I have heard some people say: ″We are New Testament Christians. We don't need to read the Old Testament.″ Peter would be the first to object to such thinking. He has already recounted his own eyewitness testimony to the Transfiguration to support his teaching and refute the charge that he and others are following ″cleverly devised stories″ (2 Peter 1:16-18). Now he turns to the Old Testament to reinforce his point.

Peter uses the term ″prophetic message″ (v. 19) to refer to the Old Testament in a general sense, and more specifically to Old Testament prophets. The prophets did not speak of their own volition: they did not utter their own words or their own interpretation of things (vv. 20-21). They did not suddenly say to themselves: ″Right, I will write a prophecy after lunch today.″ Rather, they spoke the words which God gave them as they were inspired by the Holy Spirit. New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham puts it this way: ″The Holy Spirit of God inspired not only the prophets' dreams and visions, but also their interpretations of them, so that when they spoke the prophecies recorded in Scripture they were spokesmen for God himself.″⁶

Because of its divine origin, the prophetic message is completely reliable, and Christians can depend on it (v. 19). And because of its divine origin, we must pay careful attention to the prophetic word. It is the light shining in a dark place (v. 19). Light is often used metaphorically to refer to God's Word. In Psalm 119:105, God's Word is ″a lamp for my feet, a light on my path″. When the day dawns, however, the light is no longer needed: this is when the ″morning star″, which refers to the Messiah (v. 19; see Numbers 24:17; Revelation 22:16), will come and establish His glorious reign in all the earth.

This was what the Old Testament prophets looked forward to, as did the early church. We, too, anticipate the glorious reign of our Messiah. In the meantime, we need the light of His Word–including the Old Testament–to help us negotiate the dark world in which we live.