…argument here but I hope you remember it. Remember what he’s doing. John does have a rhyme and a reason to this epistle even though over the years many commentators have kind of made fun of it and thought that John was incoherent. John was not incoherent. He was very consistent. There is a flow to his argument. The flow to the argument here is that the false teachers are seducing the believers to walk in the flesh outside of fellowship with God and the result of that is that they don’t carry into eternity their rewards for works done as unto the Lord. So it’s a very practical thing that he’s dealing with here even though the teaching, the false teachers – is probably a pretty sophisticated heresy that he’s dealing with. So let’s open with a word of prayer and come to focus on this section of God’s Word.
(Opening prayer)
Okay, the first verse of the three that we want to do today we started last time; and we dealt a lot with the use of the word hour. We said - we were discussing it in class; and we said that it’s not some totally foreign use. We use that expression all the time in our English language when we say it’s so-and-so’s day or back in the days of my grandmother. We use that kind of English construction when we’re talking about some bracketed point of time. So this is the hour.
John is using that the same way. In the English translations it’s not hora. It’s translated as time because the translators figured that’s the meaning of it. So we talked about that. We noted that in this verse construction at the first clause and the last clause, John has the last hour. When you see something like that in the text, that should ring a bell that to John, who wrote this, he wants to make the last hour important. We talked about hour, but what I want to do this morning is think a little bit about why he talks about the last hour. As we come to it though, remember he addresses his audience keeping in mind this epistle was read probably to largely illiterate people. So John wrote the letter. It was probably passed around. The pastors in those days would get up and they would say, “We got a letter from the apostle.” They’d read it. That’s why in this particular epistle it’s structured like we know addresses were done in those days – just oral.
So we have here “little ones.” We said that that “little ones” is a term that denotes a child at the beginning of its training. It’s not the usual word for little children that he uses elsewhere (teknia). This one is peidia. It’s the idea of you’ve got to be trained. You’ve got to learn for your survival in the world. So I think that’s probably why he selected this vocabulary term right here. He’s talking to all believers; but he’s saying when you get into this kind of stuff, you’ve got to have the attitude that we need training. We got to grow up. The world out there is hostile, and we need to know how to handle ourselves. So that’s that.
Then he says:
NKJ 1 John 2:18 … even now many antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour.
We talked about the meaning of the word antichrist. I want to review that before we get into this last hour business. On your outline you’ll see where it says many antichrists have now come to be. That’s my little translation of the sense of the Greek there. They’ve come on stage. That’s what he’s saying.
We talked about antichrist last time. In popular Christian vernacular the word antichrist is often used of the beast, the man of sin, in Thessalonians. But we said last time the beast is only one of three characters in the book of Revelation. There’s the dragon. There’s the man of sin, the beast. Then there’s the False Prophet. We said that if you look at how John uses this antichrist term in 1 John 4, which we’ll get into eventually, he tends to use this term for a false prophet. Yes, there is the Antichrist in our everyday Christian 21st century vocabulary. But I think if John were here he would use the term antichrist for the different personality, the False Prophet who was the introducer of the Antichrist.
Now a word about the role of the prophet. If you go back into ancient Israel into the theocracy where they had prophets - keep in mind there is only one nation in human race’s history - one nation only - that ever had a contract with God. Of course you’ll never hear that in a secular history course. But biblically this ought to raise attention. That’s why Dr. Albright who is one of the deans of American archeology said this is an important fact. Secular historians just totally go across - don’t even think about it because in their view the Bible is just an ancient book. It’s just Jewish autobiography. But for those of us who take it seriously, Israel has that distinction. But there’s a second distinction about the nation Israel. Not only the only nation in world history that had a contract with God. It’s only nation and only religion that had millennia long series of prophets. The prophets started as far as Israel is concerned with Moses.
God said, “I will raise up a prophet like you.”
…ultimately the Messiah, Jesus. There was a sequence of prophets. Now what do you suppose the role of the prophet was? Now liberal critics of the Scriptures have distorted this. Back in the 20’s and 30’s and 40’s of the 20th century, liberalism came into the church. The liberal social gospel people were saying, “We want to be prophetic.” They substituted Marxism as so forth for their prophetic-ness. That wasn’t the role of the prophet at all. Their idea of the Old Testament was it was the prophets generated all the theology. It was not. It was Moses. God gave the whole sum and substance of theology once and for all.
