1 John 2:18-23 • May 31, 2015 • s1101
Pastor John Miller continues our study through the Book of 1 John with an expository message titled “Do Not Be Deceived pt1” using 1 John 2:18-23 as his text.
Pastor John Miller
May 31, 2015
2:18 Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour. 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. 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. 22 Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist who denies the Father and the Son. 23 Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either; he who acknowledges the Son has the Father also.
There are two verses I want to read that kind of are the two end stones, the beginning and the end of our text, and I want you to follow with me. First is the verse 18, "Little children, it is the last time..." 18 of chapter two. "It is the last time and as you have heard that anti-Christ shall come, even now there are many anti-Christ whereby we know that it is the last time." Then jump down to verse 26. "These things have I ridden unto you concerning them that would seduce you." About five years ago I was preaching this same message. And I've studied this passage for years and felt like I had kind of a handle on it, but I was reading and it was a Saturday morning. I was in my comfy little chair in the living room by the front window. And I'm reading this verse and I kid you not, I read verse 18, "Little children, it is the last time. And as you've heard, anti-Christ shall come, even now there are many anti-Christ whereby you may know it is the last time."
Literally I read that verse and I heard this sound, ding dong. And I thought, "Who's ringing my doorbell on a Saturday morning?" Who do you think is ringing my doorbell on a Saturday morning? Right? And so I opened the door and they smiled and they said, "Hi, we're from the kingdom hall." And I kid you not, the first thing they said was, "You ever read your Bible?" I'm thinking, "This is just too amazing." I go, "Yes, and I was just reading about you in my Bible." Their eyes got great big and they were like, "Whoa. Where in the Bible were you reading about us?" I said, "Well, open your Bible. 1st John chapter two, verse 18. Even now there are many anti-Christ." Oh, well we believe in Jesus Christ." I said, "Yeah, but not the Jesus Christ of the Bible. You believe in a different Jesus." And I went on to share with them as we should speak the truth in love. Not get angry with them, not get upset with them. Stay calm, smile, but speak the truth in love. John is writing this passage for that very purpose.
That we will be visited, we will be connected by people who do not believe in the Jesus of the Bible and John goes on to say, "This is the anti-Christ and do not be deceived." Now if we have the life that is real, if we know God, if we have fellowship with Him, if we're walking in the light, if we're keeping His Word, we will not be led astray. And in this epistle, John gives us, "Test to determine whether we're true children of God." The first test is the moral test of obedience. Look at chapter two and verse three. Go back to verse three of chapter two. "Hereby we do know, then we know Him." How do we know we know him? "If we keep His commandments." Keeping the word, obeying the word is an indication, I know God. The second test was the social test of love. God is light. We walk in obedience and holiness. God is love. We love other people. Look at chapter two verse nine. "He that says he's in the light and hates his brother is in darkness even until now."
So two tests. The first is the moral test of obedience. The second one is the social test of love. John comes to test number three. It is the doctrinal test of belief. Theologians call it the christological test or what do you believe about Christ? What you believe about Jesus Christ is the most important thing that you could ever believe. Did you believe what the Bible teaches? Did you believe accurately who Jesus Christ is? I want you to note now, one more verse before we go back to verse 18 and that's verse 22 of chapter two. "Who is a liar?" John says, "but he that denies that Jesus is the Christ, he is anti-Christ, he that denies the Father and the Son." I'm going to come back to that verse in just a moment. But in this text, the first thing that John does as he contrast the true believers with the deceivers. You have the deceivers or the anti-Christ and you have the believers, those who have the life that is real.
So let's go back to verse 18 and read down to verse 21. "Little children," John says, "it is the last time, and as you have heard anti-Christ shall come. Or the anti-Christ even now are there many anti-Christ, whereby we know that it is the last time. They went out from us that is these false teachers, these anti-Christ, but they were not of us. If they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us. But they went out that they may be made manifest that they were not of us, but you have an unction," verse 20, "from the Holy One and you know all things. I have not written unto you because you know not the truth but because you know it and no lie is of the truth." Now in verse 18, the first thing John does is speak lovingly to them. He's a pastor and they are his people and he is their spiritual father, so he calls them little children. He's not talking about them being spiritual infants, he's talking about them being the children of God.
Nothing more loving for a pastor to do than to warn the little ones of danger. It's not popular, it's not in Vogue, but in the sermon today as your pastor, that's what I'm going to do based on this text. My commitment is always to preach the meaning of the text. I'm here to preach the Word, not what I want to preach, not what I think I should preach but what the Bible actually says.
