<p>4:1 <em>Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God. Because many false prophets have gone out into the world</em>- In John's Gospel and letters, the defining feature of true believers and teachers is that they have received the spirit of the Lord Jesus, the Comforter. The authenticity of teachers / &quot;prophets&quot; was to be demonstrated according to whether they had the fruits of the Spirit, which are summarized in love for our brethren as the Lord loved us unto death. This is the test of the spirits.</p><p>There were other tests of these prophets- if they didn&rsquo;t accept that Jesus was Lord, they didn&rsquo;t have the Spirit (1 Cor. 12:3). If they held false teaching about whether Jesus came in the flesh, and walked in hatred of the other Christians, they also were to be rejected (1 Jn. 4:1-10). When Paul says that God and the Holy Spirit witness to the truth of what he is writing, he is presumably referring to how those with the gift of discerning spirits had tested and approved what he was saying (Rom. 1:9; 9:1 cp. 2 Cor. 11:31; Gal. 1:20; 1 Tim. 2:7). What all this means is that as soon as a genuine New Testament prophet gave a prophecy, it was <em>immediately</em> recognized as such, because all these methods of &lsquo;testing the spirit&rsquo; had been followed. This, by the way, explains the very &lsquo;dogmatic&rsquo; and self-assured tone of some of the writers. They insist that their commands have God&rsquo;s authority (1 Thess. 4:2; 2 Thess. 2:15), and therefore must be obeyed (2 Thess. 3:14). They can insist that what they are saying is actually the will and command of the Lord (1 Cor. 14:37); and their inspired preaching was &ldquo;of the Holy Spirit&rdquo; (1 Cor. 2:13). These claims would have come over as arrogant and baseless- unless there had indeed been the process of confirmation of their words explained above. The writers can ask for their letters to be read at the gatherings of the early church- which initially would have been based around the synagogue practice of reading from the Old Testament Scriptures. Their writings were clearly accepted on a par with those writings- as soon as they were issued (1 Thess. 5:27; Col. 4:16; Rev. 1:3). The testings of the various claims to Holy Spirit inspiration are to be found in Gal. 1, 1 Cor. 14 etc. But the letters of John, written at the end of the New Testament period, have the most warnings about the need to test the various claims of Holy Spirit inspiration- understandably, as John was writing towards the end of the period when inspired writings were being given (1 Jn. 4:2,3; 5:6; 2 Jn. 7). See on 1 Cor. 14:29; 1 Tim. 5:18.</p>