Chapter II

Already Among Them

The spirit is not coming. It was already in their generation.

1 min · They Did Not Believe Him

The moment Christ was absent the antichrist began to crawl. That is not a future program. That is the first week after the cross, and every week since.

Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour.

1 John 2:18

John will not let the church postpone the crisis. The spirit is not coming. He said it was already in their generation. Already in the world. Already sitting in assemblies that still used the Name. The Gospel was lost with the first generation. They did not have the whole story and they did not believe the story they had.

The spirit is not coming. John said it was already in their generation.

Men treat antichrist as a costume at the end of time. A man, a throne, a set of headlines. Scripture is less theatrical and more severe. The spirit of antichrist is substitution: anything placed where Christ already is. A delayed Christ is the most respectable substitute of all, because it still sounds like faith. It praises Him in heaven so it does not have to obey Him on the ground.

Pass this by if you want. It remains true. The false Christianity that wears His name is infested with that spirit. It is the Christianity of a present absence: hymns without authority, cross without kingdom, return without reign. It trains a people to live as if the throne were vacant until further notice. Vacant thrones do not stay vacant. They are filled by whatever crawls fastest.

That vacancy is not an accident of doctrine. It is the old unbelief in a new register. They will grant Him a future and deny Him the hour He claims. The first generation did it with spices and flight. This one does it with delay. Same spirit. Same empty garden. Same prepared corpse.