<p>2:18 <em>Little children, it is the last hour; and as you heard that antichrist comes, even now have there arisen many antichrists. Whereby we know that it is the last hour</em>- These antichrists are those of :19, the &quot;they&quot; who entered the Christian community but were never really &quot;of&quot; it. This surely refers to the Judaist infiltrators of the early church (Gal. 2:4). In John's immediate context, these people were &quot;anti&quot; Christ both in the sense of being against Him, and of false appearing like Him. They were part of the singular &quot;antichrist&quot; system which John felt was to arise in &quot;the last hour&quot;. We wonder if he has in view the uprising of a system of evil just before the Lord's coming, of the kind he prophesied about in Revelation. It could even be that John's epistles were written after Revelation, and it is to that document he refers in writing that they have &quot;heard&quot; about the coming of antichrist. The beasts, whore, false prophet etc. are all capable of application to the Jewish system destroyed in AD70, and this was the &quot;synagogue of satan&quot; which the opening letters of Revelation begin by talking about. This is not to say that Revelation does not have other and specifically 'last days' fulfilments.</p><p>John may have in mind 2 Thess. 2, as the source from which they had heard about the coming of antichrist. This envisages a specific individual, similar to Judas, arising from within the community of believers and being enthroned in &quot;the temple&quot;. I have noted on that chapter the possible fulfilments of this &quot;man of sin&quot; in a Jewish context. The 'revealing' of the &quot;man of sin&quot; would then connect with the 'revealing' of the specific antichrists (:19).</p>