Episode 100: Mark Part 40—The Transfiguration

Yeshua/Jesus takes Peter, James, and John to a mountain for different sort of proclamation—but this time the proclamation comes from the ultimate source. And what does this say about Yeshua’s mission and who we are ultimately called to listen to?

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9 And he said to them, “Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power.”² And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, ³ and his clothes became radiant, intensely white, as no one on earth could bleach them. ⁴ And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, and they were talking with Jesus. ⁵ And Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you andone for Moses and one for Elijah.” ⁶ For he did not know what to say, for they were terrified. ⁷ And a cloud overshadowed them, and a voice came out of the cloud, “This is my beloved Son; listen to him.” ⁸ And suddenly, looking around, they no longer saw anyone with them but Jesus only. ⁹ And as they were coming down the mountain, he charged them to tell no one what they had seen, until the Son of Man had risen from the dead. ¹⁰ So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead might mean. ¹¹ And they asked him, “Why do the scribes say that first Elijah must come?” ¹² And he said to them, “Elijah does come first to restore all things. And how is it written of the Son of Man that he should suffer many things and be treated with contempt? ¹³ But I tell you that Elijah has come, and they did to him whatever they pleased, as it is written of him.”

Hi, I am Tyler Dawn Rosenquist and welcome to Character in Context, where I teach the historical and ancient sociological context of Scripture with an eye to developing the character of the Messiah. If you prefer written material, I have five years’ worth of blog at theancientbridge.com as well as my six books available on amazon—including a four-volume curriculum series dedicated to teaching Scriptural context in a way that even kids can understand it, called Context for Kids—and I have two video channels on YouTube with free Bible teachings for both adults and kids. You can find the link for those on my website. Past broadcasts of this program can be found at characterincontext.podbean.com and transcripts can be had for most broadcasts at theancientbridge.com. If you have kids, I also have a weekly broadcast where I teach them Bible context in a way that teaches them why they can trust God and how He wants to have a relationship with them through the Messiah.

All Scripture this week comes courtesy of the ESV, the English Standard Version but you can follow along with whatever Bible you want. A list of my resources can be found attached to the transcript for Part two of this series at theancientbridge.com.

This is an account of glory wedged in between two predictions of suffering. Last week, of course, we talked about Mt Hermon and what that location meant to Jews of that time period, but the week before that we covered the first passion prediction, where Yeshua/Jesus gave Peter and His other young disciples a messianic reality check. Yes, He was the Messiah but no, He wasn’t the Messiah they were expecting or even wanting. He’s just the Messiah they needed instead. It’s an important lesson—that Yeshua is rarely what we want but always what we need!

Now, I don’t know if I mentioned it last time but we are now at the beginning of “the way” discourses. By “the way,” I mean that this phrase occurs seven times between 8:27, when we see the group on their way to Caesarea Philippi, and 10:45, ending with their arrival in Jerusalem. We’re going to see so much Exodus language, way more than we saw in Yeshua’s Galilean ministry because now the Second Exodus is upon us with the journey to this mountain, Mt Hermon, and the “second Sinai” event that we will talk about today and then the continuing journey to the new Promised Land inaugurated at the Cross with the New Creation. This is the greater exodus promised by the prophets and most notably, Isaiah, when Yeshua (as Psalm 68:18 prophesies and Paul quoted in Eph 4) “…ascended on high, leading a host of captives in (his) train.” The whole world was held captive by the Pharaoh of sin and death and Yeshua liberated not one nation but all nations from its power. They need only be told so that they can switch allegiance from the kingdoms of this world to a greater Kingdom. The greater exodus is Yahweh’s chosen way of restoring and delivering the world from the consequences of the sin of Adam, through the death and vindication of the second and greater Adam, the final Adam. We covered verse one last time but we are going to backtrack—they are now in the villages of Caesarea Philippi, on the slope of Mt Hermon.

9 And he said to them, “Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power.”

Now, we already talked about this and the possibilities of what this meant so I am not going into great detail but it is almost certain that Yeshua is talking about the Transfiguration about to take place. What I want you to be aware of is that we aren’t going to have a shred of recorded dialogue out of Yeshua until verse nine. In fact, he’s only going to say two things in these entire nine verses. Being that this is such a stunning account, we naturally want more details but they won’t be forthcoming.

