Well, good morning, everyone. How's everybody doing? Oh, you can do better than that. How's everybody doing? Yeah, all right. Let me turn this on here.
Okay. Can you hear me?
Well… If you can advance a slide, Jim.
Today, I want to continue in the book of 1 John.
We want to look at chapter 2 verses 18 through 23. The lesson point here is John is looking to identify the spirit of Antichrist.
The Antichrist opposes Jesus Christ. And so this is what he's going to be covering now in the book.
And I'm entitled to something you cannot be received. 1 John 2, verses 18.
So our Father, we come before you in the mighty and precious name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
As we partook of the Lord's Supper this morning. Saw that he gets to be insulted.
Is done on our behalf. He is all of the enemies, Lord, that we're
His return. Which is our great quote.
Confidence more in the promises that are made in the scriptures as we live our lives in light of the word of God.
And we thank you and praise you.
Okay. Better?
That's better, no? Yes.
We're going to do it. There it is. Okay. Wow. Okay, so there are two verses I want to read which are the two bookends of the beginning and ending of the passage I wanted to focus on today.
Let's look at 1 John 2, verse 18, and then we want to look at verse 26 of 1 John 2, verse 18 and then 26. Let me read them for you.
The first one says this in verse 18, little children, it is the last hour.
And as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now, many Antichrists have come.
By which we know that it is the last hour. And then verse 26, 1 John 2, verse 26.
These things I've written to you concerning those who try to deceive you.
How many of you have been visited by Jehovah's Witnesses? Mormons.
Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons. Okay. I think we all have… And so if you think about what these Cults have in common, they have a faulty view of Jesus Christ. I remember I've had Jehovah's Witnesses come to my door several times. When I was a new believer.
I kind of battled with them and then I realized they're not going to get anywhere. And so then later on, after I got a little bit more understanding of the scriptures, I took a different approach and that was to talk with them And this is the approach that I took. I said, let me tell you everything I have in Jesus Christ.
And then you can tell me what you have. And so obviously what we have in Jesus Christ, you know, is this, well, it's infinite.
What they have is pretty faulty. One time, I used to live on Brady Road, which is a road that connects capital Burlai Place, about a mile and a half stretch. And sometimes people Well, they punch it down that road and they're, you know. And so I was out
On my driveway, and these Jehovah's Witnesses were working this street up and down. And one of them, two guys were in a car and all of a sudden they went right under my drive and two guys jumped out and I felt like I was in one of those old TV sitcoms like Kojak or maybe What's the other guy's name?
Maybe Hawaii 5.0 or maybe, what's the other guy's name? Anyway, some of these programs, you know how they have the unmarked squad car and then all of a sudden they see their mark and then they slap that siren on top and then they gun it and then they make an arrest. And I thought these guys are going to make a citizen's arrest or something, but they were Jehovah's Witnesses, and of course.
They believe 144,000 will be saved and they were trying to maybe fill their quarter for the end of the day. And so I've had some unusual experiences with them.
But for the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Jesus they're talking about is not the Jesus of the Bible. So for engaging with those who profess to know Jesus, but their Jesus is not the real Jesus, we want to speak the truth in love, not getting angry with them.
But being firm and truthful that the verses that I just read.
Can illustrate their false teachings. And John is writing this passage for that very purpose.
When we are visited or engaged with false teaching or when we will be connected to people that do not believe that Jesus of the Bible, we will be prepared.
And John goes on to say that this is the Antichrist, and don't be deceived. Now, if we have the life that's real in Jesus Christ, if we know God, if we have fellowship with him, if we're walking in the light, if we're keeping his word, we will not be led astray.
And in this epistle, John gives us tests to determine if we're true children of God.
Remember in a previous message I talked about in 1 John 2, verses 3 through 11, he talks about the first test, and that is obedience.
To the word of God. We're not perfect, but our general orientation in life is Wanting to know what the scriptures say and wanting to say working in obedience, right?
Toward obeying him. He says this, if you love me, you'll keep my commands. And then he says, my commands are not burdensome. Why? Because we're compelled by the love of God to please him.
