Discerning the Spirits

Two revelations answer the same practical question — how do you tell what is of God from what only sounds like it — and both answer it with a test the hearer can apply rather than with a ruling from above.

What this page maps. Modern revelation, reported as the text gives it. Dates, places, and occasions are not in this wiki’s source text and are not stated.

Account

The problem stated

“Behold, verily I say unto you, that there are many spirits which are false spirits, which have gone forth in the earth, deceiving the world” (D&C 50:2); “And also Satan hath sought to deceive you, that he might overthrow you” (D&C 50:3); “Behold, I, the Lord, have looked upon you, and have seen abominations in the church that profess my name” (D&C 50:4). The problem is stated as internal as well as external: “Behold, verily I say unto you, there are hypocrites among you, who have deceived some, which has given the adversary power; but behold such shall be reclaimed” (D&C 50:7).

The test

The revelation does not answer by listing counterfeits. It asks a question and makes the hearers answer it: “Wherefore, I the Lord ask you this question—unto what were ye ordained?” (D&C 50:13); “To preach my gospel by the Spirit, even the Comforter which was sent forth to teach the truth” (D&C 50:14); “And then received ye spirits which ye could not understand, and received them to be of God; and in this are ye justified?” (D&C 50:15); “Behold ye shall answer this question yourselves; nevertheless, I will be merciful unto you; he that is weak among you hereafter shall be made strong” (D&C 50:16).

The test itself is symmetry between speaker and hearer: “Verily I say unto you, he that is ordained of me and sent forth to preach the word of truth by the Comforter, in the Spirit of truth, doth he preach it by the Spirit of truth or some other way?” (D&C 50:17); “And if it be by some other way it is not of God” (D&C 50:18); “And again, he that receiveth the word of truth, doth he receive it by the Spirit of truth or some other way?” (D&C 50:19); “If it be some other way it is not of God” (D&C 50:20). And the outcome when both halves hold: “Wherefore, he that preacheth and he that receiveth, understand one another, and both are edified and rejoice together” (D&C 50:22).

Then the criterion in its shortest form: “And that which doth not edify is not of God, and is darkness” (D&C 50:23); “That which is of God is light; and he that receiveth light, and continueth in God, receiveth more light; and that light groweth brighter and brighter until the perfect day” (D&C 50:24). The run “brighter and brighter” stands at exactly one distinct frozen verse in the corpus, D&C 50:24.

A procedure follows for a case the test does not settle: “if you behold a spirit manifested that you cannot understand, and you receive not that spirit, ye shall ask of the Father in the name of Jesus; and if he give not unto you that spirit, then you may know that it is not of God” (D&C 50:31); “And it shall be given unto you, power over that spirit; and you shall proclaim against that spirit with a loud voice that it is not of God—” (D&C 50:32); with a limit on manner: “Not with railing accusation, that ye be not overcome, neither with boasting nor rejoicing, lest you be seized therewith” (D&C 50:33).

A second test, called a pattern

Another revelation gives a differently-shaped test for the same problem: “And again, I will give unto you a pattern in all things, that ye may not be deceived; for Satan is abroad in the land, and he goeth forth deceiving the nations—” (D&C 52:14); “Wherefore he that prayeth, whose spirit is contrite, the same is accepted of me if he obey mine ordinances” (D&C 52:15); “He that speaketh, whose spirit is contrite, whose language is meek and edifieth, the same is of God if he obey mine ordinances” (D&C 52:16); “And again, he that is overcome and bringeth not forth fruits, even according to this pattern, is not of me” (D&C 52:18); “Wherefore, by this pattern ye shall know the spirits in all cases under the whole heavens” (D&C 52:19). The two tests share a criterion — what edifies — and differ in what else they require: the pattern adds contrition and obedience to ordinances, which the earlier test does not name.

A third revelation states the boundary rather than the test: “And this shall be a law unto you, that ye receive not the teachings of any that shall come before you as revelations or commandments” (D&C 43:5); “And this I give unto you that you may not be deceived, that you may know they are not of me” (D&C 43:6); “For verily I say unto you, that he that is ordained of me shall come in at the gate and be ordained as I have told you before” (D&C 43:7). And a fourth applies the same discipline to a named case: “And again, thou shalt take thy brother, Hiram Page, between him and thee alone, and tell him that those things which he hath written from that stone are not of me and that Satan deceiveth him” (D&C 28:11) — the correction to be delivered privately first, and grounded not in the content of the writings but in the order they broke: “For, behold, these things have not been appointed unto him” (D&C 28:12).

How the section closes

The section that opens on false spirits closes on the speaker’s own identity, in three clauses that stand elsewhere in the corpus.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 50:43: “And the Father and I are one. I am in the Father and the Father in me; and inasmuch as ye have received me, ye are in me and I in you.” - John 14:10: “Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.”

