The Diary That Proved the Mountain Was Real

On August 1, 1838, a young British lieutenant named John Hanning Speke stood at the edge of Lake Victoria and scratched precise coordinates into his leather journal. For years, armchair geographers in London had debated whether the source of the Nile even existed as described. Theories multiplied. Myths circulated. But Speke had been there. He had felt the mist on his face, tasted the freshwater, watched the river spill northward with his own eyes. When critics back in England dismissed his account as exaggeration, he could say with quiet certainty: I did not invent this. I stood on that shore.

Peter writes with that same unflinching confidence. "We did not follow cleverly devised myths," he insists. He was there on the holy mountain. He heard the voice of the Almighty tear through the silence like thunder: "This is my beloved Son." That was no secondhand story passed through unreliable channels. Peter's hands trembled. His knees buckled. The glory of Christ blazed before him like nothing he had ever witnessed.

And yet Peter says something remarkable — that we have something even more sure than his eyewitness testimony: the prophetic word, Scripture itself, shining like a lamp in a dark place. The explorer's journal fades. Ink deteriorates. But the Word of God holds steady, burning bright until the Morning Star rises in our hearts and every shadow finally gives way to dawn.