It seems to me that the reason John mentioned the commandment of the Father to the elect lady was because she and her children weren’t completely obedient to that commandment, and this offered an advantage to those John termed the antichrists (2John 1:7), but understanding what John meant by antichrists involves understanding his times. Context is extremely important! This is especially so, when it comes to understanding when John wrote his Gospel and his epistles, because, if John didn’t write toward the end of the first century AD, then it would be impossible to identify the antichrists with the Gnostics, which don’t appear until the 2nd century AD. Nevertheless, most commentaries want to place John’s words of warning at the end of the first century AD or the beginning of the second.
An example of what I mean might be when one believes the Apocalypse was written. Most conclude it was also near the turn of the first century AD, and, if it was, its images must point to things coming in the future. However, if it were written early, perhaps during the 40s AD, its images could point to the destruction of Jerusalem, and the book’s prophesies would be fulfilled, and we wouldn’t look for anything to be fulfilled in the future. Therefore, context is extremely important. Otherwise, one could go off on a meaningless tangent that would bring us nowhere.
According to Clement of Alexandria the whole of the New Covenant text was written between the reigns of Tiberius and Nero:
“For the teaching of our Lord at His advent, beginning with Augustus and Tiberius, was completed in the middle of the times of Tiberius. And that of the apostles, embracing the ministry of Paul, ends with Nero.”[1]
If this is true, then the antichrists could never point to the Gnostics, and we would have to look for the identity of the antichrists among the then current enemies of believers, the Jews, because context matters and saves us from going beyond the teaching of Scripture (2John 1:9). So, why did John warn the elect lady about the importance of ‘walking in truth’ and obeying the commandment of God (2John 1:4-6)? It was because “many deceivers have gone out into the world…” (2John 1:7). It falls to us, then, to identify these deceivers and understand from where they came.
John identifies the coming of the antichrists with the time of the end or the last time (1John 2:18). Many interpret the last time to mean the end of time in our immediate future. Yet, the Scriptures tells us that the Kingdom of God, which has been established on the earth, would never end (Daniel 2:44). So, what do the end times or the time of the end refer? It refers to the end of the Old Covenant, and the final days in which God would deal with the world through a physical nation, i.e. the Jewish state (cp. Deuteronomy 31:25-29). So, unless one would purposely read our modern times into John’s epistles, the end time or the time of the end must refer to what occurred in the first century AD, or in the days just prior to the Jews’ war with Rome, which ended in destroying their nation and their Temple and scattered them as a people throughout the gentile world.
Peter equated the last days with the coming of the Holy Spirit upon all flesh (Acts 2:16-17). In 2Timothy 3:1 Paul tells Timothy that the last days would be perilous times, and goes on to describe what evil people would be like. Then he says to turn away from such people, showing that those times were upon believers in the 1st century AD (2Timothy 3:1-5). The writer of Hebrews claimed that God had sent his Son, Jesus, to the earth in the last days (Hebrews 1:1-2). James mentions that the disobedient were at the time of his letter storing up their sins for the last days, showing he expected them to be judged in their expected lifetimes (James 5:2-3). Peter claimed that the salvation offered in Christ was revealed in the last time (1Peter 1:5), and then goes on to say that Christ secured our salvation in the last times (1Peter 1:20). Both Peter and Jude speak of scoffers or mockers who would appear in the last days or the last time (2Peter 3:3; Jude 1:18), and, finally, John claims the appearing of them (instead of scoffers he uses the term antichrists) showing that the days in which he wrote were what Scripture calls the last time (1John 2:18).
Context is important, if we wish to uncover the truth, instead of forcing our opinions onto the text, which would be wrong (2John 1:9). We need to stay within the confines of the text to keep from causing the word of God to contradict itself (cp. John 10:35). Why would anyone do such a thing, and would putting the opinion of a man above that which Christ taught deny the Lord and his words and make that one an antichrist? There are many antichrists today, but they had their beginning in the days of John and the other Apostles, in the days of the writing of the New Covenant text, probably in the 60s AD.
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[1] Clement of Alexandria; Stromata; book 7, chapter 17; also see my study When was the Apocalypse Written?
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