As today, contemporaries of the apostle John taught that we must continually revise Christianity based on "new" knowledge or new social understandings. To the contrary, John tells his readers they must go back to the beginning, back to the testimony of the original witnesses of Christ, the apostles. The test of any teacher, then, is whether he adheres to the apostolic testimony. These contemporaries of John were not from God but from the world; they were not representatives of Christ, but antichrists.
      L. A. Mott’s exposition helps readers think their way through John’s epistles—to understand where John has drawn the lines against false teachers, and, at the same time, to understand where lines of fellowship are to be drawn in churches today.