What Does 2 Peter 1:19-21 Mean?
2 Peter 1:19 And so we have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. 20 Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation. 21 For no prophecy was ever driven by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were driven by the Holy Spirit.
As a result of the Apostles hearing God’s voice affirming Jesus at the Transfiguration, they had the word of the prophets (the whole Old Testament) made even more certain in their minds than it already was (the New Testament confirms the Old). The Apostles’ teaching (the New Testament) and the word of the prophets (Old Testament) are both God’s Word. So we must pay it the same kind of attention you would pay to a lamp shining in a dark, dismal place—as your only access to truth and guidance in the world. Do that until Jesus comes back and brings light to the world and to your own heart. Then you will no longer need to use the Bible as a lamp in a dark place. When the prophets had visions and dreams, they didn’t know the meaning and never imposed their own. Nor did they want to. They waited for God to reveal it.

Divine Revelation: 
Why People Hate a God Who Speaks
2 Peter  Part 18
12/20/2025
2 Peter 1:19-21

Many Christians read the Bible every day and still drift away. Peter explains why—and how to make sure that never happens to you.

Introduction
Above All
Atheism, Agnosticism, and Anti-theism.
God’s Word, not Man’s
NOT Human Interpretation
NOT Human Will
Driven by the Spirit
The New Testament Solidifies the Old
The Prophets Made More Certain
Messianic Prophecy
Review: Peter’s Purpose Is to Keep You from Falling
The Meat of the Sandwich: Pay Attention
Pay Attention
Different Kinds of Attention
As to a Light
You’re In a Dark Place
Until the Day Dawns
Your Heart Is Also Dark
How This Is Done in Practice
1)	Stark Contrast
2) Central Focus
3)	The Only Light Source
Conclusion
Summary

2 Peter 1:19 And we have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. 20 Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation. 21 For no prophecy ever had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
Introduction
Above All
2 Peter 1:20 Above all When Peter says that (here and in 3:2), it means for the topic he’s addressing, this is the starting place for your thinking. Here, he says, “Above all ...” and then goes on to talk about God speaking. This whole section is about God communicating to mankind. The question of whether or not God has spoken is above all. Think about that for a second.
Atheism, Agnosticism, and Anti-theism.
Atheism, agnosticism, and anti-theism. The definitions of those words are shifting these days, but whatever labels you prefer, there are people who say there is no God, there are people who don’t know if there’s a God or not, and there are people who say it’s impossible for anyone to know. Those are very different views.  They’re saying opposite things. One side says, “There is definitely no God!” and the other side says, “Maybe there is.” You’d think those two sides would be natural enemies. But my observation is just the opposite.
If an agnostic comes online and says, “Maybe there is a God out there, but no one could possibly know him,” you don’t see a bunch of atheists or anti-theists jumping on and arguing with him. But when I post something about the Christian view of God, both the atheists and the agnostics are all over me with arguments.  And their arguments are pretty much the same in most cases. Anti-theists, atheists, and agnostics are like peas in a pod. They are allies with each other and seem to be bitterly opposed to Christian theism. 
Why is that? I think it’s because it’s not the existence of God that bothers them. What they hate is the idea of a God who communicates. That’s what gets them riled up, and it’s what they join forces to fight against. They really don’t mind the idea of a god, as long as he is silent.
The reason atheists, agnostics, and anti-theists get along so well is that the implications for the world we live in are pretty much the same for all three of those belief systems. But a world in which God spoke is a totally different world. That changes everything.
Think of how different your world is from theirs. In a world where God has spoken and revealed his purposes, life has meaning. For them, the only meaning of life is what they make up for themselves, so it’s really just pretend. They might imagine a purpose, but objectively, life has no more meaning than a glob of slime at the bottom of a garbage dumpster. 
And without purpose, there’s no direction. In a world with a silent God, your life is as aimless as a leaf in the wind.