Keeping the word, obeying the word is an indication of knowing God.
Then John has a second test. And that is the social test of love.
God is light. He says that in 1 John 1. And we walk in obedience and holiness and God is love, he says. We love other people. In 1 John 5, verse 1, he says, if you're born of God, you're going to love those who are born of God.
You're going to love the children who are in the family of God. That's a natural extension of knowing the Lord Jesus Christ.
If we go to 1 John 2, verse 9, he says this.
He who says he's in the light and hates his brother is in darkness until now.
So two tests. The first test is a moral test of obedience. The second is the social test of love.
But then John comes to test number three, and it's the doctrinal test of belief.
The doctoral test of beliefs. Theologians call this, the Christological test.
Or what you believe about Jesus Christ, what you believe about Christ is the most important thing you're ever going to believe in life.
That you believe what the Bible teaches and that you believe what The Bible teaches accurately about Jesus Christ.
I want you to note one more verse before we go back to verse 18, and that's verse 22, 1 John 2, verse 22.
And it says this, who is a liar? This is John speaking. Who is a liar, but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ?
He is Antichrist who denies the Father and the Son. Now I'm going to go back to this verse in just a moment, but in this text, the first thing that John does is that he contrasts the true believers with the deceivers.
You have the deceivers of the Antichrist and you have the believers who have life, the life that is real in Jesus Christ.
Going back to verse 18 now, I want to read verses 18 through 21. We're jumping around a little bit, but it's important to do this.
Let's go back to verse 18. It says this, little children, or the Greek is little born-again ones.
It is the last hour, and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming Even now many antichrists have come by which we know that it's the last hour.
Verse 19, they went out from us, that is these false teachers, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us, but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us.
Here's verse 20. But you have an anointing from the Holy One and you know all things.
Verse 21, I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you know it and that no lie is of the truth. So in verse 18, the first thing that John does is speak lovingly to them. He identifies himself as an elder.
He's an elder and they are his people and he is their spiritual father, so he calls them little children. He's not speaking to spiritual infants. He's talking about them being the children of God.
And there is nothing more loving than for an elder to warn those little ones in his keeping of danger.
It's not popular. It's not in a lot of sermon study, but this is what I'm going to do. What the Bible actually says, that is the goal. And so any elder wants to impart truth in a sermon will warn his hearers, especially babes in Christ.
As he gets to certain portions in the scriptures. You know, a parent can give warnings to his children like, you know, watch out when you're going into the street Watch out that you don't take on too much student debt. No, no, they wouldn't say that. Maybe they would. I don't know. Be careful when you're out there. And a true elder will warn his people of wolves. Some wolves come in sheep's clothing. They look like sheep. They talk like sheep.
Cheap don't talk, they bah. They baw like sheep. They walk like a sheep, but they're not sheep.
It's more like grandma, what big teeth you have. That's more like what's going on here. And sometimes they knock on your door. Jesus in the Olivet Discourse, Matthew 24 said this, beware of false prophets.
Beware of false Christs who come to you in sheep's clothing.
So Jesus was saying outwardly that they appear like she, but inwardly they're ravenous wolves.
So today, this is the message of warning to God's people about the dangers. Do not be deceived.
I'd like you to advance this slide if you could, Jim.
So the term antichrist is found four times in the New Testament, but only in 1 and 2 John. Antichrist is announced as one who denies the Father and the Son. We're going to keep this in mind here.
Notice in verse 18, it is the last hour. And what does he mean by this phrase? Little children, it is the last hour. Notice he repeats it at the end of verse 18. We know that it is the last hour.
Well, did you know that in Hebrews chapter 1 verse 2 and 1 Peter 1, verse 20, that the last hour is from the birth of Christ to the second coming of Christ? We're in the last hour now.
That is one way the phrase is actually used. We don't often think about that, but it's a biblical concept. It's known as the last hour period of God's grace or the church age.
And God's big sovereign kind of redemptive purpose and program during this time of the birth of Christ's second coming is known as the last days. But it is also the time before the second coming.
