And we have something more sure, the prophetic word, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. – 2 Peter 1:19-21
I was raised in a good old Southern Baptist country
church. The Bible was considered the
Word of God, and as having what is technically called “full verbal plenary
inspiration”. If the King James Version
was good enough for the Apostle Paul, it was good enough for us. I learned the Scripture as a kid the same way
that I learned history, the state and federal constitutions in school. I don’t ever recall being an atheist or even
agnostic with regard to the existence of some kind of spiritual reality. Materialism made no sense to me, and the first
time I read about the Big Bang, I immediately reconciled it to the Bible and
equated it to God speaking creation into existence.
What I wasn’t sure of for a long time was Christianity,
especially Christianity as it had been preached, taught, understood, and
practiced by my good, church-going hillbilly family, friends, and
neighbors. My friends and I would sit
around drinking beer and smoking dope talking about Jesus as someone worthy of
respect and emulation while rejecting the pale, frowning, foreboding image
presented by our elders. I changed one
day as I was sitting at the little, round kitchen table we had in our trailer
where I was reading “A Chapter Not Strictly Necessary” in Miracles. I started going to
church.
Within a few months, I was not only attending church three
times a week, I was teaching. Generally,
I was teaching from a Sunday School quarterly, and, other than adding my own
rhetoric flourishes, metaphors, and illustrative stories, I stuck to the
doctrinal points in the lesson. Where I
would get into trouble was in talking to people off the cuff over lunch. I have heard many times the King James
Version of verse 20 above: Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the
scripture is of any private interpretation.
Often it was said this way, “Yes, but remember, there are no private
interpretations.”
What the speaker meant is that a) you have to be careful
about applying a verse to a specific situation in the world – something with
which I agree, or b) trying to understand Scripture in a way not perfectly
consistent with the generally accepted understanding and application is a bad
idea – something with which I disagree.
Even if I am wrong, this particular verse does not endorse that
view. What Peter is saying is that
Scripture is not something made up by a person to serve that person’s ends,
like the Book of Mormon or the Koran. With
apologies to any Mormons or Muslims that might happen to read this, that’s what
I believe else I would be a Mormon or Muslim.
Right?
As far as I can tell, revelation is always personal and
individual. By that, I do not mean to
imply that I disagree with any basic doctrine of Christianity or that I think
there is any way of salvation apart from the Cross. If God doesn’t speak to us personally, we do
not know God. If God speaks only to the congregation
and the revelation is only corporate then I do not see how an individual experiences
salvation apart from being initiated as a member of the corporate body. Indeed, this seems to be what is taught by
some churches. I don’t know that any
denomination puts it exactly like that, but such a statement would be
consistent with their practices.
To me Scripture is a carrier of revelation. I’ve told the story before of how I had that
experience of connecting to Christ and asked my wife to pick up a new Bible for
me. The one she bought was a KJV like my
old one, but more compact, about 4” by 6”, and no red letters or references. When I started reading it, I was astounded
that someone had the audacity to change the Bible. I was so convinced that it was different that
I dug out my old one to compare it. The
difference in the revelation was like night and day. But the words were the same.
I can read the same verse that I read ten years ago, even a
passage that I studied in depth or taught on, and, today, I will find a whole
new level of meaning and understanding it.
And I will sit here and say, Now I see what it really means. Ten years from now, if I should still be
living for some strange reason, I will likely read it, see something new, and
say the same thing. It is like what
Jeremiah says in Lamentations 3:21-23 -- But
this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to
an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
God’s revealing of Himself is a continual – we might even
want to say an evolving process. In any
long-term relationship with real friends or with a spouse, with children and
parents, there is always this kind of newness and discovery. If that isn’t there, the relationship can
falter and breakdown. It doesn’t mean
that a person needs to get a divorce or abandon a friend or never call home,
but it does mean there is less joy and meaning in the relationship. We may remain loyal and faithful out of
decency or a memory of what once existed.
With us as imperfect people the loss of interest in a bond
of love can usually be blamed on both parties to a greater or lesser
extent. When the bond is between us and
our Father, I’m pretty sure the fault lies all on my side. It is important for us to continue to pursue
God and never accept the rigid view that knowing all the doctrines of the
church means knowing all there is to know about Christ.
