How to test the spirits whether they are from God or not.
Have you been in an awkward situation which involves someone saying that it cannot be questioned because it was the Holy Spirit?
Some so-called Spirit-led actions may make you avoid anything to do with the Holy Spirit.
But by reading the Bible, we cannot ignore the subject just because we want to avoid some potential potholes and traps.
So, how do we test the spirit to see whether it is from God or not?
I want to explore this subject leaning heavily on the teachings of David Martyn Lloyd-Jones who had a lot more experience and authority than myself!
David Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899–1981) was a Welsh Protestant minister and for almost 30 years, he was the minister of Westminster Chapel in London.
Lloyd-Jones preached for the last time on the 8th of June 1980 at Barcombe Baptist Chapel.
Table of Contents:
1. The Holy Spirit’s miracles are not to give us an easy life!
In theory, God can do anything because we know that He created everything, He divided the Red Sea, He scared off invading armies, etc.
So He could make our way smooth and problem-free!
Let’s think about that, God could have saved Noah and his family by performing a miracle to enable them to survive the flood.
But the Lord wanted Noah to spend a lifetime building a huge boat with lots of sweat and money!
Many of the biblical stories involve waiting years, and lots of heartache when the Lord could have intervened to make things easier, but He did not do that!
He is more interested in training us in patience and endurance so that we can share in His holiness (Hebrews 12:10).
So let us realise that the Holy Spirit’s miracles are not there to make our lives easy!
2. What is the Holy Spirit’s purpose?
If we know what the Holy Spirit’s purpose is, then we are more likely to recognise when a false spirit is at work.
Here is what the Bible says the Holy Spirit does – His purpose and aims:
- The Holy Spirit bears witness to Jesus Christ. (John 15:26)
- The Spirit reveals God’s wisdom to those He loves. (1 Corinthians 2:9–13)
- He is a Helper for all believers (John 14:26).
- By dwelling in Christians the Holy Spirit is a guarantee of their inheritance – that they will get to heaven. (Ephesians 1:13; 4:30)
- He helps believers to pray. (Romans 8:26).
- The Holy Spirit is praying and interceding for believers. (Romans 8:27)
- He washes at the point of conversion and continues to renew believers. (Titus 3:5).
- Also at conversion, believers are born again into God’s Kingdom by the power of the Spirit. (John 3:5)
- The Holy Spirit gives joy to believers. (1 Thessalonians 1:6)
- He gives hope to Christians. (Romans 15:13).
- The Spirit is opposed to the desires of the flesh and He wants to lead believers into righteousness. (Galatians 5:16–18)
- He wants to enable the fruit of the Spirit to become more evident. (Galatians 5:22–23)
- Believers need to be continually filled with the Spirit. (Ephesians 5:18).
- The Holy Spirit supplies spiritual gifts to believers. (1 Corinthians 12:4-11)
- He convicts unbelievers on sin, righteousness and judgment. (John 16:8) 2
If we keep in mind all these things that the Holy Spirit does, we will be able to judge more accurately what is of the Holy Spirit’s work and what is from a false spirit.
3. Issues with the Holy Spirit: Do not be swayed by impressive things!
Beware of getting over-impressed by ‘phenomena’ which include signs and wonders.
In saying that, I don’t mean I am against miracles and wonders because God spoke things into being from nothing.
The Lord is all-powerful and anything is potentially possible, but that does not mean that He will do that!
Jesus’ miracles seem to be extraordinary and yet not showy or done in such a way as to be a performance.
Sometimes Jesus would tell the healed person to not tell anyone else.
The crowds that saw Jesus perform miracles followed him because they wanted to see more miracles or they were just intrigued and wanted to hear more about the Kingdom of God.
Either way, Jesus did not hype the crowd up!
At times he tried to slip away to a quiet spot.
The problem with a crowd of people is that they are easily manipulated, but Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, are not interested in doing that because it does not lead to a genuine change of heart.
That is an area I particularly have a concern about the Toronto Blessing, see ‘Signs and Wonders‘.
Also, the presence of miracles does not mean that God is doing it.
Let’s remember, in the last days, the Satanic Beast will perform miracles and the crowd, the world, will be so impressed they will follow him:
One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed.
Revelation 13:3 NIV
The whole world was ASTONISHED and followed the beast.”
Just because a massive crowd gets caught up with things, that does not mean that it is from God – even if it is within a church worship service.
