1st John 2:24-29

1 John 2:24-29 “As for you, let that abide in you, which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the Son and in the Father. This is the promise, which He Himself made to us: eternal life. These things I have written to you concerning those who are trying to deceive you.

As for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him.

Now little children, abide in Him, so that when He appears, we may have confidence and not shrink away from Him in shame at His coming. If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone also who practices righteousness is born of Him.”

“Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you.” What are the basic Christian doctrines?

1. Christ is God’s Son
2. He died for our sins
3. He was raised from the dead to give us new life
4. He will return and establish His Kingdom

John is encouraging them to hold onto the basics; the things they learned first. Nothing else you learn after this, if it’s true, will contradict those things.
Verses 26 and 27 really talk about the fact that as believers we have the Holy Spirit inside us and He is teaching us. When we listen to preachers and teachers, not only do we compare what they say to scripture, but also to what the Holy Spirit tells us.

Verse 28: the best way to prepare for Christ’s return is to live with Him everyday. To never forget His presence.

A commentator wrote, “We will all be called out of this world sometime and if we’ve never thought about God we will go and meet a stranger and it will be scary, but if we’ve walked with Christ and prayed to He and God and stayed in the Word, then we will really be going home and it will merely be entry into a nearer presence with God and Jesus.”

How we feel about that day depends on how we live now.

And again, in the last verse, what we say we believe shows by our actions.

1st John 2:18

1 John 2:18 “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.”

Over 2000 years have gone by and some people say, “Well, where is the final hour? The end times?”

Some think the end times are between Christ being on earth the first time and when He comes back the second time. In Biblical thought the last time or end time is the end of one age and the beginning of another. So it’s used more then once in the Bible and not always about the same period of time.

Men have the choice of allying themselves with the old world, which is doomed to destruction or allying themselves with Christ and entering into the new world. Here is the urgency for John: man has a choice and it depends on whether or not he has given his life to Jesus Christ.

So you may argue that every hour is the last hour, every minute in fact we are confronted with allying ourselves with God or with evil forces that are against God. I heard someone say once that one of the reasons we go to church is to show the world whose side we are on!

The antichrist John mentions here is not the one and final antichrist he talks about in Revelation. Here he uses it as a term for one who is an adversary of Christ or a false prophet or false teacher. Many men in history have been thought to be the antichrist, the one in Revelation: Nero, Hitler, the Pope (!), Stalin, Mussolini to name a few. But, in the letters of John he is not so much a person as a principle, the principal that is hostile to and actively opposed to God.

Show the world whose side you are on. Christian tees at:
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