Amen.
That's my goal. And any pastor worth his salt who cares about God's people is going to warn them, especially babes in Christ. "Be careful when you cross the street. Be careful when you do this, watch out." And so a true pastor warns the sheep of wolves. And some wolves come in what? Sheep's clothing. They look like a sheep, they talk like a sheep, they smell like a sheep, they baaa like a sheep, but they're not sheep. It's, "Grandma what big teeth you have?" They're wolves. And many times they knock on your door. Jesus in his all of that discourse. Matthew 24, he said, "Beware of false prophets. Beware of false Christ who come to you in sheep's clothing." He said, "Outwardly they appear like sheep but inwardly they are ravenous wolves." And so Pastor John in our epistle, and Pastor John in the pulpit is going to warn you God's people today about the dangers, do not be deceived.
Notice he says verse 18, "It is the last time." What does he mean by that phrase? "Little children, it is the last time." And at the end of verse 18, he repeats it again. "It is the last time." Well did you know based on Hebrews 1:2 and 1 Peter chapter one verse 20 that the last time was from the birth of Christ to the second coming of Christ. That's one way that phrase is actually used. We don't often think about that, but it is a biblical concept. It's known as the last time or the last period of God's grace or the church age. And God's big sovereign kind of redemptive purpose and program during this time of the birth of Christ to the second coming is known as the last days. But it's also the time just before the second coming. Just before Jesus Christ second advent and He returns the second time, there's going to be a rise and an increase in false teachers and false prophets and false Christ and it will culminate in the tribulation period the last seven years of man's history. There's going to be a man arise, and we commonly call the anti-Christ.
John is the only one who uses that term, the anti-Christ verse 18 or a anti-Christ, but he's also known as the man of sin. He's also known as the son of perdition. He's also known as the beast or the mouth speaking great swelling words. And he will come before the second coming and he will be a world ruling dictator. We call him the anti-Christ. Now, the word anti-Christ or against Christ has two meanings. It means that he will be instead of Christ, he will take the place of Christ and it secondly means that he will oppose Jesus Christ. The anti-Christ, this man of sin, the son of perdition, this person who comes on the scene during the last seven years of man's history, before the second coming. He will do two things. He will take a place of Christ. People will think he's the savior, people will think that there's peace on earth, he's the Messiah and he will also speak against Christ. Now, I do not plan on being here to see the anti-Christ.
A lot of people want to know, who's the anti-Christ? Is it Ronald Reagan? Is it Henry Kissinger? Is it, oh, President Obama. I will stop right there. I don't know who the anti-Christ is. You don't know who he is. And guess what? I don't care who he is. Because I don't plan on being here. You go, "Where are you going to go?" I'm going to go to heaven. It's called the rapture. And I believe the rapture takes place. That's what Christians are looking for, that we will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air. And when we are caught up, the church, the light of the world, the salt to the earth, then the world's going to get very dark and very corrupt and the anti-Christ can be revealed. Nowhere in the Bible are we told to look for anti-Christ. If I preach a sermon on antichrist, the church is full. If I preach a sermon on Jesus Christ, it's half full.
Why are we so intrigued with, who is the anti-Christ? I don't know. Because the Bible always exhorts us to look for Jesus Christ. Blessed hope of our glorious appearing, of our great God and Savior who? Jesus Christ. That's who we're looking for. Now John makes a distinction there in verse 18. He first says, "It's the last time and you have heard that the anti-Christ shall come." Future tense. That's the man of sin, this world ruling dictator that I described. But then notice what he says. "Even now, even right now, there are many..." Plural. "Multiple anti-Christ whereby this we know means we're living in the last days." So the word anti-Christ was used for a person. He will come in the future. It's used for the spirit of anti-Christ chapter four verse three. And it's also used for false teachers. Now, the false teachers of John's day were known as gnostics. Gnostic. It comes from the Greek word ginosko to know. And they claim to superior knowledge that salvation was through knowledge and that they had to introduce you.
