still in the dark

Week 50  1 Peter 1

Peter begins his letter talking about the topic of salvation but then for some reason takes a little sidetrack. It is salvation-related…but it’s more about prophets: salvation was something the prophets wanted to know more about. They prophesied about…salvation…even though they had many questions as to what it all could mean. They wondered what the Spirit of Christ within them was talking about when he told them in advance about Christ’s suffering and his great glory afterward.
Peter is kind of vague about how the mechanism of communication-transfer worked. He does say that the Spirit ‘within them’ was talking to them. Which is interesting but not too explicit.
More interesting to me is that the prophets themselves wanted to know more. Peter admits they had many questions as to what it all could mean. So even when a prophet got a miraculous forecast about the Lord he was – to some degree – still in the dark.
So for instance Isaiah said: to us a child is born…and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. This was good information no doubt. But it looks like Isaiah still had questions. Who will this be? When does he arrive? What’ll he do? What’ll things be like?
The prophets got correct – but not comprehensive – information.
They transmitted what they got but they – like their audience – still had plenty of questions.

Note: quotes from 1 Peter 1:10-11 (NLT) & Isaiah 9:6 (NIV)