When I first came to Redland we had a particular fellowship that we observed once a year. There were a lot of avid hunters and fishermen and fisher-women in the church back in those days and throughout the year they would freeze their catches or their kills. Then in the spring they would empty their bulging freezers and make a casserole or a stew or a pot of something and bring it to the church to share in potluck fashion. It was called “The Fish and Game Dinner.” Do any of you remember those annual feasts?
For those of you who weren’t there then, I’ll tell you it was great. We’d all come and pile our plates high with Bambi burgers and sea trout, steamed crabs, and various forms of mystery meat. Then, when our stomachs were full the evening’s ENTERTAINMENT would begin. Each hunter or fisherman or woman would take turns telling a STORY. They’d tell how they caught their fish, including the unbelievable size of the one that got away—or about how far they had to run to bag their deer or how many sharks they had to fight off to get their crabs out of the bay—stories like that.
The trick was we knew only ONE TALL TALE told that night was TRUE. The others were—well, let’s just say—they were TALL—or to be blunt, they were fabrications, made-up stories—LIES. We’d all listen and then we would each try and guess which story was factual. The winners would be those feast attenders who guessed correctly which hunter or fisherman was telling the truth. We heard a lot of amazing tales at these annual fish and game dinners and it was a lot of fun. I don’t think I ever chose correctly so there was a lot of laughter and statements like, “That really happened!? I don’t believe it! Amazing!!!!”
Of course the TRUTH is lying or deceit in REAL life is NOT fun. It doesn’t bring us joy. In fact, deceit can be incredibly hurtful. It can destroy families—careers—marriages—churches. I bring this all up because in today’s text John warned the people in the churches of Asia about liars in their midst who were causing problems and their lies were much more serious than your everyday “fish story.” No—these people were claiming to follow Jesus—but were actually working AGAINST Him—and their deceitful actions and teachings were causing damage to many of the congregations under John’s care. Take your Bibles, turn to 1st John 2:18-27 and follow along as I read about these deceivers.
18 – Dear children, this is the last hour;and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming,even now many antichrists have come.This is how we know it is the last hour.
19 – They went out from us,but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.
20 – But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth.
21 – I do not write to you because you do NOT know the truth, but because you DO know itand because no lie comes from the truth.
22 – Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a person is the antichrist—denying the Father and the Son.
23 – No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.
24 – As for you, see that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you. If it does, you also will remain in the Son and in the Father.
25 – And this is what He promised us—eternal life.
26 – I am writing these things to you about those who are trying to lead you astray.
27 – As for you, the anointingyou received from Him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as His anointing teaches you about all thingsand as that anointing is real, not counterfeit—just as it has taught you, remain in Him.
Now—you’ll note that John gives these liars a NAME that is probably familiar to you. Did you catch it? He calls them “antichrists” — and, by the way, this is a term that is unique to John’s epistles. The word “antichrist” is not found anywhere else in the Scriptures. The prefix “anti” means “in the place of” or “in opposition to” —so an anti-Christ was—and still is—someone who opposes or seeks to replace Jesus—the Christ—someone who says Jesus is less than the Bible teaches us He is.
And—understand—we are not talking about THE anti-Christ here. No—these people John is talking about—these deceivers—are PRECURSORSs of the individual—THE antichrist—the evil prophet—Daniel referred to as “the Little Horn”—and Jesus referred to as “the Abomination that causes desolation”—and the book of Revelation calls to as “the Beast.” John was talking about forerunners of THE antichrist—people who were serving satan—the father of all lies—by deceiving and seeking to destroy the local church. John says they could—and can—be recognized in three ways.
- They desert the church.
- They deny Christ.
- They deceive Christians.
Well, the truth is we deal with the same kind of people in our day and age—deceivers who teach things that are just not true—things that are contrary to the Bible. We deal with people who say Jesus is NOT God’s Son, is NOT the Savior of the World—did NOT die on the cross for our sins—or did NOT rise from the dead. In fact, we have more antichrists today than John had to contend with—which is why I think it’s wonderful that this past week’s RBC CAMP Bible Study was apologetic in nature. It was designed to help children look to the Bible for help in defending their faith from these kinds of deceptions.
So—think of this morning’s message as “RBC CAMP PART 2” because John writes to help equip us to counter the messages of the antichrists we face.
(1) First, he reminds us that their coming is a SIGN of the TIMES.
