All questions are answered within the belief system itself, usually with circular reasoning, for example: Whoever knows God listens to us, and he who is not of God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. (1 John 4:6) The tautology in this passage is absurd when you think about it, but deceptive and powerful for the person fearing for salvation. In essence, it says “We’re right and the world is wrong because we say so, and the proof of being of God is whether someone listens to us, while the proof of being wrong is listening to them.”
