In the last week I have been doing a serious study on 1 John. I was listening to a John MacArthur Podcast and he talked about taking each of the New Testament books and reading one book for 30 days everyday. I have read through the entire Bible lots of times and I think for the next 2 years I am going to try this and still read through the entire Bible in a year. We will see how it goes but it has already been a blessing for me in so many ways.

1 John is just an amazing slice of scripture. There are so many blessings and so many nuggets of information in this short 5 chapter book of the Bible. I have been thinking about what I wanted to write about 1 John and after reading some other posts on some other blogs I thought the topic of the AntiChrist would be appropriate.

Here is what was said about Christianity on one of the blogs I regularly read (str.org),

“The public face of Christianity: peace loving do-gooders making the world a better place, is a distortion of what Christianity really is: a cult driven by authoritarian fear mongering based on a suspension of logic, reason and free thought in favor of ancient superstition that hinders the progress of the human race, and gives those who claim religious authority the perfect power and opportunity to psychologically manipulate their followers. Throughout history social reform has been hindered by the religious...”

Wow, then he goes on and rails that Christians are intolerant. I guess it is ok to be intolerant of Christians though. There is so much in this one paragraph it would take days to write what is wrong with the above quote. But, I want to address 2 things from 1 John about the author of this statement. According to God’s word who is this person and secondly address what Jesus says on how we should treat one another. God’s word exposes who this person is and secondly it tears down his philosophy about Christianity.

This gentleman is in a serious situation. He is an antichrist. 1 John 2:22 Says,

Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist who denies the Father and the Son.

This gentleman is in no worse or better state than anyone who denies who Christ is. I wouldn’t expect anything else from someone who does not have a personal relationship with Jesus. We should pray for this individual that God would open his eyes to the truth and that he would repent and turn to God.

Obviously I don’t go around telling anyone they are antichrists because it really would do no good. But what I want to show is that they are in a serious need of a Savior. If they do not repent they are going to perish. 1 John 1:9 gives us hope.

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

How does God make us righteous? By paying for our sins through His death. Now the above author claims that Christians use our religion to manipulate their followers through fear by authoritarian mongers? REALLY? Well lets see who we put our faith into and see if this is who He is.

1 John 3:16 By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.