In a world where God has spoken, we know what’s good and bad, right and wrong, moral and immoral. But in a world without God, right and wrong are nothing but popular opinion. So if you live in Nazi Germany, murdering innocent Jews is good, not evil. If you live in America in 1800, then enslaving Africans and treating them worse than animals was morally good. In countries where they all agree that if you decide a female member of the family has dishonored the family, it’s perfectly moral to just burn her alive as an “honor” killing. That’s their world—morality is just popular opinion and you just have to hope popular opinion never turns against you.
In a world where God speaks, we can know truth and be connected with the real world. We can know what’s going on in the spiritual realm, and we can know the meaning of what we observe in the physical realm.
In a world where God is absent, everything, including your brain, is just particles bumping into each other. The thoughts that happen in your head are nothing more than brain matter reacting to stimuli, like a bunch of billiard balls bouncing off each other. There’s no reason to assume the ideas created by all those reactions have anything to do with the real world. For that matter, there’s no reason to believe there even is a real world outside of your own thought life. If your thoughts are just mechanistic reactions, why trust them? The atheist has no good reason to trust his brain. But if there is a God who speaks, it stands to reason he would give us minds capable of understanding reality.
In a world where there is no communication between us and God, we are utterly helpless against the ravages of forces far greater than us. You’d be like an ant that could just be squashed at any moment. The forces of nature, the geopolitical world, sickness, the economy—all these huge forces outside of your control could just crush you without warning, and there is no one to appeal to for protection. No one to talk to who can do anything about it. And also no one to talk to who knows your heart and who cares about your life. No one to guide you, no one to rescue you, no one to protect you.
And in the silent God world, not only does your life have no meaning or direction, the whole human race has no purpose or meaning or value. But in a world where God has revealed his purposes in creating humanity, and his plan for bringing about that purpose, we know where things are headed. Instead of history just being the meaningless droning on of time until the universe finally runs down and dies a heat death, we know where everything is headed.  We know that history is moving along a very definite trajectory, and it’s all headed to a definite conclusion. And where each person fits in that final destination depends on the one part of what God has revealed that the critics hate the most.
Probably the biggest reason why agnostics and atheists and anti-theists get along so well with one another and are so militant against Christianity is this one point: Judgment Day. They really, really don’t want there to ever be a Judgment Day. They imagine a world with no Judgment Day, no hell, no ultimate justice, in fact, no guilt at all. We’re just all animals operating on instinct, “dancing to our DNA,” doing what our genetic programming compels us to do—you’ll never have to answer to a holy God for any wrongdoing.
The idea that God has spoken is one of the most fundamental aspects of the entire Christian worldview. We use the phrase “God’s Word” so often that we can forget the massive, universe-shaking implications of that phrase. The agnostics and atheists are so similar because the real issue isn’t so much the question of whether God exists, it’s whether or not there’s such a thing as God’s Word. That’s what they really hate, that’s what they’re on the warpath against, because if they can convince themselves that doesn’t exist, then they can create their own reality and have any worldview they want.
So all that to say, when Peter says, “Above all,” he’s not exaggerating.
God’s act of communicating to mankind is so fundamental to all of reality that the gospel of John starts this way:
John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word
Is that talking about the Bible?
No, it’s talking about God himself.
John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
God’s self-revelation is so essential to his nature that sometimes almost uses God’s Word interchangeably with God himself. The self-revealing aspect of God’s nature is the starting place for all understanding of reality. God has indeed spoken, he has spoken clearly, and he has done so in two stages. First, through the prophets in the Old Testament, then through the Apostles in the New Testament. Put those together, and you have God’s Word to mankind.
And that’s the main point of this closing paragraph of 2 Peter 1, where Peter serves up a Scripture sandwich. The top piece of bread is the New Testament (vv.17-18), and the bottom piece is the OT (vv.20-21). The meat in the middle is v.19, but I’ll save that for the end.
Peter doesn’t use the terms “New Testament” and “Old Testament.” He uses the terms “Apostles” and “Prophets.” The prophets wrote the OT Scriptures, and the Apostles wrote the NT Scriptures.  Peter uses that same terminology in ch.3—Prophets and Apostles.
And what’s the #1 thing you need to know about the Apostles?  They heard the voice of God.