Just before Jesus's second advent or coming when he returns The second time, there's going to be a rise and an increase in false teachers and false prophets.
And false Christs. And it will culminate or peak in the tribulation period, the last seven years of man's history.
Notice how the Age of Grace is defined from the birth of Christ to the end of the tribulation period. Now, if you look at the Bible dispensationally, people can quibble a little bit with that, but that's how I'm using it. So there's going to be a who.
A person who will arise and we commonly call him the Antichrist, the person, the beast.
John is the only one who uses that term, the Antichrist or an Antichrist.
He's also known as the beast or the mouth speaking great swelling words.
And he will come before the second coming and he will be a world ruling dictator. We'll call him the Antichrist.
The word Antichrist means against Christ, and it has two meanings.
It means that he will be instead of Christ and it means that he will oppose Christ, this Antichrist, this person will do two things.
Number one, he'll take the place of Christ. People think he's the Savior and think there's peace on earth and he will take the place of Christ. And second of all, he will speak against Christ.
Now, if you're looking at the book of Revelation, particularly chapter 13, this beast As it says about this tribulation period, you'll have the false prophet who will be doing signs And people will believe that the beast, the Antichrist is
The Savior. That's what they will believe. He'll go into the abyss, chapter 13, suffering a mortal wound. He'll come out of the abyss.
Having been healed from it and people will say, isn't this the Christ?
Now, I don't plan on being here to see the Antichrist, neither should you. I believe we'll be raptured away.
Who is this person? A lot of people want to know what the Antichrist is. Maybe some president of a country or some earthly leader.
I really don't care. I don't know who he is, nor do you. He could be alive today if we believe in the infancy of Christ's return. He could be alive today. Someone could ask, well, where are you going to go? And the answer is, I'm going to be in heaven. It's called the rapture, right? And I believe the rapture takes place and what Christians are looking for
Is that we'll be caught up to meet the Lord in the air.
And when we are caught up, the church, the light of the world, the salt of the earth will be taken away.
Then the world will get very corrupt and dark. And the Antichrist can be revealed.
Notice that nowhere in the Bible are we told to look for the Antichrist.
The old brethren wrote a lot of stuff, very good stuff, and they would say, you know, if you're preaching on the Antichrist, you'll fill a church. If you're preaching about Christ, maybe a half full church.
Why are we so intrigued about who the Antichrist is? I don't know because the Bible always exhorts us to look for Christ.
The blessed hope of the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior.
Who is Jesus Christ? That's who we're looking for. So John makes a distinction in verse 18. He says, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, he first says it's the last hour and you have heard that the Antichrist shall come, future tense.
That's the man of sin, this world-ruling dictator that I just described. But notice what he says Even more so, he says, even now, even right now, many, plural multiple antichrists have come.
By which we know that it is the last hour. So we are living in the last days.
So the word Antichrist is used for a person. We know he's coming in the future.
But it's also used for false teachers, the spirit of Antichrist.
It is also used for the spirit of Antichrist in 1 John 4, verse 3. Now the false teachers of John's day were known as Gnostics.
It was just formulating in John's time and then gets stronger and stronger. Gnostic comes from the Greek word ginosko, which means to know.
And they claimed a superior knowledge that salvation was through knowledge.
And they had to introduce you and catch this little concept. They would give you an anointing.
They would give you the special anointing to introduce you to this deeper knowledge whereby through knowledge you could work your way up through special emanations to finally arrive at God.
By primarily the Gnostics had a faulty view, a false doctrine, false teaching about Jesus Christ.
Let me say this right now. You cannot be wrong about Jesus and right about God.
If you're wrong about who Jesus is, then you're wrong about God.
And if you do not have Jesus, then you do not have God the Father. See, that's what Jesus was battling right with the Pharisees. They wanted a God who was distant.
Almost an abstract God. But when Jesus came in the person who looked just like them and was talking to them.
Looking at them right in the eye. They didn't like that. He was a threat.
