The Mount of Transfiguration

158:2.1For about half the dis­tance down the moun­tain not a word was spo­ken. Je­sus then be­gan the con­ver­sa­tion by re­mark­ing: “Make cer­tain that you tell no man, not even your breth­ren, what you have seen and heard on this moun­tain un­til the Son of Man has risen from the dead.” The three apos­tles were shocked and be­wil­dered by the Mas­ter’s words, “un­til the Son of Man has risen from the dead.” They had so re­cently reaf­firmed their faith in him as the De­liv­erer, the Son of God, and they had just be­held him trans­fig­ured in glory be­fore their very eyes, and now he be­gan to talk about “ris­ing from the dead”!

158:2.2Pe­ter shud­dered at the thought of the Mas­ter’s dy­ing—it was too dis­agree­able an idea to en­ter­tain—and fear­ing that James or John might ask some ques­tion rel­a­tive to this state­ment, he thought best to start up a di­vert­ing con­ver­sa­tion and, not know­ing what else to talk about, gave ex­pres­sion to the first thought com­ing into his mind, which was: “Mas­ter, why is it that the scribes say that Eli­jah must first come be­fore the Mes­siah shall ap­pear?” And Je­sus, know­ing that Pe­ter sought to avoid ref­er­ence to his death and res­ur­rec­tion, an­swered: “Eli­jah in­deed comes first to pre­pare the way for the Son of Man, who must suf­fer many things and fi­nally be re­jected. But I tell you that Eli­jah has al­ready come, and they re­ceived him not but did to him what­so­ever they willed.” And then did the three apos­tles per­ceive that he re­ferred to John the Bap­tist as Eli­jah. Je­sus knew that, if they in­sisted on re­gard­ing him as the Mes­siah, then must John be the Eli­jah of the prophecy.

158:2.3Je­sus en­joined si­lence about their ob­ser­va­tion of the fore­taste of his postres­ur­rec­tion glory be­cause he did not want to fos­ter the no­tion that, be­ing now re­ceived as the Mes­siah, he would in any de­gree ful­fill their er­ro­neous con­cepts of a won­der-work­ing de­liv­erer. Al­though Pe­ter, James, and John pon­dered all this in their minds, they spoke not of it to any man un­til af­ter the Mas­ter’s res­ur­rec­tion.

158:2.4As they con­tin­ued to de­scend the moun­tain, Je­sus said to them: “You would not re­ceive me as the Son of Man; there­fore have I con­sented to be re­ceived in ac­cor­dance with your set­tled de­ter­mi­na­tion, but, mis­take not, the will of my Fa­ther must pre­vail. If you thus choose to fol­low the in­cli­na­tion of your own wills, you must pre­pare to suf­fer many dis­ap­point­ments and ex­pe­ri­ence many tri­als, but the train­ing which I have given you should suf­fice to bring you tri­umphantly through even these sor­rows of your own choos­ing.”

158:2.5Je­sus did not take Pe­ter, James, and John with him up to the mount of the trans­fig­u­ra­tion be­cause they were in any sense bet­ter pre­pared than the other apos­tles to wit­ness what hap­pened, or be­cause they were spir­i­tu­ally more fit to en­joy such a rare priv­i­lege. Not at all. He well knew that none of the twelve were spir­i­tu­ally qual­i­fied for this ex­pe­ri­ence; there­fore did he take with him only the three apos­tles who were as­signed to ac­com­pany him at those times when he de­sired to be alone to en­joy soli­tary com­mu­nion.