2 John verses 7-13 (Teaching)

[0:00] Good morning. Good morning. Back in the second John this morning. Last week we went through the first six verses, second John.

[0:14] We should be able to finish it up this week. There's only 13 verses in the chapter. Very, very short. A pistol of John writes, and I told y'all last week it's my personal opinion, I have no Bible to prove it, but it's my personal opinion that second and third John were written very late in the life of John.

[0:37] And I think that the, not only the content of second and third John shows that, but also the shortness of second and third John shows that we all know as we get older, we're able to do less than what we could when we were young.

[1:02] So, but anyway, we'll, let's say we went through the first six verses last week, and we ended in verse six, and we'll actually read it again because it is closely connected to verse seven.

[1:17] There is a distinction between the two separate parts of the epistle, but it's a segue into verse seven. So we'll read verse six again in second John.

[1:29] It says, and this is love that we walk after his commandments. This is the commandment that as you have heard from the beginning, you should walk in it. In verse seven, four many deceivers are entered into the world who confess not that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.

[1:47] This is a deceiver and an antichrist. So like I said, verse six connects, imperative really to connect to verse seven, to get verse, to understand verse seven.

[2:04] And what connects them is that word that verse seven begins with, the word four. In other words, you all heard me say it dozens of times since I've been teaching here many times in Scripture.

[2:17] God gives us the what and then he gives us the why. This is one of those cases. Verse six, we have the what, that this is love that we walk after his commandments. Verse seven is the why, that word four tells us that for many deceivers are entered into the world who confess not that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.

[2:38] This is a deceiver and antichrist. So and antichrist and that's something I want to bring out again. I know we talked about this in first John.

[2:50] I want to bring it out again. He says this is an antichrist, not the antichrist. There is not a single antichrist that is ever mentioned in Scripture.

[3:02] There's a lot of talk of that in the church world of who the antichrist is going to be. Folks, there is no specific one antichrist that has ever brought up in Scripture.

[3:14] There's the spirit of antichrist. Here it's an antichrist which leads us to believe that there's more than one antichrist. Now if you want to go over in the book of Revelation and talk antichrist in Revelation chapter 13 you'll actually find two antichrists there.

[3:33] You've got the beast that rises up and you've got the false prophet that rises up in Revelation chapter 13. Those are two people with antichrists.

[3:44] Those will be actual people if my understanding of Scripture is correct. One of them will be a political leader that has the spirit of antichrist. The other one will be a religious leader that has the spirit of antichrist.

[3:57] The religious leader will be coaching the people into following the political leader. Now once again, I'm not a Bible scholar. I don't claim to be a Bible scholar.

[4:09] That's my understanding of Scripture. But I can't tell you for a fact that there are two antichrists that are brought up there because both of them are against Christ. Both of them are instead of Christ.

[4:20] Both of them hate Christ as far as what we can tell from the Scripture. So here we have antichrists brought up in verse 7.

[4:31] But back to the beginning, for me, deceivers are entered into the world who confess not. Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. This is the deception that was prevalent in John's day.

[4:43] It's even prevalent in our day now that Jesus Christ has not come in the flesh. Many of these people were what they were called in John's day and on into the centuries following Dositus.

[4:57] They would say that Jesus Christ was nothing more than a man. But the spirit of God fell on him at the baptism, but at the cross.

[5:08] Before Jesus Christ was hung there, before he was crucified, the spirit of God left Jesus Christ. I said this is a Dositus type of view.

[5:19] It's certainly not biblical. Jesus Christ was God before he ever came to earth. Jesus Christ was God laying there in that manger. He was God that preached and talked to people in the regions around about Galilee.

[5:33] He was God when he was there on the cross. He was God in the tomb and he was God when he ascended. He was God the entire time. The spirit of God did not come to nor did it ever leave Jesus Christ.

[5:47] Now I understand that the baptism of John, it says the spirit of God descended as a dove. It doesn't say that the spirit of God was a dove.

[5:58] It says the spirit of God descended as a dove. I understand all this, but Jesus Christ was God the entire time. The spirit of God was always with him.

