Spirit of Anti-Christ

John in his 1st epistle paints a picture of the doctrine of Anti-Christ. it is a broad description of Christ's nature as man. The mark is the public confession we make.

Since many prophets were appearing in Christ's name v1, john chose to make a broad application. Either a prophet confessed Christ was flesh or he didn't.

1Jn 4:2 Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God:

1Jn 4:3 And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.

Of course Judaism was anti-Christ by saying the Christ had not come at all.

Some teachers wanted to take a middle position, that Christ was flesh but not like you and I. they wanted to portray Jesus as flesh cleansed of its sinful nature. this was a violation of Paul's teaching.

Rom 8:3 For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:

Christ didn't have flesh any different than you and I.

The doctrine of the immaculate conception actually denies Christ's fleshly nature, saying Mary and Christ were conceived without the nature of the rest of man.

The Immaculate Conception, according to the teaching of the Catholic Church, was the conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the womb of her mother, Saint Anne, free from original sin by virtue of the foreseen merits of her son Jesus Christ. The Catholic Church teaches that Mary was conceived by normal biological means, but God acted upon her soul at the time of her conception

It was a gnostic concept that if Mary was purified from original sin her son would be as well, thus he wasn't exactly flesh as you and I.

is catholic teaching the spirit of anti-Christ as taught by john? highly likely.