The three branches of government – what are they? Executive, judicial, legislative. Of course the way our governments function we only have executive left. The point is that in a real republic form of government, you have those 3 functions. Now let’s think. Let’s go back to ancient Israel. Those three functions have to be performed by somebody. The question is who’s performing them.
Question 1 – executive. Well, the executives after the monarchies rose were the kings.
Who was the legislature? Why? Because He gave the legislation. God was the legislator. Isn’t it striking that of the three functions of government, the legislature is missing in the Old Testament? That’s because he who makes the laws defines the culture. Whoever makes the laws - every single law and regulation whether it’s intended or not solidifies a belief. So when you change the law, you change the culture and it’s belief systems. You have to because the law is saying this is right and this is wrong on - by what standard? Somebody’s standard has been embedded in every regulation and in every piece of legislation.
That’s why it’s a joke to me when somebody says to me as my dialogue with our illustrious senators from Maryland point out when they say, “Well, we want to treat everybody equally. We don’t want discrimination.”
That’s a silly statement. How do you justify that statement? Every law discriminates, doesn’t it? It discriminates against those who keep it and those who don’t. So don’t tell me that you’re getting rid of discrimination. Changing law only changes those whom you discriminate against. So instead of discriminating against every pervert in society, we discriminate against Bible believing Christians now. But you haven’t ended discrimination. All you’ve done is change the target. So in the Old Testament God set forth the Torah that established the cultural standards.
Okay. The executive was the king. God was the lawgiver. Who performed the judicial function? If you had somebody sentenced, who was involved in that? Usually it was the elders of the local government. If you look carefully at the law it was always the local – the local people that administered the law. Now why do you suppose…very rarely although it was provided, you could appeal a locally judicated thing. They would go to the High Priest and then through the urim and thumin and all the rest of it. Why do you suppose in the Mosaic Law code they emphasized the law enforcement at the most local level? What happens when you don’t?
Comment It goes…If you don’t deal with it at a local level …you have to deal with something then you lose your culture. You lose your society.
You’re letting it go too long. Somebody 18 layers up in the bureaucracy - first of all they don’t know the local situation. Who is best knowledgeable of what really happened? It’s the neighbors. When we have jury selection, what are we trying to do in the jury selection process? Trying to get peers. What’s the theory behind that even though often times it’s manipulated? There’s a theory behind jury selection. You try to pick people who are in the same boat that understand the situation.
So you have a local level. Now what was the role of a prophet? He wasn’t the legislator. God was the legislator. As you look at the Old Testament you think of the prophets. What were the prophets doing? Were the prophets innovating? Were they the progressives of their day? What was the role of the prophet? Anybody? Think about this. What was that?
Comment
They were a mouthpiece of God - but about what?
Comment – The Word of God
The gospel. But in the Old Testament the gospel was embedded in the law. But when the prophets spoke up what - as you read Jeremiah, Isaiah, Hosea - what were they going after?
(Comment) They’re showing the true interpretation of the law. They’re showing how the people are breaking it. It’s almost like you’re going on about your business…Here’s what the Word of God means…
The prophets wanted to keep the gospel pure. The only way they could keep the gospel pure was to make sure the Word of God was understood. So God would call a prophet into existence.
By the way, what strata of society did He call prophets from? You have the wealthy, the poor, the educated, the uneducated. If you think through a little bit, did God pick a certain social class to be His prophets? Just kind of a sense as you’ve read the Old Testament – I know many of us haven’t read it that well. When you read a person like Amos who was a small business farmer or you read somebody like Isaiah who was a very well-educated person, what do you come away with when you think about who was picked to be a prophet? It doesn’t seem like He was favoring any social class. The prophets came. They could have been business people, local people. They could have been high up on the totem pole socially and politically. It didn’t seem to matter.
Think today, Mike’s going to be in Daniel. Now Daniel technically from the rabbinical point of view, he was a wise man not a prophet even though his book is all about prophecy. The book of Daniel is not in the prophetic section of the Hebrew Old Testament. It’s in the wisdom section. But nevertheless Daniel was a teenage POW. So the idea here is when God speaks, He doesn’t pick favorites that way. He can pick a person who’s a normal every day person or He can pick one of the elite. But you don’t see any bias in the way He’s picking His prophets.
