Read with Me
1 John 4:1-3 (HCSB)
Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to determine if they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.
This is how you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit who confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. But every spirit who does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist; you have heard that he is coming, and he is already in the world now.
Listen with Me
Some in John’s day were gullible. If someone came rolling into town claiming to be a prophet, whatever they said was believed by those listening without taking time to think critically about the content, and without comparing it to the words of Jesus and the teaching of the apostles.
This was a problem because some of those so-called prophets were teaching things that were opposed to the true teachings of the Scriptures. Some Gnostics, for example, were teaching that Jesus was not the eternal Son of God who had become flesh. Instead, they taught that He was a mystical master who had accessed Christ Consciousness, had overcome the prison of flesh through deep mystical knowledge, and thus been able to manifest miracles and wonders. And, of course, they claimed to have the key to that kind of mystical knowledge, which they would share with their listeners for a price.
But John clearly saw the dangers of that kind of false knowledge (compared to 1 Timothy 6:20-21) which could lead people away from Jesus and His clear teachings and into a false religion of striving and working to attain what was available in its true and untainted form simply through faith in Jesus and the fullness of the Holy Spirit.
The discerning mark of these false prophets, the thing that made their true identity immediately recognizable for what it was, was their refusal to acknowledge that Jesus was truly God in the flesh. These false prophets spoke about a false, unknowable God that they called the Monad, which created several lower “emanations”, one of which, the Demiurge, created the world, and other of which were called aeons, one of many pairings of principles, one pairing of which was the Christ and wisdom, which lived in human man, Jesus.
All of this, clothed in the sophisticated-sounding Greek of the philosophers, proved to be very attractive to those who fancied themselves intellectuals. But it was deadly, causing them to turn from the true faith that had saved them and from the true Jesus to a lie that caused the shipwreck of many souls.
John clearly called the evil spirit that lay behind this false, soul-wrecking doctrine the spirit of antichrist or the one who sets himself against Jesus and His work. And that spirit is none other than the ancient serpent, satan, in a new disguise.
Pray with Me
Father, unfortunately, that same spirit of antichrist is working in our world today, persuading people to turn away from the true historical faith and from Jesus, the eternal Son of God, to an intellectualized faith that is based on naturalism and human reason. And that spirit is still trying to persuade others that since so many “intelligent people” and “scientists” don’t believe the principles and historical data of the Bible, those intellectuals and scientists must be right, and all the unsophisticated people who believe in what the Bible actually says must be wrong. Lord, help us all to simply trust what You have told us is true in Your word, and help me to always turn away from the intellectualism and scientism that is falsely called knowledge today, and to stand firm on Your clear revelation contained in Your word. Amen.