Your relationship with God rises or falls on how you respond to His Word. In this episode of Light on Life, we move from the meticulous handling of Scripture to the sobering reality of what happens when it is rejected. The Bible makes it clear—this is not a small issue. To reject God’s Word is to step into the very spirit of antichrist. But how do you recognize it? And more importantly, how do you guard your life from it? Today, we uncover how to spot and avoid the spirit of antichrist by staying rooted in precise, obedient, Word-centered living. How to Spot and Avoid the Spirit of Antichrist, that’s our focus on this week’s Light on Life.

This Week: How rejecting God’s Word reveals the spirit of antichrist—and how obedience keeps you aligned with God.

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Accept the Challenge

Each week’s podcast contains a call to action. The Word of God will not produce in your life unless you put into operation.
This weeks call is:

Guard. Obey. Stay Aligned.

Choose obedience over opinion. Identify one area where God’s Word has spoken clearly—and align your actions with it today.

Stay precise with what God said. A meticulous life with the Word is your protection and your strength.

Join the Conversation

Each week’s podcast also contains a question designed to encourage testimony. Testimony is vital to a believers life. We overcome by it (Rev. 12:11).

This week’s question is:

Question: Where have you seen the difference between obeying God’s Word and drifting from it?

Share: What helps you stay aligned with God’s Word when it challenges your thinking or feelings?

Remember: A life anchored in the Word doesn’t drift—it stands firm.

About Emery

Emery committed his life to the Lord Jesus Christ over 49 years ago and has served as both a full-time pastor and an itinerant minister. Both he and his wife Sharon of 44 years emphasize personal growth and development through the Word of God. The ministry of the Holy Spirit is both the focus and the hallmark of their mission. Read more about them here.

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Podcast Notes:

• Well again, welcome.
• Let’s pray.

Father God, thank you for your goodness and your mercies to us. They are new everyday. We ask you today for grace to hear and to do your Word. Open the eyes of our heart. Help us to see and know You in Jesus’ Name, Amen

• Your walk with God was never meant to be mindless—it was designed to be meticulous.
• In last week’s episode, we uncovered that the kind of prayer that produces real results does not come from an autopilot routine, but from a life that carefully guards, honors, and keeps the Word of God.
• The word tēreō (pronounced TAY-RAY-OH) showed us that keeping God’s Word is not for the occasional crisis—it is a moment-by-moment, attentive, and precise guarding of what God has said.
• This guarding is so that we can carefully do the Word—put it into operation.
• We saw that when the Word is treated as sacred—protected, valued, and used—it becomes the foundation for everything in the believer’s life.
• From that platform, prayer becomes all it was meant to be.
• Not scattered.
• Not emotion-driven.
• But focused and effective.
• Because of this, we began putting this into practice by building a Word-based platform for prayer—using specific scriptures to help generate the answers that God calls prayer-fruit.
• Effective prayer does not begin with prayer—it begins with the Word.
• Go to the Word first.
• Now we take the next step.
• Because if meticulousness with God’s Word is His standard, then we must also recognize what stands in direct opposition to it.
• Scripture doesn’t just show us those who guarded the Word in their everyday life—it also reveals those who rejected it.
• There are many people who started in church with the Word but refused to continue in it.
• It’s one thing to start with the Word—it’s a whole other thing to finish.
• These people did not keep the Word.
• They did not guard it.
• They rejected it.
• And the Bible gives them a name.
• The Holy Spirit through the Apostle John calls them ‘antichrist.’
• This week, we shift from the meticulous handling of the Word to the sobering reality of those who abandon it.
• Because this is not just something to understand—it’s something you must recognize immediately.
• You must be able to spot it.
• And you must know how to avoid it at all costs.
• Because a life built on the Word produces stability—but a life that rejects it reveals what was never truly established to begin with.

The Antichrist Spirit: Beginning Notes

1 John 2:18–22 (NASB 2020) — 18 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. 19 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 evident that they all are not of us. 20 But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you all know. 21 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. 22 Who is the liar except the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son.