In other words, John says we should not be SURPRISED about the appearance of more and more antichrists because he says that after all we are living in the last days. This is the last hour. Now—some have understood John to mean that he expected the end of this fallen world to come in his lifetime—and the fact that it obviously didn’t leads many to say the Bible cannot be trusted. However, if you read John’s words more closely you can see that he was talking FIGURATIVELY. John didn’t mean that Jesus would return within sixty literal minutes of his writing. Of course not! After all this was before the invention of e-mail or text messaging. It would be many months before all the readers in all the churches under his care got his letter—so he was describing a period of time far longer than an hour. In fact, John was not speaking so much CHRONOLOGICALLY as he was THEOLOGICALLY.
You see, the Bible pictures the entire church AGE—from the time Jesus came into this world to die on the cross and rise from the dead—all the way to His second coming—the Bible pictures it ALL as: “the last days” or “the final hour.” You might think of “the final hour” as the LAST LONG CHAPTER of a book. But however you think of it we must remember that God does not operate on Eastern Standard time. As 2nd Peter 3:8 puts it, “A day with the Lord is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like a day.”
Well—this understanding of the last days or the final hour is found all over the New Testament.
For example when the Spirit of God transformed the first 120 Christians into the church on the day of Pentecost, Peter stood up and quoted the Old Testament prophet Joel to tell the crowd that “the LAST DAYS or the FINAL HOUR” had begun. (Acts 2) In Hebrews 1:1-2 it says, “In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in the LAST DAYS He has spoken to us by His Son.” 1st Peter 1:20 says, “He [JESUS] was chosen before the creation of the world but was revealed in these LAST TIMES for your sake.”
So you and I are living in the LAST days. We are living out the final chapter in God’s Story. A third testament will never be written. We are not waiting for the coming of a great prophet to lead us into yet another dispensation of God’s grace. No—the NEXT event to come on God’s schedule is Jesus’ return. The Christian era is the LAST era and therefore these are indeed the END TIMES. And, in his now ancient epistle God used John to remind you and me that as Christians we live in the same final chapter as the Christians in the first century did.
John’s first readers knew that an antichrist figure would come shortly before the CLOSE of this final hour. This person may very well be alive today—I don’t know—but when he DOES come on the scene he will embody every hostility toward Christ that’s ever been expressed in all of the world’s history—all in one incredibly evil person.
Now—we can look back and see that throughout history there have been people who were PRECURSORS to this final evil figure. I’m thinking of individuals like Nero, Stalin, Hitler and Saddam Hussein but they weren’t THE antichrist. They were just antichrists. And—over the years lots of people have wasted a lot of time speculating on who THE antichrist is. The list is long. Some said it was Pope Pious XII or JFK or Henry Kissinger or Anwar Sadat or Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan or Sun Myung Moon or Michail Gorbachev. I even read that someone picked Barney as the antichrist. They said if you took the words “Dancing Purple Dinosaur” and added up the numerical value of the letters it would equal 666. I’m fairly sure the person who made this calculation was joking. I hope he was. But it does show that many people are PREOCCUPIED with identifying this evil individual. There was even an article in The NY Times a few years back called “Why the Antichrist Matters in Politics.” I guess no one running for office wants to be accused of being THE Antichrist because it could cost him some votes.
But all that DOESN’T matter to you and me. You see, I believe the Bible teaches that Christians will be raptured before THE Antichrist comes to power—so our problem is all these antichrists—his precursors. That’s who we have to deal with. The spirit that will characterize the FINAL Antichrist was already working in those who recently left the congregations John supervised. Their appearance and work was a sign of the times and WE should heed this message because we are 2000 years closer to Jesus’ return than John was—and the closer we get to the end—the more of the antichrists will show up. Evil will be more prevalent because the devil knows his time is limited. In short, the “end times” began in John’s day and have been growing in INTENSITY ever since.
I’m reminded of an old farmer who had a grandfather clock that went haywire one midnight and chimed fourteen times. When he counted fourteen chimes the farmer jumped up and said to his wife, “Wake up, Nellie, it’s later than it’s ever been before.” Well, in a sense the farmer was right. It is later than it has ever been before. We are living in the end times—2000 years further into it than the people who first read John’s letters.
So when you hear people saying Jesus was just a man—just a good teacher—When you hear people saying He is not the only way to Heaven—When you hear people in authority—teachers, governmental leaders—saying God is not real and that there is no such thing as truth and that it doesn’t matter what you believe—When you see the leaders in our culture endorsing behavior that the Bible calls sin—don’t panic. Let that remind you that we are living in the last days. God said in His book that all this would happen—and as you see this prophecy being fulfilled let it prompt you to deepen your walk with God—to draw closer to Him for guidance and strength. No generation has ever needed the ANCHOR of their faith in Jesus more than ours!
