1 John 4:1 - Spiritual gifts and testing the spirits

Spiritual gifts were common in the early church, however that did not mean that everyone that claimed to be giving an inspired utterance of some sort, eg a prophecy, actually was giving an inspired utterance. Some messages would be inspired (just to clarify, I do not mean inspired in the sense that Scripture is inspired), some would be people being simply mistaken or over enthusiastic, others would be deliberately misleading. We are to use discernment, we are to test the spirits, we are to test every message. And this applies to “normal preaching” just as much as to prophecy. Just because something sounds inspired, or sounds clever, does not mean that it is inspired or clever. “For many false prophets have gone out into the world” and there are still many false prophets.

When we think of the term prophet we sometimes think just of someone speaking in a “thus saith the Lord ..” way. This is usually an unwise thing to do anyway, but even so, we have too narrow a view of prophecy and being prophetic. Many LGBT proponents would claim to be led by the Spirit. We should test everything against the word of God.

Sometimes people say “the Lord told me to do” such and such a thing, and I have heard others say that when someone says that it is very hard to argue against them, or reject what they say. Why? I would have no problem at all. If someone comes to me and says the Lord told them something, then He may well have done so, but what I would do is first test it against Scripture. Then you consider the character of the person, practicalities, etc. And if someone is talking unbiblical nonsense then they are speaking unbiblical nonsense, regardless of how they may think they got the nonsense.

Now, I absolutely believe that God does speak to us as individuals and does reveal things to us (not in the sense of “new Scripture”), but if He does it will be entirely consistent with Scripture, and will usually be highlighting or bringing to life what is already in Scripture.  

Anyway, we are to test the spirits.