ODJ: not fiction

November 29, 2015 

READ: 2 Peter 1:16-21 

You must realise that no prophecy in Scripture ever came from the prophet’s own understanding, or from human initiative. . . . They spoke from God (vv.20-21).

Recently a shop that’s part of a huge retail chain labelled its Bibles as “Fiction”. A pastor shopping for a gift came across the Bibles and saw “Fiction” written on the price tag. So he took a photo and posted it on social media with the comment: “[Name withheld] has Bibles for sale under the genre of FICTION. Hmm.” The retailer has since apologised, saying the Bibles were mislabelled and the mistake had been corrected.

You wouldn’t ever find the apostle Peter making a similar mistake. He was emphatic that he didn’t create cleverly invented fiction, but wrote from the real-life angle of his eyewitness experiences (2 Peter 1:16-18). “For we were not making up clever stories when we told you about the powerful coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. We saw his majestic splendour with our own eyes” (v.16). In other words, the Bible is grounded on historical truth.

At the transfiguration God affirmed Jesus as His Son. Philip said, “We have found the very person Moses and the prophets wrote about! His name is Jesus” (Matthew 17:1-9; John 1:45). And whatever the prophets wrote, it wasn’t the product of the authors’ “own understanding or from human initiative” (2 Peter 1:20-21).

Ensuring the accuracy and reliability of what was written, the human authors were “moved by the Holy Spirit”—the divine Author (v.21). In fact, the Holy Spirit guided different people of diverse backgrounds to reveal God’s inspired truth (Numbers 22:38; Jeremiah 1:6-7; Amos 7:14-15; Luke 1:1-4). So as he wrote of the power and trustworthiness of Scripture, Peter affirmed their authority to speak into our lives.

—K.T. Sim

365-day-plan: Ephesians 1:3-23