Test spirits. See whether they’re antichrists.

1 John 4.1-3.

Years ago, a pagan who believes in angels asked me, “Do you talk to your angels?”

I don’t, actually. I talk to the Holy Spirit. Nothing against my angels—assuming I have angels specifically assigned to me like Secret Service agents. The jury’s still out on whether the bible teaches such a thing, although Christians who believe in guardian angels seem to believe really hard in ’em. And some of ’em do pray to them. Michael and Gabriel probably get tons of prayers from Roman Catholics. But since they’re not infinite like God, I’m not sure how many of those prayers they hear.

Besides, I pointed out to the pagan, how do I know the angels I’m talking to, are even good angels? They might be evil.

She was kinda stunned by this idea. Evil angels?

Well yeah. A lot of pagans have a massive blindspot when it comes to evil spirits. Most assume, same as Plato and the ancient Greeks did, that if you’re pure spirit you’re beyond good and evil; that those things are either the inventions of our society, but these spirits live on a higher plane than mortal human society. Or that all our evils are tied to being material, and as spirits they’re not material, and any evil which used to be in ’em is gone now. So if the ghost of Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest appears to you and offers advice, don’t worry about him being a vile, treasonous domestic terrorist; he’s on a higher plane now! (Though I’m fairly sure he’s on a much, much lower one.)

But outside of Greco-Roman paganism, most religions recognized there were such things as evil spirits. Ancient Hebrews and Christians did too. The devil has some angels on its side. Mt 25.41, Rv 12.7, 9 Devil’s evil; its angels are evil. Angels are likely spirits, and evil spirits often come up in the bible; Jesus kept having to throw ’em out of people. Once a whole legion of them.

So I’m not gonna be so naïve as to presume any angel who appears to me, is gonna be one of the good ones. (Especially if it encourages me to start a new religion. That’s happened once or twice that we know of.)

Just after John, in his first letter, told his audience 'we know God remains in us because he gave us his Spirit, 1Jn 3.24 he immediately points out we need to test those spirits which claim they’re from God. Certainly not all of ’em are!

1 John 4.1-3 KWL

1Beloved, don’t trust every spirit!

Instead test the spirits—

whether it’s from God.

For many fake prophets went out into the world.

2This is how you² know God’s spirit:

Every spirit which confesses

Christ Jesus came from God in the flesh.

3Every spirit which won’t confess Jesus—

which says he’s not from God—

this is a spirit of antichrist.

You² heard it’s coming,

and it’s in the world right now.

A legitimate spirit from God is gonna be orthodox in its theology. It’s gonna know God, and gonna correctly describe him. Whereas a phony spirit, an evil spirit, is gonna mess with our understanding of God, and lead us astray. Partly to drive us away from God, and render us as useless as possible to God’s kingdom… and partly because it’s such evil fun to mess with people.

Hence John’s really simple test. Is the spirit orthodox? Then it’s likely from God. Is it heretic? Then don’t trust it.

Trusting every spirit. Or none of them.

We humans are creatures of extremes. And the two extremes I see most often in Christianity, are either the folks who believe every prophet, and the folks who won’t believe any prophet. The extreme suckers and the extreme skeptics. The suckers love to track down prophets and embrace everything they have to say, no matter how iffy. The skeptics insist every prophet is a hoax, that the Holy Spirit doesn’t do this sort of thing anymore; some of them even quit Christianity if they’ve been burned badly enough by fakes.

In another of the apostles’ letters, Paul instructs us against dismissing the acts of the Holy Spirit:

1 Thessalonians 5.19-21 KJV

19Quench not the Spirit. 20Despise not prophesyings. 21Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.

In part because if it weren’t for the Holy Spirit speaking through prophets, we’d know very little about God. One of the foundations for knowing about God in the first place, is that he spoke through prophets! He 1.1 And if you’re thinking, “Well, but there’s the bible,” whom do you think wrote our bible? Duh, prophets inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Once Jesus returns to earth, prophets will no longer be necessary. 1Co 13.8 Meanwhile they’re very necessary. And because they’re necessary, they’re frequently counterfeited. The devil’s usual modus operandi is to play God anyway, and it’s had plenty of practice, and is very good at it. It’ll try to trick legitimate prophets. And if prophets aren’t on their guard, the devil’s gonna succeed. It regularly succeeds. Lookit all those prophets who manage to rack up a pretty good track record… and then suddenly they prophesy something which comes to nothing. Doesn’t happen at all. Sometimes the exact opposite happens. It’s because they got full of themselves; too proud of their success rate to remember to “prove all things,” and didn’t bother. So the devil took advantage.

It’s because of fake prophets, and because of legit prophets who might blow it, that we Christians are ordered throughout the scriptures to test them. John and Paul told us to do it; Moses did too. Dt 13, 18.22 Never blindly accept prophecy. Not even from trusted prophets. Confirm everything.

John already mentioned antichrists were coming, and are here. And an evil spirit will try to spread antichrist thinking as much as it can get away with. It’ll have great fun trying to convince us Jesus is all sorts of freakish things, then getting us to act upon these new beliefs. In this way, people have been led to believe

• Jesus isn’t real. Didn’t even exist. Pure fiction, invented by Christians. His resurrection story looks way too much like ancient resurrection myths to be actual history.
• Jesus did exist, but all the supernatural stories about him were invented by madmen. Or con artists. Or con-artist madmen. Either way they just want your money.
• Jesus did rise from the dead, but only spiritually, not physically. He only pretended to have a physical form anyway. He was a hologram who tricked everyone around him into thinking he’s material.
• Jesus never did die; he tricked some other sucker into dying in his place, then showed up alive so he could prove he’s alive, then got raptured straight to heaven like Elijah. [Muslims believe this one.]

None of these beliefs are new. They’ve all been around since John’s day. That’s why you’ll find these claims all the way back in Christian history, and whenever some skeptic claims, “People were saying this all the way back in the third century, so you know it’s true”—please; a very old falsehood is still a lie.

An antichrist spirit is gonna persist in whichever phony story is its favorite, and try really hard to convince us. Liars tend to do that. So John’s test for a fake prophet, and whatever evil spirit is behind that fake prophet, is to figure out which cockamamie story about Jesus it’s telling. If the depiction of Jesus isn’t orthodox, you can’t reasonably trust anything more it tells us.

If on the other hand it does accurately depict Jesus… well, keep testing. It might be, just as we Christians often are, right about Jesus, but wrong about other things. Spirits aren’t infallible; only the Holy Spirit is. Sometimes the spirit might be honestly mistaken—and if you correct it, and it humbly accepts correction, and otherwise behaves as a good fruitful Christian oughta, good! That’s considerably more trustworthy than any evil spirit, which’ll just double down and insist you’re who’s wrong. But as you can see, don’t automatically swallow everything a spirit says—same as we shouldn’t swallow everything a human says. Use your head.