Exploring True Faith (1 of 2) — Art Katz

Is to examine a critical text in the three versions that are given in Matthew, Mark and Luke. The fact that the Holy Spirit reiterates these episodes in three Gospels is reason enough to consider them.

It's a remarkable conjunction of the Mount of Transfiguration and the Valley of Despair, all in the same text. So we need right away to ask, is this just an accidental conjunction or an intentional one?

And why this conjunction? And so there's much to draw out from these episodes. I share this in every place. If you've not heard it from you, you need to hear it at least once, that in my old age and the years of the Lord, I finally have come to the place where every episode of Jesus is given of the Father for our last day's consideration.

It is something in itself that serves purposes at that time and at the same time it is calculated for our consideration upon whom the ends of the age have come. So it's loaded with end time implications and often eschatological significance as I hope to show you today, even in the issue of the boy that was cast into the fire and into the water, of who I think he represents.

So we're called to interpret why the disciples could not succeed in casting out that demon, but only Jesus. And why in this text is there the strongest rebuke of Jesus to his disciples to be found anywhere in all of the New Testament?

How long must I be with you? How long must I suffer you? You faithless and perverse generation. If there was no other reason to study the text, but to find out what prompted Jesus to so explosive a statement of that kind as if he's come to the end of his tether, that he had every right to believe that the disciples should have been at a place of faith and were not, that when they were tested by this demonic expression, they completely collapsed all of them, even those who had been on the mount of transfiguration with him.

So Lord, instruct us in the implications for ourselves and lest we would hear such a rebuke in our own time as they heard in theirs. That we would be faithless, that we should know better and have a better reality to confront especially the supposed reality, the unreality of the powers of darkness that keep men in bondage.

So Lord, thank you for three texts. Help us to go from the one to the other. There are significant differences in each account that we don't want to miss and why one says this, the other omits it, but to put it together, it's like a faceted jewel that needs to be held up to the light and to catch the glimpse here and the glimpse there to get the full statement of what God is wanting us to consider and for which reason he's given it.

So your blessing Lord we pray as we explore and teach us even how to examine the text so that we'll take away from this examination this morning a certain skill and ability of how to peruse, how to draw forth from text the meanings that are deposited there because our reading is altogether too casual.

This is more than reading, this is study. So bless our study Lord, we thank you and give you praise in Jesus name. So I'm going to read from Mark 9. Somebody turn to Matthew 17 and read the corresponding text.

Someone turn to Luke 9 and see there and maybe when we come to points of differences I'm reading, raise your hand if you see that in your text there's something spoken that's not in the one that I'm reading or that it offers a glimpse of something that would give us a more incisive grasp of what's being depicted.

So chapter 9 of Mark verse 2 begins with six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John and led them up to a high mountain apart by themselves. Why these three? Because there's an inner circle.

There's three and then there's 12 and then there's 21 and then there's 500 or 120 in the upper room. They're like concentric circles of a radius of influence and intimacy that Jesus had with some. And of the three who was the most intimate?

John. So even this deserves our attention that the Lord reserves revelation of a particular kind for those with whom he is in the closest communion and even there we're going to see a failure in what is revealed.

Six days later, what's the significance of six? Because in one of the accounts it says eight days later and I don't know how to explain that discrepancy. Two of the gospel accounts say six days later, one says eight.

Eight is a favorite number for me. What does eight designate? New beginnings, resurrection. Eight because it's the first day of the new week or the eighth day when Jesus rose. Day of new beginnings, day of resurrection.

What does the number six connote? 666 and more. It is man, man, man. Six is man. He took them up on the sixth day to a mountain apart by themselves and he was transfigured before them and his clothes became dazzling white such as no one on earth could bleach them.

Who has a version that says something about his face? His face shone like the sun. Anybody in the, what is that, Matthew or Luke? Okay, in the Luke version does it say anything different than what we just read?

Okay, is that an important little tidbit? It just went boom, he was transfigured. As he prayed, his face shone. As he prayed, the radiance of God came forth. You think that that's in any way coincidental or significant?

Because his prayer is communion and beyond petition and that's the moment that the father sees to bring this remarkable radiance. Someone said the remarkable thing is not the great shining, the radiance of Jesus, the remarkable thing is that he always shone like that, but that in every, up till now, that radiance has been withheld or concealed.