² And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, 

Before I get to the Exodus language, I want to talk about Peter, James, and John because Scripture is not flattering to these three. They are kinda trouble. Peter follows up on every victory by doing something just so disappointing. He identifies Yeshua as the Messiah, only to totally blow it by rebuking his Master for not being willing to be the right kind of Messiah. He walks on water, only to sink beneath the waves. He is a privileged guest at the Last Supper, only to fall asleep when his Master needs him to stay awake praying and then follows it up with the violent act of chopping off someone’s ear. And, of course, his denial the next morning that he is with or even knows Yeshua. James and John, of course, are the genocidal twins who want to call down fire from heaven on the residents of Samaria. Why not Andrew, my personal favorite disciple, who brought the loaves and fishes to Yeshua and who brought Peter to Him? What about Matthew, who gave up his status and wealth? Hey, I named my kids after these two for a reason! Why Peter, James, and John? I don’t know—perhaps their foolish, violent zeal was something that Yeshua knew could be refashioned into something amazing. Or maybe all twelve of them were doing things like this and we just don’t have it all written down. In any event, this is the second of three times that they are pulled apart to witness something that the others will not see. The first incident was the resurrection of Jairus’s daughter, now here at the Mount of Transfiguration and, of course, at Gethsemane. There is a fourth time when these three are pulled aside but that is with Andrew when they are marveling at the greatness of the Temple, when He informs them that it will be destroyed. Perhaps Peter, James, and John are the new Moses, Aaron, and Miriam of the greater Exodus and Yeshua must strengthen their faith after the crushing disappointment they had just experienced. Perhaps He needed to reinforce who He is and strengthen their commitment again. Just a thought. Or, they represent the three named persons who climbed Mt Sinai with Moses and the seventy elders—Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu. In any event, references to “them” as a group are going to occur seven times and we have already seen two in the last verse. The reason why is because this encounter is for their benefit and specifically preparation—as we will see. This is a reality check.

We have a reference to them being at the foot of the mountain for six days before the three of them accompany Yeshua up to the top of Mt Hermon. This is a direct reference to Moses at Mt Sinai in Ex 24:16—“The glory of the Lord dwelt on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days. And on the seventh day he called to Moses out of the midst of the cloud.” So, again, we have six days of waiting followed by going up the mountain on the seventh day. And the text says that He was transfigured, metamorphoo—which is where we get the word metamorphosis. In effect, the veil between this world and the supernatural world was ripped aside for a time and they saw Him as He truly is. This is reminiscent of how Moses was changed on Mt Sinai and his skin shone so much that he had to wear a veil when he came back down the mountain. But, as we see in Revelation, this is His true appearance in glory.

¹³ and in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest. ¹⁴ The hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, ¹⁵ his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters. ¹⁶ In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength. (Revelation 1:13-16)

³ and his clothes became radiant, intensely white, as no one on earth could bleach them. 

This may not look important on its own, but let’s read Daniel 7:9—”“As I looked, thrones were placed,     and the Ancient of Days took his seat; his clothing was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool;” and on to 7:13-14 ““I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him.  And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away,
and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.” What this does, His appearance in His glorious heavenly reality, cinches His identity as the Son of Man and the Son of God—the divine Messiah. These three needed to see this so that they would know, that even though they didn’t understand this new type of Messiah, it didn’t change His identity. That being said, they still would not fully understand until much later, after His ascension, even. Actually, after Pentecost, their understanding changed again, and then ten years later it would change once more in Acts 10.

⁴ And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, and they were talking with Jesus. 