2 Peter 1:17 ... the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory ... 18 We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven 
We covered that last time—the voice of God. Now let’s look at the bottom piece of bread, the OT. And guess what Peter’s main point is going to be? The Old Testament is ... the voice of God.
God’s Word, not Man’s
2 Peter 1:20 Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation. 21 For no prophecy ever had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
Could it be that the Bible just contains the word of God, so God's Word is in there somewhere but some of it has human origin? No. Peter uses absolute language twice in v.21. He says “no prophecy ever.” At no instance in the formation of Scripture did man's will ever prevail over what God wanted to communicate. In fact, repeatedly in the OT, God says the definition of a false prophet is someone who speaks his own ideas.
Ezekiel 13:3 ... Woe to the foolish prophets who follow their own spirit 
Jeremiah 23:16 Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you ... They speak visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the LORD.
Peter mentions those guys in the very next paragraph.
2 Peter 2:1 But there were also false prophets among the people
There have been plenty of prophets who spoke their own ideas, but Peter is assuring us that none of that ever made it into Scripture. (The word “Scripture” in that Jewish context referred to the same body of literature we call the Old Testament.) And Peter isn’t just giving his opinion—this comes on Jesus’ authority.
John 10:35 ... the Scripture cannot be broken
Jesus regarded the Old Testament as the word of God, and he established his credibility by rising from the dead. That’s how I know every single thing in the OT is not only true, but it’s God’s Word.
Peter spells this out for us, first by saying what didn’t happen, and then what did happen. Two things didn’t happen.
NOT Human Interpretation 
20 Above all, know that no prophecy of Scripture came about by his own interpretation
Some take that to refer to the reader’s interpretation, but I think the NIV gets it right here—it’s talking about the writer of prophecy, not the reader. I’ll record a separate message to defend that view. But I have a high level of certainty that what Peter is saying is that when the prophets had visions and dreams and revelations, they waited for God to tell them what the visions meant. The prophets didn’t try to interpret the visions themselves.  The prophets did not have the ability to create the vision or even interpret the vision. Nor did they have the desire to do so—that’s the second thing Peter says didn’t ever happen.
NOT Human Will
21 For no prophecy ever had its origin in the will of man The prophets couldn’t interpret their own revelations, nor did they want to. Whenever we’re told what the prophet wanted, it’s always that they didn’t want to be prophets. So often, when God called them, they resisted and had to be compelled. Jonah tried to run away when God called him to prophesy.  God had to send a whale to bring him back. It was rough on Ezekiel too.
Ezekiel 3:14 The Spirit then lifted me up and took me away, and I went in bitterness and in the anger of my spirit, with the strong hand of the Lord upon me.
Moses got into an extended argument with God: 
“No, God, not me. I can’t speak.”
God: “I’ll help you.”
“It’s still a no, God. The people won’t listen to me.”
God: “I’ll do miracles through you so they’ll listen.”
“You know what God—just send someone else.”
Jeremiah 1:4 The word of the Lord came to me, saying, 5 "... before you were born ... I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." 6 "Ah, Sovereign Lord," I said, "I do not know how to speak; I am only a child."
It wasn’t a life they chose. None of it came from the will of man.
Driven by the Spirit
So that’s what didn’t happen—what did happen?
21 ... but men spoke from God as they were driven by the Holy Spirit. This is the only mention of the Holy Spirit in 2 Peter. And what did he do? He drove the prophets to write Scripture.
That word “driven” is normally translated “carried.” But it’s also used of sailboats being driven by wind, and I think that works a little better here. Peter used that same word in the previous verse to describe what didn’t happen. Verse 20: “No prophecy was driven by the prophet’s will.” Verse 21: “... but men were driven by the Holy Spirit.”  The prophets didn’t drive the process; they were the ones being driven.
And Peter used that same word two other times back in vv.17-18. It’s hard to translate into English, but basically the idea is that when God spoke from heaven at the Transfiguration, the words were driven from God the Father to Jesus. So each time Peter uses this word, the point is the same—it all came from God, not from a human source. Peter just keeps making this point every way he can—NT and OT (Apostles and prophets)—100% God’s Word, zero from man.
