<p>2:2 <em>I know your works and your toil and patience, and that you cannot tolerate evil men, and did test them that call themselves apostles, and yet are not, and found them false</em>- This intolerance of false apostles and teachers would have been in obedience to the commands to Timothy regarding these types at Ephesus in 1 Timothy. The situation there seemed hopelessly weak, and the false teachers entrenched. And yet empowered by the Spirit and with timid Timothy rising up the challenge of dealing with the situation, the problem with the false teachers had been turned around. And yet, at the cost of losing<em> agape</em> love (:4), making all this but a pyrrhic victory.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <em>&nbsp;</em></p><p>There is a marked warning throughout the letters that there will be a spirit of self-deception and hypocrisy amongst the latter-day ecclesias.&nbsp;Jezebel &quot;<em>calls</em> herself a prophetess&quot; (2:20), some &quot;<em>say</em> they are Jews and are not&quot; (2:9), others &quot;<em>say</em> they are apostles, and are not&quot; (2:2), Sardis had &quot;a name that thou livest&quot; but was dead (3:1). This must be seen in the context of other NT warnings that deceivers would enter the ecclesia, appearing to have the Apostolic gifts of the Spirit. As noted on 1 Jn. 4:1, John's own communities of converts had faced this problem. There was a conscious program of infiltration of the ecclesias by &quot;false brethren unawares brought in&quot; (Gal. 2:4), originating from the 'satan', the great adversary of early Christianity- Judaism. As noted on 1 Jn. 4, John himself had given various tests as to how false and true apostles could be identified. It seems Ephesus had put these into practice. These false apostles were part of a whole system of fake Christianity, called the antiChrist, the fake Christ. In the immediate context, as demonstrated throughout our commentary on 1 John, this referred to the Judaist opposition to Christianity and the program of conscious infiltration of the early churches.</p>