Apart from Abraham and David, there are hardly two more revered figures for the three in attendance. Both had wilderness ministries. Both took on wicked kings, Pharaoh and Ahab. Moses was the lawgiver and the leader of the first Exodus, the lesser Exodus, and Elijah was Israel’s greatest prophet who was prophesied to restore all things before the coming of the Lord. Moses told the Israelites that one day a prophet would arise, one like himself, and that they would need to listen to that prophet. Remember that. We find it in Deuteronomy 18, ¹⁵ “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen— ¹⁶ just as you desired of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God or see this great fire any more, lest I die.’ ¹⁷ And the Lord said to me, ‘They are right in what they have spoken. ¹⁸ I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. ¹⁹ And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him.^”

These two are the lesser forerunners of Yeshua, who is leading His own Greater Exodus, who is taking on Satan himself, the king behind the rulers of the world, the true slave master. And they are atop Mt Hermon, talking with Him. What are they saying? We have no idea. Why are they there, looking like (as Sigurd Grindheim points out in Reading Mark in Context) insignificant extras on a movie set? Mark treats them like they are an afterthought compared to Yeshua but they are there as a witness that God is about to intervene in a brand new and shocking way. Moses and Elijah were seen as eschatological figures, end times/last days heralds. Their presence can only mean that God is about to do something huge and something decisive. That we can’t hear what they are saying to Yeshua means that they are not the focus of this new event. They had their day in the sun, so to speak, and this is now Yeshua’s time to deliver and restore. Here, where the first century Jews believed that the fallen angels descended to earth and made an oath and a pact with one another to rebel against God and take human wives and introduce wickedness onto the earth—the place they saw as ground zero for all the evil practices of the nations in the world—now, in their minds, God is reversing that evil time by sending Moses and Elijah (the law and the prophets) down instead to meet with Yeshua, the one who will finally destroy the stranglehold of wickedness on the whole world. This was a direct challenge to the ruler of this world that God had had enough. His time of unopposed wickedness has come to an end. There is a new king and this is a foreshadowing of His coming enthronement.

And then Peter just always has to say something.

⁵ And Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.” ⁶ For he did not know what to say, for they were terrified. 

To be honest, we’d all be terrified. One, he was probably nervous to be there before all this happened. Peter will actually later quote from I Enoch or will at least allude to the same beliefs shared by I Enoch. This is a creepy place that has always been associated with paganism and gross immorality. The tribe of Dan never really took possession of it by driving out the Canaanites and Jeroboam set up one of his calves here. Herod Philip’s home was at the base of this mountain and there was a grotto dedicated to Pan. It would be like walking into a haunted house. And so they get up there, having no idea what to expect, and there before them appear Moses and Elijah. And we have no idea how we know they were Moses and Elijah—maybe it was like how it is in a dream where you just know things that you aren’t explicitly told. But, I mean, they are scared to death but this is also awesome. Yeshua, Moses, Elijah, Peter, James, and John. At least they saw themselves as servants and not committee members. However, let’s look at the problem with what Peter said.

“Rabbi, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.” 

So, first problem, Peter immediately demoted Yeshua to “Rabbi” down from Messiah status as soon as he saw the big two of Moses and Elijah. He doesn’t understand that Moses and Elijah are there to serve Yeshua, at best, Peter sees them as Yeshua’s equals. Second problem, he wants to make tents, skenos, for the three of them. That means he wants to stay there. He wants to extend the whole experience and remain on the mountain with his Master and, more importantly, his two childhood heroes. He wants to make three tabernacles having no clue that the final Tabernacle is there with them. He thinks that this is the final revelation of Yeshua’s glory, to be here in the presence of Moses and Elijah. Of course, he wants the experience to last as long as possible. After what Yeshua had told them all, maybe he thought that Elijah and Moses were there to talk some sense into Him and clear up His obvious misunderstanding of the job of the Messiah—namely, not to die. But again, an Exodus reference with the tents and the mountain. Mt Sinai, of course, was where the presence of God had dwelled since the episode with the Burning Bush until He moved to the Ohel Moed, Moses’s tent, outside the camp while the Israelites were building the Tabernacle. The Tabernacle served as a moving palace for the presence of God to dwell among them—foreshadowing, of course, Yeshua as the final dwelling place of Yahweh on earth and when we become joined to Yeshua, we become part of that living Tabernacle.

⁷ And a cloud overshadowed them, and a voice came out of the cloud, “This is my beloved Son; listen to him.” 