Now ultimately when you have the rise of the monarchy, and by the way anybody know - when did the monarchy begin? Did it begin with Moses? There was no king in Moses day. Well, why did they have the monarchy?
They wanted a monarchy because they wanted a physical manifestation of a government that would tell them what to do. And that’s why you need to remember the most politically wise passage of Scripture for our day is 1 Samuel 8 because it’s in 1 Samuel 8 - Samuel is a what? Prophet. So what do we do?
“Everybody is voting for a monarchy. Lord, what do I do?”
In 1 Samuel 8 you have God revealing to him a document that should be read by every American citizen because in 1 Samuel 8 you have the depiction warning from God.
“You guys want a centralized top heavy government. Let Me tell you what the problem’s going to be.”
All the problems we see in our culture today are prophesized in 1 Samuel 8. It’s an amazing passage of Scripture that way.
Samuel is the prophet. God says what to Samuel? Here’s the prophet functioning now.
God says, “Samuel, they haven’t rejected you,” because the prophet after all represents who? God
“Samuel, they rejected Me. Now I’m going to tell you what I want you to tell these people. You’re going to get a king; but I’m going to put some restrictions on the king. You are going to be the one that picks it.”
Now in American politics you often hear the term the kingmakers - the smoke filled rooms where they pick the candidates. But ironically the candidates were picked in the Old Testament. They should have been. The Northern Kingdom screwed up. But the ideal model was that the king was not popularly voted. The king was selected by a prophet. He was selected by a prophet because God needed men who would handle the dangers of a centralized government. But then there was a process of time that after – think for example Samuel anoints David. David is a young guy there. He doesn’t have a…nobody knows David. Who’s David? So it takes years before David becomes king. The interval between the anointing and taking the throne is a distance. Now during that distance the idea was that this person that was anointed by the prophet would be able to demonstrate his competency to the people so by the time he took the throne there was a popular sentiment toward him. That’s the story of David. That’s the story of 1 and 2 Samuel. So you can think in a nutshell that’s what’s going on in those prophetic books.
Okay. What did Samuel do physically that showed that David had been selected by God? An act – anointing. That word in the Hebrew is meshak from which we get the messiah. . What then does the term messiah or Christ mean? The anointed one - which means what about his selection? If He’s the anointed one he is selected by God. Now we’re starting to close in on meaning of words. Meshak - Old Testament messiah. Greek – Jesus Christ. Jesus is the Christ. It’s not His last name. It’s Jesus son of Joseph if you want to fill out the ID card. Christ is His title. Jesus is the anointed one.
Now we come to this term – many antichrists have come onto the scene just as you have heard the Antichrist is coming. And antichrist we said are the false prophets – false prophets.
Now let’s think about what’s the role of a prophet? Let’s think of an anti-prophet. What’s an anti-prophet do you suppose? Let’s just guess. We don’t have to go to Scriptures too much here. We can sharpen our ideas by scriptural illustrations. What would you kind of intuitively sense if you see this word here - forgetting the fact that popularly we think of the Antichrist, but just think about the role of a prophet. What is an anti-prophet? What would be some ideas? Yes.
Comment
A liar, a person who is resisting what a prophet does. A prophet has done what? He’s shown people the Word of God and where they’ve departed from it. So if you’re an anti-prophet, your message must be in opposition to the Word of God and what the prophets have said. The prophets are in a sense New Testament prophets.
So John says that when you see these false teachers – many, many of these guys were buzzing around. He says you want to think. The other thing I’m trying to stress as we go through John – I’m deliberately doing this with John’s writings because John is said to be non-logical and irrational. I’m showing you there’s logical structure to him. He doesn’t feel his way through some spooky mystical way on what God’s will is. He reasons this out with the starting assumptions embedded in Scripture.
So he says, “Just as you heard, therefore we know the last hour it is because the presence of these anti-prophets. You heard that the Anti-prophet is going to come, the one who is going to oppose everything of the prophetic line of Scripture.”
