You weigh the teaching against the text, not against the teacher's charisma. A true thing from a flawed person is still true. A false thing from a magnetic person is still false. Pull the claim away from the personality and put it under the text, where charisma cannot help it. Your answers save in your browser as you go, so you can stop and come back.
Name the claim
Write the teaching down in one or two plain sentences. If you cannot state it plainly, you cannot test it. Vague claims hide from the text.
Verify the claim
Most people skip this and lose before they start. Before you weigh whether a teaching is true, confirm it is even real. If it fails any one of these, you are done.
1. Go to the source. Does it exist, and does it say what they claim?
Open it yourself. This space runs on fabricated quotes, invented etymologies, a midrash no one can locate, a verse that is not there. Search Sefaria for a Tanakh reference, or BibleGateway for a Christian Bible reference. Watch the numbering: Jewish and Christian Bibles count some verses differently. The teaching often dies right here.
The claim failed verification. The teaching dies here. You do not owe a fabricated source a hearing. You can stop now, or keep going to see how the rest of the test works.
2. Read the context. Does the claim survive the surrounding passage?
Pull back to the verses before and after, then the whole passage. A verse can say one thing alone and the opposite inside its paragraph.
The verse does not say in its paragraph what the teacher says it says alone. The claim failed verification. You are done, unless you want to see the rest of the method.
3. Check the Hebrew. Does the translation carry the meaning?
Whole doctrines hang on one mistranslated word. Run the key word through a real tool like Pealim or Morfix, or compare translations on Sefaria. If the claim rests on a New Testament verse that quotes Tanakh, find the Tanakh text it quotes and check the Hebrew there. The quote may follow the Greek Septuagint where it differs from the Hebrew. Ask whether the teacher built a tower on a translation error.
A doctrine built on a mistranslated word is built on nothing. The claim failed verification.
Which direction does it pull?
Toward the G-d of Israel and His Torah, or away from them. A sign, a feeling, or a fulfilled prediction does not save a teaching that moves you away (Deuteronomy 13). Direction overrides every wonder.
If it moves your worship, do not debate it. Leave. Deuteronomy 13 does not ask you to win the argument. It asks you to walk away.
Does it add or subtract a command?
Add nothing, subtract nothing (Deuteronomy 4:2). The obvious failures cancel a command. The sneaky ones add a new binding obligation that contradicts nothing, so it slips past a filter that only watches for what got removed. Watch both directions.
Flag it. A teaching that binds what Torah did not bind, or looses what Torah bound, fails at Deuteronomy 4:2 no matter how good it sounds.
Is there a second witness?
A matter is established by two or three witnesses (Deuteronomy 19:15). Apply this to the teaching, not to the text. A command G-d stated once stands on its own, because Torah said it. But a new doctrine built on a verse needs corroboration. Search the rest of Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings.
One anchor and no support is not established. It is one person's reading. You set it aside even when it contradicts nothing. That is not the same as calling it false.
How is it being sold?
The tests above weigh the teaching. These weigh the teacher. The enticer in Scripture works in secret and sells the new, the hidden, the thing they kept from you (Deuteronomy 13). Check any that apply.
None of these proves a teaching false on its own. Every one of them is a reason to slow down and run the full test before you move an inch.
Where the test points
The test points. You decide. No tool renders a verdict for you, and neither does a teacher. These are four different actions, not a thumbs up or down. Choose the one you are prepared to act on.
Your answers stay in this browser. The one exception: what you type in the claim step is sent to the research service when you click Do the Legwork, and only then.