Truth always leaves clues
The Lord lamented that “this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted.” (Matthew 13:15) This was not merely the condition of especially wicked people. The Lord’s light was and is so advanced that very few did or do understand it. In most cases, it requires repeated attempts of teaching by lesser qualified intermediaries before you get it. The Lord’s description here probably applies to you just as well as it did the Pharisees. If you don’t already possess a certain quantum of truth, it is very unlikely that you will recognize it as true upon being exposed to it. Instead, like a scientist who lacks the instrumentation to observe a property directly, you will have to rely upon secondary evidence, what the scriptures describe as the fruits of the principle.
The Lord said:
15 Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
16 Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?
17 Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.
18 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.
19 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.
20 Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. (Matthew 7)
What does “good fruit” mean? Good means that which improves or benefits. The outcomes in a person’s life are determined by the light that the person lives according to. Outcomes here is not limited to a narrow interpretation.
“Good fruit” does not mean temporal prosperity. There are countless examples of righteous men from history who went through severe adversity, the chiefest of them the Lord himself. It is not in the absence of adversity that truth is manifest, but the endurance of godly character through it. When that begins to crack, when you see the limits of someone’s endurance, you will discover limits to their truth. God dwells in everlasting burnings, where he endures every bit of reality pertaining to our existence. Jesus corrected his disciples’ error in supposing a certain man’s physical handicap resulted from sin (see John 9:2-3). He said that the man’s blindness was actually a blessing so that “the works of God should be made manifest in him.” (John 9:2-3) When we judge, we ought to judge righteous judgment, or judgment according to God’s understanding, and not according to our sight, or man’s understanding: “Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.” (John 7:24)
Trees that bear evil fruit are hewn down and cast into the fire. While this almost certainly refers to the fires of hell, remember that just as the outcomes of righteousness do not wait until after death to manifest, neither do the outcomes of wickedness. Good fruit implies the capability to endure the vicissitudes of life—not to avoid them, as in the case of the righteous blind man, but to endure them.
Higher truth can withstand greater tribulation. Light and truth is, at its root, the mechanism by which God makes us capable of overcoming the things of this world. The more suffering a person can bear while maintaining Christ-like poise, the more truth they have. Poise can be deceptive when it is granted by ignorance. A fool can be very calm in the midst of a storm, because he has no reckoning of the storm.
Bearers of truth are humble. They truly believe that everything they know is incorrect or incomplete, and therefore are least likely to dismiss something out of hand.
Bearers of truth tend to overcome obstacles. They are more prepared for and resilient to future events because they have an expanded awareness. Bearers of truth do things differently. They don’t take people’s word for it. They think and act according to what they have determined is true, not what the crowd believes is true.
Bearers of truth do not have much respect for tradition. They test things. They adopt things most people won’t consider. Because of this, they are frequently ostracized from social groups, churches, and even workplaces.
While all of these qualities will manifest in someone who possesses further light and truth, none of them guarantee it. Those who pass these tests are worth investigating, but everything they present as putative truth must still be tested.
It may seem tempting to oversimplify the testing process. We live in a generation where people are unwilling to listen to an argument that is longer than a soundbite. When you limit a message to a certain level of simplicity, you cut yourself off from anything more substantial. You would not expect anyone to convey a college course in one sitting or stream a movie in five minutes. You should assume that significant ideas will require significant time to investigate. You can’t shortcut the process by substituting your feelings for your rational process—you will almost always feel bad about any corrective instruction; this is a well-known phenomenon called cognitive dissonance. You can’t shortcut the process by offering a low information prayer to God—he expects you to lay a foundation of informed reason using the rational faculties he has given you before crowning them with revelation.
While the reward for correctly mining truth from others is great, the risk is also high. You can reject bearers of truth, and you can accept frauds.
There are false messages
The existence of human messengers does not imply that all who claim to have a message from God actually do. There are people who are actuated by the devil, but claim to be inspired from God (see Alma 30:53). There are people who are con artists (short for convincing artists), who personally benefit from manipulating people to do as they say. There are people who are sincere, but of limited understanding, whose zeal exceeds their knowledge (see Romans 10:2). An apt example of this is Apollos, who went around preaching and teaching the baptism of John. He wasn’t preaching about Jesus only because he hadn’t yet heard of him (see Acts 18:24-26).
