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  18^th November 2025

TuesdayReflection

************************

Grant Richison

  exposes the mind of God to the mind of man

"Test all things; hold fast what is good"

.... 1 Thessalonians 5:21

By challenging the Thessalonians not to despise prophecies, Paul did not want to imply that they were gullible and swallowed any religious nonsense that might come their way.

This verse puts a qualification on the previous verse.

We test preaching (5:20) against the Word of God.
The final arbiter of truth is God's Word.
The word "test" means to test with the purpose to approve. We approve prophecy by the Bible.

"To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because there is no light in them" (Isaiah 8:20).

My dear friends, do not believe all who claim to have the Spirit, but test them to find out if the spirit they have comes from God. For many false prophets have gone out everywhere.
1 John 4:1

Satan is in the business of imitating God's Word.
Christians are to test truth as FBI agents examine counterfeit money.
Some people will contrive ideas and pass them off as God's ideas.

God wants us to test "all" things, not simply most things.
Do not condemn anything without first investigating it.
On the other hand, do not accept anything until you first test it against the objective truth of God's Word.

It is difficult to put aside our preconceptions about truth because we build security around what we believe.
Honesty means that we examine the Bible without bias as much as possible.

All Christians need to develop a sense of discernment.

Some people try to pawn off their personal ideas as being from God.
This confuses the voice of God with the voice of a man.
One drop of poison in your food spoils the entire meal.

False doctrine usually carries much truth.
The Devil is too smart to tempt you with absolute contradiction to what you believe. He takes what you believe and modifies it slightly.
Peter, for example, did not discern the plan of God, so Jesus rebuked him.

But Jesus turned around, looked at his disciples, and rebuked Peter. "Get away from me, Satan," he said. "Your thoughts don't come from God but from human nature!"
Mark 8:33

Jesus said in effect, "Peter, you are peddling the Devil's lie.
What may look right to you is, in fact, a lie."

Very few Christians today take the time to sniff out errors.
Everything seems to sit right with them because they do not rightly divide the word of truth.

Do your best to win full approval in God's sight, as a worker who is not ashamed of his work, one who correctly teaches the message of God's truth.
2 Timothy 2:15

This is an edited version.
The full article and Bible references are avaiable on request

'Dr. Grant C. Richison'
exposes the mind of God to the mind of man by expounding individual books of God's Word verse-by-verse.
Each study expounds a passage, forms a principle out of that passage, and shows how to apply that principle to your life.

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