Of course you need to keep your eye on Jesus but you will see what I mean!
As we have seen John is so keen to uphold the person of Jesus Christ and to challenge those who are dethroning Him. It is still the greatest challenge to the church today. The question is not about the achievement of the Church but the obedience to the Lordship of Christ. Anything less is an antichrist.
For 2,000 years the church has believed in an Anti-Christ figure is to come and have pointed at many people who they think may be it. John will say many have arrived already.
“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. 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.” (1 John 2 v 18-19)
He is living in the last hour. He believes in the soon return of Jesus Christ and for John it is very soon. How does he know?
By what is happening in the church as much as outside in the world.
Either the decline or departing from the truth is what we must keep our eye on.
Maybe there was a short term mission’s team that went out preaching and teaching in the churches across the region and they departed from the truth and that is why John is writing to combat their deception. Maybe ‘they’ were leading personalities in the church who drifted away (3 John 1:9 Diotrephes) and John is saying they weren’t part of us really.
Whatever happened John could see that what was happening to the Church indicated that the antichrist was already here and they had entered the last period of time of this world.
Missions Paul 