Seventh Day Baptist
Christian Education Council
PO BOX 1678
Janesville, WI 53547
—Matthew 17:9-13
by: Leota Stevens.
One more mystery of history is solved in this passage. The disciples were instructed by Jesus to refrain from broadcasting this information to the general public. That must have been a very difficult assignment to be given to three men just bursting at the seams with adulation, wonderment and praise. However, their obedience was the important issue in their relationship with their teacher and their Lord. The scribes had expounded on the scripture about the Messiah and stated that Elijah would precede the appearance of God’s anointed, but no one had observed him—or had they? The man with the true bold spirit of Elijah had been declaring the arrival of the Messiah. John the Baptist was the voice crying in the wilderness to make plain the paths of the Lord. The disciples saw that the word of God had been validated before their very eyes.