Everybody can talk about a God whose distance. You can make them out to be what you want, but that's not the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible came on earth.
Bodily? Spoke to us and he told us the way to God, the way to heaven is through him.
Cannot be wrong about Jesus and right about God. So it's very important that we understand who Jesus Christ is and understand the biblical teaching regarding him.
And also, in our age, we have false teachers. We have cults, right? Oh boy, I pressed something wrong there.
We have cults and the Gnostic beliefs of John's days are not dead.
They're still alive and manifesting themselves in religious groups. When I went to… As you know, we go to Malaysia to visit my in-laws And Shalita's father is a great Bible teacher and he was always assigning certain things. At one point, he assigned me this seminar on cults.
I didn't know very much about it. I was kind of overwhelmed, but I did it and I learned an enormous amount about cults.
And what you find as you compare the cults is that their beliefs are always at the expense of Jesus Christ. You can't hold a biblical view of Christ and claim to have special knowledge of your own.
So we did this seminar and we looked at all sorts of different cults.
Did you know that prior to 1850, cultists were practically unheard of in America?
And then we had this proliferation of cults. In 1830, we had the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Which is commonly known as Mormonism One time there was a Mormon guy who came to the assembly He was a trucker.
He talked about his path to salvation in Jesus Christ. And so he was a trucker, long haul trucker, and he started to listen to radio and he discovered Christian radio and so he was listening to it.
And the epiphany moment for him, the moment at which he believed, was that he was saying that As the Bible, when the Bible would say certain things, let's say about the Hittite Empire.
And people would say that it was wrong or whatever, but they kept looking and they believed that the Bible said. And then they would uncover evidence and suddenly the Bible was correct. And he said, in the Mormon church, they were finding mistakes and then looking to cover them up all the time. And that's what got him On the search for Jesus Christ, and he was eventually rewarded with that by receiving Christ as a savior. Now he came here and he had this table in the back and he had all the Mormon books, you know, the Book of Mormon, he had the Bible and such.
And somebody had walked in and put the Amplified Bible on the table.
And Donna Duckhorn came in through that door and she said, what? They've got the Amplified Bible too? Kind of a funny moment. I just laughed.
Like they infiltrated the Amplified Bible. It was funny. You have to be there. Okay, so anyway.
But they're commonly called Mormonism and are Mormons, and they have a faulty view of Jesus Christ. Listen to what they believe. They believe that Jesus Christ is the spirit child of Elohim.
That Elohim had a wife and they had a spirit child and that first spirit child was Jesus.
Then a second spirit child of Elohim was born and that child was Satan.
They believe that Jesus and Satan were brothers. But that's not what the Bible teaches, is it?
We also had the birth of the Jehovah's Witnesses in 1870. They have a faulty view of Christ. They believe that Jesus Christ was first created by God the Father.
That he's not eternal. He's a creature. He was created as an angel, and then he became Jesus.
Then we have the New Thought Movement, then the Church of Christ Scientists, founded by Mary Baker Eddy in 1879.
There's a church of First Christ scientists pretty close to where I live. I've never seen a car in the parking lot at all. Now, they believe in healing and reviewing Mary Baker Eddie's teachings, I'm not sure what goes on in that church, but they believe that one could heal
Continually heal oneself. But there are no cars in the parking lot, so maybe they all died off. I don't know. But she believed, and I remember Erwin Lutzer doing a great series on healings and he said, well, if you just calculate that forward.
What she's saying is that she would never die because she could continually heal herself.
Of course, she did wear glasses. She wore all, yeah, I mean, who knows? I mean, she ultimately died. They kept it a secret, but, you know.
These beliefs just aren't biblical. Then we have the United Church of Religious Science, founded by Ernest S. Holmes in 1927.
We have the Unity School of Christianity founded by Charles and Myrtle Fillmore in 1891.
And we have the birth of the New Age movement. Over 20 million Americans involved in that.
This is a resurgence of Gnosticism. We have the Church of Christ, Church of Scientology, and of course you hear about that in the news. They pursue celebrities, don't they?
