Apostle John, writing in 1 John 4:1, says, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.”

We live in dark times today – darker than the days of Apostle John. With the expansion of the gospel of Christ comes the inevitable proliferation of the false prophets whose intent is to cast doubt on who God is, His Christ and what He is doing through His genuine servants.

Apostle John, observing his days and God’s Spirit speaking prophetically to our days, tasks every believer with the duty of testing spirits to determine if they are of God. He also gave us an insight into the sign of these false prophets, one that can readily be seen and heard whenever they speak.

Therefore, in this article, we shall look at a few ways to test the spirits and decipher which is of God and which is of the devil. This article is not exhaustive. So, I pray you to search the scriptures as there are many more parameters embedded in the same.

1. Watch their fruits – life and character.

Jesus tells us that by their fruits we shall know them because a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruits and vice versa (Matthew 7:15-20). No matter what people say, if their fruits are inconsistent with what they portray themselves to be, take their fruits and leave whatever they say. What yields the fruits is the seed inside them, and if that seed is not Christ, there is no way their fruits will resemble Christ.

You can be full of prayers, fasting, working of miracles and oratory, but when your daily life is full of lies, anger, hate, unforgiveness, pride, adultery and other works of the flesh listed in Galatians 5:19-21, you are not of Christ. Right living with God precedes and supersedes charisma.

A person who has the Spirit of God loves what God loves and hates what God hates. Simply put, he loves righteousness and hates iniquity.

2. The lens of the Bible

The Bible provides a solid gold standard against which everyone’s word and work is judged. We live in a dark world that is full of fake messages and anointings from heathen priests. However, the Word of God shines so brightly amidst this darkness (2 Peter 1:19). Therefore, to show that the words and works of these priests are evil, you bring them to the Light of God’s Word. Everything must be x-rayed through the lens of the Bible, or else one will be deceived.

This means that any behaviour, words, ambition, teaching, prophecies, thoughts and thought pattern that do not conform to the pattern of the Bible cannot be of Christ.

Christ Jesus, the express image of God and the Word of God personified, showed us an example to follow. So, we can say that Jesus is our gold standard. Pass them through Jesus, and their true nature will be revealed.

3. The Holy Spirit in you

Anyone who is born again has a seal of God upon him – that is the Spirit of God (2 Corinthians 1:22. Ephesians 1:13-14). As he grows, he also gets baptised with the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost in you can give you a signal that He is not the one operating in the person before you. There is an inner knowing that God’s Spirit whispers to you. So, any believer who has the Spirit of God and understands Him will get a signal when things are not right in a place.

Also, I want you to know that the Holy Spirit doesn’t want to lose you to evil spirits. He is not afraid of Satan, but at the same time, He doesn’t want to lose whatever is committed into His hands. Jesus has committed us into the hands of the Comforter during this Church age. So, the Holy Spirit, just as Jesus did, wants to keep whoever is under His care.

He detests unholy things. So, when the person before you has the spirit of the devil, the Spirit of God in you will give you signals.

4. Through discernment

This is similar to the point above. But it is not the gift of discernment. In this case, you can feel some uneasiness or unsettlement in your spirit that the spirit operating through your interlocutor or in an assembly is not of God.

This happened to Paul in Thyatira when he encountered the damsel who was possessed by the spirit of divination. After many days of repeating the same thing to the audience, Paul was grieved in his spirit against the spirit in the lady, and he commanded the spirit to leave her (Acts 16:16-18). So, that feeling of annoyance against the demon spirit is what I mean here.

Even when someone can be saying all the right things, he could be operating from an evil altar, and discernment will help you detect that. Satan and his ministers can disguise themselves as angels of light, but not forever (2 Corinthians 11:14-15)

5. Their stand on Jesus Christ

This is the first screening process I often undertake with teachers, pastors, apostles, prophets etc. If a teacher does not believe in Jesus Christ as God, he is none of His. This may sound basic, but some teachers have issues believing that Jesus is God despite innumerable scriptures that support this truth.

Furthermore, any teaching that goes against the humanity and deity of Christ cannot be of Christ (John 1:1. 1 John 4:3). This is another basic truth that is easily seen in scriptures but argued by some.

This also goes hand-in-hand with people who pick what to believe in the Bible and what not to believe. They always go for the verses in the Bible that align with their lifestyle and discard all others that rebuke them. Such spirits that lead people into living this way and teach others to live accordingly cannot be from God.

6. Self-promotion and emphasis on gain

When people always strive to project themselves and their accomplishments instead of or more than Christ and Him crucified, that sounds an alarm to me (1 Corinthians 2:2). Also, people who mistake godliness as a means for financial gain do not promote the gospel of Christ (1 Timothy 6:5).

These see preaching of the gospel as a means of enriching themselves financially instead of bringing the world to Christ. Their service to God is primarily based on what they can gain, so they devise means to make money, even twisting the Bible for that purpose.

When Simon the sorcerer desired the gift of the Holy Spirit for self-promotion and possibly making gains, Peter had to rebuke him sharply – Acts 8:18-23.

7. Eternity test

“This world is not my home. I’m just a passing through. My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blues,” sang a famous gospel singer, Jim Reeves. The truth of that song did not originate with him but had been there before he was conceived in his mother’s womb.

Jesus, speaking in John 14, told us that He was going to prepare a place for us, and when he is done, he will come to take us there. If our hope in Christ ends in this decayed world only, then we are truly, of all men, the most miserable (1 Corinthians 15:19).

We are told in Hebrews 11:9-10 that Abraham looked for the city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. Evidently, he wasn’t talking about this present earth but the new Jerusalem that will come down from God (Revelation 21:2). Paul, by the inspiration of the Spirit of God, writes again in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 and 1 Corinthians 15:52-54 about the resurrection of the dead and the transformation of the living saints to meet with Christ in the air and live forever with Him.

So, any minister whose theology does not include the eternal abode of the saints at death or rapture is not working with the Spirit of God.

8. Love and Unity Test

Any spirit that promotes hate for brethren, disunity and schism among believers can never be of God. The Bible clearly states that God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him (1 John 4:16).

Please note that we are not talking about love as the world intends it, but the true love which Christ exemplified (John 15:13), the Holy Spirit sheds abroad on the heart of every believer (Romans 5:5), and God continues to manifest (John 3:16).

The love that cares for the eternal destination of a man’s soul, that desires good for others and strives that the body of Christ remain one. The love that prays for the dying soul and encourages the feeble knees. The love that warns against sin and shines the light of the gospel in dark places. The love that strives to and encourages others to keep the commandments of God. That is the love I’m talking about.

One of the deepest heart cries of Jesus before his departure was for love and unity to reign among his disciples (John 13:34-35; 15:12-14; John 17:1-26). Seeing that the Holy Spirit will remind us of the things that Jesus taught, it is obvious that anyone who in any shape or form promotes disunity, even in a small assembly, does not have the spirit of God.

Are there other ways to test the spirit? Kindly add yours in the comments below. God bless and keep you.