Divergences: the Gospel verse puts the clause as a question to a disciple, the revelation as a statement; the Gospel has a comma the revelation lacks. The revelation extends the figure outward in a way the Gospel verse does not — “ye are in me and I in you” (D&C 50:43). “I am in the Father” stands at seven distinct frozen verses in the corpus, including John 14:11, 3 Nephi 11:27, D&C 93:3 and D&C 93:20 — disclosed, not paired here.

[Textual] — verbatim quotation. () - D&C 50:44: “Wherefore, I am in your midst, and I am the good shepherd, and the stone of Israel. He that buildeth upon this rock shall never fall.” - John 10:11: “I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.”

Five words identical. The Gospel verse defines the title by what the shepherd does — “giveth his life for the sheep” (John 10:11) — where the revelation uses it as one of three titles in a row and moves straight to the rock. The sentence “I am the good shepherd” stands at three distinct frozen verses in the corpus: these two and John 10:14.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () The second of the three titles: - D&C 50:44: “Wherefore, I am in your midst, and I am the good shepherd, and the stone of Israel. He that buildeth upon this rock shall never fall.” - Genesis 49:24: “But his bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob; (from thence is the shepherd, the stone of Israel:)”

“the stone of Israel” stands at exactly these two distinct frozen verses in the corpus. The pairing of shepherd and stone is present in both — the older verse has them in the same parenthesis, “the shepherd, the stone of Israel” (Genesis 49:24); the revelation has them as consecutive self-designations (D&C 50:44). What differs is voice: the older verse speaks of a shepherd and stone in the third person within a blessing; the revelation speaks in the first.

Significance

Both tests put the burden on the hearer. “Behold ye shall answer this question yourselves” (D&C 50:16) is an unusual sentence in a book of commandments, and the criterion it leads to — edification, mutual understanding, light that grows — is one a congregation can apply without appeal to an officer. Alongside it the same range of revelations builds the opposite safeguard: a boundary rule about who may bring revelations at all (D&C 43:5–7), and a named correction delivered privately (D&C 28:11).

The wiki reports both and does not rank them. Whether the tests were meant to work together, and how, the texts do not say.

Key references

D&C 28:11–13 — a named case; the private correction; the covenant limit
D&C 43:5–7 — the law against receiving teachings offered as revelations
D&C 50:1–24 — false spirits; the question put back to the hearers; edification as the criterion
D&C 50:31–33, 50:43–46 — the procedure for an unrecognized spirit; the closing titles
D&C 52:14–19 — the pattern by which “ye shall know the spirits in all cases”

Gifts of the Spirit · The Order of Revelation · Opposition and Agency · Index · Connections

The three grand keys (D&C 129)

Section 129 belongs to the same family of tests, and it is the record’s most procedural entry — stated in the third person throughout, with no thus-saith-the-Lord formula anywhere in it, so this page attributes it to the record rather than to a revealed first-person voice. It supplies a taxonomy — “There are two kinds of beings in heaven” (D&C 129:1) — names a third pretender class — “If it be the devil as an angel of light” (D&C 129:8) — and gives a physical procedure: offer the hand, and read the result (D&C 129:4–8). The section closes: “These are three grand keys whereby you may know whether any administration is from God.” (D&C 129:9)

[Textual] — verbatim quotation. () The section’s proof-text for the first kind of being is the risen Lord’s own sentence: - D&C 129:2: “For instance, Jesus said: Handle me and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.” - Luke 24:39: “Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.”

Divergences: punctuation only inside the shared run — “handle me, and see” reads “Handle me and see”, the revelation capitalizing at the start of its quotation; the gospel verse’s opening clause has no counterpart. The revelation attributes the words to a named speaker (“For instance, Jesus said”) without naming a text.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 129:3: “Secondly: the spirits of just men made perfect, they who are not resurrected, but inherit the same glory.” - Hebrews 12:23: “and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect,”

Divergences: the epistle names the class as one item in a list; the revelation makes it the second of two kinds of beings and adds two definitions the epistle does not state. The run “the spirits of just men made perfect” stands at exactly these two distinct frozen verses in the corpus (D&C 129:3, Hebrews 12:23).

One phrase-fact, disclosed and not paired: “an angel of light” stands at four distinct frozen verses in the corpus — 2 Corinthians 11:14, 2 Nephi 9:9, D&C 128:20, D&C 129:8 — and no record is minted from it: the two nearest candidates both carry transform-language that 129:8 lacks, neither stands nearer than the other, and the shared run is four words.

Sources

Doctrine and Covenants sections 28, 43, 50, 52, and 129 (verse text only; headnotes excluded). Cross-references quoted from John 14, John 10, Genesis 49, Luke 24, and Hebrews 12; 3 Nephi 11 and D&C 93 are cited, not quoted, inside a disclosure.

Every quote is verbatim from the frozen source text, cited to its exact reference and checked character-for-character; no quote crosses a verse boundary. Five connection records are registered on this page, all [textual] and all asserted_by: wiki. The named case at D&C 28:11 is reported exactly as the verse gives it; nothing about the person named is supplied from outside the verse text. Phrase distributions are counts of distinct frozen verses in the corpus, derived by search at the time of writing.