Don't throw a fit, man

 

 These orators inflame the people, whose anger is really but a short fit of madness.

-- Jonathan Swift 

Paul hastily wrote off humanity, unlike the Psalmist who knew better

 

Let God be true, but every man a liar.

-- Romans 3:4

I said in my haste, All men are liars.

-- Psalm 116:11 

There is nothing new under the pen

 

 Our lines reform'd, and not compos'd in haste,

Polish'd like marble, would like marble last;

But as the present, so the last age writ;

In both we find like negligence and wit.

 

-- Edmund Waller 

How does one read I John and come away concluding that the antichrist there isn't associated with speculation about the end of the world?

I don't know. Maybe by not reading it?

Slouching Toward Silicon Valley? The Antichrist Goes Mainstream

... It is a common mistake, however, to associate the antichrist exclusively with speculation about the end of the world. When this mysterious figure first appears, it is not in the apocalyptic visions contained in the last book of the Bible. Rather, it is mentioned a few pages earlier, in two short letters traditionally attributed, like Revelation, to the apostle John. The author condemns those who “do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh,” explaining that “any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist.” ...

Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.

 -- I John 2:18

And he missed it. Oh well!

I don't think the author was too terribly interested in what I John has to say anyway, only in what he has to say, which I did not find terribly compelling. Read it and decide for yourself. 

As for I John, it is obviously mistaken that it was the end of the world, no less than Jesus was mistaken about the end of the world, so these antichrists in I John weren't actually a sign of that, but I John unequivocally took antichrists for signs of the end of the world, and himself believed it was the end of the world.

I John notably has not just one antichrist but many, analogous to the false christs and false prophets predicted at the end of the world in the little apocalypses of the gospels (Matthew 24, Mark 13). And I John 4:1 explicitly states that "many false prophets are gone out into the world."

Both of these things are evidence that in I John's mind the antichrist is connected conceptually to those gospel narratives about the end of the world. That they are also false christs in his mind is proved by the fact that he says that they are docetists who deny, to borrow the Fourth Gospel's language, that the word was made flesh in the incarnation. 

So I John is nothing if not speculation about the end of the world, and you'd have to not read it to miss it. 

It is also notable that I John does not explicitly use the typical word for sign, let alone any word for sign, that we might expect him to use if in fact he is the same author as the author of the Fourth Gospel, who uses the language of signs like water. This is a little puzzling, but it does not detract from the main point that I John knows from the presence of antichrists that it is the last hour.

Be that as it may, Jesus after the flesh unequivocally repudiated such signs, but the new theology's Christ of faith which sprang up after him didn't just embrace signs.

For it, Jesus was the sign. 

And, behold, there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon; and the same man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel: and the Holy Ghost was upon him. And it was revealed unto him by the Holy Ghost, that he should not see death, before he had seen the Lord's Christ. ... And Simeon blessed them, and said unto Mary his mother, Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against;

-- Luke 2:25f., 34

Oddly enough this Jesus grew up to say otherwise:

No sign shall be given to this generation (Mark 8:12).

Sign-seeking and sign-performing were the unequivocal evil business of the devil, this Jesus insisted (Matthew 4:1ff.; 16:1; Mark 1:13; 8:11; Luke 4:1ff.; 11:16).

But the empty tomb swamped that narrative.  It only exists side by side in the text which has come down to us in tension with the new narrative which now dominates it in which:

The resurrection became the ultimate sign, the sign of the prophet Jonah (Matthew 12:39; 16:4; Luke 11:29), justifying elaborate timetables for a second coming foretold by signs (Matthew 24:3; Mark 13:4; Luke 21:7); Jesus' miracles in the Fourth Gospel themselves become positively described as signs; Wonder-working becomes the sign of an apostle.

Truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you in all patience, in signs, and wonders, and mighty deeds.

-- II Corinthians 12:12 

The message of Jesus in the flesh by contrast was like a bright flash, exposing the world's utter corruption and proclaiming its imminent transformation. But it came suddenly without signs to be observed (Luke 17:20f.), and especially not an antichrist.

The kingdom of God was already there among them, he said, and . . . they missed it.  

The chosen few

... [William James] gave special attention to the people he called the “sick souls,” those whose inner lives were marked by melancholy or fear, people who felt the world’s brokenness with burning intensity. Instead of dismissing them as unstable, he saw them as people who grasped the seriousness of life. Their suffering, he believed, was a sign that their hearts were tuned to deeper realities. ... 

More. 

Let your Yeas be homely russet and your Nays be kersey coarse

 

 Taffata phrases, silken terms precise,

I do forswear them; and I here protest,

Henceforth my wooing mind shall be exprest

In russet yeas, and honest kersey noes.

 

-- William Shakespeare, Loves Labors Lost, Act 5 Scene 2 

Whence the empty suit

 

 

  There can be no kernel in this light nut; the soul of this man is his clothes.

-- William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well, Act 2 Scene 5 

She says, You're only taking orders, That's how every empire falls

 

 

 

 And great was the fall of it.

-- Matthew 7:27

Open your hearts to us.

-- II Corinthians 7:2 

Trump is already the living embodiment of the root of all evil, what more do you want?

 

 For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

-- I Timothy 6:10

 

St. Augustine well spoke of the Donald Trumps of the world, the Vladimir Putins, the Xi Jinpings, who molest the land and the sea, whose modus operandi is robbery

 Trump on Venezuela: "We Are Going To Run The Country"

U.S. in Prime Position To Unlock Venezuela's Vast Oil Reserves

Eaton, et al., WSJ

 

 

 Kingdoms without justice are similar to robber bands.

And so if justice is left out, what are kingdoms except great robber bands? For what are robber bands except little kingdoms? The band also is a group of men governed by the orders of a leader, bound by a social compact, and its booty is divided according to a law agreed upon. If by repeatedly adding desperate men this plague grows to the point where it holds territory and establishes a fixed seat, seizes cities and subdues peoples, then it more conspicuously assumes the name of kingdom, and this name is now openly granted to it, not for any subtraction of cupidity, but by addition of impunity. For it was an elegant and true reply that was made to Alexander the Great by a certain pirate whom he had captured. When the king asked him what he was thinking of, that he should molest the sea, he said with defiant independence: “The same as you when you molest the world! Since I do this with a little ship I am called a pirate. You do it with a great fleet and are called an emperor.”

-- St. Augustine, The City of God Against the Pagans IV 

All the world deludes itself with the charm, Happy New Year

 The commands which our religion hath imposed on its followers are not like the absurd ceremonies of pagan idolatry, that might look like incantations and magick, but had no tendency to make mankind the happier.

-- Richard Bentley