Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Resisting the Antichrist | New Testament | 1 John 2

Episode Date: November 23, 2023

Who do you think the antichrist is? What are they like? Have they already come? What does the Bible have to say about the antichrist? In today's episode, Patrick takes a deep dive into the topic during his study on 1 John 2. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Prepare your heart to celebrate Jesus. Sign up to have the 'I Am Your God' Advent Devotional delivered directly to your inbox starting Sunday, Dec. 3, 2023. Join the TMBT community in reading the entire New Testament in one year. Get your FREE reading plan here. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: 1 John 2

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. Last week, there was a viral TikTok trend of people from about every imaginable age, ethnicity, and gender claiming that they'd read Osama bin Laden's letter to America, in which he explained why he perpetrated the 9-11 attacks. And they said that reading this changed their lives. But back to the letter itself, he explains why he did the attacks. He did them because he said it was justice, because it was revenge. On September 11th, he and his comrades took 3,000 innocent lives. Everyday people on flights to see family, everyday people going

to their office, everyday people who work as first responders and firefighters, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, people who looked forward to their everyday future, but never saw it because of a plan hatched on the other side of the globe by Osama bin Laden and others. To Osama bin Laden, however, their deaths were justified retribution. But more than that, the first item of importance for bin Laden was this. He wrote, the first thing is that we are calling you to Islam. How were they going to do this? Well, Osama bin Laden makes it clear. Jihad, violence, and indiscriminate murder of the infidels, by which he means all of those everyday moms and dads, sons and daughters. But now, 21 years later, his letter is resurfaced. and going viral and people are saying that it's changing their lives. One TikToker said her life would never be the same. She described reading it as an existential crisis. Why? Well, it's not because she saw evil unmasked. It's not because she was suddenly sobered by Bin Laden's devastating carelessness with life. No, it's because she realized that bin Laden was right all along. In fact, there's a

whole trend of people showing before and after videos. They pretend it's 2011 when Osama bin Laden was captured and killed and in that part of the clip they're celebrating. But then the clip cuts and it's 2023 and they're reading Osama bin Laden's letter with tears in their eyes and the text on the screen always says the same thing. Me realizing that Osama was right all along. It's sobering. It's disturbing. How was he right to kill 3,000 people? And even more strangely, these people seem unconcerned by the fact that bin Laden explicitly condemns sexual promiscuity, the very thing that many of these people celebrate. Many of the people posting this were women, and yet they don't seem bothered by the fact that if bin Laden was right, they'd be

forced to wear burkas, to quit their jobs and to live in abject submission to men. But somehow, to them, he was still right. He was still justified. He's right, because in their view, America, the great colonizer, got what it deserved. The West got what it deserved. Bin Laden was doing the only sensible thing, resisting the oppression of oppressors. Suddenly, in their view, 9-11 isn't an act of terror. It's a just war. Now, I don't think it's an accident that these kinds of things go viral on TikTok. After all, it's run by a totalitarian government bent on manipulating people all over the world. But the story highlights for me a fundamental reality. We, are malleable. Ideologies and ideas have the power to change us from those who grieve death into those

who celebrate it and call it just. From those who pursue love into those who justify hatred. That is the power of false teaching. And of course, there's plenty of lies outside the church deceiving people and stealing their hearts. But the tragic reality is that false teaching is inside the church too. And the Apostle John, a man in love with love itself, and the incarnation of love himself, he loved the church enough to warn it about the power of bad ideas, because ideas do have consequences. They not only lead us away from God, but toward a life of evil. He writes in 1st John 218, Dear children, this is the last hour. And as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many Antichrist have come.

let me pause here and point out that when many of us hear the word Antichrist, we think of a singular apocalyptic figure at the end of time. But for John, Antichrist is not one person. He says there are many Antichrist in his day. And of course it's true that there are many Antichrist in our day. But what all of these Antichrist share in common is that they're false teachers, purveyors of world and church destroying lies. John continues. This is how we know that it is. the last hour. They, he's talking about the Antichrist, 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. But you have an an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth.

I don't write to you because you don't know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth. Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the mistake. It is the Messiah. Such a person is the Antichrist. Denying the father and the son, no one who denies the son shall have the father. Whoever acknowledges the son has the father also. As for you, see that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you. If it does, you also will remain in the son and in the father. And this is what he promised us, eternal life. I'm writing these things to you about those who we're trying to lead you astray. As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things,

and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit, just as it has taught you, remain in him. I hope you hear what John is saying. The truth is that truth himself wants to hold you and teach you. Jesus wants to anoint you with the knowledge of truth so that you can, you can live a life of truth. But the dark truth is that there are dark forces that want you to live for the lie. In the church, they come in the form of people who deny Jesus. They deny his divinity, his death for sin, his teachings, his resurrection, his promise of new creation. They may call it curiosity or deconstructing, but John calls them Antichrist. And of course, there are many anti-Christ ideologies outside the church, and you'll know them by their fruit. If an ideology is

impotent in the face of murder, if it is unable to call evil evil, then that ideology is from the spirit of the Antichrist. Don't listen to the liars and the deceivers. For a time, they all seem appealing and loving and brilliant, but the veil will come off at some point, and the evil will spill forth. The problem is that if you've already grown to trust these liars and deceivers, when the veil comes off and the evil comes out, you won't be able to see it. You'll call good evil and evil good. So cling to the truth. Vigorously deny the lie. Know that truth and love are not in opposition. They are necessarily bound to one another. You cannot have love without truth. So cling to truth. Cling to love also. Cling to the one who loved you enough to die for you

and promise you resurrection. Cling to the one who calls you to love enemies, not destroy them as infidels. Cling to the one who is not deceived by modern ideologies. Cling to Jesus. Cling to truth. Cling to love. And never, ever, ever let go.