• ‘You have heard that antichrist is coming.’
• That’s an absolutely true statement even today.
• Every week, it seems, a new book comes out trying to pin-point this individual.
• Over the last ten years somewhere in the neighborhood of three thousand books have been penned on the subject of Bible prophecy.
• Everyone wants to know who this antichrist figure is.
• John says, by the Holy Spirit, that this is the last hour.
• If it was the last hour two thousand years ago, then we must be down to the last minutes as the time clock pounds it’s way towards the Second Coming of Jesus.
• Just who is this guy?
• But, while the Church is enamored with who this person might be, they are missing the most important message: the spirit of antichrist has been at work for thousands of years.
• Back in the first century the Holy Spirit of God stated that ‘many antichrists’ have already appeared.
• Many antichrists?
• That’s right, you thought there was only one.
• The Greek word ‘antichrist’ is the one we want to look at and with that thought, here is the Definition of the Day.
• The word ‘antichrist’ means counter-Christ¹
• The term does not point to a substitute Christ.
• It is rather a picture of direct opposition to Jesus Himself.
• Saying it a different way: antichrists are those opposed to Jesus not those trying to say that they are Jesus.
• This is an vital distinction.
• Another thing, that I found shocking and you may as well is that the term ‘antichrist’ is only found in the Epistles of John.
• It occurs there four times.
• The word does not appear at all in the book of Revelation!
• The most detailed prophetic book in the Bible—and the term isn’t even used.
• How does that shake up your spinal cord?
• The Beast is mentioned in Revelation, the man of sin is referred to as well, but not this term the antichrist.
• How many books written in the last decade have been penned in the name of a person who is not even mentioned by that name in the greatest prophetic end time book in the Bible?
• Check it out.
• So, how are we to understand this antichrist theology because John says there are many of them?
• ‘Many’ means the antichrist problem was already widespread in the first century.
• If it was prevalent then, what do you think it is now?
• Well, here’s a clue.
• The entire population of the 1st century was only about 2–3% of today’s world population.
• When John said, ‘even now many antichrists have come,’ he was speaking into a world of roughly 200 million people.
• Today, we are living in a world of over 8 billion—forty times larger—do you think that number of antichrists have decreased or multiplied?”
• Dear me, it’s off the charts!

What Is An Antichrist?

• The Holy Spirit defines without doubt just who is an antichrist.

1 John 2:22 (NASB 2020) — 22 Who is the liar except the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son.

• What is an antichrist person?
• An antichrist is an individual who denies Jesus.

1 John 4:3 (NASB 2020) — 3 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 now it is already in the world.

• There is a spirit of antichrist actively operating in the world today.
• The source of this rebellion is rooted in the original rebel, Satan.
• Here it shows up in the word ‘denies.’
• That word ‘denies’ is huge to understanding your vital link to God’s Word.
• An antichrist is anyone who denies Jesus—and by doing so, rejects the Word of God.
• The word ‘denies’ carries a super-strong element of rebellion.
• The word means rejection and renunciation ²
• It means to disassociate with a person.
• This is not just a disagreement you have with God—this is a deliberate severing of relationship.
• What were these antichrist people rejecting?
• They rejected Jesus as coming from God.
• Jesus said these words in John’s gospel.

John 8:42 (NASB 2020) — 42 Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I came forth from God and am here; for I have not even come on My own, but He sent Me.

• The Way, The Truth and The Life, the man in whom there was no guile flat out said “I CAME FORTH from God.”
• You have to help not to understand that.
• To deliberately with full understanding say something other than what God said, to live your life on something other than what He said, is rebellion.
• An antichrist is a willful, deliberate denier of God’s Word.
• To reject the Word is to reject Jesus—because Jesus is the Word.
• Now, can you see why it’s crucial to be meticulous about what God said?

How to Spot Antichrist Style Rebellion

• So, how do we spot antichrist rebellion in ourselves?
• I say ourselves because we are not called to condemn people—we are called to examine ourselves first.
• Jesus didn’t condemn the woman taken in adultery, but He did tell her, “Go and sin no more.”
• He dealt with the sin without condemning the person—and that’s our model.
• After all, this is the Dispensation of Grace.
• Personal judgment of others has no place here—we start with ourselves.
• Because if you can’t see it in yourself, you’ll be vulnerable to it when it shows up around you.

Matthew 7:1–2 (NASB 2020) — 1 “Do not judge, so that you will not be judged. 2 For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you.

• Scripture identifies rebellion across multiple dimensions—against God’s commands, against established authority, and against God’s character itself.

Rebellious Against God’s Word

• A ‘thus saith the Lord’ must be matched with ‘Yes, Lord I will.’
• If God said it, it’s so.
• If He tells you to do something, there’s only one response.
• Your opinion carries no weight in the spirit realm.
• If your opinion is different than God’s, then it’s your opinion that must change.
• If you persist, you align yourself with rebellion.
• This is serious—it is destructive to your eternal life in God.
• As Daniel and the Hebrew boys did not even have the smell of smoke in their garments, so we should strive to always live the words of the songwriter.

Yes, Lord, yes, to your will and to your way. Yes, Lord, yes I will trust you and obey. When your Spirit speaks to me With my whole heart I’ll agree And my answer will be ‘Yes’ Lord ‘Yes.’