We dealt with that. We said okay in the closing days there is a continuity of evil. Not only is there a continuity resistance to the Word of God but there is a continuity of counterfeiting what the prophets have done. That’s why progressive liberalism in the 20th century - Marxism, Fascism all these isms that we’ve seen arise in the 20th century are messianic, aren’t they? Don’t they promise you progress? Well if you have progress, don’t you have in mind something you’re trying to accomplish? We’re trying to bring a world of peace, of prosperity. We’re trying to do this, trying to do that. It’s a messianic vision. It doesn’t belong to an atheist. They’re borrowing it from Scripture. The irony of evil is it can never originate something. It has to counterfeit something. The reason it has to counterfeit something is it has to be close to the way we are designed or it wouldn’t resonate with us. A counterfeit guy has to create a dollar bill that looks like the real thing, doesn’t he? Why is that? Because if it wasn’t looking like the real thing, we wouldn’t be seduced by it. So that’s one of the things about evil. It has to counterfeit the truth or it would have no appeal. So we have then this structure.
Now the last thing I want to deal with is this business of the last hour. Let’s put some of these ideas together. If the antichrists are coming and the antichrists are people who are objecting to the Word of God and counterfeiting it, why is this linked with the last hour? By John’s time period here, they’re rebelling, opposing, counterfeiting what? Old Testament is embedded here. But they are counterfeiting the gospel that John has been teaching – and Mathew, Mark, Luke. What is that? It’s the incarnation. God has become incarnate and He has walked on the face of the earth. He’s visited this planet. That’s the final revelation. If that’s the most that God can reveal, the most intimate revelation of God, and you rebel against it; there’s no more to history then, is there? You’re rebelling against the greatest revelation that’s ever happened.
Yes
Comment It strikes me that almost every ideology whether it be political or philosophical or whatever tends to hijack the person of Christ for their own means. So if you read like advanced feminism, they’ll say that Christ was actually a woman that taught. They reiterpret it into a man because…sometime. If you read a homosexual, they’ll say that he’s actually a homosexual as indicated by the fact that He was always hanging out with other guys. If you read an atheist they’ll try to deny He existed at all. Everybody reinterprets Christ to their own thing which is kind of in line with what you’re saying is that they hijacked the person of Christ to advance their own cause.
Yeah. Joel put it very well. It’s true. The ideal feminist, what do they have to do to Jesus? Turn Him into a woman. The ideal homosexual – “Well Jesus was a homosexual.” So Christ has become the nub here. So John is saying a serious thing. There is no more to history. The human race right now is being judged on one basis – what are you doing with Jesus Christ. Now let me show you where that’s implicit in the way John preaches the gospel. Hold the place here and turn to the most popular passage in all of God’s Word, John 3 - right after John 3:16. Everybody looks at John 3:16, but keep reading after John 3:16 and look what happens.
NKJ John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
By the way, notice the bifurcation there. There are not three responses to Jesus. You either believe or you don’t. Choices have consequences - something this generation has a problem with. We have got parents by the ton who are trying to protect their kids from the consequences of their choices. That is wrong because you’re not allowing reality to teach your son or your daughter. You’ve got to let them experience at least some of the consequences so they don’t make the same mistake again because you’re not going to be around to coach them in every little choice they make. So how are they going to learn? They only learn the way we learned -screwing up and finding out – oops, it hurts. That’s how we learn. This applies to salvation. Watch.
should not perish
That’s a consequence.
but have everlasting life.
NKJ John 3:17 "For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world…
It was a gracious act of sending the Lord Jesus Christ into history. God – people get this idea because of hell and the Lake of Fire that God’s a meanie. No, God is a holy just God and He knows we’re fallen and He knows we got to get into position where we have the righteousness so He can have fellowship with us.
NKJ John 3:17 "For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.
That’s the motivation. That’s the love of God here. But now look. It gets a little more sobering – the next verse.
NKJ John 3:18 "He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
19 "And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
20 "For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.
21 "But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God."
Skipping down to the last verse of the same chapter.
NKJ John 3:36 "He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him."
Now I don’t know what could be more clear. This is why it is last hour. There’s no more space here for choices. We’ve got the initiative from God Himself by sending His only Son. God can’t do any more than that. That’s it. This is the sobering side of thinking about when John comes to this verse and the last hour.
Now let’s run to the next verse. Now observe this one. Now he’s going to talk a little bit more about these antichrists, these false teachers. Let’s look at that verse and see if we can notice something.
NKJ 1 John 2:19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us.
