1 And as they went down the mountain, Jesus told to the disciples the meaning of all things they had seen,
2 Saying, The priest like Elias who was walking before me was John the Baptist:
3 For as the scribes say, Elias must come before the Messiah of Israel.1
4 And as for the dark man with one blind eye who was walking with me, he was the Antichrist.
5 People from many nations will follow him whilst they will believe that they follow me.
6 And the Man like Moses whom ye saw walking behind us is that prophet who will come after me as light and mercy for all the nations.
7 He will come with great power and glory and will put down the kings from their thrones and kingdoms because they do not praise the Lord nor thankfully acknowledge whence the kingdom was bestowed upon them.
8 And he will destroy all those who set themselves up as gods besides the One True God, our Lord.
9 Then Jesus told them a parable concerning the three messengers the disciples saw on the mountain,
10 Saying, The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.2
11 And concerning his own coming and the Antichrist, he spoke another parable and said,
12 A man sowed good seed in his field; but when men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way.
13 And when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also, so much so that the wheat was hard to see.
14 So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares?
15 He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up?
16 But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them.
17 Let both grow together until the harvest: then I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together the tares and bind them in bundles and burn them.3
18 After these things Jesus had made up his mind that he should go to Judea and resume his preaching.
19 And when he had called unto him the people who believed in him, he said unto them, Whosoever will come after me let him forsake all that he hath and follow me.
20 Verily I say unto you, that there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom come with power.4
21 When ye see a cloud rise out of the west, straightway ye say, There cometh a shower; and so it is.
22 And when ye see the south wind blow, ye say, there will be heat; and it cometh to pass.
23 If ye can discern the face of the sky and of the earth, likewise discern ye this time.5
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Notes
- Mark 9:11. ↩
- Matt. 13:33. ↩
- Matt. 13:24-30. “Good seed” represents the true teachings of Jesus and “tares” the confused doctrines others invented in his name under instigation from the devil, the “enemy.” The separation of the two would take place at the coming of the Antichrist and the return of Jesus. Indeed, the two latter events may be understood in terms of this separation of the “wheat” from the “tares.” The coming of the Antichrist may be understood as the manifestation of the falsehood, sown by the devil within the Christian tradition, in a completely naked form, without any cover from the Christian truth. This falsehood would be destroyed, or, using the language of the parable, the tares would be burnt. The reemergence of the pure truth revealed by Jesus after the destruction of the falsehood later mixed with it may then be understood as the Second Coming of Jesus. It seems that a process that will lead to these developments has already been set in motion by the modern critical studies of the New Testament. ↩
- Mark 8:34; 9:1; Matt. 16:28. This saying has had a great influence on the Christian tradition. After the death of Jesus, his disciples justified the saying by teaching that Jesus would return with power and glory within the lifetime of the first generation of Christians to establish the messianic kingdom. The belief in the imminent “parousia” of Jesus as the royal Messiah came to be held widely and became the center of Christian hopes and thinking not only because the saying of Jesus seemed to imply it, but also because it was the only way to keep up faith in the Messiahship of Jesus and, therefore, interest in his mission. When, however, the parousia of Jesus did not take place, the Christian thinking had to undergo a great deal of change (of course, at a considerable loss of its already meager level of integrity). What Jesus meant by the saying, however, was simply that the messianic kingdom would be established before he died and, therefore, would be seen by some of his contemporaries. Such a statement implied that the Messiah had already come (or, at least, had been born), and Jesus expected his hearers to think that it was he himself. The statement was, therefore, one of Jesus’ indirect ways of hinting that he was the Messiah (cf. Note 3, Chapter 16). Those who wanted would take the hint, while others could understand the statement as yet another repetition of the message “The kingdom of God is at hand” (with a more precise definition of “at hand”). That Jesus was capable of such subtlety is shown by his answers to the chief priests and the scribes (Mark 11:27-33; 12:13-17). ↩
- Luke 12:54-56. ↩