• You don’t want even the smell of rebellion in your Jesus walk.
• And, with that thought, here is the Quote of the Day.

You will never be more like the devil than when you’re a rebel; you will never be more like the Lord Jesus than when you submit.³

Rebellion and God’s Standard

• God has a unchanging standard for His people because He is an unchanging God.
• God introduced it to Adam and Eve.
• He didn’t change the standard when they sinned.
• He didn’t alter it when He dealt with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
• The children of Israel heard the same message and had the same expectation.
• God the Father didn’t change the expectation for His Son Jesus when He walked Planet Earth.
• God’s standard is the same for His creation.
• Here it is: “Whatever I tell you to do, do it.”
• God told Adam and Eve not to eat of the fruit of the tree — they didn’t do it.
• God directed Abraham to leave his family and travel to a land that He would show him—but Abraham’s obedience was not meticulous obedience.
• Abraham brought his father Terah and his nephew Lot along with him.
• God told the Israelites not to worship idols — they crashed and burned miserably when it came to obeying this directive.
• Jesus is the only one who did whatever the Lord told Him to do fully.
• As Jesus’ followers, we don’t get to hide behind the failures of our predecessors.
• Why?

1 John 2:6 (NASB 2020) — 6 the one who says that he remains in Him [in Jesus] ought, himself also, walk just as He walked.

• Jesus was obedient unto death even the death of the cross.
• God’s standard has not changed: “Whatever I tell you to do, do it.”
• Now, King Saul was an individual who refused to live by this simple directive.
• God appointed him king of Israel in his humility but he chose the antichrist way of rebellion by refusing to obey God three different times.
• The first occurrence was very early in his reign as Israel’s first king.
• The command: God told Saul to wait seven days.

1 Samuel 10:8 (NASB 2020) — 8 And you shall go down ahead of me to Gilgal; and behold, I will be coming down to you to offer burnt offerings and sacrifice peace offerings. You shall wait seven days until I come to you and inform you of what you should do.”

• The Failure: After waiting seven days without Samuel’s arrival while his troops scattered, Saul commanded the burnt offering and peace offerings to be brought and offered them himself.

1 Samuel 13:8–14 (NASB 2020) — 8 Now he waited for seven days, until the appointed time that Samuel had set, but Samuel did not come to Gilgal; and the people were scattering from him. 9 So Saul said, “Bring me the burnt offering and the peace offerings.” And he offered the burnt offering. 10 But as soon as he finished offering the burnt offering, behold, Samuel came; and Saul went out to meet him and to greet him. 11 But Samuel said, “What have you done?” And Saul said, “Since I saw that the people were scattering from me, and that you did not come at the appointed time, and that the Philistines were assembling at Michmash, 12 I thought, ‘Now the Philistines will come down against me at Gilgal, and I have not asked the favor of the LORD.’ So I worked up the courage and offered the burnt offering.” 13 But Samuel said to Saul, “You have acted foolishly! You have not kept the commandment of the LORD your God, which He commanded you, for the LORD would now have established your kingdom over Israel forever. 14 But now your kingdom shall not endure. The LORD has sought for Himself a man after His own heart, and the LORD has appointed him ruler over His people, because you have not kept what the LORD commanded you.”

• Saul was fearful because the people were scattered from him.
• He chose the pacifying of fear over the direct obedience.
• This was right at the beginning of Saul’s reign — right out of the gate, Saul disobeyed.
• Now get this, that one single bit of disobedience caused him to lose out on his kingship.
• One bite from the forbidden fruit was all it took for Adam to introduce the entire human race to the consequences of disobedience.
• God does not want improvisation — He wants and requires obedience.
• Saul followed this with two other acts of disobedience most notably, the case of the King of Amalek.
• To which the Lord replied with these words:

1 Samuel 15:23 (AMP) — 23 For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as idolatry and teraphim (household good luck images). Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, He also has rejected you from being king.

• Rebellion is not just disobedience—it is rejection of God’s Word, and that is the very spirit John calls antichrist.

Why Rebellion Is Like Witchcraft

• Now, have you ever wondered about the statement: ’For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft?’
• How does that work?
• Rebellion parallels witchcraft because both involve rejecting legitimate authority and attempting to operate outside God’s established order.
• There is no place for doing things your way in God’s Kingdom.
• Witchcraft is a partnership with the devil—and so is disobeying God’s Word.
• Long before Adam ever sinned, Satan was the original rebel.
• He decided that he was going to do a frontal assault on the Throne of God

Isaiah 14:12–15 (NASB 2020) — 12 “How you have fallen from heaven, You star of the morning, son of the dawn! You have been cut down to the earth, You who defeated the nations! 13 “But you said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God, And I will sit on the mount of assembly In the recesses of the north. 14 ‘I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’ 15 “Nevertheless you will be brought down to Sheol, To the recesses of the pit.