In the wilderness, at Mt Sinai, we see God hidden in a dark cloud above Sinai—again, Ex 24:16—“The glory of the Lord dwelt on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days. And on the seventh day he called to Moses out of the midst of the cloud.” The cloud overshadows Peter, Jacob, and John (totally different word than when the Spirit overshadowed, Mary, so don’t go getting any oddball ideas) and they hear a voice from out of the cloud—again, just like at Sinai and it addressed the three of them. But before we get to what the voice said, let’s take a quick look at II Chron 5: ¹³ and it was the duty of the trumpeters and singers to make themselves heard in unison in praise and thanksgiving to the Lord), and when the song was raised, with trumpets and cymbals and other musical instruments, in praise to the Lord, “For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever,” the house, the house of the Lord, was filled with a cloud, ¹⁴ so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the house of God.” This cloud, the same cloud at Sinai, was also at Moses’s Tent and dwelt in the Tabernacle and would move whenever it was time for Israel to break camp and move somewhere else. Here we see it also at the inauguration of Solomon’s Temple and now, at the inauguration of the final Temple. Yeshua is the final resting place of Yahweh’s full glory. What does the voice tell them? After all, Peter’s words just demoted Yeshua to the status of a mere Rabbi in the presence of Moses and Elijah because they still do not understand.

“This is my beloved Son, my unique Son, the Son who is the inheritor—the greater Isaac. Listen to Him, He’s greater than Elijah and Moses put together on their best day.” And that’s a hard pill for these guys to swallow, that anyone should be listened to over and above Moses and Elijah. But they had to hear that from God’s mouth so that later they could tell the others. There’s a good reason that we aren’t privy to what Moses and Elijah were discussing with Yeshua—it’s because they aren’t the ones whose dialogue is important right now. What they said doesn’t matter. What they had to say is already written but Yeshua is the logos, the rhema, the living word and He is the final say of God to humanity. No one gets to trump anything He said with anyone else’s words. During His ministry, Yeshua called Himself greater than a whole lot of things. John the Baptist said that Yeshua was greater than he was, and then Yeshua said that John was greater than anyone who came before. Yeshua said he was greater than the Temple (Matt 12:6), Jonah (Matt12:41), greater than Solomon (Matt 12:42), and in John 4:12 and 8:53, He was challenged on being greater than Jacob and Abraham—and by His responses proved that He was. Yahweh says, “This one is unique and greater than all who went before Him or will come after Him. He is the definitive revelation of my will and my character. Listen to/obey Him first and foremost.” Make no mistake, this was a rebuke for their focus being messed up. And remember Moses’s words to the children of Israel—that God would raise up a prophet like him from among his brothers—and that prophet (unlike Moses) would always speak perfectly whatever God gave him to speak—so to him they were commanded to listen. This is why Peter, James, and John were told to listen by the voice from Heaven.

⁸ And suddenly, looking around, they no longer saw anyone with them but Jesus only.

So, they snap out of it, the cloud must have cleared away and they are alone with Yeshua. So, the change to Yeshua’s appearance was mind-blowing but evidently it was not permanent. In fact, Matthew 17:9 tells us that this was a vision, which seems very much to be over now. And Moses and Elijah—it is like they were nothing but curtains hanging from a movie set—they were almost decorative. If you have ever read Ecclesiasticus, also called Sirach, chapter 48, you see how Elijah was revered as the greatest ever! In verse 4, it says “How glorious you were, O Elijah, in your wondrous deeds! And who has the right to boast which you have?” and he has just been totally eclipsed. This probably confused them just as much as everything else put together.

⁹ And as they were coming down the mountain, he charged them to tell no one what they had seen, until the Son of Man had risen from the dead. 

So, here are His first recorded words since verse one when He told the whole group that some of them would not taste death until they saw the Kingdom of God after it had come with power. And now back to the death references again. Oh geez, Peter, James, and John had probably forgotten about His first passion prediction seven days ago. They were probably floating on air. But He isn’t going to allow them to forget forever and they need to come back down to earth–literally. Now that they have seen the unveiling of His glory, they need the reality check more than ever. “No matter what you have seen and no matter what you see, I am going to die. That’s the plan and it has always been the plan.” But here we have a bit of hope anyway. Although they are being told to keep quiet, He is talking to them about the resurrection of the dead, which pretty much everyone except the Sadducean chief priesthood believed. They had a reason for not wanting to believe it because if you were living like they were, you would want your life to be one and done in the worst sort of way too. I once heard someone say that Yeshua would have been a great Sadducee but if you read what everyone was saying about them and how corrupt they were, you would know what a terrible insult that was.

