John 16:12-14
Therefore when a spirit speaks thru a person and that spirit is it’s own authority, then we know that spirit is not the Holy Spirit.
To pluck an example out of the air: the pope in Rome. The spirit which speaks thru his mouth is it’s own final authority, it speaks by its own authority, it is not submitted to the Father and the Son, and it is an independent authority bcos it’s teaching is independent from scripture and considered greater than scripture. When a teaching clashes with scripture then you have a clash of authority : a foreign spirit has come and is asking you to submit to what it says, and therefore it is trying to get you to submit to it, rather than the truth of scripture and the Author of it, who is the Truth.
In plain language: This means that when he states a truth, he is asking you to believe it on the grounds that it is HE who is saying it. He doesn’t defer to another greater authority as the grounds to believe and obey it. By contrast, a person who believes in the authority of Scripture never asks you to believe or submit to what they are saying just bcos it is them saying it.
All false prophets and teachers speak by their own authority, bcos it is the same unholy spirit working in them. They can never declare that you don’t need them, that the Scriptures are enough.
Ian Vincent 
July 21, 2009 at 4:01 am
I’m using the pope as an example bcos its very plain, but i’m not singling him out by any means as most of christendom and the theological paradigm functions that way.
Re: This means that when he states a truth, he is asking you to believe it on the grounds that it is HE who is saying it.
That would be the unspoken reality of it. People who believe and submit to what the pope and that institution declares do so on the basis of believing that they have some kind of authority instrinsic to their office, and NOT bcos they understand the Scriptures for themselves. Proof being that when asked they can’t articulate the truth themselves from the Scriptures, they can only quote a “higher authority”.
This is rife everywhere.