And catch this little concept. They would give you an anointing. They would give you this special anointing to introduce you to this deeper knowledge whereby through knowledge you could work your way up through these different emanations to finally arrive at God. But primarily the gnostics had a faulty view, false doctrine, false teaching about Jesus Christ. Now, let me say this right now, lest I forget. You cannot be wrong about Jesus and right about God. You got that. If you are wrong about who Jesus is, then you are wrong about God. And if you don't have Jesus, you don't have God the Father. So, so very important that we understand who Jesus Christ is and understand the biblical teaching concerning Him. So in our day, in our age, we have false teachers, we have cultist and the gnostics are not dead, they're still alive. They've manifested themselves in different religious groups. Did you know that prior to 1850, cultus were practically unheard of in America? And then we had this proliferation of cults.
In 1830 we had the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, which is commonly known as Mormonism. They have a faulty view of Jesus Christ. They believe that Jesus Christ was the spirit child of Elohim. That Elohim had a wife and they had a spirit child. The first spirit child of Elohim was Jesus and then they had a second spirit child of Elohim and that child was Satan. They believe Jesus and Satan were brothers. That's not what the Bible teaches. Then also we had the birth of the Jehovah's Witnesses, 1870. They have a faulty view of Christ. They believe that Jesus Christ was first created by God the Father. He's not eternal. He's a creature. He was created as an angel then he became Jesus. Then we have the new thought movement, Christian science founded by Mary Baker Eddie in 1879. Then we have the United Church of Religious Science founded by Earnest S. Holmes in 1927.
We have the Unity School of Christianity founded by Charles and Myrtle Fillmore in 1891, and we had the birth of the New Age movement, over 20 millions Americans involved in that. It's actually a resurgence of gnosticism. We have the Church's Scientology we're hearing about in the news lately. We have the Unification Church, the Bahai Faith, Unitarian Universalism. Recently we have the book, the DaVinci Code by Dan Brown denying the true deity of Jesus Christ. The Third Jesus written by Deepak Chopra. And the New Earth by Eckhart Tolle promoted by Oprah on her television show. By the way, we're reading about Oprah Winfrey in this verse. These verses are about Oprah Winfrey. She's an anti-Christ. She went to church, she sang the hymns, she believed in Jesus and then she went away from the church and she no longer believes in the Jesus of the Bible. She believes in the Jesus of her own creation. So now it's in our movies, it's on our television sets, it's in our magazines, it's in our business places.
We have been infiltrated by this gnostic heresy and it is an indication that we are living in the last days. I want you to see their relation verse 19, to the people of God. "They went out from us." Now, before I read verse 19 again, I want you to look for something in this verse and that is the contrast between they, the false teachers, the anti-Christ and us, the true believers, the followers of Jesus. "So they went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us they would, note how, have continued with us. But they went out that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us." I want you to memorize that verse. I'm going to question you on it after church.
I want you to quote it to me. "They went out from us because they were not of us for if they really have been of us, they would've continued with us. But the fact they went out from us is an indication they're not really of us." Got that? The dangerous thing is when they don't go out from us, they stay among us and they are in our pulpits and in our pews and in our seminaries, and they're claiming to be Christians. Same vocabulary, different dictionary. Be careful. It's very deceptive. "Oh, we believe in Jesus." I believe the Bible is the Word of God. What they believe is the word of God is found in the Bible, but you got to find it. Figure out which is the Word of God and which isn't the Word of God. No, the Bible is the Word of God. It is the Word of God and it is without err, it is given by God's inspiration. It is infallible. It is sufficient for all that pertains to life and godliness. Everything we need is found in the Bible.
And Jesus Christ is the living Word and He's discovered in the written Word. So they went out from us. Someone said, "When you see a star fall, you can know that it's not really a star." A dummy at I am. I had to look up meteors yesterday and kind of do a little study on stars and sorry to pop your bubble. They're not falling stars, they're not shooting stars, they're meteors. Fragments that come out and then when they hit the atmosphere, they burn up and, "Woo, look at that falling star." No. If it's really a star, it's still shining in the sky. And that's the way it is in the church. "Woo, look at that. Woo. They're star. Woo, look at them. Woo." And then oh, they fell. "They went out from us because they were really not of us. If they really had been of us, they would've continued with us." The sign of a true Christian is perseverance and continuance in the doctrine of Christ, in the church of Jesus Christ. We need to be aware. We need to be careful. These are not Christians who lose their salvation.
These are pigs that have had a bath. They've got a tuxedo, a little bow tie, and they sprinkle some cologne on them. They curled their little tail, but they're still pigs only going. And the minute they get the door open, where do they head for? The pigpen. You go, "That's not very nice, Pastor John. Calling them pigs." I'm quoting the Bible.
