March 2 Daily Devotional

Bible Reading

II Peter 1:12-21:

¹²Wherefore I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance of these things, though ye know them, and be established in the present truth.
¹³Yea, I think it meet, as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up by putting you in remembrance;
¹⁴Knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath shewed me.
¹⁵Moreover I will endeavour that ye may be able after my decease to have these things always in remembrance.
¹⁶For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.
¹⁷For he received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.
¹⁸And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount.
¹⁹We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts:
²⁰Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.
²¹For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

Devotional

The prophecy of Old Testament times was indeed spoken, as Peter tells us, by men. Isaiah and the other prophets of God in the past did give utterance to prophecy. But they spoke as they were moved, or borne, by the Holy Spirit. There was an activity of the Spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit, which made the words that they uttered the words of God. The prophets could declare with full truthfulness: "Thus saith the Lord." And what was true of the prophets of Old Testament times was true also of the writers of the New Testament. The words that Paul wrote, for example, were in a genuine sense the words of the Lord. He could say: "But we received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is from God; that we might know the things which were freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Spirit teacheth; combining spiritual things with spiritual words" (I Corinthians 2: 12, 13). Peter rightly spoke of Paul's epistles as Scripture along with the Old Testament (II Peter 3:16). The Bible in its entirety was breathed by God. It is God's Book. It is God's Word. It has the perfections that its divine Author alone could give it. It is the only infallible rule for faith and life, a lamp to our feet and a light to our path.

Welcome to "Think on These Things," a twelve-week daily devotional prepared by the late Dr. John H. Skilton, an ordained minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and for many years Chairman of the New Testament Department at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia.

We are indebted to P & R Publishing and Skilton House Ministries for permission to use this copyrighted material on the OPC Web site. (P & R held the copyright from 1975 to 2005, at which time they reassigned the copyright to Skilton House.)