Christianity and Anti-Christianity in Their Final Conflict. Samuel J. Andrews

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СКАЧАТЬ which confesseth not Jesus, is not of God ; and this is the spirit of the Antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it cometh, and now it is in the world already." (R. V.) No earlier form of hos- tility to God could have been antichristian; Christ must appear in the world before His claims could be rejected. As the Incarnate Son, and God's repre- sentative, it is the hostility to Him,—the antichristian spirit—which distinguishes this whole dispensation, but comes into highest manifestation at the end. It is the Christian apostasy which produces the Anti- christ.

      As St. Paul had spoken of "the mystery of lawless- ness" working in the Church in his day a few years earlier, so St. John speaks of its further development. "Even now are there many antichrists. . . They went out from us, but they were not of us." This marks them as apostate Christians. They had a name among the disciples, but had fallen away from the faith. They were the first fruits of "the scoffers and mockers" predicted by St. Peter and St. Jude. Some of the early writers speak of them as Gnostic teachers and leaders.

      The mention of the Antichrist is not that the Apostle may speak of the last Antichrist in detail, but that he may warn the Church against the workings of the antichristian spirit already active. As said by Ebrard, "the Apostle's design is warningly to testify that the many antichrists then appearing were in their character like the nature of the Antichrist to come." There is no good reason to doubt that he,

      THE TEACHINGS OF ST. JOHN. 47

      like St. Paul, looked to see this spirit reach its full development in an individual Antichrist, who should deny both the Father and the Son. (I. ii, 18, 22.) All who had yet appeared were but his heralds and fore- runners; the growing, but not the ripened tares. The Apostle's teaching is doctrinal, to show in what the spirit of Antichristianity consisted—the denial that Jesus had come in the flesh, or the denial of the Incarnation. It is from the knowledge which his readers already had of the Antichrist to come, that he can explain the true character of the errors now seen among them, and their great significance and danger.

      It deserves to be noted in considering the emphasis which this Apostle lays upon love in his Epistles, that he wrote at Ephesus, and that it was he by whom the Lord sent the Seven Epistles to the Seven Churches; in the first of which, addressed to the Church at Ephesus, he reproved it for "the loss of the first love." Whether his own Epistles were written earlier or later than the Seven, it is evident that he marked the same loss; and therefore enforced the value of this grace, both in its relation to the Head of the Church, and in that of the members to one another. ^* God is love, and he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God in him." "If we love one another, God dwelleth in us." The loss of this love opened the way to many forms of evil, both doctrinal and practical.

      Note.—It is said by Prof. Stevens ("The Johannine The- ology," 1894), that the prevailing view in the Church in the past, tliat Antichrist in this epistle designates a person, is not well founded, because "the man of sin'' of St. Paul, "the Anti- christ" of St. John, and "the beast" of The Revelation, are

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      representatives of different forms of evil ; the first being the rep- resentatiye of Jewish hostility, and the last of the persecuting power of Rome. But our examination of St. Paul's words has shown us that he is speaking of the spirit of lawlessness in the Church, and not of Jewish hostility ; and that the beast does not symbolize Roman persecution, will clearly appear in the exam- ination of The Revelation. That the Gnostic heresy was in the mind of the Apostle John, may be admitted, and the Apostle Paul seems, as we have seen, to have alluded to it ; but this is wholly compatible with its union with other, forms of evil, and all these are to be summed up in the Antichrist. It is observed by Plummer ( "The Epistles of John " ) that "there is a strong preponderance of opinion in favor of the view that the antichrist of St. John is the same as the great adversary of St. Paul." Bishop Wordsworth (Com. in loco) thinks that "the man of sin and the Antichrist do not correspond accurately to each other," but it is not "impossible that they may eventually coalesce." He identifies the man of sin with the Beast (Rev. xiii, — ).

      THE TEACHINGS OF ST. PETER.

      There is no mention of an individual antichrist by this Apostle, but much is said of the evil tendencies which he saw already active. In his first Epistle he speaks fully of the trials and sufferings, present and future, of those to whom he wrote, but very little of false teachers and their heresies. He tells them that though already tried by manifold temptations, there was a time of " fiery trial " yet to come before the glory of the Lord could be revealed. This trial by fire is doubtless the same as that spoken of by St. Paul, when " the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is." (1 Cor. iii, 13.) It is the same as the day when the Lord returns " in flaming fire" to punish His enemies, and to be glorified in His saints. (2 Thess. i, 8.) When this shall be, St. Peter does not say, but he says : "The end of all things is at hand." (1 Pet. iv, 7.)

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      It is to be noted that St. Peter knew through the word of the Lord spoken to him (John xxi, 18) that he himself should not live till His return, but this did not prevent him from warning the disciples to be ever expecting Him and hoping to the end. (2 Peter i, 12—.) He, no more than St. Paul, speaks of a long interval before that revelation, but he knew that, however short the interval, the Church would be subject to manifold temptations through the craft and malice of its great adversary, "walking about as a roaring lion."

      It is in his second Epistle that he speaks distinctly of the false teachers who would arise and bring in damnable heresies, whose pernicious ways many would follow. (2 Peter ii, 1—.) He speaks prophetically, yet evidently the present mirrors for him the future. He saw in his own day the germs of the heresies which would ripen into all evil fruits. He describes the leading features of these false teachers and their followers, "walking after the flesh in the lust of un- cleanness," despising governments, presumptuous, self-willed, speaking evil of dignities, servants of cor- ruption, though boasters of liberty. He is not speak- ing of heathen enemies, but of Christians, those who, having "escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour, are again en- tangled therein and overcome; those who have forsaken the right way, and have turned from the holy com- mandment delivered unto them." That these are the same as those mentioned by St. Paul (2 Tim. iii, 1—) as "having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof," and by St. John as the antichrists who "went out from us," there can be no doubt. That St. Peter expected this apostasy to increase, is plain from his words that there would "come in the last days

      50 THE TEACHINGS OF THE SCRIPTURE.

      scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying. Where is the promise of his coming?" As scoffers and scorners are the ripened tares—the last and high- est product of the apostasy—so, on the other hand, there must be the ripened wheat, those "looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God," those "dili- gent to be found of Him in peace, without spot, and blameless."

      But St. Peter does not speak of any individual as the head of these apostates, or of them as forming an organized body, unless the mention of "false teach- ers" implies this. As he himself was soon to end his ministry—"knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle"—others whom the Lord would raise up, must be the guides of the Church in the coming days of the great antichristian trial. Both St. Paul and himself had given the churches full warning, and he could therefore say: "Beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware, lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked (, the lawless), fall from your own stead- fastness."

      THE TEACHINGS OP ST. JUDE.

      This Epistle, like СКАЧАТЬ