“Young children, it is the last hour, and just as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have appeared, from which fact we know that it is the last hour.

1 John 2:18,

What do we learn from those words? John mentioned “many antichrists,” indicating that the antichrist is, not an individual, but a collective term.

Furthermore, this group was present at the time when John wrote his letter, in “the last hour,” presumably the end of the time of the apostles.