Nicole,

             Thank you very much for writing back to me, and sharing much of your experiences, I really appreciated that.

When the apostle Peter was coming to the end of his life, when he was writing his second epistle, he referred back to his experience on the mount of transfiguration. What an exciting thing that must have been to see what he saw, and to actually hear the voice of the Father. So many of us today crave those kinds of experience, to see the miracles and to hear an audible voice of God! As far as many of us are concerned, it doesn’t get any better than that. Yet, it is in that very context that Peter wrote:

II Peter 1:16 For 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.

17 For 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.

18 And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount.

19 We 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:

20 Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.

21 For 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.

 

Peter shows that as great as seeing a miracle or a vision, or even hearing the audible voice of the Father, that what we have in the scriptures is a more sure word of prophecy. The scriptures are more sure, than a vision or a dream, because he guarantees that, right there in Second Peter, that the scriptures came directly from the Holy Ghost, and are of no private interpretation. There is no scriptural guarantee that every dream of a believer is from the LORD, nor yet that our interpretations of those dreams are guaranteed to be of the Holy Ghost – we would like to think so, but the only guarantees are the scriptures themselves. Our experiences as believers are great, but they are just that, our experiences, and cannot be held up to be equal with the inspired word of God. A dream is a dream, but the scriptures are the perfect, pure, preserved, infallible, and inspired word of God.

                          Gino