(2) John also reminds us of our RESOURCES—things we can rely on to help us as we live in the end times.
a. The first resource he mentions is God’s TRUTH.
As he puts it in verse 20, “You know THE TRUTH.” And the truth John is referring to is the inspired, written Word of God. God’s revealed truth—the Bible—is a great resource for end times living for it serves as our “lie-detector.” It helps us recognize the deceitful messages of today’s antichrists when we hear them. Now—John knew that his first century readers had the truth. They had the Gospels including the one he wrote. They had some of Paul’s letters. Plus they had the message they received about Christ when they first came to know Jesus personally—KNOW Him Who is the way, the TRUTH, and the life. And, like a good pastor, John was gently reminding his congregations that they already had truth so all they needed to do was to utilize what they already had. John also gives us a hint about what the antichrists of his day—were teaching. They were denying that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah or Anointed One. Jude 4 talks about these people when it says, “For certain men whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are godless men, who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.”
One individual who did this in John’s day was a man named Cerinthus. Cerinthus taught that Christ was neither born nor did He die. Cerinthus said, the Spirit of the Messiah came on Jesus at His baptism but left Him on the cross. Of course this kind of teaching denies the deity of Jesus because to Cerinthus and his followers Jesus was just a man, born naturally and had all the imperfections and sin common to all men. Tradition says that Cerinthus lived in Ephesus—the same town where John pastored. It is also said that whenever John would enter one of the public baths, if he learned that Cerinthus was also there, he would rush out of the bath not wanting to be under the same roof as this antichrist.
Well, in our text John reminds us that false teachings like those of Cerinthus—John says being WRONG about Jesus’ identity—is the same as DENYING Jesus. I mean, we can’t just claim Jesus was a good guy or a clever moral teacher or a gifted rabbi. According to the Bible anything less than viewing Jesus as fully God and fully human is denial of Who He truly is. And denying Jesus means denying God the Father, since the Father sent the Son into the world to provide for our salvation and forgiveness of our sins. So this was a major problem in the early church and sadly it still is. We have men and women like Cerinthus with us today—people who deny the Bible’s clear teachings about Jesus.
But as a word of encouragement I would remind you that even though we have more of these antichrists than John—we have more of the written Word to rely on as well. When John wrote these words the fully New Testament hadn’t yet been collected and bound together. As I said, his readers only had PART of the Bible but we have it ALL. Today we have all of the 66 books that make up the Bible, including all 27 books of the New Testament. In short, we have much more truth to rely on than the people in John’s day—truth that helps us not get derailed by the false teachers. The words of this Book of truth—help us spot falsehood and lies. It gives us the guidance we need to deal with the messages of the antichrists of this final stage of history.As Paul puts it in 2nd Timothy 4: “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
Michael Plant was experienced and passionate about sailing the ocean’s wild winds. But his third trip around the world was different. He designed and built a $650,000 racing vessel called the Coyote, a lightweight fiberglass-coated, foam-core-hull sailboat that was very fast. Equipped with the latest in technology, on October 16, 1992, Plant launched from New York and headed across the Atlantic toward France, a 24,000 mile four-month race. But it wasn’t long into the trip before Plant began experiencing trouble. No one heard anything from him for several days. Then, on October 21, a passing Russian freighter picked up his transmission. “I have no power,” Plant communicated, “…but I’m working on the problem.” He ended the transmission with his only request: “Tell [my fiancé] not to worry.” That was the last direct communication anyone ever had with Plant. After 32 days, the Coyote was finally spotted on a Sunday morning by a Greek tanker. It was drifting upside down, and there was no sign of Plant. The mast, still fully sailed, was submerged some eighty-five feet into the frigid waters. The hull was intact, but as I said, upside down and in this inverted position, it exposed the fatal problem: the eighty-four hundred pound lead keel bulb that weighted the boat had been sheared off. To this day, no one knows if it was a rogue whale, sea garbage, or just a faulty build that damaged the boat, but without the weight of the ballast, the small boat was useless against the crosscurrents and high winds of the open seas. You see, the ballast’s weight in the lowest part of the vessel would give it stability and balance in the rough seas, and without it, the vessel would become top-heavy and be easily overpowered by the waves. To put it simply, without a keel and ballast, the boat was broken and at the mercy of the sea.
Well, without the Bible we are just as broken. We need its written truth to stabilize our thinking as we “sail” through a world filled with an “ocean” of more and more lies and deceptions. As Paul warns in Ephesians 4, without the truth of God’s written Word, we will be “…tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming.”