Here's a moment when it's revealed. It's not just that in this moment it comes upon him. He's always the radiant son of God, but for the sake of mankind not able to receive that light and would not serve the purpose of the father so to publicly reveal it, it was concealed until this mountaintop experience.

Okay, hey, so long as we're on the subject of radiance, what about ours? If radiance is becoming the son of God and is appropriate to his person and is continually his condition, though it is concealed from the view until now, what ought our condition to be?

To what degree should we rightly expect certain transfiguration in our own being, in our own person, certain radiance, a certain glow? And have you had occasion to see it? Not likely in yourself, of course, but in any other?

If you see it, it's rare. And when you see it, you know what I have always observed on the very rare occasions, the person through whom this radiance and glow is expressed is never himself conscious of it.

The moment that he becomes conscious of it, boom, it's gone. It's the total unselfconsciousness in that union with God and the natural effervescence of a spirit-filled personality that we see that radiance.

But I would covet, I would desire that it ought to be more visible in the saints. And if it's not, probably we're at fault somewhere. So we're allowing something into our thought, life, speech and consideration that dulls that radiance or even makes it to retreat.

But I think that would be a right part of our witness unto him as it was for Jesus. So interesting that the whole account should begin that way. It could be that Jesus himself was taken by surprise. He never expected to come into this remarkable glow.

And I don't know what his object was in bringing these men up to the high mountain apart, whether he anticipated what would be revealed there and has something to do with the subsequent coming down from the mountain to the valley.

But at any rate, there appeared to him in verse four, Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Now, one of the other accounts says why they're talking with Jesus and what they're talking with Jesus about.

Who's got that? The deceased. They are rehearsing with Jesus. You're approaching the climax of your earthly tenure, which is your crucifixion death. In fact, coming down from the mountain, he speaks of it, I'm going to suffer and be killed and rise again the third day.

He's been reminded by his conversation with both Elijah and Moses, who of course have come down from glory and appearing in that radiance with him. What's the significance of these two figures? Why of all of the patriarchal great heroes of the Old Testament faith does the father bring Elijah and Moses to converse with Jesus?

So we need not look upon Jesus as some kind of innovation, but something coming right out of the whole grit and content of Old Testament prophecy and law. He is the consummation, even the fulfillment, the telos, the Greek word for the object and end of everything that had preceded him.

So it's very appropriate that these two men should appear with him. And what are they talking about? His decease and his departure? I don't think that it would be improper to see Moses as an apostle receiving a call, the revelation of God in the burning bush, a deliver of Israel through the wilderness, the establishing of the law, very foundational to the whole of Israel.

So though the word is a New Testament term, the reality that Moses expresses in his own conduct is an everywit apostolic, a real father, deep, and one who bears up with the intransigence of his own people, their terrible burden, and has to intercede in their behalf lest God blot them out for their idolatry and their faithlessness.

What that man bore in moral anguish, let alone the physical demand of 40 years in the wilderness, is incalculable. So that God, that the father would honor him to have this pre-crucifixion time of communion with Jesus, who himself is very God, is altogether fitting.

Did they bring a dimension of something that was for him a solace, a comfort, an assurance, like go get them tiger and listen, you're going to suffer something extraordinary, both physically and morally.

You're going to experience the absence of the father, you'll cry out, my God, my God, why has not forsaken me? While here he's going to come and hover over you in a cloud. You would have loved to have even a faint portion of that at the cross, but no, it's at the mount, but not at your time of suffering.

So hang in there, fulfill your destiny, your calling. This is the fulfillment of all the things for which we have labored and suffered and sacrificed throughout the whole history of Israel. You are the consummation and we're upholding you and girding you, even as my arms were held up in the times of my trial, we will be upholding you in the time of yours.

We don't know what that conversation was, but we know this, it was more than chit-chat. So that such a conversation was necessary and came at this time, is something that we need to assess, that in the wisdom of the father, it was not an exaggerated or an extravagant provision, but altogether appropriate for the son at the threshold of his greatest suffering.

And is that an encouragement for you? Like what will he do for you at the threshold of your greatest suffering? I'm not saying you're going to get a visitation of Moses Elijah, but maybe myself coming down from glory, because I would have preceded you to give you a little pat on the back and remind you, remember that school in 2005?

Remember I said that, that, well now you're going to face it. I don't know, I'm joking of course, but if the Lord will do that for this son, what will he do for all of his sons? Will he not give a special provision, this is right off the top of my head, this is completely unpremeditated, it's not that profound, but can we take encouragement by seeing this provision for Jesus, that we can also surmise that when we will face ultimate extremity and requirement, that there will be a provision for us that comes down from above that enables us to bear it.

