John, whom Jesus called His beloved disciple, writes to the church in Asia Minor in what is now modern day Turkey sometime around 90 AD.
He wrote to address several particular types of false teachings.
Gnosticism was a teaching that blended Eastern mysticism with Greek dualism (the spirit is completely good, but matter is completely evil). Some Gnostics believed that if God was truly good he could not have created the material universe. Another lesser god- the god of the Old Testament- created the earth.
Another false teaching was that Jesus was not fully human but only appeared to have a human body and never actually suffered pain and death on the cross. Yet another heresy that John addresses was the belief that Jesus was just a man upon whom the "Christ" descended at His baptism and that "the Christ" departed from Jesus just before His crucifixion.
Jude
The little 25 verse epistle of Jude was written around 60-64 AD to address false teaching in the early church. It is commonly believed to have been written by Jude, the brother of James and the half brother of Jesus.
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