The Mount of Transfiguration

158:6.1They re­mained overnight with Cel­sus, and that evening in the gar­den, af­ter they had eaten and rested, the twelve gath­ered about Je­sus, and Thomas said: “Mas­ter, while we who tar­ried be­hind still re­main ig­no­rant of what tran­spired up on the moun­tain, and which so greatly cheered our breth­ren who were with you, we crave to have you talk with us con­cern­ing our de­feat and in­struct us in these mat­ters, see­ing that those things which hap­pened on the moun­tain can­not be dis­closed at this time.”

158:6.2And Je­sus an­swered Thomas, say­ing: “Ev­ery­thing which your breth­ren heard on the moun­tain shall be re­vealed to you in due sea­son. But I will now show you the cause of your de­feat in that which you so un­wisely at­tempted. While your Mas­ter and his com­pan­ions, your breth­ren, as­cended yon­der moun­tain yes­ter­day to seek for a larger knowl­edge of the Fa­ther’s will and to ask for a richer en­dow­ment of wis­dom ef­fec­tively to do that di­vine will, you who re­mained on watch here with in­struc­tions to strive to ac­quire the mind of spir­i­tual in­sight and to pray with us for a fuller rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther’s will, failed to ex­er­cise the faith at your com­mand but, in­stead, yielded to the temp­ta­tion and fell into your old evil ten­den­cies to seek for your­selves pre­ferred places in the king­dom of heaven—the ma­te­rial and tem­po­ral king­dom which you per­sist in con­tem­plat­ing. And you cling to these er­ro­neous con­cepts in spite of the re­it­er­ated dec­la­ra­tion that my king­dom is not of this world.

158:6.3“No sooner does your faith grasp the iden­tity of the Son of Man than your self­ish de­sire for worldly prefer­ment creeps back upon you, and you fall to dis­cussing among your­selves as to who should be great­est in the king­dom of heaven, a king­dom which, as you per­sist in con­ceiv­ing it, does not ex­ist, nor ever shall. Have not I told you that he who would be great­est in the king­dom of my Fa­ther’s spir­i­tual broth­er­hood must be­come lit­tle in his own eyes and thus be­come the server of his breth­ren? Spir­i­tual great­ness con­sists in an un­der­stand­ing love that is God­like and not in an en­joy­ment of the ex­er­cise of ma­te­rial power for the ex­al­ta­tion of self. In what you at­tempted, in which you so com­pletely failed, your pur­pose was not pure. Your mo­tive was not di­vine. Your ideal was not spir­i­tual. Your am­bi­tion was not al­tru­is­tic. Your pro­ce­dure was not based on love, and your goal of at­tain­ment was not the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.

158:6.4“How long will it take you to learn that you can­not time-shorten the course of es­tab­lished nat­u­ral phe­nom­ena ex­cept when such things are in ac­cor­dance with the Fa­ther’s will? nor can you do spir­i­tual work in the ab­sence of spir­i­tual power. And you can do nei­ther of these, even when their po­ten­tial is pres­ent, with­out the ex­is­tence of that third and es­sen­tial hu­man fac­tor, the per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence of the pos­ses­sion of liv­ing faith. Must you al­ways have ma­te­rial man­i­fes­ta­tions as an at­trac­tion for the spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of the king­dom? Can you not grasp the spirit sig­nif­i­cance of my mis­sion with­out the vis­i­ble ex­hi­bi­tion of un­usual works? When can you be de­pended upon to ad­here to the higher and spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of the king­dom re­gard­less of the out­ward ap­pear­ance of all ma­te­rial man­i­fes­ta­tions?”

158:6.5When Je­sus had thus spo­ken to the twelve, he added: “And now go to your rest, for on the mor­row we re­turn to Ma­g­a­dan and there take coun­sel con­cern­ing our mis­sion to the cities and vil­lages of the De­capo­lis. And in the con­clu­sion of this day’s ex­pe­ri­ence, let me de­clare to each of you that which I spoke to your breth­ren on the moun­tain, and let these words find a deep lodg­ment in your hearts: The Son of Man now en­ters upon the last phase of the be­stowal. We are about to be­gin those labors which shall pres­ently lead to the great and fi­nal test­ing of your faith and de­vo­tion when I shall be de­liv­ered into the hands of the men who seek my de­struc­tion. And re­mem­ber what I am say­ing to you: The Son of Man will be put to death, but he shall rise again.”

158:6.6They re­tired for the night, sor­row­ful. They were be­wil­dered; they could not com­pre­hend these words. And while they were afraid to ask aught con­cern­ing what he had said, they did re­call all of it sub­se­quent to his res­ur­rec­tion.