4. How to test whether the spirit is of God or not.
Satan comes as an angel of light and this is an area where we need to be cautious.
We need to test all things, which includes things of the Holy Spirit and we’ll look into this further down the page.
Allowing the gifts of the Holy Spirit within church services or meetings can create all sorts of issues – not because the Holy Spirit is untrustworthy, but because people are prone to misusing or faking these things.
The apostle John had a situation where there were false preachers teaching a different gospel.
He warned the congregations:
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.
1 John 4:1-3 ESV
By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.”
“In John’s own day, there were the Docetic Gnostics [that Christ did not have a real or natural body during his life on earth but only an apparent or phantom one 3 ] and Cerinthian Gnostics [that Jesus, the offspring of Joseph and Mary, received Christ at his baptism as a divine power revealing the unknown Father. This Christ left Jesus before the Passion and the Resurrection. 4 ] who denied the humanity of Christ, and in so doing, they also denied the deity of Christ” 5
So, this test was specifically for the situation that John was facing.
We cannot use this test on its own for other situations, because we read in the gospel of Mark:
And immediately there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit. And he cried out,
Mark 1:23-25 ESV
‘What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are— the Holy One of God.’
But Jesus rebuked him, saying, ‘Be silent, and come out of him!’ “
An evil spirit was saying that Jesus was ‘the Holy One of God’:
It is clear that the unclean spirit confessed Jesus as coming in the flesh; yet that was merely a verbal confession without the fruits of obedience.
‘How can we test the spirits to see if they are of God?’ Bible Ask. 6
Therefore, true confession carries a two fold meaning:
(1) to acknowledge the truth of the doctrine of the incarnation of the Son of God;
(2) to reveal in the life the effect of believing this doctrine.
The fullest interpretation calls for more than verbal agreement with a teaching: it demands the Christ-filled life.
Therefore, the obvious fruits of a Christ filled life means to confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh (1 John 4:1-3);
forsake sins (1 John 1:8-10);
keep God’s commandments (1 John 2:3-4; 5:2);
practice righteousness (1 John 2:29);
and love others (1 John 3:10; 4:17).”
The biggest area of safety is remembering that it is a person’s fruit – their godly character, that is important:
Jesus, talking about false prophets said:
Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
Matthew 7:19-20 NIV
Thus, by their fruit you will recognise them.“
In other words, if someone performs a sign or a miracle it isn’t any guarantee that the person is right with the Lord, or even that God has performed it!
The flow of Jesus’ teaching is interesting, which includes recognising people by their fruit, then people doing miraculous things and then He ends with an astonishing statement:
Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
Matthew 7:21-23 NIV
Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?‘
Then I will tell them plainly,
‘I never knew you. Away from me, you EVILDOERS!”
So, impressive phenomena do not prove anything in themselves.
There are many things that can create a phenomenon, so we mustn’t be carried along by it.
Test it and if it passes the checks then praise God!
5. Is it right to challenge the Holy Spirit – is that unbelief?
Another trap is being fearful of showing unbelief and so we then accept anything which seems to be miraculous.
This can lead to weird and wacky things.
A lot of what happened in what is now termed as the ‘Toronto Blessing’ falls into this area. To explore what this is and its history see the ‘Toronto Blessing Review‘.
I was at a prayer meeting where the leaders had encouraged everyone to ‘open themselves up’ and go with what they are ‘given’ and don’t question it, even if it seemed strange.
The results were chaotic; barking, crawling around on the floor, etc.
Only myself and another chap weren’t performing and we were told to stop resisting the Holy Spirit.
But we mustn’t open up ourselves to everything!
We have got to test things and not be pressured into a quick decision that we live to regret.
God will not hold it against us if we test these things because Paul tells us:
Do not put out the Spirit’s fire; do not treat prophecies with contempt.
1 Thessalonians 5:19-22 NIV
TEST EVERYTHING. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil.”
And John wrote:
Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.”
1 John 4:1 NIV
To question things is not unbelief, it is common sense and it is biblical!
Just because the gathering of Christians is doing strange things does not give you the thumbs up to do the same, because we need to test what is happening to see if it is from God.
Do not be afraid to test the spirits, it does not show you have unbelief, but it does show that you are biblically based.
See an article on what effect, if any, the filling of the Holy Spirit has upon our holiness.
How do I know that I am saved, does the Holy Spirit give assurance?
