1 John 2:18-23

1 John 2:18

The Last Time; the Christ; the Antichrist; the Chrism.

I. The Apostles said that a new age was at hand, the universal age, the age of the Son of man, which would be preceded by a great crisis that would shake not earth only, but heaven, not that only which belonged to time and the condition of man as related to time, but also all that belonged to the spiritual world and to man's relations with it. They said that this shaking would be that it might be seen what there was that could not be shaken, which must abide. I cannot tell what physical changes St. John or the other Apostles may have looked for. That they did not anticipate the passing away of the earth, what we call the destruction of the earth, is clear from this: that the new kingdom they spoke of was to be a kingdom on earth as well as a kingdom of heaven. But their belief that such a kingdom had been set up, and would make its power felt as soon as the old nation was scattered, has, I think, been abundantly verified by fact. I do not see how we can understand modern history properly till we accept that belief.

II. Our Lord had clearly intimated in His last discourse to the disciples that before the end came false Christs should arise and should deceive many. "These antichrists," St. John says, "have gone out from us, because they were not of us." We can understand very well what he means by the facts of Church history. The belief in spiritual powers was strong in that age. The Gospel strengthened and deepened it, but it existed before the Gospel. Many of those who joined the Church exulted in the gifts for their own sake, in the inspiration for its own sake. These became enchanters and impostors of the worst kind. Their chrism or anointing was to set them in high places; Christ's made Him the Servant of all. "But," continues the Apostle, in words which have surprised many, "ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things." If they believed, they had God's Holy Spirit; these antichrists would not, could not, deceive them. They might be deceived in their interpretation of a book: their intellects might fail to discern the force of sentences; but if they were simple and childlike, if they yielded to the guidance of the Spirit, who was to make them simple and childlike, they would not be deceived about a man, they would know whether he was true or a liar.

F. D. Maurice, The Epistles of St. John,p. 134.