³⁷ Now on the last day of the festival, Hoshana Rabbah, Yeshua stood and cried out, “If anyone is thirsty, let him keep coming to me and drinking! ³⁸ Whoever puts his trust in me, as the Scripture says, rivers of living water will flow from his inmost being!” ³⁹ (Now he said this about the Spirit, whom those who trusted in him were to receive later — the Spirit had not yet been given, because Yeshua had not yet been glorified.)

⁴⁰ On hearing his words, some people in the crowd said, “Surely this man is ‘the prophet’”; ⁴¹ others said, “This is the Messiah.” But others said, “How can the Messiah come from the Galil? ⁴² Doesn’t the Tanakh say that the Messiah is from the seed of David^[a] and comes from Beit-Lechem,^[b] the village where David lived?” ⁴³ So the people were divided because of him. ⁴⁴ Some wanted to arrest him, but no one laid a hand on him.

⁴⁵ The guards came back to the head cohanim and the P’rushim, who asked them, “Why didn’t you bring him in?” ⁴⁶ The guards replied, “No one ever spoke the way this man speaks!” ⁴⁷ “You mean you’ve been taken in as well?” the P’rushim retorted. ⁴⁸ “Has any of the authorities trusted him? Or any of the P’rushim? No! ⁴⁹ True, these ‘am-ha’aretz do, but they know nothing about the Torah, they are under a curse!”

⁵⁰ Nakdimon, the man who had gone to Yeshua before and was one of them, said to them, ⁵¹ “Our Torah doesn’t condemn a man — does it? — until after hearing from him and finding out what he’s doing.” ⁵² They replied, “You aren’t from the Galil too, are you? Study the Tanakh, and see for yourself that no prophet comes from the Galil!” ^[c]

4 Dear friends, don’t trust every spirit. On the contrary, test the spirits to see whether they are from God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. ² Here is how you recognize the Spirit of God: every spirit which acknowledges that Yeshua the Messiah came as a human being is from God, ³ and every spirit which does not acknowledge Yeshua is not from God — in fact, this is the spirit of the Anti-Messiah. You have heard that he is coming. Well, he’s here now, in the world already!

⁴ You, children, are from God and have overcome the false prophets, because he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. ⁵ They are from the world; therefore, they speak from the world’s viewpoint; and the world listens to them. ⁶ We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God doesn’t listen to us. This is how we distinguish the Spirit of truth from the spirit of error.