[6:11] He didn't receive the spirit at the baptism. The spirit of God was testifying that this was indeed Messiah. This was the cross that was promised to come, the cross of the Old Testament Scriptures that the Jews had been waiting for.

[6:28] But many deceivers are entered into the world. This is what John was saying, this is what you need to be on the watch for, is these deceivers.

[6:39] These deceivers will say that Jesus Christ was not God coming to flesh. There are people that will tell you Jesus Christ was God in the flesh, but they'll deceive you other ways.

[6:52] It was also that way in John's time. We had not only the Dositus view, but we also had the Gnostic view that John was competing with, if you'd like to phrase it like that.

[7:04] The Gnostic view was, well, just as the name indicates, the word Gnostic comes from the Greek word gnosis, which means knowledge. It's where we get our English word knowledge from.

[7:17] But the Gnostics claim to have a higher understanding and a better affiliation with God than just those regular Joe Christians that were down here at the bottom.

[7:28] They claim to be on a higher plane with God and have special revelation from God that the regular Christians wouldn't have. And there's several people like that out there in the world right now, some of them are part of the charismatic movement.

[7:44] The Catholic Church is this way as well, whereas the priests and the bishops, the people who are taught, the Catholics who are taught, that the lower caste of Catholics don't have the relationship with God that the priests and the bishops do.

[8:04] This is why people go to priests in Catholicism to receive forgiveness. They go to the priests and they confess their faults to this man in the box.

[8:16] And they do all these things because they've been taught that the priests and the bishops of the church have a better relationship with God.

[8:27] They're taught that the Pope is God's presence on the earth. They're taught that the priests also represent God to an extent, folks, my Bible teaches that everybody that is born again is a representative of Almighty God.

[8:44] They're not only a representative of God, they're an ambassador of God's kingdom. And that's everybody that has ever been saved, not just one little sect of people, not just preachers, not just deacons, not just people that have been saved for 10 or 20 or 30 years.

[9:02] It is everybody that has been born again is an ambassador of the kingdom of God, an ambassador of the promises which are in this book. So John is telling them here, for many deceivers have come your way.

[9:18] Many deceivers are entered into the world who confess not that Jesus Christ is coming to flesh. And he reiterates it, he says, this is a deceiver.

[9:29] Anyone that tells you Jesus Christ, that Jesus Christ was not God coming to flesh, that Jesus Christ was just a man. Or really and truly, if they tell you Jesus Christ is anything to them outside of what this scripture says that Jesus Christ is, folks, that is a deceiver.

[9:48] This is the complete word of God that we hold in our hands. And there is nothing to be added to Jesus Christ outside of this Bible. The charismatic movement is horrible for these types of things.

[10:02] And many people in the charismatic movement have a gnostic view of Jesus Christ. And they think that Jesus Christ is something that he's not. And they try to convince others that Jesus Christ is something that he's not.

[10:16] And this isn't a hit or anything like that towards any ladies or females. The females in the charismatic movement have got an awfully twisted view of whom Jesus Christ is.

[10:31] Some of the males do as well. But if you listen to a lot of females, if you ever pull up charismatic videos on YouTube and you listen to females describe Jesus Christ, they describe him, and it might sound funny to you, they describe him more like a high school boyfriend.

[10:48] Then they do the savior of the world. Then they do the creator of the universe. They'll say things like, you know, Jesus met me in my room and he rend his fingers through my hair.

[11:00] I've heard these things come from some of these charismatic people, these charismatic females. Folks, that is not the Christ of the Bible. The Christ of the Bible is ruler. He is king.

[11:13] And some of the males in the charismatic movement, I've heard one male not longer ago in a video say that Christ came to him wherever it was that he was at, and apologized to him for the way that some of the people in the church have been treating him.

[11:28] Really, the creator of the universe, the master and maker of it all, the king apologized for some. Folks, Christ apologizes for nothing. He apologizes for nothing. He has nothing to apologize for.

[11:44] He never sinned. No God was ever found in his mouth, but supposedly this Christ came to this man and apologized to him for the way some of the church people have been treating him.

[11:56] Folks, that's a Christ that is not the Christ of the Scriptures. That is not the Messiah that I read about here. The people who are deceivers and they are into Christ, that's heresy.

