What Does 1 Thessalonians 5:21 Mean?

(21) **Prove all things.**—The right reading inserts a “but”:—“I bid you pay all reverence to the cheering utterances of your prophets (comp. Acts 15:32); but take care! put everything to the test.” That the warning was needed, or would be needed soon, is shown by 2Thessalonians 2:2. It is couched in general terms (*all things*)*, *but, of course, has special reference to all things purporting to be manifestations of the Spirit. And how were these revelations to be tested? If they were not in accordance (1) with the original tradition (2Thessalonians 2:2), (2) with the supernatural inspirations of the other prophets who sat as judges (1Corinthians 14:29), (3) with enlightened common sense (1John 4:1), they could not be “good.” The word “good” here is not vague and general good in the moral sense—not the same Greek word as in 1Thessalonians 5:15—but “good” in the sense of “genuine,” “answering to the proper conception of what it purports to be.” The same word is used in the same sense in John 10:11.