Tom Cruise and others are involved in that church. Very strange church. Interesting fun fact about them. They were seeking an exemption from tax, right? So churches are tax exempt And the IRS wouldn't give them that exemption. And so what they did is they hired a bunch of high-priced lawyers to harass the IRS, and they just followed agents. They recorded if they went over the speed.
Afford all these resources and eventually the IRS gave in and gave them a church exemption.
The value of that is over a billion dollars in safe taxes.
Some of these churches are quite wealthy. We have the Unification Church.
We have the Baha'i root faith. Unitarian Universalism. Recently the Da Vinci Code was published by Dan Brown denying the true deity of Jesus Christ.
We also have the third Jesus written by Deepak Chopra. We have a new earth written by Eckhart Tolle, which was promoted on Opera show when she had her talk show.
So all of this is in our movies, on TV, in the workplaces, this Gnostic heresy regarding Jesus. And this is an indication that we're living in the last days.
Now, I want to point out the relation to the people of God in verse 19 He says this, they went out from us.
Now, before I read verse 19 again, I want you to look for something in the verse, and that is the contrast between they, the false teachers, the Antichrist, and us, the true believers, the followers of Jesus.
Notice this here. So they went out from us, but they were not of us.
If they were of us, they would no doubt have continued with us.
Once again, let's read the rest of verse 19. But they were not of us, for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us, but they went out.
That they might be made manifest and none of them were of us.
The dangerous thing is that in John's day, they were part of the community of believers, but because they were not believers, they left.
But there's a more dangerous thing. It's when they stay among us. That's more dangerous.
When they're in our pulpits, in our pews, in our seminaries, and they claim to be Christians, same vocabulary, different dictionary. Be careful, it's very deceptive. El Molner.
Southern Baptist Convention took over a seminary. And he documents his battle with these professors who were attacking inerrancy and casting doubt to their students about the the foundation of the scriptures.
Whether they're inerrant or not, and whether there's truth contained in it.
And at one point, he has this confrontation with one of the professors and he says, you know, truth is exclusive. Jesus Christ is who Jesus Christ is and the Bible is true. And that professor shot back and said, no, no, no, no. Truth is polyvalent.
It's polyvalent. That's a term from chemistry. It holds multiple values.
And they battle back and forth. Eventually, they ended up firing all of them and starting fresh. This is a battle that's been going on for a long time.
What the Bible says is true. They say they believe in Jesus.
We believe the Bible is the word of God, but what they believe is that the Word of God is found in the Bible, but you have to find it.
Figure out which is the Word of God and which is not. But the truth is the Bible is the word of God.
And it is without error and it's given by God's inspiration. It is infallible and is sufficient for all that pertains to life and godliness. Can I get an amen?
Everything we need is found in the Bible, and Jesus Christ is the living word and he is discovered in the written word. So they went out from us.
So I'm going to say that when you see a star fall you can know that is not really a star. You know, it's really It's not really a fallen star, but a meteor, right? It's a shooting star, right?
But if it's really a star, it's still shining. They went out from us because they were not really of us. If they really had been of us, they would have continued with us. The sign of a true Christian is continuance and perseverance in the doctrine of Christ.
In the church of Jesus Christ. So we need to beware, we need to be careful.
These are not Christians that lose their salvation. These are pigs.
Who have had a bath, who took a bath, had some cologne put on them, but they remain pigs.
You can say, well, Ray, that's not a very nice thing to say from the pulpit, but I'm quoting the Bible.
2 Peter says they're pigs that have been washed and returned to their wallowing in the mud.
Here's the key application. Their nature was never changed. They're still pigs. Pigs do what pigs do. Dogs do what dogs do because they're dogs.
Not only does Peter call them pigs in going back to the mud, but he says they are dogs.
Vomited and go back to that vomit. Now, this isn't a pleasant thing. You're going to have lunch pretty soon.
But that's how strongly worded these verses are. It's shocking, but it's in the Bible.
So they went out from us because they were not of us. Jesus called them wheat among tares. He had 12 disciples. One of them was a dud.
