Finally, Brethren, Farewell — September 2025

John sees in a vision the glorification of the saints during the new dispensation. The thousand years that John mentions is the period of time from the ascension of Christ into heaven until the loosing of Satan shortly before the rise of the final antichrist. The antichrist is the beast that John mentions. And yet John says in his first epistle, “Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time” (2:18). The spirit of antichrist was already present in the world of the apostle, and so John also says, “Every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world” (4:3).

This spirit of antichrist is responsible for all the opposition against the church throughout the new testament age. This spirit is responsible also for all the apostasy of the new testament age. This spirit takes form in the many false teachers and false gospels that arise during the new dispensation. This spirit also will bring in his time the final form of the beast, who will unite the nations and make war against the camp of the saints in the last days.

Always the beast has his image—the doctrine of man. Always the beast demands to be worshiped as God. And always the beast demands that his worshipers take his mark. That reality of bearing the mark of the beast also will have its final form.

However, the spirit of antichrist always demands of his worshipers that they distinguish themselves as belonging to the world. They must go out of the church and join themselves in fellowship with the ungodly world and the false church. They must have a good word for the world and for the false church. They must oppose the true church and her testimony. For in that antichristian world, the church stands as loyal to Christ by her witness. That witness is of Jesus and of the word of God. And that witness comes in the power of the Spirit of truth who “will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment” (John 16:8).

On account of that testimony of the church to the truth and against the world, Satan stirs up a furious persecution. For the souls that John sees glorified in heaven have been beheaded. They have been executed by the world and the false church after the world and the false church tried them for their testimony and condemned them to death for that testimony. That does not mean simply that they all lose their physical lives. They are persecuted in all sorts of ways and thus lose their lives in the world. They are cast out of the church; they are maligned as enemies of God and man; they lose their names and standings and are rejected of friends and family. As servants of the exalted Lord Jesus Christ and as pilgrims and strangers in the ungodly world, they suffer at the hands of the world just as their Lord did.

And belonging to their Lord they are—after they have suffered awhile—exalted with him to the height of heavenly glory in their souls, and with him they judge over all things and share in the glory of their Lord.