Anti-Christs

I John 2:18-23

There is no shortage of false teachers and preachers in our world today. They teach a "get rich quick" message of name it and claim it theology. People look to make this life better through false promises if they will only believe and send that preacher some money of course. People want to believe that they can command God because it puts them in control. Most would never actually say it, but this teaching makes them sovereign over God. That is in direct contradiction to what the Bible teaches. And yet, millions follow anti-Christs like these. Sadly, many will die and go to hell because they never surrendered their lives to God. They attempted to boss Him around, rather than bow the knee.

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Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us.

But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things. I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and that no lie is of the truth.

Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist who denies the Father and the Son. Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either; he who acknowledges the Son has the Father also.

I John 2:18-23

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John says that as the end of this period of history draws to an end, there will be many anti-christs that rise up. They will come out of the church and they will teach false doctrines (heresies). As I mentioned in the introduction, there are plenty of those today. However, the "prosperity gospel" is only one group. In reality, the problem goes way beyond that. Only about 50% of pastors in evangelical churches have a Biblical worldview. That number drops off when you go to other groups of churches. Some subgroups even have as few as 20% of their pastors that have a Biblical worldview. If that is the condition of the pulpits, then the pews are even worse.

We get surprised when we hear this, but we shouldn't be. John told us this very thing would happen. John said that those who do not stand for Biblical teachings would separate themselves from us. This is 1) because they were never part of us, and 2) so that we can identify them. When we identify them, we are to have nothing to do with them. Paul wrote it this way, "Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness?" (II Corinthians 6:14).

We know the truth, not because we are better than anyone else, but because we have the Holy Spirit. With the leading of the Spirit, and the study of God's Word, we can know truth. The truth of God's Word is what distinguished true believers from anti-Christs. Since a lie cannot be truth, we cannot commune with false teachers. It is both wrong and dangerous. We are called to be Holy, which literally means to be set apart.

A liar is anyone who denies that Jesus is the Christ. This is not just explicit denial, but implicit also. When a preacher's teachings deny the need for salvation, or they proclaim salvation though the actions we can do, that is a liar and an anti-Christ. One of these so called preachers admitted in an interview that he knows what the Bible says about sin and salvation, but he does not want to beat people up over their sins. So he preaches encouraging messages. There are a lot of problems with this, but a big one is that people are already beat up over their sins. They are not beat up, they are beat to death. Paul said:

"And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others."

Ephesians 2:1-3

The gospel is what gives us life. It is the truth that we hear in Christ that teaches us to call upon His name.

Father, I thank You that true believers and fake believers cannot dwell together for long. You have ordained it so that the truth will cause them to separate from us. It is not that You do not want to save them. It is not that we should not want them to be saved. It lets us know who the church is, and who the mission field is. May we be diligent in standing for and speaking truth.