Amen.
2 Peter. 2 Peter says that they are pigs that have been washed, have returned to their wallowing in the mire. Their nature was never changed. They're still pigs. Why does the pig do what a pig does? Because it's a pig. I studied all week to figure that out. Why does a dog act like a dog? Because it's a dog. Not only does Peter call them pigs, go back and going back to the mud, but he says they're dogs that have vomited and they go back sniffing for their vomit. Just thought that'll bless you today. It's in the Bible. So they went out from us because they were really not of us. Jesus called them wheat among tares. Hard to tell the difference. Think about Jesus had 12 disciples, right? You're supposed to nod your yes. 12 disciples. Out of the 12 one of them was a what? A traitor. His name was what? Judas. You wouldn't name your son Judas, I hope. And no one in the gang. No one in the group. None of the disciples suspected Judas when Jesus said, "One of you will betray me."
They didn't all immediately look at Judas and go, "I wonder why he always wore black and had his sunglasses on. Why he's listening to Black Sabbath on his headset." It's Judas. They didn't know it was Judas. He was really a good imitation. He talked like them. He perhaps prayed like them. He preached like them. Scary thought he even healed like them. When Jesus sent the 12 out, Judas went out and he prayed for people and they got healed. And he even had his own television program, the Judas Hour. "Wow, he's a good preacher. Oh, he's a good preacher. Oh, he's a dynamic preacher." "What does he say?" "I don't know, but it's good." Listen very carefully. It's not always what they say, it's what they don't say. You have to not only listen for what they say, but what are they omitting? What are they not saying? Do they talk about sin? Did they talk about hell? Did they talk about repentance? Did they talk about faith in Jesus Christ? This is the gospel and without those elements, you have not the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And do they preach the Jesus of the Bible? "Well, they talk about Jesus," which Jesus? Many people believe in Jesus, but it's a Jesus of their own creation and their own imagination. They have a false profession. They're in the church, but they're not of the church. That's what verse 19 is saying. Do you know that you can go to church and yet you're not saved? Do you know that you can go to church and then end up in hell? Did you know that you can go to church and really not be saved? It's important that you trust in Jesus Christ and that's what John wants us to understand and he makes clear. So I want you to notice the contrast of true believers verse 20 and 21. "But you," by the way, did you notice all the contrast in verse 19? They and us, they and us, they and us. "But you" verse 20, "you have an unction from the Holy One and you know all things. I have not written to you," verse 21, "because you know not the truth, but because you know the truth and no lie is of the truth."
Now, John says, verse 20, you as true Christians have and unction and it comes from the holy one and you know all things. What's that mean? It means every Christian, every true child of God has the Holy Spirit. Don't miss that. The unction there is a reference to the Holy Spirit. It's the imagery of the anointing or the anointing of the priest. When you are born again, you possess the Holy Spirit in dwelling in your life, every Christian. And if you don't have the Holy Spirit, you're not of his. That's that unction, that's that anointing. It's like a little meter in your heart that tells you truth and err, truth and err. Heard the story of an evangelist that led an Indian to Christ. He was a newly born Christian and one day they were walking down the street of New York and there was a preacher on the corner up on a soapbox. And evangelists recognized right away that he was a cultist preaching a false gospel. So he was worried about his new convert there, this Indian, and they stopped for a moment and listened.
Then they walked down the street and he turns to this Indian convert and he says, "What'd you think about that man on the corner?" He says, "Well, something inside of me was just saying, liar, liar, liar, liar." You know what that is? The Holy Spirit. Amen. Now, God has given us His Word which is inspired by the Spirit and nothing that is true will ever contradict the Word of God. That's our rule of thumb, not our feelings or emotions, but you still have this little kind of meter in your heart. So Holy Spirit saying, "Truth, truth or lie, lie." If you're a true child of God. And it's given to us by the Holy One. Which is a reference either to God the Father or most scholars believe, and I would agree that this is a reference to Jesus. Jesus sent the Holy Spirit. "I will send you another Comforter," but he also said, "I will pray the Father and he will send to you another Comforter.
So whether it be the Father or the Son, the Holy Spirit's given to us by the Holy One. "And we know all things." What does he mean by that end of verse 20? "You know all things." Well, he doesn't mean that Christians are omniscient, it doesn't mean that we know everything. What He means is that we know everything we need to know about Jesus and everything we need to know about salvation and everything we need to know to get to heaven. That's what Christians know. That's why the world looks and you go, "You think you're so right and you think you're so smart and you think you've got the right way and you look down on others. You Christians are so narrow-minded." That's because we have the Holy Spirit and we have the Word of God and He's the spirit of truth, and God's word is true and God is true, and we have all that we need to know about life and godliness and about how to get to heaven. They have all the knowledge that is required for salvation.
