2 Peter 1:19–21

"We have also a more sure word of prophecy" should be rendered, "We have the word of prophecy made more sure." The word of prophecy is, of course, in the Old Testament. But is it not sure enough already? Why make it more sure? It should be understood as attesting, or confirming, the word of prophecy. The transfiguration confirmed the prophecies in the Old Testament.

On the holy mount God let chosen witnesses see, as a living scene, the central point to which all prophecy tends — the coming and kingdom of our Lord Jesus. Moses represented the dead saints, raised. Elijah represented the saints taken to heaven without dying. And there was the Lord Jesus, the head and centre of all blessedness and glory. Besides, there were saints in natural unchanged bodies: Peter, James and John. The whole group was like a seal, confirming what the prophets had given the people of God to expect.

The word translated "dark" in the original means "squalid" or "filthy." This world, with all its clever inventions and elegant splendour, is only a squalid place in God's sight. Every Christian taught by Him sees it the same way. The only real light in the squalor comes from the lamp of prophecy. Men dream up an empty "millennium" they will produce out of the present filth. The lamp of prophecy brings us into the light of God's purpose and His coming work of both judgment and salvation. It lets us see the squalor of the world that is, and the glory of the world to come.

The power of prophecy is that it lays bare what is going on in the course of this world, and takes it into judgment. If I know that judgment is coming, and that the weeds are to be burned, I shall not have anything to do with the weeds.

Here prophecy is compared to the lamp shining in a squalid place, and the heavenly hope to daylight — above all to the person of Christ as the day-star. Notice it is not "till the day come," or "till the arrival of the day of the Lord." It is "till the day dawn and the day-star arise in your hearts." It is the heart getting hold of the heavenly hope. It is the heart now having Christ as its constant hope, and so in the spirit and light of the day before it shines on the earth by and by.

The lamp is excellent for casting enough light on this dark world, its evil and its doom. They did well to pay attention to it, "till day dawn and a morning star arise in your hearts." That is, until they enjoy the bright heavenly relationship which Christianity, fully understood, gives us now in Christ. And until they hold the heavenly hope of His coming to bring us into the Father's house.

There is a difficulty connected with this verse. One suggested rendering removes it: "We have also the prophetic Word confirmed, to which you do well in taking heed (as to a lamp that shines in an obscure place, until the day dawn and the morning star arises) in your hearts." It does not mean that the morning star is to arise in the heart of the believer. It means that we should take heed to prophecy in our hearts. And how the entire prophetic Word, that blessed lamp, is needed in these darkening days!

"Its own" is the simplest, strictest and most common use of the disputed word, and it is the only sense that fits the context. It is hard to see why the King James Version and the Revised Version chose "private," except that they did not know what to make of it.

No prophecy of Scripture is its own interpreter: you cannot interpret it by taking it on its own. That is the plain translation.

Rome has used the word "private" to hold up its terrible lie that no private individual should ever interpret Scripture. As a result Rome discourages the reading of God's Word in every way... Only the prophetic Word is in view here... In interpreting prophecy, prophetic Scripture must be compared with prophetic Scripture. Prophecy must be taken as a whole.

Taking single texts away from their context has often been disastrous for interpretation, as we all know. But it has nothing at all to do with the so-called "right of private judgment," which is better called the liberty of the soul to hear for itself what the Spirit makes known to everyone.

It is instead a warning against treating each prophetic saying as if it stood alone — a self-contained statement to be interpreted apart from the whole body of prophetic teaching. All prophecy is connected and related, and can only be understood in connection with the whole. It was never spoken by the will of man, but by the inspiration of the Spirit of God. He used different men in different ages, but His one mind runs through it all.

They were all parts of one whole, with one and the same object: the kingdom of God. Each event was a step towards that object, a link in the chain of God's government that led to it. No link can be explained unless you grasp the aim of the whole — the revealed aim of God's counsels in the glory of His Christ.

Local circumstances of the moment give the occasion for a prophecy, but it forms part of a great whole, and Christ the King is the centre of that whole. Taking it on its own is like cutting a branch off a magnificent tree that it belongs to.

He does not deny that many a prophecy had its scope only in one particular, passing event important enough to call for it... Take the dreams of Pharaoh in Genesis, and of his two officials before that. Take the prophecies of Agabus in the book of Acts about the famine and about the apostle Paul. Many such prophecies are recorded in the Old Testament. Yet none of them is a prophecy of Scripture in the sense meant here.

Those who look for prophecy to be fulfilled before the Lord comes for us miss the joy of waiting for Christ. They see a close likeness between a prophecy and some passing event, but they do not know what it is to watch for the bright and morning star.

The will of man could never produce prophecy. Only God knows the future, and He has spoken about the future.

Man's will resists all this. Even if it were ever so eager to help, who is able except God to take in a range so vast, deep, and high? So the only possible power is that of the Holy Spirit. In His great love for man's blessing, God chose to tell us beforehand of those coming glories of Christ, just as through holy men He also predicted His sufferings.

Notice how verse 21 speaks of inspiration. "Holy men of God" spoke and wrote "moved by" or "borne along by" the Holy Spirit. They put their pens to paper under His power, so He is the real Author of what they wrote.

Those who wrote the books of the Bible were holy men of God, acknowledged by Him as His instruments. Moses was such a man of God (Psalm 90:1), as was Elijah, who could say, "the LORD... before whom I stand" (1 Kings 17:1). They stood before God, conscious that He was constantly looking on them.

By the Holy Spirit He moved them to speak far above the measure of their understanding. They took no place of authority, but in the lowliness of faith searched their own writings, wanting to find God's interpretation of them (1 Peter 1:10-12).

He brings down the exalted one and lifts up the lowly one, putting them on one common level. He uses them as He finds them, making them the channels of His thoughts and not their own. Yet here is the remarkable fact: He never does violence to their individual character. Peter remains Peter and Moses remains Moses. Their abilities show in their writings. Their style is there. Everything there speaks of the man, yet nothing there fails to speak of God.

It is a distortion of the truth to say that the writers were inspired, but not the writings. If 2 Peter 1:21 supports the first, the claim for the second is even more explicit and directly to the point in 2 Timothy 3:16... Not only were the men inspired, but so, according to the apostle Paul, is the result.

In 2 Peter 1:21 we get the claim in definite terms... for surely if the spoken prophecies were inspired, their being written down would not be less authoritative.

If man had no part in originating prophecy, then certainly mere man is not the interpreter of it.

No single prophecy must be read alone, as if it stood apart from the rest. Read each one in connection with the whole plan of it in the Word. "For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man" — so it is not the expression of the many minds of men. "But men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit" — there is One perfect mind throughout it.