The Mount of Transfiguration

158:4.1It was shortly be­fore break­fast time on this Tues­day morn­ing when Je­sus and his com­pan­ions ar­rived at the apos­tolic camp. As they drew near, they dis­cerned a con­sid­er­able crowd gath­ered around the apos­tles and soon be­gan to hear the loud words of ar­gu­ment and dis­pu­ta­tion of this group of about fifty per­sons, em­brac­ing the nine apos­tles and a gath­er­ing equally di­vided be­tween Je­ru­sa­lem scribes and be­liev­ing dis­ci­ples who had tracked Je­sus and his as­so­ciates in their jour­ney from Ma­g­a­dan.

158:4.2Al­though the crowd en­gaged in nu­mer­ous ar­gu­ments, the chief con­tro­versy was about a cer­tain cit­i­zen of Tiberias who had ar­rived the pre­ced­ing day in quest of Je­sus. This man, James of Safed, had a son about four­teen years old, an only child, who was severely af­flicted with epilepsy. In ad­di­tion to this ner­vous mal­ady this lad had be­come pos­sessed by one of those wan­der­ing, mis­chievous, and re­bel­lious mid­way­ers who were then pres­ent on earth and un­con­trolled, so that the youth was both epilep­tic and de­mon-pos­sessed.

158:4.3For al­most two weeks this anx­ious fa­ther, a mi­nor of­fi­cial of Herod An­tipas, had wan­dered about through the west­ern bor­ders of Philip’s do­mains, seek­ing Je­sus that he might en­treat him to cure this af­flicted son. And he did not catch up with the apos­tolic party un­til about noon of this day when Je­sus was up on the moun­tain with the three apos­tles.

158:4.4The nine apos­tles were much sur­prised and con­sid­er­ably per­turbed when this man, ac­com­pa­nied by al­most forty other per­sons who were look­ing for Je­sus, sud­denly came upon them. At the time of the ar­rival of this group the nine apos­tles, at least the ma­jor­ity of them, had suc­cumbed to their old temp­ta­tion—that of dis­cussing who should be great­est in the com­ing king­dom; they were busily ar­gu­ing about the prob­a­ble po­si­tions which would be as­signed the in­di­vid­ual apos­tles. They sim­ply could not free them­selves en­tirely from the long-cher­ished idea of the ma­te­rial mis­sion of the Mes­siah. And now that Je­sus him­self had ac­cepted their con­fes­sion that he was in­deed the De­liv­erer—at least he had ad­mit­ted the fact of his di­vin­ity—what was more nat­u­ral than that, dur­ing this pe­riod of sep­a­ra­tion from the Mas­ter, they should fall to talk­ing about those hopes and am­bi­tions which were up­per­most in their hearts. And they were en­gaged in these dis­cus­sions when James of Safed and his fel­low seek­ers af­ter Je­sus came upon them.

158:4.5An­drew stepped up to greet this fa­ther and his son, say­ing, “Whom do you seek?” Said James: “My good man, I search for your Mas­ter. I seek heal­ing for my af­flicted son. I would have Je­sus cast out this devil that pos­sesses my child.” And then the fa­ther pro­ceeded to re­late to the apos­tles how his son was so af­flicted that he had many times al­most lost his life as a re­sult of these ma­lig­nant seizures.

158:4.6As the apos­tles lis­tened, Si­mon Ze­lo­tes and Ju­das Is­car­iot stepped into the pres­ence of the fa­ther, say­ing: “We can heal him; you need not wait for the Mas­ter’s re­turn. We are am­bas­sadors of the king­dom; no longer do we hold these things in se­cret. Je­sus is the De­liv­erer, and the keys of the king­dom have been de­liv­ered to us.” By this time An­drew and Thomas were in con­sul­ta­tion at one side. Na­than­iel and the oth­ers looked on in amaze­ment; they were all aghast at the sud­den bold­ness, if not pre­sump­tion, of Si­mon and Ju­das. Then said the fa­ther: “If it has been given you to do these works, I pray that you will speak those words which will de­liver my child from this bond­age.” Then Si­mon stepped for­ward and, plac­ing his hand on the head of the child, looked di­rectly into his eyes and com­manded: “Come out of him, you un­clean spirit; in the name of Je­sus obey me.” But the lad had only a more vi­o­lent fit, while the scribes mocked the apos­tles in de­ri­sion, and the dis­ap­pointed be­liev­ers suf­fered the taunts of these un­friendly crit­ics.

158:4.7An­drew was deeply cha­grined at this ill-ad­vised ef­fort and its dis­mal fail­ure. He called the apos­tles aside for con­fer­ence and prayer. Af­ter this sea­son of med­i­ta­tion, feel­ing keenly the sting of their de­feat and sens­ing the hu­mil­i­a­tion rest­ing upon all of them, An­drew sought, in a sec­ond at­tempt, to cast out the de­mon, but only fail­ure crowned his ef­forts. An­drew frankly con­fessed de­feat and re­quested the fa­ther to re­main with them overnight or un­til Je­sus’ re­turn, say­ing: “Per­haps this sort goes not out ex­cept by the Mas­ter’s per­sonal com­mand.”

158:4.8And so, while Je­sus was de­scend­ing the moun­tain with the ex­u­ber­ant and ec­static Pe­ter, James, and John, their nine breth­ren like­wise were sleep­less in their con­fu­sion and down­cast hu­mil­i­a­tion. They were a de­jected and chas­tened group. But James of Safed would not give up. Al­though they could give him no idea as to when Je­sus might re­turn, he de­cided to stay on un­til the Mas­ter came back.