Now, I want you to notice the second session as we wrap this up, verse 22 to 23. The content and the consequences of their deception. Verse 22. "Who is a liar?" And the Greek it would read "Who is the liar?" Not a liar but the liar. "He that denies that Jesus is the Christ." Not that Jesus had the Christ or that Christ came upon Jesus, but that he is the Christ. He is the anti-Christ that denies this, that denies the Father and the Son. If you're wrong about Jesus, you're wrong about God the Father. Notice verse 23, "Whosoever denies the Son the same as not the Father, but he that acknowledges or he that confesses or he that believes in the Son, have the Father also." John identifies the falsehood by asking a rhetorical question in verse 22, who is a liar? Would you like to know who the liars are? Okay, I'm going to tell you. Verse 22, "He that that denies that Jesus is the Christ." Is that hard? That's not hard. "What do you mean by Jesus is the Christ?" The word Christ means anointed one. The Meshach.
Isn't it interesting that he just said you have an anointing? Same word used for Christ. You as a Christian, you have the anointing, you have the Holy Spirit, you have Christ. But Jesus, the sinless man, Jesus born of a virgin, didn't receive the Christ as gnostics taught, but he is the Christ. Here's what the gnostics taught. They taught that Jesus was born just like any other human being, not sinless, but a sinner, a human being like anyone else. Is that not popular today? That when Jesus was baptized and the heavens open and the dove descended, the Holy Spirit in the form of dove, that the Christ came upon the man, Jesus. This is exactly what New Agers teach today. And then when Jesus then hung on the cross and he cried, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" That the Christ left the man Jesus. He was born a man. Nothing more. He died a man. Nothing more. That is not the Christ of the Bible or the Christ of the New Testament.
And if you do not confess that Jesus is the Meshach, the Christ, the Anointed, then you do not have God. That is the spirit of anti-Christ. We'll get there in several weeks, but look at chapter four verse one for just a moment. John says, "Beloved believe not every spirit but try or test the spirits whether they be of God." Why? "Because many false prophets are gone out into the world. This is how we know the spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God. And every spirit that confesses not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God. This is the spirit of anti-Christ. Therefore, you have heard that it should come and even now already is in the world." What is John saying again? Jesus is the Christ. Jesus has come in the flesh. Let me tell you what the Bible teaches about Jesus. And unless you believe in this and agree with this, you don't have Christian doctrine, you don't have Christian truth. The Bible teaches that Jesus Christ is the second person of the Godhead.
Matter of fact, in order to understand who Jesus is, you have to believe in the Trinity. That there's one God and he's manifested in three persons. Tri-unity of God. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Bible teaches that the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Spirit is God. They're all equally divine and they all possess the same divine attributes. And one of those attributes is that they are eternal. They always have been, they always will be. So what did we learn about Jesus? He's eternal. He's the eternal son of God, the second person of the Godhead. And what happened is that in the womb of a virgin by the name of Mary, the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Godhead came upon this young virgin, and in her womb was conceived miraculously the Son of God. And at that moment, he took on humanity, sinless humanity. So the conception was a miracle. His birth was natural, but he lived for 33 years. Listen to me very carefully as the sinless man, Jesus.
And that's another doctrine about the doctrine of Christ that you must understand as Christian and that is the impeccability of Christ that he did not, could not, would not ever sin. He was the second person of the Godhead. Jesus never thought an evil thought. Jesus never did an evil deeded. He never spoke a crossword. He never sinned. He said, "Who convinces me of sin?" No one could do that. So his sinless, humanity. Humanity, but sinless and his full deity in one person, Jesus Christ, anything less than that is anti-Christ. Anything less than that is not the doctrine of Christ. And then you have to go a little further. This God man, Jesus willingly, voluntarily, went to a cross. And he laid his life down on that cross and our sins, the whole sin of the world was placed upon the pure and sinless son of God. And he became a substitute for man, the creature's sin. He was buried. We know that. And three days later, he physically bodily rose again from the dead.
