Jesus and the End-Time

The End-Time in Outline
 Many Antichrists

Children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come; therefore 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 it might be lain that they all are not of us. But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all know. I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and know that no lie is of the truth. Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father. He who confesses the Son has the Father also. Let what you heard form the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you will abide in the Son and in the Father. And this is what he has promised us, eternal life. 1 John 2:18-25
As an interpreter, I take comfort from John. He is not interested in applying biblical visions to contemporary events. If he were with us today, he would not be breathlessly explaining that the ten horns of the beast represent the Common Market nations, or that the kings of the East represent the Red Chinese, or that the current interest in astrology signals the revival of the Babylonian Empire. It would not be the skimpy evidence on which these interpretations are based that would turn him from them; his difference with them would be based on pastoral rather than scholarly concerns. He would not ask so much, Is I do, "Where is that written" but rather, "What is that to you?"

I deduce this about John from his put-down of the sensationalists. Christians then as now were fascinated and entertained by the end of the world and needed to be brought back to their own responsibilities. We wait for the return of Christ by doing our work as his servants in the world. So John took the most sensational sign of the close of the age-the appearance of the Antichrist , or son of perdition-and brought it home to the congregational level. "Children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Antichrist has come, so now many Antichrists have come; therefore we know that it is the last hour."

Paul used his reference to the son of perdition to prove that you could not believe in a secret return of Christ, as some of the Thessalonians were doing by saying that the day of the Lord had come. Now John shows that the effective sign of the end-time is persons who are known and recognizable as Antichrists. You do not need to speculate about some mysterious world ruler to know that this is the "last hour"; the evidence for that is much closer to home.

For John, the sign of the end-time was in their very midst: "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 it might be plain that they all are not of us."

This is where the true battle is fought. We will not know who the son of perdition is until he is revealed and the Lord Jesus slays him with the breath of his mouth; but we can open our eyes to see many Antichrists at work all about us. They continually remind us that the Church has always lived in the last hour.

We do not know how many Antichrists there have been in the history of the Church; nor do we know how many there are now. We do know, however, that being an Antichrist is not a matter of divine decree but of human choice. God does not appoint the Antichrists; they depart from him by their own choice. "They went out from us." They are not supermen; their very ordinariness makes them somehow more frightening.

Paul called the son of perdition "the lawless one." John looks at the characteristics of the Antichrist from a different perspective, but it may be argued that he is speaking of the same quality that Paul called lawlessness. The Antichrists are the deniers of Christ. "Who is the Antichrist, but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the Antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son."

Remember that these deniers are not heathen who have never heard the Gospel; they are people of the Church who, having heard the Gospel with every opportunity to believe and obey it, have rejected it. They know what they are rejecting. This is not to imply that every backslidden Christian is an Antichrist. We are not to judge the hearts of others, nor do we know how deep and final the rejection of Christ is in the lives of others. But we do know that the Antichrists, by John's definition, do not need to be evil geniuses ruling the world. He or she can be any teenager, any grandma or grandpa, any clean-cut, responsible good citizen. Any of these can deny the Father and the Son, and there is no greater treason than that. The writer of Hebrews does not name these deniers as Antichrists, but surely he is speaking of the same tragic attitude:
A man who has violated the Law of Moses died without mercy at the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the man who has spurned the Son of God, and profaned the blood of the Covenant by which he was sanctified, and outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay. And again, "The Lord will judge his people." It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Hebrews 10:28-31).
In Karl Olsson's novel, The God Game, a young assistant minister sets out to discover why the most prominent member of his church has committed suicide. He learns the answer from another minister who had been the man's chaplain during World War II. During a patrol the man had been knocked down by the explosion of a mine, but he was otherwise unhurt. Afterward he told the chaplain about it.
Once or twice I though, "Now I'll let them know I'm O.K. Now I'll drag myself over and give them a hand." But I didn't. I just lay quiet in that nice cold mud. I didn't want to set off any more mines. I didn't care enough about you or those other guys to stick my neck out. Maybe I'm sick and ought to see the headshrinker; maybe I don't belong to the human race. Maybe, but I don't think so…In that mud, with death and dying all around me…I decided that there was something clean and sort of holy about looking out for myself and admitting it…I don't hate God. I don't even doubt his existence. I just refuse to be his slave. I will not serve. Lying out in the mud on my face, with all that groaning and moaning around me, I dedicated myself to myself.1
There is the creed of an everyday Antichrist. It is not so much a matter of doctrine as it is of attitude. Most people do not think or behave doctrinally. "To deny the Father and the Son" does not necessarily mean to deny their existence, but it certainly means to deny their authority. The everyday Antichrist says, by word or attitude or both, "The Father and the Son have nothing to do with me." He makes this denial even though he knows better-that is why he is a liar.

John claims that the Church is the source of her own worse enemies. They are tied to the Church by blood, by culture, by long association. IT is difficult to do battle with them because, after the flesh, they are our relatives and friends. It is much easier to say that the Russian Prime Minister exhibits the characteristic of the Antichrist than to say that Aunt Jane or Brother Anderson does. So what are we to do?

Though we are not to judge the ultimate destiny of persons, it is laid upon us to recognize the truth that is in Jesus and separate it from our opinion of this or that contemporary person. We are to draw the line sharply; at least we are to honor the line that has been drawn for us. "I write to you not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and know that no lie is of the truth. Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ?" The insidious danger to the Church in every age is to accept falsity as truth because we love or trust the person who offers it.

If the Church were our property and sole responsibility, built to last forever, we could do this. We could make the Church whatever we wanted. But the Church is not ours; it is God's, and its purpose is to serve God and his truth in the present age. We are people of the end-time, engaged in the conflict of truth with error, of Christ with Antichrist. Unless the Church sees itself in this urgent situation, it is not likely to stand against the Antichrist manifested in Aunt Jane or Brother Anderson.

In The Touch of God2 I said that every church is a center, not an outpost, for world evangelization. It is also true that every church is a battleground, not a fortress, where Antichrists challenge the lordship of Christ. The Church in the end-time is not a place of refuge. It is a scene of activity, conflict, and victory.

John asserts that you do not need to look forward to some visionary Armageddon to see the conflict of Christ and Antichrist. That is not the sign of the end. The sign of the end lies rather in this, that even now there are many Antichrists; it is up to each of us to see the battle-line between Christ and them drawn clearly in our hearts and in our churches.

1 Karl A. Olsson, The God Game, World, 1968, pp. 225, 226.

2 Covenant Press, 1975.

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