The Last Hour
1 John 2:18–23
Little children, these are the end times, and as you heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have arisen. By this we know that it is the final hour. They went out from us, but they didn’t belong to us; for if they had belonged to us, they would have continued with us. But they left, that they might be revealed that none of them belong to us. You have an anointing from the Holy One, and you all have knowledge. I have not written to you because you don’t know the truth, but because you know it, and because 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. Whoever denies the Son doesn’t have the Father. He who confesses the Son has the Father also.
World English Bible
The most dangerous counterfeits aren’t the obvious ones. Nobody is fooled by a crayon drawing of a hundred-dollar bill; the counterfeit that ruins you is the one that looks nearly perfect. John writes to believers facing exactly that, and he tells them something sobering about where the counterfeits came from: “They went out from us.” The antichrists of the last hour weren’t invaders storming the gates. They were familiar faces who sat in the gathering, sang the songs, and then walked away from the truth about Jesus.
John calls this “the final hour”, not a countdown to be decoded, but the age we’ve been in since Christ ascended: the long, contested interval before He returns, in which deception is not a possibility but a guarantee. We shouldn’t be shocked when impressive voices distort Christ. We were told.
So how do you spot the counterfeit? Bank tellers famously train on genuine bills: handle the real thing long enough and the fakes feel wrong in your fingers. John gives the test in a single question: “Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ?” Every deception that matters eventually touches the identity of Jesus. It will praise Him as teacher, guru, example, legend: anything but Christ, the Son, God come in flesh. And John is unsparing about the stakes: “Whoever denies the Son doesn’t have the Father.” You cannot keep a generic God while discarding His Son. Confess the Son, and the Father comes with Him.
But notice that John isn’t trying to make you anxious. He’s doing the opposite. “You have an anointing from the Holy One, and you all have knowledge.” The anointing isn’t secret knowledge reserved for an inner circle; it’s the truth of the gospel you received, now at home in ordinary believers. You don’t need a seminary degree or a heresy-detection app; you need to stay soaked in the word you already received. Discernment, it turns out, is less about studying every lie and more about deep familiarity with the truth. Hold the genuine article daily (the real Jesus, fully God, fully Savior) and the counterfeits will start feeling wrong in your hands.
Reflect
- Which voices am I letting shape my view of Jesus, and do they confess Him as the Christ, or merely admire Him as something less?
- Am I more familiar with the genuine article (spending real time with Christ in His word), or would a near-perfect counterfeit fool me?
- Have I quietly accepted a version of “God” that doesn’t require the Son? What is that costing me?
Pray
Thank God that the truth about His Son has been entrusted to you, and that discernment grows from the gospel you already received, not from credentials you lack. Ask Him to deepen your familiarity with the real Jesus through His word, so that distortions lose their pull. Pray by name for someone you know who is drifting toward a lesser Christ.