You won’t know which type of person you are dealing with until you test what they are saying. People with legitimate light and truth will be the minority.
There is a difference between a deceived prophet and a false prophet. Both exist. A false prophet never came from God. A false prophet is a total phony. False prophets are liars, and they know they are liars. A deceived prophet is different. A deceived prophet may have accessed the heavens. He may have had many interactions with God. He may have worked true, mighty wonders from heaven. Yet, none of these things prevents a man from teaching false doctrine, from being mistaken, or from teaching on a topic beyond his understanding. Prophets only know what God has shown them, and no prophet has seen everything. Like anyone else, prophets must synthesize what God has shown them with their understanding of everything else. Everything else could come from their understanding of the scriptures, studies of human behavior, cultural biases, and what they have heard from others.
Furthermore, all men are capable of possessing lesser truth. For example, consider John the Baptist. He preached a higher degree of truth than the Jews, but a lower degree of truth than Christ. Christ's teachings would not have been new or radical if they were simply the same things as John preached. They were not. Some followers of John recognized that Jesus had higher truth, and started listening to Jesus instead of John. Many did not. While post-Jesus followers of John (such as the disciples Paul encountered baptizing with the baptism of John) were not preaching false doctrine, they were certainly preaching doctrine of lesser light than the followers of Jesus (see Acts 19). Those who cling to lower light when shown higher light are akin to men who opt to eat stale, moldy bread when hot, fresh bread is offered to them.
This works the other way as well. Truth can come from anywhere, including from people who have previously done things that are clearly bad. The high priest who sentenced Jesus to death also gave a true prophecy:
49 And one of them, named Caiaphas, being the high priest that same year, said unto them, Ye know nothing at all,
50 Nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.
51 And this spake he not of himself: but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for that nation. (John 11)
Rejecting a principle for where it came from is perhaps the greatest form of unbelief. Most people mistakenly think they are testing a principle when in fact they are merely testing where it came from. The truthfulness of a principle has nothing to do with where it came from. It is by their fruits that ye shall know them. Not the trunk of the tree.
The source of a message does not impact its truthfulness.
No man is perfect. Given that truth, the search for deeper understanding of gospel principles will always include uncovering the mistakes, misconceptions, and limitations of understanding in others. This is completely natural given the process of seeking for truth. As referenced in another chapter, consider the analogy of a city at night. With various sources of light at different intensities, the truth seeker has an ever-changing snapshot of all truth currently understood by them. Some parts of this snapshot are more certain than others. For an outsider to see another’s viewpoint that is not in concordance with his own, then, is the norm and not the exception. Mistakes are simply a side effect of the process, just as dross is a byproduct of deriving metal from ore. The dross of others’ mistakes is not what truth-seekers are after. They will simply cast it aside in their search for the ore of personal improvement.
Past performance is not a validator of truth. A person can be totally right in the past, and totally wrong in the present, or vice versa. Every message must be independently evaluated: “...test everything; hold fast what is good.” (1 Thessalonians 5:21) One part of a sermon can be correct, even if another is not.
Don’t accept the messenger; accept the message
God makes use of vessels to do his work. Sometimes these are righteous vessels (like Isaiah), and sometimes these are wicked vessels (like Nebuchadnezzar). Most times, however, they are a little righteous and a little wicked (like Gideon, who did some things right and some things wrong). The righteousness of a man does not indicate that anything he says is true. The Bible is full of examples of true messages from God being delivered by men who were not worthy of emulation. On the other hand, the wickedness of a man does not indicate that a particular belief he has is not from God. The high priest who killed Jesus delivered a true prophecy (see John 11:49-51)!
The Lord Jesus was and is the perfect conduit of truth. Everything he teaches provides increased light and truth for everyone he teaches. This is an exceptional position. The amount of light and truth you possess will determine the probability of encountering more in someone else. Those with a normal amount—that is, very little—have a good chance of learning something from everyone they meet. Even in this case, this doesn’t mean that everything others believe represents incremental truth to you. Almost everyone you encounter will possess a mix of beliefs that represent increases in truth for you and beliefs that are lower than the truth you already possess. Some few people you encounter—and the more truth you have, the fewer they will be—will possess more truth than you on all or almost all subjects.