The sad fact is many Christians don’t take advantage of this resource and so they are easily deceived and led astray. A 2012 research study commissioned by the American Bible Society and conducted by Barna Research revealed some good news and bad news about Bible reading and biblical literacy in America. I’ll begin with the encouraging news:
- 85 percent of households own at least one Bible, with a household average of 4.3 Bibles.
- 69 percent of Americans believe the Bible provides answers on how to live a meaningful life.
Now for the bad news:
- 26 percent of Americans never read the Bible and 10 percent read it less than once a year.
- 79 percent of those surveyed believe they are knowledgeable about the Bible, but 54 percent were unable to identify the first five books of the Bible.
And now the worst news of all:
- 46 percent believe the Bible, the Koran, and the Book of Mormon are different expressions of the same spiritual truths.
Survey participants also indicated their biggest frustration about reading the Bible was that they “never had enough time to read it.” I would suggest that it wasn’t that they didn’t HAVE enough time—they just didn’t MAKE enough time. Reading God’s Book of Truth was not a priority for them. And without taking advantage of this God-given resource for living in the end times they are vulnerable to the false teachers of our day. Listen. I believe it has never been more important that we read the Bible—study the Bible—it has never been more important that we, “…let the WORD of Christ dwell in us richly.”
b. A second resource John mentions is God’s ANOINTING.
Look at verse 27. John says, “As for you, the anointing you received from Him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as His anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit—just as it has taught you, remain in Him.” Now—in John’s day an ANOINTING was when someone rubbed oil on a person in order to visibly set that person apart for a special task. For example, in the Old Testament, kings and priests were all publicly commissioned for their work by being anointed. In fact the word “Christ” means “Anointed One,” —for He is the One God anointed and sent to do the work of our salvation.
In any case, this word picture of being anointed with oil for a special task becomes a picture for us of the Holy Spirit coming to live inside of us when we trust in Jesus Christ. 2nd Corinthians 1:21-22 says, “God…anointed us, set His seal of ownership on us, and put His Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.” This means that every person who has trusted Jesus Christ, asking Him to come into their hearts and lives as Savior and Lord has this same anointing. I’m no more or less anointed than you are if you’ve put your faith in Jesus. We’re both anointed by God through the Holy Spirit living in us.
Some have taken John’s words here to mean that Christians who are truly spiritual don’t need any teachers in their lives. That would seem odd since John is teaching them with his letter and the New Testament speaks often if our need for spiritual teachers. So that’s not what he’s saying. No—John is warning that a teacher isn’t going to add anything new to what God has already said in his Bible. You see, these false teachers of his day, these former church members claimed that they had special knowledge from God. They said that in order to truly experience God you had to be under their teaching. John is saying that we don’t need that sort of thing.
He’s also saying we have an INNER TEACHER in this anointing of God’s Holy Spirit to help us discern truth from lies. When people try to twist the teachings of the Bible, we can rely on the same Spirit Who inspired the writing of every Word of Scripture to help us spot that kind of deceit. The Holy Spirit will help you know if what you are hearing from a particular teacher is a lie or the truth. Many Christians are led astray because they are not abiding in the Spirit—they are not spending enough time in prayer talking with God to help them recognize God’s still small voice.
I came across an article this week on Crosswalk.com by a woman named Julie Barrier entitled, “Coming Back from a Cult.” I want to read part of it because it just may apply to some of you or someone you know. Ms. Barrier writes: “How could I be so blind? Why did I not see the signs? Everyone around me knew I was in over my head, and they were plotting an intervention. Cults are insidious—even for long-time followers of Christ. I was a happy, albeit complacent churchgoer from the get-go. I started eating graham crackers in the church nursery before I could talk. When I was a child I never missed a Sunday. My family had our own pew and everything. God help the poor visitor who sat in our spot! I invited Jesus into my heart at the ripe old age of six. I cruised along with nominal commitment and blithe ignorance of Scripture despite the concerted efforts of my pastors to pound basic theology into my thick little noggin. I kept my nose clean, lived under the radar and followed the rules. I know I loved Jesus, but we were distant acquaintances. I always held Him at arm’s length.” When she was older, she writes: “I found the guy. Brother Smith (not his real name) pastored a wildly demonstrative congregation, and people prophesied over me twice a week. I didn’t need to listen to God any more because my fellow Christians told me exactly what to do (and what not to do). But after a very long time of praying, wise counsel and patience from my husband Roger, I began to see clearly. I had been duped. I was in a cult (even though it had all the trappings of a great church). The god Brother Smith was preaching was not the God of the Bible. He was a demanding, accusing condemning taskmaster who was perpetually disappointed with me. I was living a life of legalism and asceticism, and I felt trapped. Because of my faulty view of God, I didn’t think He would hear or answer my prayers. I learned a thing or two from my encounter with this false teacher:
- Beware of the “wolf” in sheep’s clothing who tells you he is the only one who hears from God.