The New Testament Solidifies the Old
The Prophets Made More Certain
And in v.19, Peter shows us the relationship between the OT and NT. The beginning of v.19 should be translated this way:
2 Peter 1:19 And as a result 
Peter is not just randomly bringing up the OT out of the blue. He’s drawing an inference from what he just said in v.18. v.18 - “We heard God speak from heaven ...” v.19 “and as a result of having heard God’s voice from heaven we now have the word of the prophets made more certain.”
As a result of hearing God’s voice on the mount of Transfiguration, we now have the entire OT made more certain than it already was. The NT makes the OT more certain. You say, “Wasn’t the Old Testament already as certain as it could be?” It was already as true as it could be, but our level of certainty can become stronger and stronger as we get more and more confirming evidence. And the Transfiguration confirms what the OT revealed. 
So the flow of thought is this: Peter says, “We saw Jesus’ Second Coming glory, we heard God speak from heaven, and so as a result of that, that supercharges our ability to trust the Old Testament prophecies.” (Especially the parts that talk about the Messiah, his kingdom, and Judgment Day.) We already believed the OT prophecies, but now that they’re starting to be fulfilled, it’s a whole lot easier to believe them.
Psalm 2 was clear enough before, but now, with God speaking from heaven and saying, “Jesus is the guy in Psalm 2,” that makes it ultra-clear. The New Testament increases our confidence in the Old Testament because it sheds additional light on it. Rather than being based on myths, the Apostles’ message was based on the Old Testament Scriptures, which have now been verified even more than they already were. In the words of Augustine, "The new is in the old concealed; the old is in the new revealed."
Messianic Prophecy
The OT starts with the promise that someday a human will defeat the serpent (Genesis 3:15). Everything that was broken in the fall will be restored. We keep reading, we find out he will be the ultimate prophet, greater than Moses (Deuteronomy 18). Then we find out that he will be the ultimate king, greater than David (2 Samuel 7) and the ultimate priest, in the order of Melchizedek who was greater than Abraham (Psalm 110), he’ll suffer and die for the sins of the people, but then he will see the light of life (Isaiah 53), and he’ll be the very Son of God, with total supremacy over the entire universe (Psalm 2), and he'll reign forever with absolute glorious supremacy (Daniel 7). That’s the messianic hope of the prophets that was already certain, but now it’s a whole lot clearer and easier to believe ever since God spoke from heaven and removed any doubt about who that Messiah is. That’s what it means that we now have the word of the prophets made more certain. 
We have a Creator who is capable of communication, he spoke clearly through the prophets and made it even more clear through the Apostles. 
Review: Peter’s Purpose Is to Keep You from Falling
Now remember Peter’s overall objective in writing this book. It’s to keep you from falling away. So he’ll spend the next two chapters warning you about the false teachers. But before he gets to that, he does something that’s more important than any warning. He anchors our faith in God’s Word. That’s the purpose of this closing paragraph of ch.1.
The false teachers will work their hardest at undermining your faith in the Second Coming. If they can get you to question whether Judgment Day is a real thing, plant the idea that it’s all mythology and not literal—if they can get you to take your eyes off the destination, then maybe you never reach that destination. So Peter prepares you for that onslaught by making sure you have absolute certainty that the world where God has spoken is the real world. And he did it through the Apostles and prophets. All Scripture is God’s Word.
The Meat of the Sandwich: Pay Attention
Now we’re ready for the meat of Peter’s Scripture sandwich. Top bread is the Apostles, bottom bread is the Prophets, taken together they give us rock-solid certainty. But that won’t be enough to keep you from falling unless you do what Peter says in the meat at the center of this passage in v.19.
2 Peter 1:19 ... we have the word of the prophets more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it.
You’ll be safe from falling away if you pay attention to the Word of God.
Pay Attention
That word translated “pay attention” is a strong word. It means to take it to heart. 	
Acts 16:14 ... The Lord opened [Lydia’s] heart to take heed to Paul's message.
Look deeply into God’s Word, think hard about it, take it to heart, and put it into practice. That’s what will keep you from ever falling away. The writer of Hebrews uses that same word to make the same point.