¹⁰ So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead might mean. 

In Greek, this reads as quite the debate going on between the three of them. And, that’s silly because they could just ask Him. But they probably know that they don’t really want to know what He means. So, why were they questioning this? I mean, they know about the resurrection of the dead at the end of the age but why the secrecy until the end of the age? Will the end of the age come that quickly? What they had no clue about yet, and wouldn’t until the day of the presentation of the First Fruits of the barley harvest during the Passover week, is that Yeshua wouldn’t be resurrected with everyone else at the end of the age. He would rise first and inaugurate a new age where the prayer of Moses from Numbers 11 would be answered:

²⁴ So Moses went out and told the people the words of the Lord. And he gathered seventy men of the elders of the people and placed them around the tent. ²⁵ Then the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to him, and took some of the Spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy elders. And as soon as the Spirit rested on them, they prophesied. But they did not continue doing it. ²⁶ Now two men remained in the camp, one named Eldad, and the other named Medad, and the Spirit rested on them. They were among those registered, but they had not gone out to the tent, and so they prophesied in the camp. ²⁷ And a young man ran and told Moses, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.” ²⁸ And Joshua the son of Nun, the assistant of Moses from his youth, said, “My lord Moses, stop them.” ²⁹ But Moses said to him, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord‘s people were prophets, that the Lord would put his Spirit on them!”

But, as I hinted at before, it was widely believed that the righteous would rise from the dead at the inauguration of the Messianic Kingdom according to precedence. So, this was an honor/shame thing. It’s been a long time since I read it but I believe it was Abraham and the patriarchs and the matriarchs first and then different figures based on their renown and faithfulness and all that. This was expected—but why on earth would they be told not to tell anyone until after the resurrection? Who would even care by that point?

¹¹ And they asked him, “Why do the scribes say that first Elijah must come?” 

But then, they seize upon a glimmer of hope—“But wait!!! We just saw Elijah! He came!! Oh my gosh—you don’t need to suffer. Elijah wouldn’t have come unless the end of the age had arrived and that means the Messianic Kingdom!” You can almost hear the abject desperation as they grasp at straws. They don’t want Him to be rejected, suffer and die but even more—they don’t want it to happen to them either and they know the penalty for playing for the losing side. There has to be another answer. Or, at least that’s how I read this. Because, as we will continue to see with the second and third predictions, they are not really seeing the finality of God’s plans.

¹² And he said to them, “Elijah does come first to restore all things. And how is it written of the Son of Man that he should suffer many things and be treated with contempt? 

Good question—where is it written that the Son of Man should suffer and be treated with contempt? Daniel 9:26, ” ²⁶ And after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing. And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed.” Psalm 22—you know, the brutal and heartbreaking one that starts out with, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and then gets worse from there? Psalm 118:22 “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.” Isaiah 53? Zechariah 11 and 12? How about Yeshua’s story mirrored in the account of Joseph and His brothers? And the suffering and rejection of Moses? David’s persecution by Saul! These were all prophetic windows of God’s plans to restore and redeem humanity from their enslavement to the evil one. It had to be this way. Without seeing the cost of our wickedness, the new creation transformation of our hearts and lives would never be of any effect. Creator had to fix His creation by doing a reset. He had to lead the way by living it out in front of us. Without a cost, and without payment, we would never give up our sins—not unless we could do it in such a way that would make us feel like we had earned God’s approval. And I ought to add that one of the primary reasons to discount the Scriptural claims of people who hold I Enoch to be authoritative is that everywhere in I Enoch, the Son of Man is exalted—nowhere does he ever suffer. We can’t accept I Enoch as authoritative and also accept Yeshua as the Son of Man. I Enoch finds its way into Scripture through quotations just like certain Greek philosophers—because certain quotes reflect truth and commonly held beliefs, but that doesn’t make the source of those quotes Scripture.

