Did John expect Christ’s return in His lifetime?

Every word given in 1 John was in response to something the church needed to know. The epistle is best understood as being written to correct problems of belief and behavior for Christians. Therefore, 1 John 2:3 tells individuals how they can know for certain that they are Christians—if they “keep his commands.” Verses 7–11 teach that to know God is to love fellow believers. Readers are told in verses 12–17 that loving the world will extinguish love for God and His Word. “Antichrists” are already in the world (verse 18), yet believers “have an anointing from the Holy One” (verse 20), so they can discern between truth and lies. The manner for knowing the truth is to let “what you have heard from the beginning” (the revealed Word of God) remain in you (verse 24).

Even as John wrote, many “antichrists” had arisen and exalted themselves against God. An “antichrist” in this sense is anyone who claims Christ’s position or authority or who is in opposition to the Lord and His work. The little “antichrists” are forerunners to the true Antichrist of the end times. The “many antichrists” are set in opposition to God and His Word. Some may claim to be the Messiah (as the beast from the sea will do in Revelation 13:1–10, 15). They are all deceivers bent on leading people astray. Jesus warned of such seducers in Matthew 24:5: “Many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will deceive many.” Ultimately, the insidious mission and aim of these little antichrists will be consolidated in one person: the Antichrist, or the beast of  Revelation.

Despite the existence of “many antichrists,” we have a supernatural defense against their lies. Commentator Matthew Henry wrote, “True Christians are anointed ones; their names express this: they are anointed with grace, with gifts and spiritual privileges by the Holy Spirit of grace. The great and most hurtful lies that the father of lies spreads in the world are usually falsehoods and errors relating to the person of Christ. The unction from the Holy One alone can keep us from delusions” (Concise Commentary on the Whole Bible).

For further reading on this subject, I have edited experts from a message given by John Macarther on November 10 th , 2002. You can read the entire message here: https://www.gty.org/sermons/62-18/christians-and-antichrists-part-1.

What does this mean, the last hour? This has been two thousand years since he said that. What is this talking about? Well, the last times, the last hour, began when Jesus arrived. There are only two ages outlined for us in the New Testament. There is the present age and the age to come. The present age is an evil age. Galatians 1:4, Paul characterizes it as evil. It is the age, then, from the beginning of evil to the end of evil.

The present age is this evil age. That’s what Paul calls it, this present evil age. The age dominated by evil. We’re in it, all of humanity has been in it since the fall. The age to come is the kingdom when righteousness will prevail in the world, and Christ will rule with a rod of iron, the great millennial kingdom, the thousand-year reign of Christ that’s promised in the Old Testament, promised in the New Testament, and described for us in the end of the book of Revelation. So you have the present age, which is an evil age. You have the age to come, which is the age of prevailing righteousness under the rule of the Lord Jesus Christ.

John says it is the last hour of this present evil age. It is the last hour of this age in which we live. How do we know it is the last hour? Because Messiah has come. And the prophet said that Messiah would come at the end of man’s day, that He would come to set up His kingdom, to set up the age to come. The Old Testament prophets, the Old Testament writers didn’t know there would be several thousand years in between the original arrival of Messiah and the establishment of His kingdom. That was not disclosed to them. Although it was disclosed to them in places such as Isaiah 53 that the Messiah would die and rise again, there was nothing in the Old Testament to demonstrate to them with any clarity this lengthy period of millennia between the arrival of the Messiah and the establishment of the age to come.

We are in this present evil age, but we have this marvelous privilege of living in the last hour of this present evil age, living at a time when the end of the age has actually come and been inaugurated by the arrival of Jesus Christ. This – just in case you need some passages to sort of undergird this, you remember that in the fourth chapter of Galatians and the fourth verse, “When the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son.” It was in God’s perfect timing when the exact moment came that He sent forth His Son.This really sort of inaugurated the fullness of time.

This is the final chapter in human history. This brings this present evil age to its culmination, the arrival of Messiah. In 1 Corinthians chapter 10 and verse 11, it talks about the Old Testament. It says, “Now, these things happened to them” – in the Old Testament – “as an example. They were written for our instruction, upon whom the end of the ages had come.” We, then, are living in the fullness of time, the end of the age,just other ways to express the last hour.

How do we know it’s the last times? People have a right to ask that question. How do we know we’re living at the end of the age? How do we know these are the last days of this present evil age? How do we know that? 1 John chapter 2, it couldn’t be clearer. “Children, it is the last hour.” How do we know that? “Just as you heard that antichrist is coming” – he is a feature of the last hour – “even now many antichrists have arisen. From this we know that it is the last hour.”

Anybody ever asks you, “Are we at the end of human history?” tell them yes and take them to that verse. You can’t have antichrist until you have Christ, and as soon as you have Christ, you have antichrist, and that identifies that we’re living in the last hour. So to be simple about John’s eschatology, he says, “Look, you have heard that the antichrist is coming, and I’m telling you there are already many antichrists.” John has identified people who reject Jesus Christ in the most severe terms. Many antichrists are now in the world. And if you don’t believe in the true Christ, the God-man, believing He is who He is, believing in His work of salvation, His substitutionary deathand resurrection, you possess the spirit of antichrist, qualitatively no different than this final horrific figure who comes from the kingdom of darkness to be the ultimate blasphemer.

Some of these antichrists get down in your own congregation. Verse 19, “They went out from us, but they were not really of us.” We had some antichrists around here who seemed to be interested in Jesus, but they were also apostates. They rebelled and revolted and left  But we’re different, verse 20. “You have an anointing from the Holy One, you all know. I haven’t written to you because you don’t know the truth but because you know it” – because you know it. Down in verse 23, “The one who confesses the Son has the Father.” Verse 25, “This is the promise which He Himself made to us, eternal life.” He’s not writing to make the true Christian doubt, verse 26, “These things I’ve written to you concerning those who are trying to deceive you.” I just want you to be sure you understand you’re His. You’re Christians, not antichrists.