Hebrews 2:1 We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away.
It is your attachment to the Word of God that will keep you from falling away, and it’s when you become decoupled from the Word that your faith becomes vulnerable.
Different Kinds of Attention
That much you already knew, and that’s the point where every sermon I listened to on this passage stopped. The big conclusion was, “Pay close attention to the Bible.” But we can’t stop there, Peter doesn’t stop there because that’s not enough. Paying close attention to the Bible is not enough.
You pay attention to a lot of things, which is good. For example, you pay close attention to stop lights. (You’d better, or you’ll die.) But you pay attention to them in a certain way.  You pay attention to them specifically as the authority on stopping and going. If you pay close attention to a stop light, but you’re paying attention to their size or their shape or beauty or their texture—you’ll die. To stay alive in an intersection, you need not just pay attention to them, but the right kind of attention—attention as to an authority on stopping and going.
You pay attention to a comedian, but you pay a very different kind of attention to a physics professor.  You pay attention to your speedometer specifically for the purpose of knowing how fast you’re going and to your gas gauge to know how much longer you can drive. Mix those up, and you’ll just drive faster and faster until you run out of gas. You have to pay attention to things in the appropriate way.
A lot of people pay close attention to the Bible and still fall away. Bart Ehrman is a well-known NT scholar who used to be an evangelical but when he decided he couldn’t trust God with the problem of evil, he fell away from the faith and became an atheist.  He’s a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, and he’s on a quest to destroy the faith of as many Christians as he can. He’s still a Bible scholar.  That’s a guy who is devoting his entire career to paying attention to the Bible, and he probably looks at it more closely than any of us ever will, studying nuances of verb tenses and all kinds of minutiae. Close attention, but not the right kind of attention.
 Many Christians pay attention to the Bible as a chore that needs to be done each day—read your chapter. Some pastors pay attention to the Bible as a text to be mastered before Sunday. Some pay attention to the Bible as to a collection of inspiring quotations, or the way they pay attention to books like Chicken Soup for the Soul. So you can see why it wouldn’t have been enough for Peter to just say, “Pay close attention.” So here’s what he says:
As to a Light 
19 ... you will do well to pay attention to it ... (what kind of attention?) ... as to a light shining in a dark place
You’re In a Dark Place
This isn’t the typical word for “dark.” This word means murky, gloomy, filthy, or dismal. To make it a little more colloquial, we could say the Bible is like a light shining in a gross place. If you could suddenly see into the spiritual realm, you’d be shocked at how disgusting your surroundings are. It would turn your stomach. 
And not only is it gross; it’s also dark. You can’t see what’s true, it’s hard to navigate life. There are canyons and cliffs and pits and all kinds of dangers you could stumble into, but you can’t see where they are. But to make it through life, you have to walk miles through that morass.
How are you supposed to do that when you can’t see your hand in front of your face? It can only be done if you pay attention to the Word of God as to a light shining in a dark place.
Recently our pastor had an illustration about darkness so he had them cut all the lights while he was preaching. It was completely dark—you couldn’t see anything.  It was so dark, it was actually kind of disorienting. You could still hear the pastor’s voice coming through the sound system, but you couldn’t tell where he was.
Then, all of a sudden a light blinked on way over on the side of the platform. He had walked over there in the dark and lit the advent candle.  Every eye in that auditorium was fixed on the exact same spot.  It was impossible not to look at it. And it was impossible not to think about it. In that kind of darkness, one single light captures all your attention.
Peter is saying if you want to make sure you never fall away, you have to not just pay attention to God’s Word, but pay attention to it like that—like you would pay attention to that lamp in the pitch dark, dangerous, murky, morass.
Until the Day Dawns
19 ... pay attention to it as to a light shining in a dark place until the day dawns 
Pay attention ... until. What’s with the until? We’re going to stop paying attention to God’s Word after Jesus returns? Isn’t the Word of God eternal? Didn’t Jesus say, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away?” Yes. I believe we will be paying attention to the Scriptures for all eternity.  That won’t stop at the Second Coming.