Do you catch repetition here? See John repeating himself? What are some things you notice about this repetition that’s going on here? Let’s look at the pronouns of the verb. Every verb has a subject. These verbs all have a subject. It says “they” of the verb “went out.” The verb of being is they. The verb to be “we were” – the subject of that is they. Continued is subject – I mean is the verb. The subject of the verb is they. Here it might be manifested. The subject is they. Who are they? The antichrist. So he over and over uses statements about the antichrist that are happening here. They went out from us.
Now there are two pronouns here – third plural they. There is a second plural which is us. Who’s us? The apostles – us - us – us –us – four times. Four times us, four times they. That repetition does what? What is he trying to distinguish? Four times he does this. What is he trying to get at here? Four times he repeats himself.
Comment
He’s emphasizing the “us” the apostles and the false prophets are two distinct groups. Now if he’s emphasizing this, what does that tell you about his listeners having a problem?
Comment - …everybody comes along…
Apparently the listeners, the receivers of this epistle, aren’t distinguishing the apostles from these false teachers. Right? Why else would he repeat himself 4 times? Now look at us where it is repeated four times. What do you notice about the prepositions - prepositions in English? I guess they still teach that somewhere in school if they get around all the sex ed and the other stuff and sex bathrooms. I think we still have some grammar left in school. Prepositions define relationships, right? Above, below, of, out of. Now it doesn’t show exactly in the English here; but all of these are same. See where it says from us, of us. That’s all in the Greek the same preposition. Out of is what it means – ex, out of from which we get export, take away. What does this show besides the fact that he’s saying, “These are two distinct group people? You better have your eyes and ears open. We’re not the same.”
What else is he saying by using that preposition?
Comment -
At some point they apparently were associated with the apostles, and they went out from them. So we have to deal with what is it that they went out from? One of the passages of Scripture is - let’s turn to - there are two passages I want to show you, Acts 15:24.
This is one of the Jerusalem discussion groups where Paul came back to the city of Jerusalem. Watch this now – out of. They left us. It’s a preposition of separation. Now separation can be many things. It could be ideological separation. That’s probably true. But what Acts 15 tells us - it was a locational separation. Notice here verse 24.
NKJ Acts 15:24 Since we have heard that some who went out from us
Exactly the same construction.
have troubled you with words, unsettling your souls, saying, "You must be circumcised and keep the law" -- to whom we gave no such commandment –
NKJ Acts 15:25 it seemed good to us,
Now you have the church of legitimate authorities defining and clarifying the issues here. So now what does this tell you about the false prophets in their geographical location? They came from where? Apparently came out of Jerusalem. So you see how they could be seducing people out in Galatia, people throughout the Levant?
“Gee these guys came from Jerusalem. They must be good boys!”
They ought to come from Jerusalem. They may even be believers. They’re still false prophets. They’re opposing the prophetic line. So they’re hiding by their geographical location.
Let’s turn to Galatians 2:4. Now we’re zeroing in our remaining minutes today. We’re trying to get a sense of whether these are believers or unbelievers. We’re going to find that it’s ambiguous here. In Galatians 2:4, what is your impression after you read verse 4 – believers or unbelievers? Clearly unbelievers there – false brothers. You notice they were brought in. There is political intrigue going on here. Why do you suppose that outsiders would be interested in sabotaging this new movement? What was the danger the new movement presented politically? Freedom from the religious tyranny. But think of those of you who’ve seen Son of God; what’s her names movie? In there they play up the politics pretty well. In that film, you’ll see that Caiphas and these guys are scared of what the Romans are going to do.
So they say, “We’ve got to get rid of this guy because He’s going to tear up the place. We’re going to have a riot. The Romans are going to come in here. We exist politically very tenuously. So let’s get rid of this thing. It’s a pain.”
The reason I’m bringing that up is you and I as believers right now in our culture, we’re a pain. Don’t you think that politically in one sense we are as big a threat to a secular state as Jesus and the Apostles were to Roman occupation? And they knew it. That’s why they were trying to deal with it politically by killing Christ.
“Get rid of these people. They are a pain because they won’t conform.”
That’s right! We don’t conform. That’s the threat. So the point there is that these were false prophets brought in.
Now if you’ll turn over to 1Timothy and 2 Timothy, you can see how much damage a believer can do. In 1 Timothy 1 he says in verse 18:
NKJ 1 Timothy 1:18 This charge I commit to you, son Timothy, according to the prophecies previously made concerning you, that by them you may wage the good warfare
19 having faith and a good conscience, which some,
Notice some.
having rejected, concerning the faith have suffered shipwreck
NKJ 1 Timothy 1:20 of whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I delivered to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme.
