Early one morning this week I woke up at about 5 AM and couldn’t go back to sleep, so I read 1 John. 1 John is among my favorite Bible books that I find both inspiring and thought-provoking. I’ve read the book many times in the past, but I was never struck with the following passage like I was on this specific morning. Following is the passage in 1 John 2:18:
“Children, it is the last hour. And as you have heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. By this, we know that it is the last hour.” 1 John 2:18
Five times in the Gospels, John is referred to as “the disciple Jesus loved.” He wrote in this passage over two thousand years ago that the time they were living in was ‘the last hour’. Here we are over two centuries later, and we still often talk about the signs of the times and the last days. We speculate when the church will be raptured off the earth and when Satan will give the antichrist power to rule over the earth for seven years.
I went back to Dee’s office in my curiosity to question her about the passage, and how could John back then refer to that time as “the last hour”. She encouraged me to look it up.
I did so, and a small snippet in “Barnes Notes On The Bible” made sense to me. Following is what Barnes wrote about the meaning of ‘the last hour’:
"It is the last time - The closing period or dispensation; that dispensation in which the affairs of the world are ultimately to be wound up. The apostle does not, however, say that the end of the world would soon occur, nor does he intimate how long this dispensation would be.”
So, in essence, Barnes was saying that we are in ‘the last dispensation’, or the last period of time that will end with Jesus returning to the earth. Jesus died and shed his blood for the sins of mankind and then rose again. He gave us His Holy Spirit to live inside us to help us.
And finally, it's clear that there will be no other savior or messiah in this last dispensation—or in ‘the last hour’!
