"Knowing
this first, (and above everything) that no prophecy.…"
The word "prophecy" here in the New Testament,
usually does not mean the telling of the future, it does mean speaking forth,
proclaiming the Truth, this Gospel and the Christ of this Gospel. That is why in 1 Corinthians 14,
the greatest gift was prophecy, the giving of the gift to speak forth
the Word of God before it was printed. Remember, we are
always emphasizing, there was about eighteen years from the time
that Paul began his ministry among the Gentiles until he writes his
first Epistle to the Hebrew-Christians. So, for eighteen years, what did the early believers
depend on? Gifted men who could speak forth the Living Word of God,
in Spirit and in Truth and that is why it was the primary gift. In verse 21 is the answer.
2Peter
1:21
"For
the prophecy (the speaking forth) came not in
old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spoke as they were
moved (carried along) by the Holy Ghost."
That is the inspiration of Scripture. We can pick it up all
the way through the book. We do not ridicule very often, but when
people will make foolish, stupid, statements like, "Luke must
have been a tremendous keeper of a diary or he could have never
written any of the four synoptic gospels or the book of Acts." To me that is ridiculous. No writer of scripture went back to notes in
a diary. They did not write on what they had remembered. They did not
write on the basis of hearsay. They wrote as the Holy Spirit
funneled these thoughts through their hearts then into their minds. They were moved –
that is the inspiration of the scripture.
Otherwise,
how in the world could Moses write about creation, or Enoch of our
present Age of Grace, which took place 2,500 to 5,000 years before?
How in the world could Moses write about his own death, which was out
in front of him? But he did. That is the inspiration of the
Scriptures. And the same way with all of the writings of scripture. How could these men name King Cyrus 150 years before he
was ever born? By inspiration. How could Daniel lay out so
perfectly the coming Gentile empires, one after the other, long
before they happened? Or the last of days, the end of Jesus' ministration and the destruction of the Temple and the city Jerusalem which happened as he wrote, in 66-70 AD. By inspiration. And so it is throughout
this whole book, that which is still future, it is just as reliable
as that which is past. The problem is that when mere men try to lead others who are also blind, they both fall into the ditch and suffer lose, lose of life eternal. So the Holy Spirit moved holy men, righteous and spiritual men to write the
things that God wanted written and of course, as Paul puts it in 2Timothy:
2Timothy
3:16
"All
scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for
doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in
righteousness:"
All
right, now then guess we can go on into chapter 4, and verse 20. You know in the original there were no chapter breaks. But,
horror of horrors, what has happened to the truth of the inspired
scriptures? Oh, it has been attacked, undermined wrest and water down by writers and translators and
by what kind of people? False teachers.
In
verse 9 of 2 Timothy chapter 1 is the verse we want, and the verse
starts off by referring to the power of
of God.
2Timothy
1:9
"
Who (God) has saved us (already), and
called us with an holy calling*, not according to our
works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given us
in Christ Jesus before the world began,"
*now
holy doesn’t mean angelically pure or sinless, but rather we are
set apart. Remember even the vessels in the temple were holy, because
they were set apart only for temple use. So we are set apart for
God’s purposes. Just as Israel was to have remained a holy nation, of set apart people.
This does not go back to the unsearchable again but does take us back to Genesis. How in the world
can we comprehend that before anything was ever created, God already
knew use for what are we, and where are we. He knew us the same way.
There was absolutely nothing hidden from God, and it was all in His
divine purposes, His whole scheme of things, as it was laid out from
eternity past.
Back to Ephesians chapter 3. To look at verse 11
again. Remember everything that we comprehend of the mysteries are
all part of His eternal purpose. Did we mention that there are at
least seven revealed by Paul?
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