I'm encouraged by this, and what he did for the one son, he'll do for others, not identically, but in measure, because there will be no suffering that will be required of us that anywhere begins to approach what he bore, although we're told to take up our cross and you can't enter the kingdom without tribulation.

Okay, so now Peter comes into the act, and said to Jesus, Rabbi, now right away like your alarm bells ought to be going off, is that to say that the use of the term Rabbi or teacher is erroneous? No, it's an identification, but it's not an ultimate identification, it's lacking, remember what we said at the prayer time, every error in the church in the last analysis is the statement of an inadequate knowledge of God.

Well this is what Peter himself is now revealing, Rabbi, teacher, he doesn't yet understand who this Jesus is, that God sees him as so significant that he's bringing the two great heroes of Old Testament faith from the law and the prophets to come and commune with Jesus.

And so there's Peter sticking his neck out and blurting out a typical Petrine statement, let us build for you, it's good for us to be here, let us build for you three booths, three tents. Well what's wrong with that?

Here's the man who's the first to make this acknowledgement, and Peter, Jesus says, flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my father which is in heaven, blessed art thou for this revelation, and here a short time after, it seems that the revelation has subsided.

You know, maybe because the flesh and the humanity of Jesus is so apparent that it disposes you to move away from this supernatural acknowledgement and come again to a lesser and more respectable and acceptable kind of seeing that is expressed and revealed here by calling him Rabbi, but what about what he says?

Don't you think that this is honoring? Let us make, underline the us, there's two uses of us, it is good for us to be here, is that what your version says? What does that say about Peter? What is Peter's central point of consideration in anything and everything?

Though he's the rock of the church and the initial apostle, let it is good for us. He's still us oriented, which is to say me, me, me, and everything is to be interpreted, seen, and deciphered in terms of the benefit one receives.

It is good for us. And any man who still has that noxious egocentric view is necessarily going to say, let us make. He's wanting to religionize, he's wanting to memorialize, he's wanting to establish something that man would make, let us make, it's good for us, let us make.

Well, one for Elijah, one for Moses, one for you. What's wrong with that? What does that betray about this rock, this apostle, that he still has not yet got it together? That there's going to have to be a real betrayal of Jesus before the cock crows three times.

And the man is going to have to go out and weep bitterly in such broken hearted rejection because he's going to reject him with oaths and with cursings, I don't know the man. And that's true, you don't.

That's why you'll betray him, you don't know the man. But it's going to take a broken heartedness to come to that knowledge. And when you go up in the open room, you're going to be pouting and licking your wounds and counting your condition.

It'll take ten days for you to assess the truth of Peter. Though you're a big hot shot, though you're loud in your statement, though all the world deny you, yet will we deny you never. His was the loudest profession and his was the most disgraceful contradiction.

Hey listen guys, if we're not instructed by this, then we're going to have to go through it. And you'll have to suffer your own shame and your own betrayal if you'll not vicariously identify with Peter's.

Because we're not made of any better stuff than he. We're flesh and blood just like him. And though we're saying Lord, you know what our spirit is saying? Teacher, Rabbi, Master. Don't fool yourself because you're using the right language, that you have the right understanding and the right respect.

That's why this is given us for our instruction. But while he was yet speaking, not knowing it says what to say. Do you have that in your version? He didn't know what to say. He was terrified. But then why say anything if you don't know?

What is it with us? We have to open our mouths and blab and we can't take the silence. We've got to punctuate it by something from us. Not knowing what to say he said. But what he said is a dead giveaway.

What's the dead giveaway? Three booths. One for you, one for you, one for you. What's wrong with that? Here's what's wrong with that. In the mentality of Peter, Jesus is at a par with both Moses and Elijah.

Is that true? Or is he the greatest? Is he the very God and very man? And the son of God and the very revelation of the Father. But Peter has not yet seen that. So he thinks he's doing him justice by seeing him at a place of equality with these two great foundational Hebrew saints.

But he's still missing it. And so therefore while he's yet yapping like that, a great cloud of glory comes down over them and the voice of the Father rings out, this is my beloved son. This is not just someone at equality with the prophets and the law.

This is my son. This is very God, very man. My son. This is the epitome of all creation. In fact, he himself has established creation. All things were made by him and for him. So hear ye him. What a response from the Father that evidently was needful and corrective for a well-meaning apostle who's yet falling short of the proper acknowledgement of who it is he's to celebrate and make known as the chief apostle of the church.

