Then the disciples understood that he spake unto them of John the Baptist.
The verse belongs to the transfiguration experience of standing with Christ on the mountain, where beholding Him in supreme beauty as chiefest among ten thousand and altogether lovely fills the soul with radiance from His risen glory. It stands at the descent from the mountain, when Jesus and the disciples coming down meet the crowd and the disciples' failure to cast out a spirit from a boy is exposed. It marks the moment the disciples understood that He had been speaking to them about John the Baptist. The surrounding account shows they were slow to grasp His teaching about rising from the dead, for even after hearing Him speak of it they wondered what resurrection meant yet did not ask Him to explain it.
Those who have received that mountain light are sent to arise and shine with it. From the mount they must go down to the plain where souls enslaved by Satan wait for the word of faith and prayer to set them free. They are to live and labor and sacrifice even unto death for the saving of humanity and of others. For standing nearest to Christ is drinking most deeply on earth of His self-sacrificing love, which vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, and thinketh no evil.
The verse belongs to the transfiguration experience of standing with Christ on the mountain, where beholding Him in supreme beauty as chiefest among ten thousand and altogether lovely fills the soul with radiance from His risen glory. It stands at the descent from the mountain, when Jesus and the disciples coming down meet the crowd and the disciples' failure to cast out a spirit from a boy is exposed. It marks the moment the disciples understood that He had been speaking to them about John the Baptist. The surrounding account shows they were slow to grasp His teaching about rising from the dead, for even after hearing Him speak of it they wondered what resurrection meant yet did not ask Him to explain it.
Those who have received that mountain light are sent to arise and shine with it. From the mount they must go down to the plain where souls enslaved by Satan wait for the word of faith and prayer to set them free. They are to live and labor and sacrifice even unto death for the saving of humanity and of others. For standing nearest to Christ is drinking most deeply on earth of His self-sacrificing love, which vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, and thinketh no evil.