¹³ But I tell you that Elijah has come, and they did to him whatever they pleased, as it is written of him.”

So, here is the kicker and the most contextually loaded verse in this entire section. I actually have it charted out but you can’t share a chart on the radio, right? Anyway, we have a triple meaning here. Let’s start out with the plain text reading. Elijah came and was the victim of “they” who did whatever they pleased. Who were the “they” in Elijah’s life?–Ahab and Jezebel. They did to him whatever they pleased—implying power. Not many people in this world have the ability to do whatever they please and not even in the ancient world but kings and queens had absolute authority. The next layer, of course, is that this is specifically speaking about John the Baptist. Elijah’s story laid the foundation for understanding this parable. John the Baptist (as we see in numerous passages throughout the Synoptic Gospels) is Elijah come again, functionally. We are not talking about reincarnation here—he are saying that John the Baptist served functionally as Elijah and so in a real way he was Elijah in every way that mattered without having the same DNA. And like Elijah, John suffered at the hands of Herod and Herodias who did to him whatever they pleased. Third layer, and I mentioned this when the account of the slaughter of John the Baptist came up in this series—John’s passion was a foreshadowing of Yeshua’s fate. If they killed the forerunner, they were going to kill Yeshua too. It was a sign of the times.

But, of course, they weren’t able to kill Elijah. Elijah lived. Ahab and Jezebel died instead—Jezebel went in a rather gruesome way, actually. And so, this is a real insult to the first-century Jewish world (one echoed in the Talmud, I might add) as being worse than the worst of all royal couples, not in the southern kingdom of Judah but in the northern idolatrous kingdom of Israel. Jezebel was a Sidonian princess, a worshipper of the Ba’alim, and someone who hated Yahweh’s prophets with extreme prejudice. Still, with all her wrangling she could never kill Elijah. But Herod, the king of the Jews, who was of Edomite heritage and the product of forced conversions (never, ever a good idea) just over a hundred years earlier grudgingly killed John the Baptist in order to not look weak in front of his dinner guests. The malice wasn’t his, it was his wife’s malice. Guys, women don’t like it when you question their, um, sleeping arrangements, just FYI.

Like I said, they couldn’t kill Elijah and so this parable about a dead Elijah was offensive in the extreme. Elijah was da man! He didn’t even die. He got swept away in a heavenly chariot and was probably playing pinochle with Enoch and Moses. You can’t shame Elijah like this by saying he came again functionally but this time they killed him because that is saying this generation is more wicked than the first generation that led to the exile. They had tried so hard to avoid idolatry, but there are worse things than idolatry—like being so factionalized, hateful and power-hungry that you will kill the Messiah. But back to John, they killed him—and what does Malachi 4 say will happen if Elijah returns and fails to bring about change?

⁵ “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. ⁶ And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.”

And, of course, that is exactly what would happen—first in 70 CE when the Temple was destroyed and then again in 136 CE when Jerusalem was leveled and turned into a pagan capitol.

Before the end here, I want to mention something cool from Davies & Allison—and if you have spent even a bit of time researching the NT context, these names pop up a lot. Anyway, they compared and contrasted the transfiguration to the cross in the Gospel of Mark, and this comes out of Garland’s NIV Application Commentary on Mark. Just real quick here: The transfiguration was private and the crucifixion was public. The transfiguration features two prophets and the crucifixion featured two thieves. At the transfiguration, Yeshua’s garments were dazzlingly white, and at the crucifixion, they were stolen. The transfiguration had three male witnesses and the crucifixion had three female witnesses. The transfiguration had a voice from heaven identifying Yeshua as the Son of God and the crucifixion had a centurion identifying Yeshua as the Son of God. Both had references to Elijah—at the transfiguration, Elijah was there, and at the crucifixion, they thought He was calling out to Elijah.

Next week, they will come down from the mountain and we will see more Mt Sinai/first Exodus references. All this week we’ve been talking about one of the ultimate self-manifestations—which of course are events where Yeshua shows who He is to be understood later—and next week we will have another. Next week’s is easier to miss. So definitely tune in.