---
title: 1 John 4:3
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/1-john-4-3/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/1-john-4-3.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: 1 John 4:3
testament: NT
section: Letters
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# 1 John 4:3

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and which is already in the world at this time.

## JW Usage

The rs book pairs 4:3 with 2:18 to argue that antichrist is a present-tense plural phenomenon, already in the world, rather than a future singular figure. Once that reading is locked in, "the spirit of the antichrist" can be applied to mainline Christendom as a whole without any future fulfilment on the table. Dispensa- tional and postmillennial Protestant schemes are dismissed as inventions.

## Protestant Usage

Grant the present tense — John does say the spirit of antichrist is "already in the world." But read the verse as a unit with verse 2: the spirit is identified by its failure to confess Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. That is a specific Christological content, not a dismissal of every future fulfilment. Irenaeus (Against Heresies 5.25, c. AD 180) and Hippolytus (On Christ and Antichrist, c. AD 200) — writing within living memory of John's disciples — recognised the present spirit in the heretics of their own day and still expected a climactic future figure. Paul confirms the both-and in 2 Thessalonians 2:3-8. Every historic Protestant scheme — amillennial, postmillennial, historic premillennial — holds both, because both are in the text. The present plural is real; the future singular is sitting in the very next sentence the rs book quotes.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [Antichrist Is Whoever Denies the Son — And Your NWT Knows](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/antichrist-christendom-boomerang.md) — 1 John 2:22 / 1 John 4:2 / 1 John 5:20 [Deity of Christ]
- [The Apostasia Watchtower Thesis](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/apostasia-watchtower-thesis.md) — 2 Thessalonians 2:3 / 2:15 — The Antidote Was Tradition, Not a Future Restorer [Authority]