In many respects, II John seems like a summary of I John, but with greater emphasis on false teachers. You have the theme of loving God by obeying His commands. You have warnings about falling away from the faith. But the instructions on false teachers seems to be more emphatic. Perhaps this is simply because it is a shorter letter (a total of 13 verses).
John refers to false teachers in this letter as "antichrists" and advises to not let them into your homes or even to acknowledge them in public. I've always wondered about about how literally to take this. Take, for example, Jehoveh's Witnesses. I think they would qualify under John's descritpion of false teachers. When they knock on your door, should you refuse to answer it, not allow them to enter the threshold, or something else? How can we share the truth with them if we cannot acknowledge them in public? Or was in the case that the false teachers John is talking about had actually infiltrated the established church (rather than creating a new one) and were therefore somehow more insidius? I don't have answers to these questions, but I do think they are worth asking.
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