CHARLO, New Brunswick, October 16, 2023 – This is how you can tell the difference between the God-inspired and the demon-driven, even when the demon-driven have the appearance of being God-inspired.

Jesus says when someone demands your coat, you give him your cloak as well. If someone asks you to go a mile, you go two. If someone borrows from you, you give without expecting to get it back. You love your enemies and pray blessings on those who hate and persecute you. This is what the God-inspired do.

The demon-inspired protect their possessions at gunpoint. They not only want what they have, they want what others have, too. They covet. They constantly scheme how to take more and more from others, whether money or possessions or land. The demon-driven lend expecting not only to get back what they’ve lent, but to get it back with interest. They hate their enemies and curse and dehumanize them, wishing only evil on them.

But more than anything else, the demon-inspired want to control. They want to control people, situations, organizations, and nations, and to do so by any means possible. Lying, cheating, stealing, and threats are their tried-and-trued methods. (Not much has changed since The Fall.)

The God-inspired, on the other hand, respect your free will, which they know is God-given. But they also urge you to use your free will wisely. The God-inspired inform you, advise you, guide you, and even at times persuade you, but they would never coerce, force, or trick you. Coercion, force, and trickery are the hallmarks of the demon-driven.

I mention the importance of discerning between the God-inspired and the demon-driven because we are currently neck-deep in a propaganda war made all the more deceptive by artificial intelligence. Claims are being made backed up by images and audio that may or may not be AI-generated (like the image above). We must question everything we see and hear online and on TV because all digital representations of reality can be altered and compromised. A talking head could in fact be just that – a digitally-generated image of a person saying something the person never actually said. Putting words into someone’s mouth has never been easier, thanks to AI.

The world chooses loyalties based on emotion and coercion, but we need to choose ours based on discernment. As born-again believers, we stand before God as his children, shoulder to shoulder with Jesus. Our unquestioning loyalty is to God and Jesus. If we choose to support someone or something in addition to God and Jesus, we must first use our discernment to see whether that person or thing is God-inspired or demon-driven and whether the evidence claimed for the support is real or contrived.

There is no excuse for born-again believers to be deceived or coerced into supporting a lie, as we are graced with God-given discernment for just such a purpose.

Now more than ever we need to be using it.