Week 50 John
John says: do not believe everyone who claims to speak by the Spirit.
That sounds like if I’m a believer then I have to believe…and I also have to doubt.
The reason John tells me not to believe everything is because: there are many false prophets in the world.
I get a scrap of paper and on the top-left write GOD and a bunch of x’s flowing down the page toward Stick-figure Me at the bottom – Truths coming from the Lord. On the right-side I pencil-in WORLD (and the subtitle False-Prophets) with a stream of y’s coming at me – Non-Truths. And John says I have to test all of them.
My sheet of paper has a cascade of x’s and y’s streaming down on me and I have to test them…make some distinctions…discriminate…accept-reject. Not the easiest thing to do.
John’s advice is to go to the source. I have a Truth Source and a Non-Truth Source and John says: if (the source) acknowledges that Jesus Christ became a human being, that person has the Spirit of God. If (the source) does not acknowledge Jesus, that person is not from God.
So John’s base-level test for examining the flood of Truths & Non-Truths that wash over me all day long is this: does the source believe that the Lord Christ came to earth in material form from God.
There’s more to it but this is the place where I start.
Note: quotes from 1 John 4:1, 2, 3 (NLT)