Prophetic experience was well known to Yahwism, and later to Judaism. It was no less known to early Christianity. In every age Yahwists, Jews, and Christians knew that people become prophets not because they want to, but because God calls them to this ministry...
Prophetic experience was well known to Yahwism, and later to Judaism. It was no less known to early Christianity. In every age Yahwists, Jews, and Christians knew that people become prophets not because they want to, but because God calls them to this ministry.
Of course, one could argue about "wanting to." Practically all the prophetic books speak of false prophets, who become especially numerous in troubled and unsettled times. Almost always the crowd takes these false prophets for true prophets and listens to them more willingly than to the true ones. Why is that? And who are these people who pass themselves off as prophets?
As can be seen, the issue is not prophets as such, but a kind of prophesying ecstatic. Such people have existed in every age and every society, and they usually become active in periods of special social unrest. There is nothing surprising here: ecstasy in itself is a purely psychological phenomenon. It is connected with a spontaneous expansion of the boundaries of perception, usually accompanied by a rapid and sharp restructuring of the perceiver's consciousness, usually temporary, though sometimes quite prolonged and in some cases even irreversible. Such expansion can be caused by many different things, from drugs to direct spiritual influence.
For genuine, true prophets, ecstasy was connected precisely with such spiritual influence. It is no accident that they themselves spoke of that breath, or "spirit," of God which they felt as completely real. And they testified to what they had heard during communion with God. But what did false prophets hear? As can be seen, what was, as people say, in the air. And they said, accordingly, what those who breathed that air wanted to hear from them. Unlike true prophets, who could speak only about what they had heard from God. And God, as everyone knows, does not always say what we would like to hear from Him. Then the listeners have to choose whose words to heed. Reason calls us to heed what is unpleasant to hear, since no one would willingly say unpleasant things to an overheated crowd. Emotions call us to incline toward those who say something pleasing to the ear. And the choice, as always, belongs to those who listen.
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1:12 Wherefore - Since everlasting destruction attends your sloth, everlasting glory your diligence, I will not neglect always to remind you of these things - Therefore he wrote another, so soon after the former, epistle. Though ye are established in the present truth - That truth which I am now declaring.
1:13 In this tabernacle - Or tent. How short is our abode in the body! How easily does a believer pass out of it!
1:14 Even as the Lord Jesus showed me - In the manner which had foretold, Joh 21:18, etc It is not improbable, he had also showed him that the time was now drawing nigh.
1:15 That ye may be able - By having this epistle among you.
1:16 These things are worthy to be always had in remembrance For they are not cunningly devised fables - Like those common among the heathens. While we made known to you the power and coming - That is, the powerful coming of Christ in glory. But if whatthey advanced of Christ was not true, if it was of their own invention, then to impose such a lie on the world as it was, in the very nature of things, above all human power to defend, and to do this at the expense of life and all things only to enrage the whole world, Jews and gentiles, against them, was no cunning, but was the greatest folly that men could have been guilty of.But were eyewitnesses of his majesty - At his transfiguration, which was a specimen of his glory at the last day.
1:17 For he received divine honour and inexpressible glory - Shining from heaven above the brightness of the sun.When there came such a voice from the excellent glory - That is, from God the Father. Mat 17:5.
1:18 And we - Peter, James, and John. St. John was still alive. Being with him in the holy mount - Made so by that glorious manifestation, as mount Horeb was of old, Exo 3:4-5.
1:19 And we - St. Peter here speaks in the name of allChristians. Have the word of prophecy - The words of Moses, Isaiah, and all the prophets, are one and the same word, every way consistent with itself. St. Peter does not cite any particular passage, but speaks of their entire testimony. More confirmed - By that display of his glorious majesty. To which word ye do well that ye take heed, as to a lamp which shone in a dark place - Wherein there was neither light nor window. Such anciently was the whole world, except that little spot where this lamp shone. Till the day should dawn - Till the full light of the gospel should break through the darkness. As is the difference between the light of a lamp and that of the day, such is that between the light of the Old Testament and of the New. And the morning star - Jesus Christ, Rev 22:16.Arise in your hearts - Be revealed in you.
1:20 Ye do well, as knowing this, that no scripture prophecy is of private interpretation - It is not any man's own word. It is God, not the prophet himself, who thereby interprets things till then unknown.
1:21 For prophecy came not of old by the will of man - Of any mere man whatever. But the holy men of God - Devoted to him, and set apart by him for that purpose, spake and wrote. Being moved - Literally, carried. They were purely passive therein.