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2 Peter 1:16 · World English Bible

2 Peter 1:16 Meaning For We Didn’t Follow Cunningly Devised Fables

For we didn’t follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.

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What does 2 Peter 1:16 mean?

The power and coming of Christ are not clever stories handed down but an inner sight, and the eyewitnesses are those in whom the drama has already unfolded. Christ is your own imagination, asleep in you as your very life, and his coming is his awakening within you as yourself.

From the Manifestation reading below.

2 Peter 1:16 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

MANIFESTATION

Manifestation

The power and coming of Christ are not clever stories handed down but an inner sight, and the eyewitnesses are those in whom the drama has already unfolded. Christ is your own imagination, asleep in you as your very life, and his coming is his awakening within you as yourself. Those who speak of it are not repeating a tale about a distant man; they have watched it happen in their own being.

The gospel is not history to be believed at a distance. It is a story that must engraft itself upon you and grow, until the majesty it describes is seen from the inside as your own resurrection. A fable is something that stays outside you and never happens. This does not stay outside. In plain words, no one truly knows the coming of Christ by hearing about it; they know it by living through it, when the divine self buried in them wakes and they see, with their own eyes, that they are what the story was about.

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Manifestation lens

Live 2 Peter 1:16 today

  1. Take one idea you have agreed with for years without trying and run it for a day. Live as if it is true, and watch what actually happens in you.
  2. When a friend asks what you believe, skip the summary you have repeated before. Tell them something you have actually been through, even if it is smaller and messier.
  3. In a meeting where everyone is quoting the accepted line, check quietly whether you have ever seen it work yourself. If not, hold your opinion loosely and go find out.

What do I say I believe that I have never once tested in my own life?

The same truth in other traditions

Zen

A painted rice cake will not feed you. The teaching has to be eaten, not admired.

Buddhism · Kalama Sutta

Do not accept something because it was handed down or because a respected voice said it. Test it in your own experience, and keep what proves true there.

Sufism · Rumi

There is a knowing you get by being told and a knowing you get by being burned. Only one of them changes you.

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