This is my beloved son, you dum-dum. This is not just number two, number three with two other personalities. This is the, this is very God, very man. And you need to shut up and hear him. The Lord your God will raise up from amongst your brethren one like us unto me and will put his words in his mouth that whosoever shall not hearken to what he shall speak in my name, it shall be required of him.

That's Deuteronomy 18. And here the same Father who inspired that scripture saying, hear ye him. This is that one greater than Moses who had come out from the midst of the brethren. Hear ye him. Because the great tragedy of Israel is they have neither heard nor considered him and have suffered the consequence as Deuteronomy 18 warns.

Okay. When you read this, can you visualize this phenomenon? A bright cloud coming down over them and the voice of the Father. There's even other implications of the Father audibly speaking that will affect the church and that generation, all subsequent generations, because Peter in chapter one of the second epistle says in verse 16, for we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

But we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty for he received honor and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the majestic glory saying, this is my son, my beloved with whom I'm well pleased.

We also heard this voice come down from heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain. So evidently God is inserting something into the apostolic testimony as Peter is the apostle to the circumcision that he's not just talking out of his hat and making compilations from a logic out of scripture and prophecy, but we were witnesses to the voice of the Father confirming the son on the holy mount of transfiguration.

And therefore that experience was necessary for you to hear to validate our testimony to you that you might receive this as being very God. God knowing the intransigence and the reluctance of his Jewish kinsmen gave Peter an experience of a kind that would serve his apostolic purposes in good stead.

So it's an important visitation and he expresses it beautifully in his second epistle. How about the word majestic in that? Out of the majestic glory. I turned to my dictionary this morning to see what the word majestic means.

What would you say it means? Or do you think that it doesn't, it's not really all that important. It's just a nice word to be thrown in, in the effulgence of all those nice words. Or is there any word that comes out of the mouth of God that is not calculated with divine intention?

Well you don't read the word majesty very often. You might have talked about the glory, the brightness, but it was the majesty of the cloud, the majesty of the father. And you might have assumed the majesty of the son.

What does majesty imply that is unique to that word that is not expressed in other complementary words like glory or beauty or something? There's something in majesty that's unique to majesty and it behooves us to consider it.

Majesty, what do they say in the courts of kings and queens? Your majesty. Majesty is invariably used in conjunction with royalty. So it's a term of recognition of highest office and the aura and the grandeur that accompanies that person who resides in it.

So they caught a glimpse of the majesty of the father. They saw the Lord in his governmental calling. That's when you say Lord, that's in fact what it means, having divine authority. And what's the first thing that Jesus says to his disciples after his resurrection?

All authority is given unto me both in heaven and earth. Go ye therefore. He's already commanding, he's already directing in this authority that has come to him in his exaltation out from suffering. But Peter glimpsed it in advance.

And we need to glimpse it. And what is it that Stephen sees in his, the moments before his martyrdom that precipitates his martyrdom. And when his auditors hear that remark, they gnash their teeth and fall upon him and stone him to death.

They couldn't bear to hear it. What did he say? I see the heavens opened and Jesus the man standing at the right hand of power. I see him in the place of authority. I see him in his governmental position as king.

Because who else can say the kingdom of heaven is at hand? Except him whose kingdom it is. He's a king and a king is majestic. And nowhere is that majesty more displayed than in his suffering. If you have an eye to see it.

So this is a very significant vision in the cloud and the voice. And what other occasions does the father speak out over Jesus that he's audibly heard where he honors his son? Every one of these utterances ought to be rightly chronicled.

Because how often do you hear God speak out of heaven? When God speaks out of heaven, it has got to be an awesome event just by virtue of that speaking. And there's got to be reason for it that should not evade us.

We're here because the same God who spoke to Moses out of heaven over Jesus spoke to me at the head of the camp road 31 years ago when I just dropped by at this property for curiosity, having no attention, living in a 17 room house in New Jersey.

But the moment I came out of that car and stepped over the chain across the road that said no trespassing and my foot came down on this piece of earth, the same God that spoke over Moses said to me who had called me by name in Jerusalem earlier, Dominion end time teaching center, community and refuge.

Those were the words. And those words have set in motion remarkable things, not the least of which is your presence here in this building on these grounds. So when God speaks, dear saints, we need to be on tippy toe and our ear opened to hang on to every word that comes down to us from the celestial heights because these are rare occasions.