But the way we will pay attention to it will change.  We will no longer pay attention to it as to a light shining in a dark place. We’ll still love his Word, but we won’t have to use it as a lantern anymore because we won’t be in a dark place anymore.
19 ... pay attention to it as to a light shining in a dark place until the day dawns 
Scripture refers to this present age as night time and the age to come as daytime.
Romans 13:12 The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. 
The Second Coming will be the first time this world has ever seen daytime. Spiritual darkness will be dispelled forever. 
Your Heart Is Also Dark
And not just in the world, but also in your heart.
2 Peter 1:19 ... pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. 
The “in your hearts” part has thrown some people. They see that and say, “Wait, is Peter saying the Second Coming is just a subjective experience that will happen in your heart and not in the outside world?” No. Peter is very clear in ch.3 that the Second Coming will affect the whole world.
2 Peter 3:10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare. ... 12 That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. 
He most definitely does not teach some kind of figurative second coming that's just an emotional or subjective experience that takes place in your heart. So why does he say the morning star rises in your hearts? It's because that will also happen.
When Jesus comes back, a bright new day will spread over the entire world creation. That will be an objective fact that everyone can see. But something is going to happen inside you as well.  The morning star will rise.
What is the morning star? Let’s see if we can dig in and unravel this mystery.
Revelation 22:16 I, Jesus, ... am the Morning Star.
Well, thanks Jesus. Mystery solved. 
So does this mean Jesus will rise inside your heart? Yes. Jesus says, “I am the morning star,” then he says this:
Revelation 2:26 To him who overcomes and does my will to the end, I will give authority over the nations ... 28 I will also give him the morning star.
So at the Second Coming, two things will happen—Jesus will appear in the sky, and he will rise in your heart. Why? Because the darkness and murkiness are a problem in both places. We need the lantern of God’s Word for two reasons—because the world is dark and because our own hearts are dark. Even if the world were well-lit spiritually, I still wouldn’t be able to navigate because of my own internal darkness. I have limited brain power, I have wrong attitudes and assumptions, I have all the effects of sin on my mind. Sin makes you dumber. And the squalid, debasing moral atmosphere of our world makes everyone morally stupid because it makes evil look good and it makes beautiful things look unappealing. It distorts everything. 
“Wait a minute, doesn’t the Bible say that the Holy Spirit enlightens the hearts of believers even now, in this life?” Yes.
2 Corinthians 4:6 For God ... made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God
We have enlightenment, but only through Scripture. The Spirit enlightens you by enabling you to understand and accept what is written in His Word. Without the Bible, your heart would lead you completely astray.
So Jesus will appear in the sky with thousands upon thousands of angels in glorious brilliance, and on that day he will also rise in my heart and bring a new dawn of enlightenment. When that happens, all our internal doubts and inability to perceive spiritual truth will be turned to certainty and spiritual perception. You will be able to just look around and see the spiritual realm because the morning star will rise in your heart. 
The light will rise over the world, and the light will rise in our hearts. There will be glory without and glory within. Is bright the sun that you behold? Then let imagination fly,  And multiply ten-thousand fold, Then let the answer fill the sky.  The Lord Majestic will return Ten-thousand brilliant suns ablaze,  And in my heart a star will burn With endless worship in its rays. 
That’s what’s coming, but until that day, our only hope is to pay attention to the Scriptures the way you would pay attention to a lantern in a filthy, dark place.
How This Is Done in Practice
Okay, so we get the metaphor—a lamp in a dark place, but what does that look like in practical terms? You open up your Bible, turn to the portion you want to read that day—how do you pay attention to it as to a light shining in a dark place?
1)	Stark Contrast
For one thing, you expect it to be in stark contrast to the world. Light and dark are opposites, so what you see in the Word should be in stark contrast with what you see in the world. If you paid attention to it as to a light in a bright place, then you’d expect it to match. You’d read what the Bible says, and if it doesn’t align with the natural way the world thinks, you’d say, “Oh, I must be misinterpreting the Bible. I’ll massage my interpretation of the Bible to make it match up with the world’s philosophy.” Genesis doesn’t seem to match what they teach in geology class, so I adjust my interpretation of the Bible to harmonize with the world’s doctrines. They say, “People will never listen to us if they think we’re a bunch of primitive neanderthals, so we need to show how the Bible is compatible with their cherished beliefs and all the conventional wisdom of our time.”