6. Issues with the Holy Spirit: Are the gifts ‘on tap’?
David Martyn Lloyd-Jones taught that tongues and spiritual gifts were given at a particular moment.
It was not something which we could turn on or off like a tap.
The key is found in the Apostle Paul’s teaching:
All these (gifts) are the work of one and the same Spirit, and He gives them to each one, just as He determines.”
1 Corinthians 12:11 NIV
Notice that these gifts are the work of the Holy Spirit and He determines who and when they should be used.
D. M. Lloyd-Jones said that someone cannot do a miracle when they want to.
It appears that Jesus performed miracles WHEN the power of the Lord was with him:
They had come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with Jesus to heal those who were ill.
Luke 5:17 NIV
This implies that he could do miracles at that point, but not at other times because the power of the Lord was not with him.
Gifts of the Holy Spirit can only be used when a commission is given from heaven.
This is especially important during public meetings, but what about during our personal devotions?
In the present climate on spiritual gifts, D. M. Lloyd-Jones’ teaching would raise a lot of eyebrows!
I have found his teaching interesting considering my own personal spiritual path.
So let’s keep an open mind and look at what Paul said:
I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you.”
1 Corinthians 14:18 NIV
Does Paul speak in tongues more than anyone else, because he decides to do that?
It would appear not, because he says ‘I THANK GOD that I speak in tongues more than all of you.’
Paul thanks God – why would he do that if he could speak in tongues at any point in time?
We don’t want to quench any of the Spirit’s work, so what do we make of this?
Perhaps in our personal devotions when we open our mouths to speak in tongues and the Spirit does spring up within us, then we continue with that until the streams of living water seem to stop flowing.
But on other occasions, we open our mouths to speak in tongues and it seems kind of ‘hollow’, so this teaching would recommend that we should stop because the Holy Spirit will determine another time when He will rise up within us.
‘I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you.’
How is the Holy Spirit involved in revivals?
How to be filled with the Holy Spirit.
7. Eagerly desire spiritual gifts and do not claim them – Issues with the Holy Spirit
D. M. Lloyd-Jones also said never to use the word ‘claim’ when talking about the gifts, because the Spirit may give, or not give, just as He chooses.
Desire the gifts but do not claim them:
Follow the way of love and EAGERLY DESIRE spiritual gifts, especially the gift of prophecy.”
1 Corinthians 14:1 NIV
Humility should accompany the gifts, this helps us to distinguish a true experience from a false one.
Every believer should seek to be filled with the Spirit so that they can be filled with power to be Christ’s witnesses.
That is the motive, to glorify the risen Christ, and not to seek after an experience.
In a letter sent to Dr. Gerald Golden D. M. Lloyd-Jones wrote:
I think it is quite without scriptural warrant to say all these gifts ended with the apostles or the apostolic era.
David Martyn Lloyd-Jones 7
I believe there have been undoubted miracles since then.
At the same time most of the claimed miracles by the Pentecostalists and others certainly do not belong to that category and can be explained psychologically or in other ways.
I am also of the opinion that most, if not all, of the people claiming to speak in tongues at the present time are certainly under a psychological rather than a spiritual influence.
But again I would not dare to say that ‘tongues’ are impossible at the present time.
Below is a video of D. M. Lloyd-Jones preaching on ‘The Gifts of the Holy Spirit’ – Sermon #8204 (Great Biblical Doctrines, Volume 2):
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See the next article in this series [4] How do I know I am saved? Answer: By the Holy Spirit’s work!
See the first article: Being filled with the Spirit adds nothing to our salvation, but it is a transforming event.
How does ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’ differ from the ‘filling’?
References and credits – open in new tabs:
For more info on D. M. Lloyd-Jones see: ‘Martyn_Lloyd-Jones’ Wikipedia
Photo of D. M. Lloyd-Jones from the cover of his book: ‘Knowing the Times’ ↩
‘What does the Holy Spirit do?’ Got Questions Ministries updated 4 January 2022 ↩
‘Docetism’ Encyclopaedia Britannica 11 April 2014 ↩
‘Cerinthus – Egyptian theologian’ Encyclopaedia Britannica 11 April 2014 ↩
‘Thru the Bible Commentary: The Epistles (1 John)’ by J. Vernon McGee, electronic ed., vol. 56 (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1991), 120. ↩
‘How can we test the spirits to see if they are of God?’ Bible Ask. 3 November 2016. ↩
Letter to Dr. Gerald Golden, September 1969 ↩