1 John 2:18

The antichrists as errors of the darkness: their mark and character, with the protection against them.

1 John 2:18. Little children: the address is to all; and with reference to the several characteristics acknowledged in them, their knowledge of the Father and of Him who was from the beginning, and their victory over the evil one. While the knowledge and the victory run through this whole section, it is more immediately linked with the preceding ‘passeth away.'

It is the last time. This is St. John's final and only expression for the Christian dispensation as answering to the ‘last days' of Isaiah 2:2, the ‘end of the days' of Deuteronomy 4:30, the ‘afterward' of all the prophets. When our Lord introduced the ‘fulness of time,' another ‘afterward' began: in His own teaching, for He spoke of ‘this world' and the ‘world to come' (Matthew 12:30); and in that of His apostles. Each of them uses his own phrases for the distinction: St. Paul speaks of ‘the present time' and ‘the- coming glory' (Romans 8:18), and St. Peter of ‘the last days' or ‘the last of the days,' and ‘to be revealed in the last time' (1 Peter 1:20; 1 Peter 1:5). St. John's is ‘the last time' here at the beginning of the section, and at the end of it ‘His appearing' (1 John 2:28), which closes the ‘time.' The passing away of the world, and the continuance of the hour or time, run on coincidently: ‘when He shall be manifested' will end both. During the old economy, and in the rabbinical interval with its ‘the present world' and ‘the coming world,' the division of history was the advent of Messiah; now that He has come, the dividing point is His second coming. It is important to remember that the apostle first speaks solemnly of this ‘last time' as distinguished from the passing world. Its relation to antichrists comes in afterwards, and gives a new colouring to the thought.

And as ye heard that antichrist Cometh, even now have arisen many antichrists; whereby we perceive that it is the last time. Our Lord had predicted not one ‘false Christ,' but ‘many,' as coming, not immediately before the end of the world only, but from the time of His departure (Matthew 24:4; Matthew 24:24). And St. John pays homage first and pre-eminently to his Master's word, referring, however, rather to His ‘false prophets,' and calling them by a name used only by himself ‘antichrists,' not as taking the place of Christ, but as opposing Him. He includes also, of course, the many predictions of his brethren, to the effect that ‘false teachers would bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them' (2 Peter 2:1). This is the pith of his argument: we discern that we are in the last revelation, because side by side go on the development of truth and error concerning the one Person who is the sum of revelation. But in his way to this argument. St. John introduces an allusion to what they had heard from St. Paul, interpreting Daniel, concerning one antichrist, whom he mentions only to show that his predecessors are already in the world. As he is not, like St. Paul, referring to the signs of the ‘last days' in the last time,' but only of the last time generally, he does not dwell on the future personal antichrist. He does, however, set his seal to St. Paul's teaching that a ‘man of sin will be revealed,' exalting himself ‘above all that is called God,' that is, as St. John interprets it, ‘above all that is called Christ' who is God, ‘denying the Father and the Son' in a form of opposition which only the fulfilment will explain. Though he does not define his own word more fully, and its explanation must be sought in St. Paul's Epistles and the Apocalypse, he here gives a new name to St. Paul's ‘man of sin, the ‘antichrist' or opponent of Christ pre-eminently, and he adds that ‘he cometh,' or, in solemn Biblical language, is still ‘the coming one,' as opposed to the antichrists who ‘have become' such or arisen.