THE ORIGIN OF GOD'S WORD

II Pet. 1:20-21 Above all, you must understand that no prophecy in Scripture ever came from the prophets themselves, or because they wanted to prophecy. It was the Holy Spirit who moved the prophets to speak from God.

Two things must clearly be understood here. One thing is that no part of God's Word comes from human origin. All Scripture comes from the heart and mind of God. God has told us everything He wants us to know about life and need to know. There is so much more He could have told us, but it is not for us to know now. Perhaps someday He will reveal more things to us, but not now. There will always be a limit on what we will know and understand because we are not God, but we can be sure of this: the Scriptures are absolutely true from beginning to end because they come from God himself.

The other thing we must understand is that God was absolutely in control of the revelation process. The writers of the Scriptures did not write because they wanted to do it; they were compelled by God to do it. God determined who would write and when it would be done. He determined how it would be done and what would be said. Be His direction alone we have the Scriptures. They are God's complete revelation and they are completely true. Period.

God is responsible for its content and we are responsible for our obedience to it. What we need to know about it, God makes it known. Some parts of it are beyond our understanding and we accept it as true simply because God said it. We never will be able to perfectly understand it, but we are made perfect before God when we live out what we do understand.

The key to Christian living is being students of the Word who live what they know.