And if the father thinks that it's appropriate in his wisdom so to express himself, we need to be extremely mindful and heeding. So I'm appreciating when the father has bestirred himself so to speak. The word chosen is used in one of the three expressions of this text.

Two of them is, this is my son, my beloved son, hear ye him. And one of them, this is my chosen, hear ye him. So we need to ask, how is it that in one gospel the word chosen is employed and the other two the word beloved is employed?

This is Luke. Is Luke taking the liberty to insert what the father had not spoken? And the others were in error in hearing the word beloved? Is this a light question? Because this has got to do with veracity and the credibility of scripture because the critics will say, well look at the contradictions.

Look it says in one place this, it says in one place that. How can you have any confidence that that is the real testimony? It's subjective, it's interpretive. These are men just writing out of their own savvy.

This is not an authoritative statement from God in which you can invest a complete confidence. And I don't have an answer for the question, but I think we need to consider it. Even if there's one departure from the other two, and the choice of a word, how do we understand it?

And I think it probably occurs in other places in scripture. In fact, Paul himself takes the liberty of using the Septuagint and the Greek version in making quotes in some of his statements, in order and he even conflates scripture.

He'll take something out of one text and something out of another and put it together as an apostolic statement. And not once does God reprimand him. So I don't think that the Lord's offended that of the three accounts, one takes the pains to say, this is the chosen son.

He's beloved and he's chosen. He's beloved because he's chosen and he has chosen to be chosen. So I'm glad that in the one of the three accounts it exists, how to explain it, I don't know. But can God say something with one speaking that is more than one statement?

I don't mean dwell on that either. For us, we say one thing at one time, but can God speak in such a way that is like an echo of one thing, even as he says the other and that both are compatible? I wouldn't limit the Holy One of Israel that because we're limited to one statement out of one mouth at one time, that he's limited.

That he could say something that has a resonance of the truth of both things at the same time and that one of the gospel writers picks up the one statement and the other two pick up the other, but that it's all out from the same source.

I've never said that before. I've never seen that before and I'm not saying thus saith the Lord. I'm just offering a possible way to understand the richness of scripture and why it seems on some instances to be variable but not contradictory.

Okay, let's not dwell too long on that. So when they looked around in verse eight, they saw no man, no one with them anymore, but only Jesus. And they saw Jesus. I like that and I quoted that in the morning prayer time.

I think they saw no man, they saw only Jesus. I think it means technically Moses and Elijah are gone now, but the spiritual meaning of that statement needs to be pondered. They saw no man but Jesus himself only.

They saw true seeing. They saw the central figure. And to see that figure is to see all. And what did one writer say? They did not even see their own seeing. They were so taken up with this beloved chosen son that it even abolishes their own subjectivity.

Because when we bring ourselves into seeing, we are going unnecessarily to mar it or confuse it or adulterate it. Isn't that true? Who of us sees any one of each other objectively as we in fact are? I mean you see me with horns, right?

At least Inga does. So we bring something. Our seeing is not objective. We don't see the thing as it in fact is. We see it through the prism of our subjectivity, the way we have been colored. So that half my struggle in the history of Ben Israel is dealing with immature sons who have had lousy fathering and have come with such a biased notion of all the men in a place of authority that they can't see you objectively.

They bring their unhappy histories onto you and you got to bear the result of what they have passed through until somehow it works out. But here is a seeing that is pure. They saw no man. They did not even see themselves.

They saw Jesus only. So I love that statement and it's something that we ought to desire for ourselves and seek. So what can we say about the phenomenon of a cloud? Why does God when he comes, comes in or as a cloud?

Why doesn't he just come in himself? What's the cloud? The cloud each time in the significant expression of himself, his voice comes out of a cloud. They're overshadowed. It's a cloud of glory. There's a brightness in the cloud.

It's not what you see, the cotton stuff floating around in the blue sky. It's a cloud of deity. So how do we understand that then? Why is it necessary? And when the Lord comes at the end of the age, does he not come out of a cloud or comes with a cloud?

And the phrase cloud of witnesses, so the phenomenon of clouds deserves some examination, some consideration. I'm not a cloud man myself, but now that the Lord is showing that it's repeated in significant places, I want to understand that.

And Chambers has a remark to make about clouds, even dark clouds that somehow guard the identity of the deity and by necessity must accompany any revelation and extension of himself. How would you like a cloud of glory over us today?