• Who’s servant are you?
• Answer: Whomever you obey.
• Since Satan is the source of rebellion, do you think it’s wise to act as he acted?
• Know this, when you do — when you disobey God — you are operating on the devil’s territory.
• I love this statement: it’s worthy of note.

Lucifer’s original sin was refusing God’s will, declaring “Not thy will, but mine, be done,” which made him Satan.⁴

• That is the root of all rebellion—“I will” instead of “Thy will.”
• The reverse idea is also very true.
• When you obey God’s Word — you become like Jesus.

How Can You Combat the Spirit of Antichrist?

• God forbid that any of us would ever be classed with the term antichrist.
• May it never be!
• We should have an Atlantic Ocean of space between us and any kind of disobedience.
• How do we get there?
• It starts with a decision.
• But that only works if you are a person of your word.

Psalm 15:1–3 (NASB 2020) — 1 LORD, who may reside in Your tent? Who may settle on Your holy hill? 2 One who walks with integrity, practices righteousness, And speaks truth in his heart. 3 He does not slander with his tongue, Nor do evil to his neighbor, Nor bring shame on his friend;

• Do you know yourself to be a person who speaks truth?
• Unless you do, it will be difficult to make your decision to obey God’s Word stick.
• We must be careful to observe and to do God’s Word.
• Doing God’s Word is doing His will.
• And doing His will, whatever it may be, requires consecration of heart.
• Jesus spoke volumes of consecration to God at the worst time of His life.
• He’s getting ready to face Calvary.
• The worst of it?
• He’s going to be separated from His Father for three days and nights.
• He prays in the Garden of Gethsemane trying to get God to do this ’salvation of mankind’ some other way.
• He prays multiple times during the course of this evening and concludes with these words.

Luke 22:40–43 (NASB 2020) — 40 Now when He arrived at the place, He said to them, “Pray that you do not come into temptation.” 41 And He withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and He knelt down and began to pray, 42 saying, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done.” 43 Now an angel from heaven appeared to Him, strengthening Him.

• It’s not so easy to say these words when the sun is shining in your life and all things are pushing along well.
• It’s another thing to walk in this kind of consecration when your soul is sorrowful unto death.
• How am I going to get there?
• Just like Jesus did.
• Jesus didn’t consecrate Himself unto God one time.
• He did it over and over throughout His life.
• Hear Him speak on a day that wasn’t as dark as Gethsemane.

John 5:30 (NASB 2020) — 30 “I can do nothing on My own. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is righteous, because I do not seek My own will but the will of Him who sent Me.”

• I seek not my own will.
• That’s the ticket.
• On another occasion.

John 6:38 (NASB 2020) — 38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.

• You see, it’s a lifestyle of consecration to obey God — to do His will that plants the flag.
• God may not have called you to go and be a missionary to Africa.
• But, are you willing to go?
• Not my will, but your will be done.

Proverbs 24:32–34 (NASB 2020) — 32 When I saw, I reflected upon it; I looked, and received instruction. 33 “A little sleep, a little slumber, A little folding of the hands to rest,” 34 Then your poverty will come like a drifter, And your need like an armed man.

• A little neglect.
• A little compromise.
• That’s all it takes.
• This is why meticulous matters.
• Stay with the Word.
• Stay inside the lines.
• Do God’s Word and will completely.
• The moment you step outside of what He said—you step into no-man’s land.
• God said it—I believe it—that settles it for me is your strongest defense against the spirit of antichrist, the spirit of rebellion.
• A meticulous life with the Word will keep you steady, sure, and right with God.
• If this teaching helped sharpen your walk with God, share it with someone who needs clarity on standing firm in the Word.
• Stay connected with us at EmeryHorvath.com for more teachings designed to help you live a focused, Word-driven life.
• And remember—God didn’t call you to casually handle His Word, but to guard it, live it, and walk in it every day.
• That’s what Jesus is Lord really means.
• Now, if you haven’t received Jesus as the head of your life, you can do so right now.
• Bow your heads and pray this prayer after me.

Father God, I come to now for one reason, to receive Jesus as Lord and Savior. Thank you that He died for my sins according to the scriptures and that He is alive today at your right hand. Your Word says, He that comes to me, I will in no wise cast out. Thank you Lord for receiving me into your Kingdom in Jesus’ Name, Amen.

• If you prayed that prayer, reach out and let us know.
• How to Spot and Avoid the Spirit of Antichrist.
• You guys have a great God week and we will see you next time for another edition of Light on Life.

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