Today, I am reading and commenting on 2 Peter 1-3.

The first thing which struck me was a comment which Peter made about Scripture.  He writes that no prophecy of Scripture came from the prophet’s own interpretation of things.  My understanding is that when Peter wrote that he considered ALL of Scripture to be prophecy (as used in Scripture, prophecy is not necessarily a prediction of future events).  Further, he writes that no prophecy was produced by human will.  Rather the prophets spoke from God as the Holy Spirit guided them.  The prophets were still human and we see that in the way they gave us God’s message, but it is still God’s message.

Peter tells us that alongside the prophets who gave us Scripture there were false prophets and today there are false teachers alongside those truly preaching God’s word.  The false teachers introduce destructive heresies.  They don’t do it openly.  Instead they pretend to believe Scripture.  They make claims that the writers of Scripture didn’t mean what we think they meant.  What they don’t say out loud, at least usually, is that they don’t think the writers of Scripture were speaking God’s words.  They will claim to love the Lord, but deny that Jesus rose from the dead.  Some of them think they have great faith, but that they have to keep secret what they truly believe because people “don’t understand.”  They are bold and arrogant, blaspheming about things which they do not understand.  They promise freedom, but are slaves of depravity and encourage others to surrender to the desires of the flesh.  If you need to hide what you believe from other believers, you are probably not following the Gospel.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.