What would your reaction be? Would you be shouting amen or would you be down on your faces? Would you be terrified or glad? A little terror never hurt anybody. It won't be cotton, it will be clouds of saints who have gone to glory because when he appears to be coming to us out from the clouds, and the implication is clouds of the saints who have come to glory, you know that just to consider that God deserves an entourage.

You like that word? I mean it's hard to think of him coming nakedly in his own person without being royal and being majestic without a company of those who are around the throne. So likely that was the cloud out of which the father spoke and that they were privileged to accompany God and to hear that great utterance and to look upon Jesus.

So this is an event of world class significance and we mustn't just dismiss it as some airy little spiritualizing or poetic allusion. This is remarkably actual, graphic and significant and we could probably spend the rest of the morning just doting on these aspects.

And we often pray for the cloud of witnesses overhead and pray that my Jewish mother is there with other of the saints whom we have known in earlier years who are identified with us and what we are about and are now quelling.

That's a Jewish word that you need to learn. To quell is to like a cat purring with satisfaction inwardly. Jewish mother quells when her son gets his diploma or becomes a doctor or a lawyer but when he marries a shiksa they stop quelling.

So cloud of witnesses overhead is more than just a little airy visitation. They exert something. They bring something in with them in their coming that's celestial and likely that was part of the event on that mount.

So it's the Mount of Transfiguration. It's a glorious episode on the sixth day. So we need to consider that this chapter includes both the Mount of Transfiguration and the valley of what do you want to call it?

Challenge? Despair? Confrontation? The ugliness of what took place in that valley. It's a demonic event. A young man foaming at the mouth and epileptic. One of the most horrible expressions of stunted deformed humanity and continually ravaged by demonic spirit.

What a punctuation. What a way to end to follow the Mount of Transfiguration. You would have thought that the Lord would have given him a weekend off and let them bask in the effulgence of the glory of what they had experienced but no, right from the mount down into the valley to see this ugly exhibition of Satan at his worst.

And so we need to ask the question, is this accidental conjunction or deliberate? And if it's deliberate what is God saying to us? What is going to follow our cherished high moments with God, our mountaintop experiences?

And are they given in advance of a trial and demand that will be made of us that if we had not had that preliminary we would have collapsed in the thing that has now come. So we mustn't dote on the high mountain experiences as a thing in itself as if we are, what's the word, like gourmets or aesthetes, but we can almost sense with an ominous, what's the word, foreshadowing, an ominous pre-sentiment, uh-uh.

Thanks Lord for the great blessing but what follows? Somebody said, what's the evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit? And the answer was trouble. So whenever there's market blessing, steal yourself and gird yourself, uh-uh, what follows?

Something is coming for which this is a preparation and not a thing to be enjoyed in itself or to be sought for in itself. In fact those things are delightful when they come of God unsuspectingly at moments that we would never have thought.

Okay, let's look at the valley experience. And they were coming down. He ordered them to tell no one what they had seen until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead. So they kept the matter to themselves questioning what this rising from the dead could mean.

Then they asked him, why did the scribe say Elijah must come first? He said, Elijah is indeed coming to restore all things. How then is it written about the Son of Man that he is to go through many sufferings and be treated with contempt?

But I tell you that Elijah has come and they did to him whatever they pleased as it is written about him. So that's a little insertion as they're coming down the mount, this allusion to Elijah, whose presence they had just seen.

And that John the Baptist is evidently the, in figuring the statement of the Elijah that must come that precedes that of the Messiah and that he has come and that he has been rudely treated, but not as badly as the Messiah himself now is going to be treated that will require his death and a resurrection on the third day, which they didn't understand.

Okay, in verse 14, when they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them and some scribes arguing with them. When the whole crowd saw him, they were immediately overcome with awe. I wonder why, maybe something is still lingering of the glory that he had on the mount and they ran forward to greet him.

And he asked them, what are you arguing about with them? And someone from the crowd answered him, teacher, I brought you my son. He has a spirit that makes him unable to speak. And whenever it seizes him, it dashes him down and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid.

And I asked you disciples to cast it off, but they could not do so. He answered them. So he's not answering the father, he answered them, you faithless generation, how much longer must I be among you?

And how much longer must I put up with you? Bring him to me. So we've got to ponder this. This is so unlike Jesus. It is so, what's the word, rude and cutting. That doesn't seem to be compatible with the nature of the son.