Little children, these are the end times, and as you heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have arisen. By this we know that it is the end times.
Despite the fact of "antichrist" being popularly understood as "a personal opponent of Christ at the end of time,"[47] and also being identified with Paul's "lawless one"  (2 Thessalonians 2:8), there is absolutely no authority for such views.  The "antichrists" in this passage are plural; the "lawless one" is singular; Christ associates the antichrists, or false christs, with the need for the "elect" to flee out of Judea  (Matthew 24:16); whereas, Paul associated the "lawless one" with the "coming of the Lord," an association that John refrained from making here.  Neither the "man of sin" nor "the lawless one" of Paul's writings has any connection whatever with what John wrote here.  It was long after John wrote that "the name of antichrist was appropriated to that great adversary of Christ 'the man of sin'  (2 Thessalonians 2:3)."[48] John's antichrist "falls far short of Paul's `son of perdition.'"[49]