[12:08] The things I've been, this one thing in particular about Christ apologizing for anything, anything, that is heresy. I don't find one time in the Scripture that Jesus Christ ever apologized for anything.

[12:23] Why do we apologize to people? Because we're sorry for something that we did. Why are we sorry for something that we did? Because it was wrong. It shouldn't have been done that way.

[12:34] I shouldn't have said that. I shouldn't have did that. Jesus Christ never said or did anything that He shouldn't have done. He has nothing to apologize for. Be careful of the Christ that you hear about.

[12:48] Be careful of buying into those things, especially these folks that are in the charismatic movement, because most of those folks, I won't say all of them, but most of those folks believe in Jesus Christ that is not the Jesus Christ of the Bible, that is not the Jesus, that is the Son of God and is described in the Scriptures.

[13:08] These are deceivers and they are into Christ. John's giving warning here to watch out for them. Verse 8, look to yourselves that we lose not the things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward.

[13:23] This is a verse that I've heard many free willed Baptists and other people quote, and I love me some free willies. I have fellowship with free willies. I don't have any problem with a lot of them.

[13:39] This is one that they'll quote saying this verse is proof that you can lose your salvation. This verse gives evidence that you can lose your salvation, but first of all, even when I did think that, I never liked the term lose your salvation, because if you lose something, you don't know where it's at. The Bible plainly teaches that God is salvation.

[14:04] I know where salvation is at, so therefore it was never really lost. But that's neither here nor there. In this verse, he says, look to yourselves. That's a hard line to grasp a hold of.

[14:18] Look to yourselves. In other words, look within yourself. Look to yourselves at what though? He says, look to yourselves that we lose not the things which we have wrought. Folks, that right there tells us, those two lines tell us, we cannot be talking about salvation in this because I never looked to myself for salvation.

[14:38] I looked to Christ. I looked to Christ for life. I looked to Christ for redemption. I looked to Christ for salvation. It can't be addressing salvation here. And then he goes on to say that we lose not the things which we have wrought.

[14:52] I can assure you that I never wrought my own salvation and that you never wrought your own salvation. Now, wrought is just another word for work. I never worked my own salvation. Jesus Christ worked out my salvation on a cross, on a hill called Calvary.

[15:10] So this tells me, these two lines tell me it cannot be salvation that he's addressing. It cannot be redemption that John is talking about here in this verse. Look to yourselves that we lose not the things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward.

[15:27] Well, once again, if you're the people that use this trying to say that we can walk away from God, we can walk away from salvation, we can walk away from that gift that God has eternally granted us, which is eternal life.

[15:46] There's all kinds of things wrong with that in this verse. He says, but we receive a full reward. Well, salvation is a full reward in and of itself.

[15:59] And we think of a reward, though, or it's a full gift, I'm sorry, in and of itself. It is not a reward that we receive salvation. It is a gift of God that we have salvation.

[16:13] Rewards is something after the fact, is it not? It's just like when if you're running a race, we can call it an award if you want to or a reward.

[16:25] However, you want to phrase that, but if you're running a race, you get the reward or the award after the fact. But you've already run the race. You're already made your way towards the finish line.

[16:41] You don't cross it. Then afterward, there's a ceremony where you get an award or a reward. What we're talking about here is rewards after the fact, rewards that we get when we get home to glory.

[16:53] That's what John is addressing here. He says, look to yourselves that we lose not the things which we have wrought. We did not work salvation. We did not give ourselves salvation, but our actions and our speech, just as Paul says to the Roman church, he says, we must all stand at the judgment seat of Christ.

[17:15] To give an account of the works that we do in this body. Why is that? It's not just to give an account to God for what we've done in our bodies.

[17:26] For the things that we've done, whether they be good or whether they be evil, it's to receive reward from God. Salvation has done been granted. Everybody's going to stand at the judgment seat of Christ.

[17:38] According to what Paul says, we must all stand at the judgment seat of Christ. Not everyone will be at the great white throne judgment, if my understanding of scripture is correct.

