Sermon Tone Analysis

Prayer

As we consider this text today, it is important to remember briefly where we have been.

Several weeks ago we saw John affirm and confirm in the lives of these believers that he truly thinks they are children of God.

He was encouraging them to grow up into maturity and not settle with being spiritual infants.

Then two weeks ago we walked about not taking the bait of this world.

Which we defined as accepting and affirming a kind of worldly evil.

A kind of evil which is moral, lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.

The kind of evil John will be addressing us with today appeals more to our minds than to our fleshly desires.

It is the kind of evil which is occurs at a philosophical level, a doctrinal level.

Discernment thrives where truth reigns.

Deception thrives where lies reign.

Signs of the Times: Antichrists

What Paul calls, “philosophy”, “elemental spirits of the world”

What he also calls, “teachings of demons”

Notice that John begins by talking about a singular Antichrist.

This figure will come at the end of time and try and deceive many.

We see it in the book of Daniel, and Revelation.

But John also references “many antichrists”

We also hear from Jesus Himself about false-Christs.

This kind of “false prophet” is what John has in mind as he talks about antichrists.

Jesus says that these false Christs will show us what days we are living in.

Which is why John says that we are living in “the last hour”

Now another way the Bible talks about this concept is how Paul refers to antichrists.

Notice the word that is present with both Paul and Jesus, “Deceive”.

What we should know about this figure of “antichrist” is he will deceive many.

What does John mean by “antichrist”?

1 John 2:18 (NKJV)

and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come,

It should be interesting to note that John is the only writer in the Bible who uses that word “antichrist”

The way John is using this term falls in line with the common belief of the day.

That there would come a final struggle between the forces of Satan and God.

Notice how John looks forward to a singular figure which he is calling “the Antichrist”

But then he says, “even now many antichrists have come”

This word is composed of two smaller words, “anti” and “Christ”

Christ as we have talked about before simply means “the anointed ONE”

But the word “anti” can either mean “the opposite of” or “instead of”

When we hear John referring to the antichrist, we should have in our minds a person or system of thought which provides a vision of salvation without Christ.

In other words, they are antichrist, meaning in-place-of-Christ.

Examples of antichrist thought.

Gnosticism - pulled many Christians away from the true Christ because they denied that Jesus came in the flesh.

Humanism - claimed that man and his ability to reason was the only hope for mankind.

Deism - claimed that the Creator never intervened in the affairs of humans and Jesus was only a good man.

Evolutionism, Communism, Materialism.

They all have a vision of salvation which replaces Christ with something else.

How can you recognize antichrists?

The Heresy of the Antichrist

I want to say on the front end, because I know how this will be heard.

This does not mean that anytime anyone leaves “our” church that they are an antichrist.

We must bear in mind that John is not talking about a mere exchange of one denomination for another—the one who does that is not by that act revealed to be an unbeliever—but rather of a departure that is at the same time a rejection of the fundamental truths of Christianity.

Now I will caveat this by saying that sometimes when people leave a church for another church, they are abandoning the faith.

For instance, if someone left our church to begin attending the Church of Scientology, or became a Jehovah’s Witness.

But in many instances, a change in denominations is NOT what John has in mind here.

Notice the dynamics of what John is saying...

1 John 2:19 (NKJV)

They went out from us, but they were not of us;

1.

The Visible vs. Invisible Church

The ones who went out from their gathering, were not of them.

You can hear very clearly the division that has taken place in this church.

The Gnostics, who believed that Jesus was only a man, and that the Christ came on Jesus at his baptism and left him at the crucifixion.

They have left the church.

And John is reminding these believers, “They may have left, but its because they were never really a part of this church.”

They may have been a member of your physical and visible church, but they were never a part of the invisible church.

The invisible church is made up of born again believers.

The visible church may or may not be filled with actual born again believers.

You may have heard me say at other moments the difference between the capital C church and lower case c church.

Even Jesus talked about this dynamic at play.

Matthew 13:24–30 (NKJV)

“The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field;

but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way.

But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared.

So the servants of the owner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field?

How then does it have tares?’

He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’

The servants said to him, ‘Do you want us then to go and gather them up?’

But he said, ‘No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them.

Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.”

’ ”

The point here for Jesus is to say that unbelievers will always be amongst the born again believers.

The implication of Christ’s parable and John’s statement is that some Christians are so much like non-Christians and some non-Christians so much like Christians that it is impossible to tell the difference between them in this life.

Oftentimes what happens, when false teaching is happening in a church.

The people who should confront it, don’t because they want to preserve “unity”

We need to know that false teachers are always the ones who destroy unity within the church.

It is never the Christians who are guarding the “good doctrine” who create division.

It is always the false teachers who are destroying unity.

Deception thrives where lies reign!

So if you begin to see lies reigning in this congregation, it is mine and your responsibility to address them.

Another marker of an antichrist spirit is..

2. They Leave the Gathering

John says that when a person leaves a gathering, it becomes plain or is revealed to everyone what has always been true about them.

When people leave the gathering, they show themselves to be true to what they are really like.

And what they are really like is unregenerate and are NOT born again.

John is reminding these believers that since we live in the times that we do, we should expect it.

When people leave the gathering it is not meant to shake the believers faith.

Knowing this does not necessarily make it any easier when we see people leave.

SO how are we to think about people leaving the faith in this way?

The Perseverance of the Saints

The perseverance of the Saints teaches that every person who has truly been saved by God will be kept by the grace of God till the end.

This means that when God changes a person’s heart, they become regenerate, or born again; then God will keep that person until they die.

SO when we see people breaking off from the faith family and attending a heretical church or not attending anywhere, we should remember this doctrine.

Or Paul even in Philippians 1:6

This doctrine is meant to bring us great comfort as we see friends, family, and others we love and have had fellowship with leave.