When Jesus said, one of you will betray me, they all questioned themselves.
And Judas was very good at mimicking the truth, wasn't he?
He did healings. He cast out the dead. He did everything, he participated with the other disciples. He was probably more educated than the other disciples. He kept the treasury, didn't he?
And so they question themselves before they questioned him. Today, there are many clever preachers of the word, but the issue is what do they say, or better yet, what do they leave out?
We got into our Bibles. This is the gospel and you need to preach the Jesus of the Bible, not of their own creation or imagination. They are in the church, but they're not of the church. That's what verse 19 is saying.
They may be some in the church, there may be some in the church who may not be saved. You can go to church and end up in an eternity apart from Christ. You need to know the Lord Jesus Christ. John says we need to trust in Christ.
That's what John wants us to understand and make clear. And now we come to the contrast of verses 20 and 21.
1 John chapter 2. But you have an anointing from the Holy One and you know all things.
Verse 21, I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you know it.
And that no lie is of the truth. Now, John says in verse 20, You as true Christians have an anointing and it comes from the Holy One and you know all things.
Now, this means that all true Christians have the Holy Spirit. That's the definition of a believer. Romans 8 talks about that.
Let's not miss that. The anointing their reference there is a reference to the Holy Spirit. It's an image of the anointing of the Old Testament priest.
When you're born again, you have the Holy Spirit. And if you don't have the Holy Spirit, you're not of His.
It's that anointing, that unction, King James, it's unction. It's like a meter in your heart which tells you truth and error, truth and error.
You know that many new christians can get saved and be quite discerning.
When I first got saved and I heard the word of God, I had a lot of liberal ideas. I had all sorts of things that later on were sorted out when I began to read the Bible, but at least I could tell truth from error. And that's what that initial anointing does. The Holy Spirit allows you to tell truth from error.
Something inside of you is saying, when you're hearing something false, liar, liar, liar. And that's what John, he uses that word. He's an old man. He doesn't mince words.
And he says, they're liars, right? You know what that is? It's the Holy Spirit. Now God has given us his word, which is inspired by the Spirit, and nothing that is true will ever contradict the word of God. That's our rule of thumb.
Not our feelings or our emotions. But you still have this little meter in your heart saying, it's the Holy Spirit saying truth, truth, or lie.
Lie. If you are a true child of God. That's been given to you. And it's given to us by the Holy Spirit, which is a reference to either the Father or most scholars believe that it's a reference to Jesus. Jesus sent the Holy Spirit. Listen to what he says here.
I will send you another comforter. But he also said that I will pray the Father and he will send you another comforter. So whether it's the Father or the Son, the Holy Spirit is given to us by the Holy One.
And we know all things. We know all things. What does this mean?
It doesn't mean that Christians are omniscient. Doesn't mean that we know everything.
What he means is that we know everything we need to know about Jesus.
And everything we need to know about salvation, everything we need to know about how to get to heaven. That's what Christians know.
That's why the world looks at us and says, you think you're right. You've got exclusive truth. You look down at us.
We don't want to hear what you have to say. But the issue is… It's the Holy Spirit who allows us as believers to understand the Word of God.
He's the spirit of truth and God's word is true and God is true and we have all we need to know.
Everything we need to know about life and godliness and about how to get to heaven.
We all have the knowledge that is required for salvation. Now, I just want to wrap up this section here by looking at verses 22 and 23. What we're talking about now is the content and the consequences of their deception.
Verse 22, who is a liar? In the Greek it would read, who is the liar?
Not a liar, but the liar. It's he who denies that Jesus is the Christ. He is Antichrist, denies the Father and the Son. So the liar is the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ. This is not that Jesus had the Christ or that Jesus came upon Jesus.
But it is that he is the Christ. He is the Antichrist that denies this.
And the spirit of the Antichrist is that which denies the Father and the Son. And if you're wrong about Jesus, you're wrong about God the Father. Notice verse 23.
Whoever denies the son does not have the Father either. He acknowledges or confesses or believes in the Son as the Father also.
