

Listen for absolute statements. I don't believe in Christianity. It's false. Absolutely Okay, so your worldview is that you reject Christianity? Absolutely. You revealed an absolute. I don't believe in truth at all. Oh Well, that's an absolute. It's an absolute truth, which means you're contradicting yourself, but let's not get into that But but listen for absolutes because that's a really key part of those things.

And what he's looking for you is to absolutely, when that guy asked that question, did God bless Japan? My initial reaction is to say that God could bless Japanese people with the gospel. That missionaries could go in there and preach the gospel when the people were broken and not distracted by a I read recently that 40% of Japanese women had Louis Vuitton handbags. I don't know if you need to know who those are. I roughly, very loosely know what that is. Some of them would forego motherhood and having children because they would make the decision between affording this really expensive, there's like a 20% markup, just by the virtue of that they're selling it in Japan, it's that expensive in Japan, and they were forgoing other luxuries in life to have this brand of thing.

So if suddenly that brand doesn't matter anymore because you had a tsunami and an earthquake and you've got a nuclear reactor going out, suddenly that doesn't matter and Louis Vuitton is probably not important and you're going to listen to the gospel. So in that context, maybe.

But to ask for you to get baited into a logical argument like that, that's just trouble. You're wise to just stand back and say that you're asking the wrong question. We have totally skipped over anointing and the bell's gone. So let's go back to the anointing real quick. We're going to skip the charismatic discussion I had planned because it will just be faster that way.

But the anointing that John is talking about is the anointing was used in a Hebrew context. If you were a Jew, and many of his readers were in this book, well, yeah, anyways, when he was initially writing the letter, the Jews would have understood the anointing was given. something that God did to choose a leader.

The anointed Aaron and the priests that were to serve under him, and the anointed Saul and David. They were there. The anointing was there as a sign of being chosen unto something and selected to do something. The antichrists left. But you didn't. because you were anointed. That was your anointing. The anointing was not like... Okay, I'm going to go into the charismatic thing. I have heard charismatic teachers who are pastors who have done something really sinful.

In one case at a church I knew about in Nevada, The guy took the church credit cards and went out and maxed them out. Bought stuff for himself. He had a really nice car for a while. I was like, wow, how did he do that? Apparently, you can do things as a pastry of access if you're not being watched to do some interesting things. And the church body was a little upset. Understandably, hey, you've spent our money. You've done these things.

And he said, don't touch God's anointed. Which is taking what David said about not killing Saul out of context. David said, I'm not going to take out Saul, he's God's anointed. God anointed him and chose him to be king. That was an anointing. That's not the anointing that John is talking about here.

I went into the charismatic stuff. But he says, but you all know, or y'all know, I actually learned y'all before I moved to Texas, but when I got there I fit right in. Except for I pronounced my I's more straight. So he says, but you all know, and he uses the Greek word there, There are several different Greek words for that, but it's oida, and I think that's how you pronounce that, which implies knowledge born by perception.

You have perceived this. It's not the same thing as the gnosko, which is a knowledge by relationship. Like, I know my wife. It's a different Greek word there. But he says, you guys know this. You have seen this. You have perceived this. They separated. They pulled out. But you know that you are part of the body and you perceive that as well. Now, we happen to have other places in the Greek where the Gnosko is used of our relationship with God that we know by relationship with Him.

1 Corinthians 8.3 is an example of that. But in this context, John uses this idea of knowing that you're there by perception, by having learned something or perceived it.

John's going to keep going. We need to wrap up here and I'm concluding remarks. John's going to keep going on talking about the Antichrist and how we respond to that as a body of believers. But even the topic of the Antichrist and what comes in with that is still tying back into the principle of relationship that he started the letter with. We have a relationship with God the Father, and we have fellowship. These Antichrists didn't, and they rejected Him. But we still have that relationship, and that's going to be an overarching theme as we continue through the book.

Any other thoughts or questions? We barely got to get into the anointing, and I'm sorry about that. blessings that we have in Christ, right? So he's not saying that you guys here and this time you wrote are particular. Every believer can say, I'm anointed. Yes, but the anointing is unto being chosen.

And then we can go back to Romans 8, where he talks about being chosen unto being conformed into the image of a son, which is really cool. It's being chosen into something. It's not just like I pick you. It's a picking us with a result, an ongoing result that's eternal.

As an anointing, can you put it another way of saying that you're given understanding? Well, that's where the knowledge comes in. The anointing is being chosen. That's really the technical relationship that they would have understood at the time. The opening day just started this last week for baseball, so I'm going to use a baseball analogy.

Forgive me, okay? I follow the Rockies, but not too closely. But what happens is that if you were anointed to be a Colorado Rocky, and you may not come from Rocky's territory, and I apologize. You do? Okay, good. But if you showed up in a Giants uniform, which my brother-in-law happens to like a lot, and I forgive him for that.

If you showed up, people would look at you and say, you don't have the Rockies anointing. You were not chosen by the Rockies. You were chosen by the Giants. Why are you at this stadium? The Giants are playing the Dodgers this week. So there's a sense of anointing has to do with being chosen and assigned to do something. You're chosen and assigned as a believer, not just that you got some knowledge. Is that any clearer? I always muddle things when I talk about baseball. Is that any better? You don't want my answer. Okay. We'll close in prayer and we can talk about it some more. How about that?

Heavenly Father, we come before you. Thank you for the truth of your word. Thank you that we can say we are anointed. Thank you that you would cause the Antichrist to be repulsed and to go out. And Lord, thank you that when we're being rejected, that they're rejecting you and not just us. And Lord, I just ask that you would draw our hearts and minds to things above as we go in to worship you and learn in the main service. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.