- God promises to lead you when you are His child. It’s the Holy Spirit’s job to guide you into all truth.
- Carefully evaluate the view of God that is being taught. Is it based on Scripture?
- Every cult (and every world religion) is based upon human effort rather than the grace of God and the sacrifice of Christ.”
Wise words! Friends, because it’s later than it’s ever been, it’s imperative that we stay close to Christ—it’s essential that we learn to listen to—and HEED—His Spirit in us
c. The final resource John mentions is God’s CHURCH.
Look at verse 19. Referring to the antichrists, John says, “They went out from us,but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.”
Note—these antichrists didn’t attack the church from OUTSIDE. Our adversary knows that never works—and that in fact EXTERNAL attacks only strengthen the church. So Satan always leads his antichrists to attack the church from WITHIN. They spread their false teachings and then leave the church, taking many deceived believers with them. The apostle Paul warned about this happening in Acts 20:30 when he said, “Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them.”
By the way, did you know that most cult leaders were once involved in a legitimate church? I’m thinking of Jim Jones. Do you remember him? He started out in the evangelical church but somehow he crossed over to the enemy side and persuaded 800 people to move with him to Guyana to establish The People’s Temple. In the end 800 people plus their children died, committing suicide under his leadership. Well, Jones’ exit from the church and his subsequent false teaching made it clear he was never genuinely a part of the church in the first place. Joseph Smith is another example. He said he was visited by an angel from Heaven named Moroni who dropped down golden tablets of new scripture called The Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith had been a member of a local church but decided that the church was corrupt. He thought God wanted to begin a new church and had of course chosen him to begin it. He went out and founded Mormonism, taking many deceived people with him.
B. H. Carroll had a saying, “When you see a star fall you know it’s not a star.” He said this because of course when you see a “shooting star” what you are seeing is a meteorite not a star.
Carroll was illustrating the fact that when you see a person who is a member of a church turn his or her back on Jesus and the Bible’s teachings and depart in to false doctrine, in the vast majority of cases you can be guaranteed that person was not a true Christina in the first place.
In any case, a good church—a BIBLICAL church—does much more than help bear burdens and meet our needs for fellowship. A good church teaches the truth of the Bible in a way that helps us deal with the antichrists of the world. It helps us stay true to God and His Word. Its members admonish one another when they stray and lovingly help one another stay on the right path. Let me put it this way. A Biblical church doesn’t lead people away from the Bible—but to it. Its members don’t lead believers to LEAVE the church. In fact, they do the opposite. When they abandon the faith they continue to love these brothers and sisters who have left and do all they can to draw them back.
Stephen Mansfield tells a true story about a church that had an incredible ministry to men. For years the driving force behind the men’s ministry was a man named Taylor. His ministry rocked on for years, changing lives and impacting the community. But in the midst of a major transition within the church, Taylor got hurt deeply and he left. He wouldn’t talk to anybody. People figured he’d come back eventually, but he didn’t. Finally, some of the men in the church took it upon themselves to reach out to Brother Taylor. After some discussion with the other guys at church they came up with a bold plan: they would set up camp in Taylor’s yard—150 men! They set up rotating shifts and said they wouldn’t leave until Taylor came out so they could talk to him. They had electric lines running from neighboring houses to power televisions. About twenty smokers and grills worked up some great barbeque food. They were in it for the long haul! They even had big signs all over the place that said: “Taylor, come out.” “We love you.” “Taylor, we know you’re in there.” Well, Taylor didn’t appreciate it. He even called the police on his former friends. As a matter of fact, the police showed up twice a day for almost a week.
And every time they came, Taylor would come to the door to explain the situation. And every time he did the men camping in his year would explode with cheers until Taylor finished his chat with the police and went back inside. But on the sixth day, when Taylor opened the door for the police and the men exploded with cheers, Taylor finally broke down and started crying his eyes out. He sputtered how sorry he was, and then he came out from his porch and greeted the guys who had camped in his yard and refused to go away.
False teachers lead people away from God’s church. Authentic Christians do just the opposite. A Bible-believing church is indeed an incredible resource when it comes to living in the last days for we are stronger together than we are alone.