But Peter said, “No, it’s a light shining in a dark place,” which means your conclusions from Scripture should be very different from what the world is saying. So if your interpretation of the Bible does match up well with the world’s ideas about spiritual things, that’s when you should assume you’re probably making a mistake.
2) Central Focus
Secondly, a light in a dark place is impossible to miss. If you’re in a well-lit room with a whole bunch of lamps, you may or may not notice one of them. But in the dark, it’s the only focus of all your attention like that candle in the church. You don’t read your Bible in the morning like taking a vitamin and then get on with your day. You try to keep your attention on it as much as possible all day.
Psalm 1:1 Blessed is the man ... 2 whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.
3)	The Only Light Source
It’s a contrast to the world, it’s your consuming focus, and third—it’s your only light source. It’s the only lantern that can cut through that murky fog. If there were other lights in this world, then it wouldn’t be a dark place. The fact that it’s a dark place means there is no light—other than the lamp of God’s Word. Nothing in the world can shine any light to show you the way except the Word of God.
There are people who read their Bible as one of many lights. They get spiritual guidance from the Bible, but they also get a little from Chicken Soup for the Soul, or from their therapist, or from philosophy or psychology or science. Those people are not paying attention to God’s Word as to a light shining in a dark place. You can read all that other stuff, but every bit of it has to be checked against Scripture, because Scripture is the only spiritual light.
So you trust God’s Word above even this world’s most adamant beliefs, even if everyone thinks you’re an uneducated Neanderthal. You hold it before you all day as the central focus of your life. You trust it as the final authority on everything, it gets the last word on everything, it’s the final court of arbitration for everything.  It’s your only guide in life, it’s a lamp to your feet and a light to your path, it’s the only way to fight back the darkness of moral corruption inside you and out in the world, it’s your source of life, food for your soul, and the tether that connects you to the God who has spoken.
Conclusion
One thing Christians and atheists can fully agree on—we are living in two very different worlds, and one of those worlds is make believe. One world has hope, purpose, morality, direction, meaning, ultimate justice, and a glorious design.  The other is just particles bumping into each other and nothing else.
And the one factor that makes the difference between those vastly different worlds is expressed in two words: God spoke.
When we consider the utter emptiness and darkness of that nightmare of a world the atheists have invented, and we compare that to the wonders and beauty and light of the real world, we’re astonished that anyone would want to live in that world. 
And yet, when we go through those periods where we let our Bible gather dust, or we read it, but not with the singular focus as to a light shining in a dark place, what are we doing? We’re turning our back on the real world and drifting toward their hopeless, dark, make-believe world. That’s an insanity that’s even worse than the atheist who’s never experienced the real world.
But the more we turn our attention to the light of God’s Word and welcome it into our hearts, the deeper into God’s glorious realm we go (picture yourself entering into a beautiful, glorious, life-giving forest, and the deeper into the forest you explore, the fuller and richer your life becomes). 
What a treasure God has given us in his Word!

Summary
      A world where God has spoken is drastically different from one where he hasn’t. Peter makes a strong point that every part of the Bible and only the Bible is God’s Word.
     As a result of the Apostles hearing God’s voice affirming Jesus at the Transfiguration, they had the word of the prophets (the whole Old Testament) made even more certain in their minds than it already was (the New Testament confirms the Old). The Apostles’ teaching (the New Testament) and the word of the prophets (Old Testament) are both God’s Word. So we must pay it the same kind of attention you would pay to a lamp shining in a dark, dismal place—as your only access to truth and guidance in the world. Do that until Jesus comes back and brings light to the world and to your own heart. Then you will no longer need to use the Bible as a lamp in a dark place. When the prophets had visions and dreams, they didn’t know the meaning and never imposed their own. Nor did they want to. They waited for God to reveal it.