[17:49] But all must stand at the judgment seat of Christ. And those which are saved, we must stand at the judgment seat of Christ to give an account for what we've done. But that account for what we've done in our bodies, that determines our rewards that we get when we get to heaven.

[18:06] And I've heard so many people, so many people ever since I've been saved, I've heard so many people justify sin. I mean justify open sin, justify going to the bars, justify partying on the weekends, justify running around on their wives.

[18:24] I've heard all these people say, well, I got saved when I was such and such. I'm just losing my rewards. I've heard that. Maybe you've heard it too. Maybe those people really are saved, and maybe they are just losing their rewards.

[18:38] But my mindset and my understanding of scripture is anybody with a mindset like that, anybody that directly and blatantly abuses the grace of God like that, has never received the grace of God.

[18:53] Because they don't act like they're getting chastisement from the Holy Spirit at all. And He will chastise when a Christian gets out of line. The Holy Spirit will chastise us. God Himself will chastise us, utilizing the Holy Spirit to do so.

[19:11] But I've heard people say that I'm just losing my rewards. I can go out and get drunk. I can shoot up. I can run around with as many men or as many women as I want to. I can do this and I can do that. I'm just losing my rewards in heaven.

[19:24] Well, first of all, why would you want to lose your rewards? My gosh, those are gifts from God. Those are things that God has promised to the elect that He has saved, that He has redeemed.

[19:36] Why would you want to lose those rewards? Because those rewards aren't ours to keep anyway if I understand the scripture correctly. Those rewards belong to Christ. That is something that we can give to Christ when we get there.

[19:48] Not for salvation, but because of salvation. Because we have been redeemed by Him. This is where the turn, throwing our crowns at the feet of Jesus Christ.

[20:04] Not in anger and not to hurt Him. We're not playing horseshoes. It's because it's His crowns. He's the one that deserves them. That's a reward from Almighty God.

[20:15] And we give those unto Christ who redeemed our unworthy souls. This is the reward that John is talking about here. Not salvation. Don't get it crisscrossed.

[20:28] There are so many things wrong in this verse to say that it is salvation. And there's a lot of people out there that base salvation on their own works.

[20:40] This goes to the verse previous to this. I'm not saying that some people might call them legalists. And there are some legalists that are out there. Some people might just refer to them as dogmatic about some things.

[20:57] And there is some of that out there. Yes. But these people are not necessarily antichrist. And they're not necessarily deceivers. Folks, I do not have alt with anybody that thinks that you can walk away from salvation.

[21:14] I have no alt with them whatsoever, as long as that's not all that they ever harp on. I was preaching to somebody that you can get saved and then you can get lost again. Ain't going to get them saved.

[21:27] Preaching Jesus Christ and preaching the gospel is what gets people saved. But preaching these other things, these secondary things, that's not going to bring salvation.

[21:43] I can't bring it anyway, but the preached gospel of Jesus Christ is how people get saved. The Bible says, Paul said that he believed in the gospel of Jesus Christ and it was the power of God under salvation.

[21:58] It's the gospel that is the power of God under salvation. Not anything that I can do, anything that I can work myself.

[22:09] Look to yourselves and we're losing out these things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward. Whosoever transgresseth and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ hath not God.

[22:22] He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son. So here again, at the very end of this verse, we have the distinction between the Father and the Son.

[22:35] He says both, meaning that one is not the other. There are two distinct persons of the same Godhead, God the Father and God the Son that John is addressing here.

[22:49] But back to the first of the verse, whosoever transgresseth and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ hath not God. John says whosoever transgresseth and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ hath not God.

[23:06] He says they're not saved. This isn't my words, this is the word of God. He says whosoever transgresseth. Oh my goodness, does that not include us? Us who were sitting here saved and born again in church, hearing the word of God talking this morning?

[23:22] Do we not transgress? What does this word mean? This is a Greek word for transgress, I think it's a Greek word called prerogato. It means to go further.

[23:35] What does that mean? It means exactly what I was talking about earlier. A lot of the charismatic, a lot of the Gnostics of John's days, they went further than the truth. They went further than the doctrine of Christ that John says if they're not abiding in the doctrine of Christ, what is the doctrine of Christ?