When we encounter anyone who has more light and truth than we do, our objective is to obtain all they have, become as close to God as they are, and then go find more light and truth elsewhere.
Unfortunately, this rarely happens. Most people are incredibly naive and will fall for any clown claiming spiritual experiences. Others are more discerning, but make a man their connection to God when they have validated some of his experiences and/or teachings. This latter case is common in the Bible, where on various occasions men would attach themselves to some prophet. These “schools of the prophets” are interesting. Can you recall the name of even one member of them, or one work they did? You can't, despite the fact that you can name the prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, etc. You see, content with making a man their idol, these people never ascended to connecting directly to God. Exceptions include Joshua, who created his own connection with God independent of Moses, and Elisha, who did the same independent of Elijah.
Please do not be so simple and foolish as to believe a man's message is correct just because he has had experiences with God. He could be a liar. He could be wrong. He could be clinging to lower truth. He could even be sent from God to lie to you. We ought to focus on the Lord Jesus, and scrutinize what we hear from men no matter what they have revealed or how beneficial it has been in the past.
Some people have had authentic experiences in the past, but have lost that light to the point where they cannot reproduce equal experiences in themselves, let alone instruct others on how to do so. This happens more frequently than I think people realize. If God visited you years ago, and never since, you really ought to humble yourself to the dust and ask him why. Spiritual experiences are meant to happen more frequently over time as one draws closer to God, not less frequently.
Do not assume that every spiritual experience comes from God. We seem to forget that Satan—the master counterfeiter—is always chomping at the bit to derail people. He is especially interested in derailing those who have been most successful in obtaining God. God only allows him to deceive to the degree that a person has the capacity to detect and withstand his deception. What this means is that those who have experienced the most are also the most likely to be deceived, because they are subjected to the greatest deceptive tactics.
Of particular vulnerability are those that haven't had an experience with God in a long time. Perhaps they slip into sin, or idleness, or pride, and have offended God but are unaware. Perhaps they are aware, but want both the fleeting pleasure of their sin and the peace that comes from a relationship with God. Of course, those can't co-exist. In any case, those more concerned with obtaining spiritual experiences than obtaining the reconciliation with God that generates them will find Satan all too willing to answer their pleas for spiritual experiences without the prerequisite repentance.
Walking the straight and narrow is a continuous experience. You have to consistently unlearn what you thought you knew and walk away from others who you thought were interested in knowing God the same way you were. Having one or many spiritual encounters in the past means nothing about your present standing with God. Like a fish, the only disciple that stays still is a dead one.
Always remember that a person can convey both truth and falsehood. Satan himself sometimes teaches truth in spite of it being surrounded by falsehood. When he told Adam and Eve that eating the fruit of knowledge would not kill them, which was a lie, he also told them it would give them understanding of good and evil, which was true. Men can likewise teach both true things and false things. A man's having taught truth in the past does not certify that whatever he teaches in the future will be true, and a man's having taught falsehood in the past does not certify that whatever he teaches in the future will be false.
Assuming one of worldly renown or one with spiritual experiences is right is trusting in the arm of the flesh.
Human beings love gurus. After all, it is much easier to decide whether a person is a so-called true messenger—a single, one-time decision—than it is to evaluate each teaching they offer independent from past experience.
Mortality is a dangerous place. A principle purpose of our being here is to learn to discern between good and evil. If it were as simple as identifying a person to whom we can attach ourselves to be saved, many more people would be saved. Instead, we are adrift and constantly bump up against putative truth. Most of it will be false, some of it will be true.
Most messengers will be completely false, and some few only a little false. There are plenty of examples of people who had one or two good ideas, or good ideas for a time, then veered off the rails.
When we believe that men's authority is required to save us, we set up certain individuals with dominion over us. We trust that whatever they tell us is God's word, and whatever they tell us to do is God's will. They become the source of truth for us. This is abominable idolatry. No matter what stature the idols have achieved with God, it can never bring you more than the glory of angels in the best case. In the worst case, it will lead you straight to hell.
Don’t outsource your relationship with God. It doesn't work like that. Salvation can only come through your personal relationship with God. You don't have the option of being saved in some other way. You can’t expect the awareness of others to translate into your knowledge. No matter what another person does, you still have to acquire light and truth for yourself in order to be saved.
