As noted before, we hear much said about the beast and the Anti-Christ. But interestingly, John tells us that those who deny the incarnation of Jesus makes one an “antichrist.” Now, therefore, there are a great many individuals and movements and even churches that would fit quite plainly and incontrovertibly into that category. John adds, “No one who denies the Son has the Father” (verse 23).

Now I think it is commonplace among nominal Christians to think that there are those who deny the Son, but nevertheless have the Father. But when someone challenges me about this, I respond: “Just tilt your chin up and talk to God because your argument isn’t with me. I wouldn’t have the gall to say it, but God did, right here, “No one who denies the Son has the Father.” This opponent of Jesus is advertently knocking out the ladder between heaven and earth, between God and man. 

Obviously this verse in John referred in ancient days to numerous heretics at that time, such as the Gnostics: they said that Christ came upon Jesus at His baptism and left before His passion, and they separated between Jesus and the Christ and made Christ something other than the person of Jesus. 

Of course, all who are agnostic and who are atheists would quite obviously be antichrist in both the senses of opposing Christianity: opposing both the revelation of God and the redemption that Jesus Christ has brought.