[23:52] We've been over it a lot since we've been going through these epistles of John. It's the virgin birth of Christ. It's the life of Christ, it's the death of Christ, it's the resurrection of Christ, it's the coming again of Christ.

[24:08] These are the very basic principles of the doctrine of Christ and they're the biblical principles of the doctrine of Christ. He says if you're not abiding in these basic things, if you go further than that and folks that go on further, it goes either way.

[24:24] You've got people that are very liberal in their religiosity and Christendom in general. You've got people that are way to the left, we would say, with liberal theology.

[24:37] But you've also got people that go further the other way. You've got these extreme fundamentalists out there that go way, way, right. They're going further, that is transgressing, that is transgressing according to the Word of God.

[24:51] Abide in the doctrine of Christ, what does it mean to abide? It means you stay there. You've got people out there, especially in the charismatic movement, that say you've never spoken in tongues, well you must not be saved.

[25:03] You've never had a revelation from God, well you must not be saved, you've never done this, you've never done that. You must not be saved, folks, that is going further.

[25:14] But to me, they're not abiding in the doctrine of Christ, they are taking it a step further and sometimes a mile further than what the Bible says. You abide in the biblical doctrine of Christ.

[25:28] He was virgin born, he lived a perfect sinless life, he was hung on a cross, he resurrected the third day, he ascended to the Father and he done all of this.

[25:39] And the working of redemption for fallen man. That is the very basic doctrine of Christ and a very small condensed nutshell. That is the biblical doctrine of Christ.

[25:53] That's what we need to abide in. That means you stay, you live in it. You ever call your home your abode? It's the same principle, that's where you stay, that's where you live, that's where you dwell.

[26:06] That's what John is saying here, dwell in the doctrine of Christ. Stay in the doctrine of Christ. Don't go way out there to the left and don't go way out there to the right.

[26:17] And you reject those people that do, you reject their doctrines. By all means, share the gospel of Jesus Christ, share the doctrine with them that you yourself are abiding in, yes.

[26:28] But don't go with them. That's the warning that John's giving here, don't go with them. Whosoever transgresses and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ hath not God.

[26:39] If we hath not God, folks, we ain't saved. It's as simple as that. We have God, we are saved. If we have God, we're godly. If we don't have God, we're ungodly. It's as simple as that. He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son.

[26:55] So if we don't abide in this doctrine, we're not saved. If we do abide in the doctrine, we are saved. It don't get any more simple than that. I mean, there's no lines to read between.

[27:06] There's no reason to go to, you know, go to 10 extra years of school to understand this line of Scripture. If we abide in the doctrine of Jesus Christ, we have Christ and not only Christ, but we have the Father.

[27:22] We have the Father and the Son. I can promise you, if we got the Father and the Son, it's because the Holy Spirit's abiding in us. Which would be the Father and the Son abiding in us by way of the Holy Spirit.

[27:34] You cannot separate the triune God. I can't have the Father and not have the Son. This is something some of the Jews of John's day were trying to do.

[27:45] And then they were flipping that coin and saying, okay, I'll take Jesus Christ, but I also want the law. Don't you can't do that either? You had these Jews that were saying, but I'm a descendant of Abraham.

[27:58] Well, big whoop. How many other descendants of Abraham were there? It doesn't matter if you're Jew or Gentile, cross died for all. He died for Jew and for Gentile alike.

[28:11] He died for the barbarian. He died for the Scythian. He died for the Jew and for the Greek. He died for everyone, male and female. It doesn't matter. He died for the sins of the world, per the Scripture.

[28:23] First in, if there come any unto you and bring not this doctor, receive him not into your house, neither bid him Godspeed. A lot of Christians will use this verse here to be mean to Job as witnesses and to be mean to Mormons.

[28:44] And they'll say, I'm told not to bid you Godspeed, I'm told you're not to come to my house, I'm told not to receive your doctor. Folks, one of many sayings that my daddy used to have, and you all may have heard it yourselves, is know your friends well, but know your enemies better.

