Thoughts From 1John 2 - Part 5

  Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. 19 They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us. 1John 2:18-19

           My parents bought a condo in South Florida adjacent to "Bible Town". This was a community of believers - mean age 70 -(ouch, I'm 70) and the retirees would meet for potlucks, hymn sings, game nights but the coup de gras was weekly 3-day Bible conferences taught by some really renowned speakers. The favorite topic - the return of Christ. You can understand why, a lot of people close to death want to be encouraged about their future but also hoping it was imminent so they wouldn't experience death. My dad has since gone to be with the Lord, but I think he was pretty convinced the Lord would come before that. My mom is 94 and still waiting, as am I.

         I guess they weren't unique in this hope of the soon return of Christ because it appears from 1John 2, they were in good company. John, probably 80 -90 years old was convinced they were in the last hour. I wonder if he would be shocked to learn 2000 years later, we still think we're in the last hour. While we might be tempted to mock prognosticators or sooth sayers predicting Christ's imminent return, isn't this the way Jesus told us to live in Matthew 24 and 25? My dad would often end his conversations with, "Keep looking up!" and that's great advice. No one knows the date, but we are to live like it is today and I think that's how John was living.

      When looking at the signs of times, what do we usually point to? I would say it's wars, rumors of wars, earthquakes, famines, natural disasters, middle East unrest, global warming, nuclear threats, growth of Islam, AI or you name it. It's interesting that John's signs were apostasy, deconversion, false teachers. Paul in 1Timothy 4 would have concurred when he said; 

"For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. 4 They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths."

Has there been a mass deconversion or introduction of false gospels? Maybe, but I think that it may not be worse than it always has been. John says it was bad back then and it's bad now. Let's stand firm in the faith and "keep looking up!"