And I use the word physically and bodily because the resurrection as Jehovah's Witness teach wasn't a spiritual resurrection. When they ran into that tomb Easter morning, the grave cloths were there but the body had vanished. Jesus was alive. And He appeared and disappeared for 40 days proving to his disciples that He had risen from the dead. He's in a new glorified body. And at the end of that 40 days on Mount Olive, guess what He did? He ascended right back up where He came from into heaven. Now, is that cool or what? You talk about a great ending for the story. You ever see a movie on TV and you go, "Man, what a dud ending." I've watched movies where I get to the end and I go, "That's the end?" That's a death. But you get to the end of Jesus life and he goes... Probably sounded like that. These are my biblical sound effects. Right back up into heaven and a cloud received Him out of the disciples sight. And then the angel appeared on the scene he says, Why are you guys just looking up into the sky?"
I'm thinking, "If you just saw what we saw, you'd be looking into the sky too, Gabriel." And then the angel said these words, "The same Jesus, this eternal second person, sinless Son of God who died for man, the creature sin and rose from the dead, the same Jesus is going to come back just like He left." It's called the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. So he ascended, He is exalted, and He is returning in power and glory to reign upon the earth forever and ever. His kingdom will have no end. I mean, that's exciting. Amen.
Amen.
That's the Jesus of the Bible. Anything less than that is anti-Christ. I wanted to give you that synopsis of the doctrine of Christ. Anything less is anti-Christ. And I want you to see it verse 22. "Who is a liar? For those that deny," opposite of confessing, "that Jesus is the Messiah, they're anti-Christ. They do not have the Father, they do not have the Son, but that whosoever denies the Son the same does not have the Father." Verse 23. "But if you confess the Son, you have the Father also." This is how Jesus said it. John 14 and verse six, "I am the way," Jesus said, "I am the truth." And by the way every time He used those words, I am, He was claiming to be Jehovah the Eternal God. "I am the way, I am the truth, and I am the," what?
Life.
The life. And guess what he said after that? "No one," what does the word no one mean?
No one.
No one. Studied all week to figure that one out too. "No one gets to the Father except by Me." If you're wrong about Jesus, you're wrong about God. And if you're wrong about Jesus, you could be separated from God for all eternity, because He and no one else is the way. Without Him, there's no going. He and no one else is the truth. Without Him, there's no knowing. And He, and no one else is the life. And without Him, there's no living. Jesus Christ, the only way for us to be saved. And if you're here this morning and you say, "Pastor John, I don't know whether I am saved. I don't know whether I'm just going to church or maybe even just believing in my head that Christianity is true, but I don't know that I've really trusted him with my heart." You might be a tare among wheat. You might be a professor, but not a possessor. You may be a church member, but not a child of God. I don't want anyone to leave here this morning without the opportunity to make sure that you're saved.
I don't want anyone to leave this service without the opportunity to make sure that your sins are forgiven, to make sure that if you die, you will go to heaven. To make sure that you are a child of God, that you've trusted in Jesus Christ and your sins are forgiven. So if you're here today and you don't know beyond any doubt that you are a child of God and you've never really put your faith in Jesus Christ, maybe you only come to revival because kind of like, "Okay, my friends come here or my family comes here, or my wife drug me here. Coming to make her happy so that I can watch basketball." And you need Jesus today. You need to trust in Jesus today because you're not saved. And if you haven't committed your life to Christ today, I want to give you that opportunity. Whoever believes on him will never perish, but have everlasting life. Give your heart today to Jesus. Give your life today to Jesus Christ. Let's bow our heads in a word of prayer.
Pastor John Miller continues our study through the Book of 1 John with an expository message titled “Do Not Be Deceived pt1” using 1 John 2:18-23 as his text.
Pastor John Miller is the Senior Pastor of Revival Christian Fellowship in Menifee, California. He began his pastoral ministry in 1973 by leading a Bible study of six people. God eventually grew that study into Calvary Chapel of San Bernardino, and after pastoring there for 39 years, Pastor John became the Senior Pastor of Revival in June of 2012. Learn more about Pastor John
Pastor John Miller continues our study through the Book of 1 John with an expository message titled “Do Not Be Deceived pt1” using 1 John 2:18-23 as his text.
Pastor John Miller
May 31, 2015
A study through the book of 1 John by Pastor John Miller taught at Revival Christian Fellowship in April 2015.
1 John 1:1–4
1 John 1:5–2:2
1 John 2:3–11
1 John 2:12–17
1 John 2:18–23