Don’t reject the messenger; reject the message
Humility requires a belief that others might have something to teach you. Whenever you dismiss someone out of hand, it is an evidence of your pride. Consider Moses, who in spite of dwelling in heaven for 40 days and parting the sea, humbly accepted advice from his father in law—who had had none of these experiences as far as we know (see Exodus 18:24). If salvation is a function of knowledge (and it is), and if correction from others is the primary mechanism for conveying light and truth (and it is), then how we respond to criticism is the key upon which salvation hinges.
There is no better example of a messenger who was rejected out of hand than Jesus. The Lord Jesus was the holiest man to ever walk the earth. He worked constant, obvious miracles. He unlocked mysteries and preached great wisdom. You would think that those who knew him best would most clearly recognize his divinity. They didn’t.
When he preached in his hometown, the people responded with derision, even while acknowledging his abnormal wisdom and miracles:
54 And when he was come into his own country, he taught them in their synagogue, insomuch that they were astonished, and said, Whence hath this man this wisdom, and these mighty works?
55 Is not this the carpenter's son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas?
56 And his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things?
57 And they were offended in him. But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house.
58 And he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief. (Matthew 13)
His own siblings rejected him—at least initially:
3 His brethren therefore said unto him, Depart hence, and go into Judæa, that thy disciples also may see the works that thou doest.
4 For there is no man that doeth any thing in secret, and he himself seeketh to be known openly. If thou do these things, shew thyself to the world.
5 For neither did his brethren believe in him. (John 7)
You would think that strangers who knew him only because his miracles and teachings brought him fame would recognize these abnormal acts as tokens of truth. They didn’t.
After he had fed 5,000 with miraculously-produced bread, the people murmured because he said he came from heaven:
And they said, Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? how is it then that he saith, I came down from heaven? (John 6:42)
These people had just eaten the bread that Jesus had produced miraculously, and still their first reaction to his claim of being from heaven was to doubt and get angry.
Interaction with a person with more light and truth than you will increase your awareness, revealing what was previously undistinguished in you. Because the natural man is an enemy to God, more often than not what they reveal in you is evil of which you were not previously aware. The Lord said: “The world cannot hate you; but me it hateth, because I testify of it, that the works thereof are evil.” (John 7:7) A person whose eye is single to the glory of God will rejoice when someone corrects them. Most people, however, will recoil from light. The natural reaction to truth is anger. The devil makes you angry against that which is good (see 2 Nephi 28:20). The Lord taught about this interaction in clear terms:
19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.
21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God. (John 3)
All of this serves as a strong caution. Our inclination is to recoil from greater light and truth, and to misjudge those who carry it to us.
Why do you think God had holy men wear weird clothes (or no clothes!), live in caves, and spend their time making strange object lesson signs (e.g. lying on their side for more than a year, publicly cooking their food on a fire made of feces, marrying a known prostitute, etc.)? Was it perhaps to make it blatantly obvious that because his ways are higher than our ways (see Isaiah 55:8-9), we should expect that these people’s ways would seem strange to us, instead of writing off what they teach when they are?
Well did Isaiah write: “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” (Isaiah 5:20) He correctly predicted that the Lord would be “despised and rejected of men” (Isaiah 53:3) and that “he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.” (Isaiah 52:2) If the greatest of all is despicable and without beauty to the natural man, how can we expect that lesser emissaries of truth will be desirable in any way?
Evaluate the message independent of the messenger
Many people that you meet will have something to teach you. The key question is not whether someone has a different quantity of light and truth than you—everyone will. The questions are: 1) in what area and 2) which truth is higher? It is quite easy to sense a disparity in light and truth between yourself and another. However, it is nearly impossible to tell who is the more advanced until you test the new putative truth:
28 Now, we will compare the word unto a seed. Now, if ye give place, that a seed may be planted in your heart, behold, if it be a true seed, or a good seed, if ye do not cast it out by your unbelief, that ye will resist the Spirit of the Lord, behold, it will begin to swell within your breasts; and when you feel these swelling motions, ye will begin to say within yourselves—It must needs be that this is a good seed, or that the word is good, for it beginneth to enlarge my soul; yea, it beginneth to enlighten my understanding, yea, it beginneth to be delicious to me.