[29:07] And I didn't understand that when I was a kid and daddy could tell me that, but I understand it now. If a man has, if a Christian, I'm telling you a Christian, if a preacher, deacon, lay member, whatever the case is, if he has a book of Mormon in his house and he reads through it, studies it a little bit, there ain't nothing wrong with that as long as he's doing that to better understand his enemy.

[29:37] Because the doctrine of the Church of Mormon is antichrist. The same goes for the Jehovah's Witnesses. If you've got tracks of the Jehovah's Witnesses, if you've got whatever that letter is, they send out a tower letter.

[29:55] If they send out sometimes you've got some of those, ain't nothing wrong with that. You're not going to help because you've got those in your house. But there's some people that say that this verse is saying otherwise.

[30:07] It says, if there come any unto you and bring not this doctrine, bring not what doctrine, the doctrine of Christ that we just talked about in the previous verse, receive him not into your house, neither bid him Godspeed.

[30:21] So let me ask you all, if a Mormon comes to my house, is it wrong for me to say, well, why don't you come in here in my living room and let's discuss this?

[30:32] Is it wrong for the scriptures? This is where hermeneutics comes in, comes in heavy play. You've got to understand not only who was writing the letter, John, you've got to understand whom he was writing to, but I think it was a church body.

[30:51] It could have been one particular woman, he refers to her as the Lady-Elect, but I think it was a church body. But not only that, in hermeneutics you have to understand the timeframe that they were writing this in.

[31:05] These nostics, these docitus, these other people with all their isms, were all coming around the church. Anywhere the gospel is preached, full teresy is not far behind it.

[31:17] It always goes to where the gospel was being truly preached. There is always heresy, there is always false teaching, there is always false doctrine that follows the gospel wherever it goes.

[31:29] And we've got to understand that in this day there were no holiday ends, there was no Ramada, there was no resorts.

[31:40] I understand that there was no room for Mary and Joseph at the end, but an end wasn't to them what it was to us. An end was simply a place you had, they didn't even have a bed in an end.

[31:52] You had to bring your own bed, it was a pad that you had rolled up in your baggage with you. You basically got a place and you might be in a room with 10 or 12 other people, you might have somebody laying at your feet or laying at the top of your head or right next to you that you'd never met in your life.

[32:09] That was an end back in these days. Now there were some that were a little more uppity, but not by much. Where did the preachers go? They stayed with other people, they stayed with other Christians.

[32:25] This is the same thing that the Gnostics were doing, this is the same thing that the Dossatists were doing. They were going to the Christian homes and they were saying, can I stay with you? I'm a preacher of the gospel.

[32:38] What Job was saying here is if they come to you and they're not preaching the doctrine of Christ, just a couple verses before this, if that's not the doctrine they're preaching, those you do not receive into your home.

[32:53] To do what? Well it goes on. It says, neither bid him Godspeed, for he that bideth him Godspeed is a partaker of his evil deeds. They're saying, if you're putting them up and if you're supporting them, if you're giving them money, in other words, if you're doing anything toward their cause, you're a partaker of their evil deeds.

[33:18] And if somebody shows up on my doorstep and they've got a tract that I probably know I'm not going to agree with, is it wrong for me to take that? No, I'm going to. You better believe I'm going to take it because I want to know what they have to say.

[33:35] Because I want to know what I'm dealing with. I abide in the doctrine of Christ though. I don't let that tract persuade me. I know what the Bible says folks. I don't know the Bible beginning to end up.

[33:48] I wish I could tell you I did, but I don't. But I know enough about the doctrine of Christ and I believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ to know that if someone presents something outside of that, it is false doctrine.

[34:02] It is false. And I want to see what their arguments are so I can prepare the gospel in my head the way it needs to be presented. Because a lot of them have got some very convincing arguments. A lot of them will cite scripture and use all kinds of matters trying to convince you of their ways. But we abide in the doctrine of Christ.

[34:25] So when John says that there come any of you and bring not this doctrine, receive him, not in your house, neither bid him, Godspeed. And I've never had this happen personally, but I have heard of it happening.

[34:39] That some people of a certain sect of supposed Christianity, which isn't really Christianity, they'll come to a house and if their doctrine is rejected, they will actually ask, will you at least bid me Godspeed?

