“Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming” (1 John 2:18a). If one only considered this part of this verse from the NKJV, the conclusion one might draw is the Bible teaches the “Antichrist” is a great adversary of Christ that is coming just before the end of the world. The capitalization of “Antichrist” in the NKJV could perhaps further this idea that there is only one such figure. However, the Bible has more to say on this subject. A careful examination of the possible meaning of these terms and phrases in 1 John 2:18 must be weighed, the rest of the verse should be read, and other statements by the same writer about this subject in his letters should considered. Proper study involves considering all that the Bible has to say on a subject before drawing a conclusion. While space forbids consideration of other passages which may be tied to this subject, let’s consider the statements John explicitly makes about antichrist to round out our understanding.
Notice the last part of 1 John 2:18, “even now many antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour.” Thus, John goes on to say in the rest of the sentence that many antichrists had already come even in his day. Later in the same epistle, John identifies every spirit that does not confess Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is antichrist, that his audience had heard would come and now already was in the world (1 John 4:3). In 2 John 7, many such deniers of Christ coming in the flesh had already gone out as deceivers into the world. Closer to the initial statement in this article is 1 John 2:22, which identifies liars who denied the Father and the Son as antichrist (this is singular with the article in the Greek, as some put it “this is the antichrist”).
These individuals John called antichrists in 1 John 2 were evidently part of a secession from true Christianity. They went out from God’s people; in this particular instance, the apostates were showing their true colors, manifesting a hidden problem that was already there (1 John 2:19). Thus, individuals who had withdrawn and now denied the Lord and opposed His church were called antichrists.
Consider a couple of phrases and terms in 1 John 2:18 that may mean something other than what one reads on the surface of one Bible version. First, taking “the last hour” in 1 John 2:18 as a reference to the time very near the end of the world seems difficult to harmonize with how many years have transpired since John lived. But the expression in the original language can mean “a critical hour.” Such an opposition and apostasy would be a critical period for God’s people. Moreover, the word translated “hour” can mean “time” (“it is the last time” KJV). The Christian age is the last of the three dispensations of history. The reference may be to time/hour in the present age of the world’s existence.[1]
Second, whether the term “antichrist” should be translated with the English article “the” in front of it may involve more consideration than one might think. The KJV, ASV, NASB, and ESV all translate 1 John 2:18a as, you “heard that antichrist” is coming (notice without the article “the”). There is good reason in weighing the Greek manuscripts to favor those copies that do not contain the article; beyond that, even if the article is present in the Greek, abstract nouns have an article before them in the Greek, but no article should be used in the English translation (e. g. “salvation” in John 4:22). Thus, if John is speaking of a general disposition of unbelief or opposition to Christ, not a specific person, then he would be using the term antichrist as an abstract noun. In this case an article would be present in the Greek, but should not be carried over into the English.
All of this is to say that hearing a popular religious idea and a snippet of a verse that seems to teach it is not good enough in finding what God’s word teaches on a subject. Some digging and investigation are required to have a well-rounded and nuanced understanding of what God really says. Homework: use this article as a starting point, and consider other passages in the Bible about movements of apostasy and what first-century Christians were told about God’s timing in regard to these.
[1] William Arndt et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 1103.