And you say, well, you know, this is basic stuff that you're saying, but I think we do need to hear these things. I certainly do over and over again.
John identifies the falsehood by asking a rhetorical question. Who is a liar?
Would you like to know who the liars are? The Bible tells us, he who denies that Jesus is the Christ.
That's not hard. What do you mean that Jesus is the Christ? The word Christ means the anointed one.
And it's interesting that he said, you have an anointing. Same word used for Christ. You have an anointing. You have the Holy Spirit, you have Christ.
By Jesus, the sinless man, Jesus born of a virgin.
Jesus didn't receive Jesus didn't receive Christ as the Gnostics taught, he is the Christ. And here's what the Gnostics taught They taught that Jesus was born just like any other human being.
Jesus is not sinless. But a sinner, a human being like everyone else.
And that's popular today, isn't it? That when Jesus is baptized and the heavens open, the Holy Spirit descended that the Christ came upon the man Jesus.
This is exactly what the New Agers teach today. And that when Jesus was then hung on the cross and he cried, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me, that the Christ left the man Jesus?
He was born a man, nothing more. He died a man.
Nothing more. That's not the Christ of the Bible or the Christ of the New Testament.
And if you don't confess that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One, you do not have God. That is the spirit of Antichrist. So there is a man Antichrist who will come in the future, but there's also the spirit of resistance to Jesus.
In the teaching of the Bible. Let's look at chapter 4 verses 1 through 2.
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits whether they are of God.
Why does he say this? Because many false prophets have gone out into the world.
Verse 2, by this you know the Spirit of God, every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God. And every spirit that does not confess that Jesus has come in the flesh is not of God.
This is the spirit of the Antichrist which you have heard was coming and now already is in the world. And what's John saying again?
Jesus is the Christ. He came in the flesh And the Bible teaches this about Jesus.
And unless you believe this, you don't have the Christian truth. The Bible teaches that Jesus, a second person of the Godhead, matter of fact, in order to understand who Jesus is, you have to believe the Trinity, actually.
There is one God in that he was manifested in three persons, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.
The Bible teaches that all three are God and all equally divine and they possess the same attributes.
And one of those divine attributes is that they're eternal. They always have been and they always will be.
And what do we learn about Jesus? He is eternal. He is the eternal Son of God.
So what happened that in the womb of a virgin by the name of Mary, the Holy Spirit, the third person, the Godhead, came upon this young virgin and in her room was conceived miraculously the Son of God.
And in that moment, he took on humanity. Sendless humanity so that the conception was a miracle, his birth.
Was natural. But he lived 33 years as a sinless man called Jesus. And this is another doctrine about Christ, the impeccability of Christ.
He did not, could not, and would not even sin. He was the second person of the Godhead Jesus never thought an evil thought. He never got angry unless in righteousness.
He never sinned. He even accused the religious leaders, saying to them.
Which one of you convicts me of sin? Wow. So sinless humanity, humanity but sinless.
And his full deity in one person, Jesus Christ, and anything less than that is Antichrist.
Anything less, anything is less than that, what I just spoke about, is not the doctrine of Christ. But then you have to go a little bit further.
This God-man Jesus willingly, voluntarily went to the cross and he laid down his life.
On that cross and our sins, the whole sin of the world, was placed upon the pure and sinless Son of God.
And he became a substitute for us. And he was buried. We know that. And three days later, he physically bodily rose again from the dead. And we use these terms physically and bodily because the resurrection As the Jehovah's Witnesses teach was a spiritual resurrection.
When they ran into that tomb on the Easter morning, the grave clothes were there, but the body was not there. Jesus was alive.
Certainly that deserves an amen. And he appeared and disappeared at 40 days proving to his disciples that he had risen from the dead.
He said, touch my body. He's in a new glorified body and at the end of those 40 days on Mount Olivet, guess what he did? He ascended right back up.
Where he came from. One of the great debaters, Christian apologist William Lane Craig, had a debate with Bishop Shelby Spong, maybe you've heard of that name before.
Controversial figure, published many books and When they were debating the resurrection.