29 Now behold, would not this increase your faith? I say unto you, Yea; nevertheless it hath not grown up to a perfect knowledge.
30 But behold, as the seed swelleth, and sprouteth, and beginneth to grow, then you must needs say that the seed is good; for behold it swelleth, and sprouteth, and beginneth to grow. And now, behold, will not this strengthen your faith? Yea, it will strengthen your faith: for ye will say I know that this is a good seed; for behold it sprouteth and beginneth to grow.
31 And now, behold, are ye sure that this is a good seed? I say unto you, Yea; for every seed bringeth forth unto its own likeness.
32 Therefore, if a seed groweth it is good, but if it groweth not, behold it is not good, therefore it is cast away.
33 And now, behold, because ye have tried the experiment, and planted the seed, and it swelleth and sprouteth, and beginneth to grow, ye must needs know that the seed is good. (Alma 32)
You test a message by experimenting upon it. If you live it and improve, it is right. If you live it and do not improve, it is false. What a true messenger offers is the opportunity to experience what they claim to have experienced. If you have done what they have taught and not received what they have claimed to receive, one or both of you is a liar. Either you have not done what they have done, they have not experienced what they claim, or both. Anyone who follows a man is a fool. Anyone who follows a fool they have disproven through their lack of experiences is not only a fool, but a liar.
Anyone claiming experiences with God ought to be able to instruct others on how to obtain those same experiences. If they are unable to bring others who apply their ideas to the same experiences they claim, you can set them down as imposters. Their experiences either never happened, came from the devil, or happened long ago and they have since lost that light and replaced it with darkness through sin.
An ideal messenger of God will make himself redundant by successfully bringing up those who hear him to the point where they equal or surpass him in experiences with God, as Jethro did with Moses. Conversely, if we consider a man as the object of evaluation, instead of considering each message separately, we limit ourselves to the state obtained by that man. Unless that man is Jesus Christ, our decision will result in severe limitation on our part.
Conclusion
All light and truth are available to all people, but some people, through their heed and diligence, are much more effective at acquiring it than others. God uses these people to make further light and truth available to everyone else. Even those who are zealous in their obedience to God can require truth from other people in order to reach the next level of light and truth. Though Paul was zealously faithful to the light and truth he had inherited as a Pharisee, he rejected the Christian message from Jesus’ disciples. As part of his path forward, he was required to visit one of the preachers he had previously rejected to obtain a miraculous healing. He had previously ignored evidence of the higher truth possessed by the Christians, and had God not intervened with an unusual miracle, he would have permanently cut himself off from considerable progress towards God.
As we see in scriptural examples, the common response to people who possess greater light and truth is negative. For example, Paul was surrounded by Christians who were demonstrating powerful gifts from God accompanying their heretical teachings of the Lord Jesus. Instead of investigating it, he actively persecuted them.
We are accountable for all truth, from all people. There will be far more people who suppose they have greater light and truth than those who actually do . All putative truth must be tested. All new truth will be different, although all different ideas are not necessarily true. One can comprehend truths that lie below their understanding, but they cannot tell out of hand whether putative truths higher than they possess are true or not.
When we encounter anyone who has more light and truth than we do, our objective is to obtain all they have, become as close to God as they are, and then go find more light and truth elsewhere. When you encounter someone who possibly has more light and truth than you have, you should investigate it further. What you will probably do, though, is persecute, ignore, or reject that person. That which is different should never be dismissed out of hand.
Whenever God delivers his word, directly or through another person, those who reject that message will be cut off from the Lord until and unless they humble themselves and repent. This is why Nephi was told “Inasmuch as they will not hearken unto thy words they shall be cut off from the presence of the Lord. And behold, they were cut off from his presence.” (2 Nephi 5:20) This is equally as true for anyone who shares with you any truth that is beyond what you possess.
Oh, how important it is to obtain and heed God's word, whatever the source. All who hear the word of God from any source and on any topic ought to heed the warning of the unlikely prophet, Samuel the Lamanite:
Therefore repent ye, repent ye, lest by knowing these things and not doing them ye shall suffer yourselves to come under condemnation, and ye are brought down unto this second death. (Helaman 14:19)