NOTES for Pe2 1:21

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.

After listing at the beginning of the chapter how growth in faith takes place, the apostle Peter brings us back to its first and most difficult act. The apostle even introduces the discussion by saying that, as long as he lives, he will continually remind them of it, and that after his death everyone should remind himself. He does not confuse them or tell them tales; he merely bears witness to what he himself saw and heard. He heard God the Father’s testimony about the Son, and he received Jesus as his Savior. This is not so easy to do, because this simple fact compels one to accept His Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection, and to accept all His words. One cannot limit oneself to a single step: once one agrees that Jesus is the beloved Son, one must accept everything in Him and everything about Him. It is as difficult as deciding to entrust oneself to a surgeon or to another person. But sooner or later there comes a moment of decision, when one must make this choice of faith that changes one’s whole life. Having remembered our conscious return to the Savior and remembered that all the prophecies were fulfilled in Him, we must preserve this knowledge while we remain “in the bodily tent” and pass it on, as it has been passed down from the apostle Peter to our own day.

Peter emphasizes once again that he is an eyewitness to Christ’s deeds and asks us to take particular account of the fact that his testimony about His teaching is not based on what others have told him, but on his own direct recollections. Peter bears witness to what he saw on the Mount of Transfiguration, about which Christ asked them not to speak “until the Son of Man is risen from the dead” (Matt. 17:9). We can hardly imagine how easy or difficult it was for Peter to keep such an astonishing event secret, but now the time has come to tell of it.

And here we see that the apostle places above his own testimony the prophetic word spoken several centuries earlier by those who did not live to see Christ’s coming. Personal experience as a witness might seem more important than something heard or read, but for Peter it matters that what he testifies to is an integral link in the unbroken chain of the one process of Revelation. In this process, what is new not only does not deny what was proclaimed before, but is confirmed by it and acknowledges everything that comes from God.