Bishop Spong went up and he talked about the resurrection as a spiritual thing.
And when William Lane Craig got up in his rebuttal, he said this.
You want to talk about the resurrection as a spiritual thing, but you want to evacuate it of any value.
You want to deny the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. Best-selling author, many, many followers, but that's what he said. That's what you're doing. You're evacuating it of any kind of value, and that's what our Christian beliefs are based upon the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. It's a foundation of our faith. And as we look at 1 Corinthians coming up, he says that in 1 Corinthians 15, if he has not resurrected from the dead, our faith is useless.
That's what's going on in the world. The denial of the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. And he couldn't have resurrected if there were any sin in him.
So what a great ending. Jesus's resurrection.
He went into heaven and guess what? He's coming back in exactly the same manner.
Not like some of these movies that you go to where the ending is just a crummy ending and you say to yourself, I paid all this money to see this crummy ending. This is not Jesus. This is a great ending.
Right back up to heaven. And he'll come back and take us to be with him forever.
He disappeared from the disciples view as he ascended. Acts 1 says this. Now, when he had spoken these things while the disciples watched, he was taken up and a cloud received him out of their sight.
And while they were looking steadfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel.
Who also said, Men of Galilee Why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus who has taken up from you into heaven will so come in light manners you saw him go into heaven.
And I like that. Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven?
And my answer would have been, well, if you just saw what I saw, I'd still be gazing up into heaven.
But the point here is that Jesus, this sinless Son of God, the eternal one, ascended into heaven, but wait, he's coming back again just like he left, and this is called the second coming of Jesus Christ. Now, the second coming, he's coming in the clouds to receive us and then the second coming after the tribulation period where his feet will touch on the Mount of Olives. And the point of the matter is
He's coming back and he's returning in power and glory to reign upon the earth forever and ever.
And his kingdom will have no end. And this is exciting.
That's the Jesus of the Bible. Anything less than that is Antichrist.
I want to give you a synopsis of the doctrine of Christ. Anything less is Antichrist. And I wanted you to see in verse 22 and 23, once again this point.
Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ. He is the Antichrist who denies the Father and the Son.
Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either, and he acknowledges the Son has the Father also.
But if you have the sun, you also have the Father.
And he said that in John 14, verse 6. I am the way, Jesus said. I am the truth. Every time he says, I am, he's saying, I am claiming to be Jehovah, the eternal God.
And then I am the what? The life. And guess what he said after that? No one, no one gets to the Father except by me. If you're wrong about Jesus, you're wrong about God. And if you're wrong about Jesus, you could be separated from God for all eternity.
Because he and no one else is the way. Yes, there is a lake of fire for those who ultimately in their lifetime don't accept the Lord Jesus Christ. We know the most about hell from Jesus himself.
He and no one else is the truth. Without him, there is no knowing, and he and no one else is the life. Without him there is no living. Jesus Christ, the only way for us to be saved. If you're here this morning.
And you say to yourself, I don't know if I'm really saved.
You may be what Jesus called a terror and not a weep.
Tears and wheat look exactly the same, right? But then they'll be separated, right?
You say, I don't know if I've really trusted him with my heart.
You may be a professor but not a possessor. You may be in church, but no child of God. But if you want to make sure, ask, ask one of the elders here. We're more than happy to talk with you.
Let's discover what the Bible says about salvation and how you can receive.
This incredible gift from Jesus Christ. Because no one should leave here today with doubt about whether you're saved or not.
You need Jesus. You need to commit your life today so that you will not perish but have everlasting life. This is the truth and you can possess it today.
Let's pray. Our Father, once again, we come before you as we're handling the Word of God. We're grateful that you are clear.
About who the Lord Jesus Christ is, that he's everything that we need to possess life.
We thank you for the Holy Spirit, which is the guarantee of what we will receive in eternity. And we thank you for this body here.
Well, it was the Bible Chapel. Take us home with travel mercies.
The mission field is right outside the door. Give us boldness to preach the gospel and we give you thanks in Jesus's name.
Amen