Delivery to Satan is - what basically the apostle is doing is turning them over to physical death and saying “You want to screw around, then hey reap the consequences pal because you’re excommunicated.” So this is how that was dealt with in those days – very soberly.
If you look at 2 Timothy 2, here you have the same two guys and there are a few more comments made.
NKJ 2 Timothy 1:16 The Lord grant mercy to the household of Onesiphorus, for he often refreshed me, and was not ashamed of my chain…
I’m in the wrong chapter, chapter 2:17, excuse me.
NKJ 2 Timothy 2:17 And their message will spread like cancer. Hymenaeus and Philetus are of this sort,
18 who have strayed concerning the truth, saying that the resurrection is already past; and they overthrow the faith of some.
So now you have a false teacher who is a believer who’s been (?) now is messing around with the church and is destroying the faith of others. That’s the dangerous stuff believers can do. We’re all sinners. We’re all corruptible. It’s very sobering to think about this.
Now I know there are people in church history who say, “Well, they really weren’t saved in the first place if they did this kind of thing.”
Well no, that’s a very naïve view of what Christians can do. When we’re out of fellowship we can do all kinds of damage to the church. So let’s be honest about it. This is not some guy that didn’t believe right. He believed okay. He just got out of line. So we have this problem.
Coming back now to this passage.
NKJ 1 John 2:19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us,
See this “of us.” It’s talking about locative case. It’s talking about the social milieu, the group they ran with. It’s hard to tell from John whether he’s calling these people unbelievers or not. But what we do know is that if they were of us, that is if they were apostolic, if they were following apostolic doctrine and dogma, they would have continued with us. But they didn’t. They went out and that’s what happens. Heresies get exposed for what they are – heresies. It’s disheartening and so on; but that’s what happens.
Now we’ll start from this verse.
NKJ 1 John 2:20 But you
Third class now isn’t it? Remember the two classes – they, us. Now we got a third one, you.
have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things.
Who’s the you? The little ones receiving the instruction - believers in little churches all over. That’s the you. Now he’s going to do this later in the epistle. I’ll refer to this passage when we get there. John speaks of 3 groups over and over again – the false teachers, the apostolic circle, and ordinary believers that are following the Word, following the Lord. So here he brings in the third group. What does he notice about the third group that he emphasizes here? You all have you all – that’s a strong emphasis here because normally you would not have to put an explicit pronoun into a verb. Most of the others it is understood by the fact and you know what verb is being conjugated and you know what the subject is. But here you all have an anointing. Oh….There’s the word Christos. There’s the word to anoint. Now we’ll have to deal next week with what anointing is. But he’s saying that you all have an anointing. We’ll have to deal with what anointing is that they all have that teaches them that Jesus is the Christ. You have an anointing. I wanted to conclude in the last minute or two here – some of you have newer translations. Some of you have the old King James translation. Here we have a text problem. This is just an example the kind of problem the text problem? That is different manuscripts read differently. Notice by the way we’ve gone all the way through John to chapter 2 before we’ve even had a major text problem. Here’s one.
Some text manuscripts read – And all of you know. Others read – And you know all things. So you have to make a decision here. What text do we follow? There are two schools of thought. People favor this one - And all of you know – because the older manuscripts favor that. That’s called the critical text. That’s the one they use to make critical decisions, the majority text. So, you all know. The majority of manuscripts however read – And you know all things. Now it’s not teaching omnipresence or omniscience. It’s just saying you know about all. What is it you know? The argument between these two is that the old manuscripts are the better because they’re older. They go back further in time. The counter argument for the majority text is the majority of manuscripts read that way and they. still exist is because they were discards. They were thrown out of the library and the reason they survived is nobody read them. The orthodox text, well used and worn out so they didn’t survive. So that’s a big debate that goes on. We’re going to talk about the difference between these two readings and the anointing. If you read ahead, verse 21 you’ll see where he’s going with this because he says - let’s go to 1 John 2.
20 But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things.
21 I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and that no lie is of the truth.
So that’s where he’ headed. Okay, well our time is up folks.
(Closing prayer)