So so are you saying that John is addressing Gnostics here?
Absolutely....Gnostic and those with a spirit of antichrist are unbelievers, right?
when we quote 1 verse it becomes a doctrine...proper context shows us who John was warning them of...
Many here tell us this all day long...and hang a salvation hat on it...but is that really what it is all about?
1 John 2.19
[SUP]19 [/SUP]They went out from us, but they were not
really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but
they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us.
now lets add some other verses....
[SUP]18 [/SUP]Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have appeared; from this we know that it is the last hour.
now 19
[SUP]19 [/SUP]They went out from us, but they were not
really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but
they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us.
Now 20-24
[SUP]20 [/SUP]But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you all know. [SUP]21 [/SUP]I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it, and because no lie is of the truth. [SUP]22 [/SUP]Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son. [SUP]23 [/SUP]Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father; the one who confesses the Son has the Father also. [SUP]24 [/SUP]As for you, let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the Son and in the Father.
You can see now that John was not even talking about salvation as much of a warning agaisnt those fasle teachers who invaded the church....
True Gnostic doctrine of John's day did not believe Jesus came in the flesh or was the Christ, but simply the supreme being and was just a human not divinity......we also get into error here when we call the Beast of the book Revelation, the antichrist and the word antichrist is not found anywhere in the book of Revelation and found strictly in the book of 1 John.
Syncretism was proliferating in the early church, so 1 John is a letter warning babes in Christ[children], adolescents[young men] elders[fathers] of false teachers and how to test them....I do not see 1 John 2.19 as a salvation scripture at all...