[34:58] I say I've never had that happen, but I have heard of it. And it's Jehovah's Witnesses that I've heard that about. I don't know if that's a practice of theirs commonly or not, but I have heard that.

[35:13] I've heard people say that they ask me if I would bid them Godspeed. It makes me wonder. I mean, obviously they know the scripture and it makes me wonder why they're doing that.

[35:27] It goes on the next verse, for he that bideth him Godspeed is a pretaker of his evil deeds. They'll get you going or coming, in other words. Now listen, I ain't saying that Jehovah's Witnesses are out here to take your first board.

[35:42] I ain't saying they're out here to rob you of your goods or your materials or your life for that matter. But I will say they got false doctrine.

[35:54] And I will stand on that because their doctrine does not line up with what does say the Word of God. And I ain't here just pounding on them or where the case is. I'm using these for examples.

[36:08] There's other ones out there that we can use, but the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses are two of the more prevalent and dominant ones, especially in this area. But verse 12, having many things right under you, I would not write with paper and ink, but I trust to come under you and speak face to face that our joy might be full.

[36:32] And this simply tells me that not only was John saying, I have a whole lot to say, and I don't think it would be justified correctly if I wrote it.

[36:43] But I think it would be justified more better, I guess, if we were face to face. And this Greek terms with the words face to face here is a Greek idiom that meant extreme intimacy that he was talking about.

[37:01] Some people will actually take that and say this was a lady that John was writing to. Her and John were having a fling, basically, is what people will say to folks. That ain't what it's saying at all. That's part of that for a Lyft theology we were talking about earlier.

[37:17] That's somebody going further than the doctrine of Christ that we were speaking of when it talked about transgressing. Having many things to write under you, I would not write with paper and ink, but I trust to come under you and speak face to face.

[37:34] And then he tells us why, that our joy might be full. And this blows holes. Just this one little verse right here, blows holes in attending a live service and watching online.

[37:51] He wanted to see either this lady, or in my opinion, this church, these church members. He wanted to see them face to face, not only because he just didn't have the time, the paper, the ink, whatever, to write to them, everything they wanted to say.

[38:09] He wanted his joy to be full. He said that our joy might be full. I want to see you all. You remember what John wrote in the very first lines of 1 John.

[38:22] He said, talking of Jesus Christ, he said, this is the one that we've seen, we've walked with him, we've touched him, we've handled him. Therefore, listen to us. I spent over three years with the man in his ministry, being close and in contact with people, mean something.

[38:43] And with Christians, it should mean something. I thought I'd throw that whole online service thing out there. That's got its pros and cons just like anything else.

[38:56] For people that are housebound, people that might be in nursing homes, whatever the case is, that's great. But don't let it substitute for congregating with the brethren. Don't let it be a substitute for showing up for church services.

[39:10] Because it ain't the same. If it is the same, just tell your family that it's coming Thanksgiving and Christmas. Y'all just stay at home. We'll zoom in.

[39:21] Verse 13, the children of thy elect sister greet thee. Amen. Now, y'all are well aware now that I personally believe the gentleman's writing to a church body instead of a particular woman.

[39:38] He greeted her as the lady-elect. And he says here in the very last verse, the children of thy elect sister greet thee. It could be. It could be that there was a sister of this woman, if that is indeed who he was writing to, and her children were actually sending their greeting.

[40:00] Personally, I think he was saying the children of thy elect sister, the children of this other church body, this other congregation, this other body of believers send their greetings as well.

[40:13] Once again, that's my opinion, folks. I wasn't there when John wrote this. So you're more welcome to develop your own opinions on that, whether he was writing to an individual lady or an individual congregation of believers.

[40:30] And I won't fall out with you either way. And I won't try and prove my point. And you don't need to try and prove your point. These are secondary issues. We can agree on the doctrine of Christ that we were reading about a few verses ago. We can agree on the doctrine of salvation. We can agree that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone.

[40:52] We can agree on those things, we can fellowship. But he says the children of thy elect sister greet thee. Amen. That word, amen, means so be it.

[41:06] Anyway, that wraps up Second John. Anybody got any questions or comments? All right. God bless you all. I appreciate you.