d them:
and behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved Son,
in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him." It was Elohim,[779] the Eternal
Father, who spake; and at the sound of that voice of supreme Majesty,
the apostles fell prostrate. Jesus came and touched them, saying,
"Arise, and be not afraid." When they looked they saw that again they
were alone with Him.

The impression made upon the three apostles by this manifestation was
one never to be forgotten; but they were expressly charged to speak of
it to no man until after the Savior had risen from the dead. They were
puzzled as to the significance of the Lord's reference to His
prospective rising from the dead. They had heard with great sorrow, and
reluctantly they were being brought to understand it to be an awful
certainty, that their beloved Master was to "suffer many things, and be
rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be
killed."[780] Such had been declared to them before, in language devoid
of ambiguity and admitting of no figurative construction; and with equal
plainness they had been told that Jesus would rise again; but of this
latter eventuality they had but dim comprehension. The present
reiteration of these teachings seems to have left the three with no
clearer understanding of their Lord's resurrection from the dead than
they had before. They seem to have had no definite conception as to what
was meant by a resurrection; "And they kept that saying with themselves,
questioning one with another what the rising from the dead should
mean."[781]

The comprehensiveness of the Lord's injunction, that until after His
rising from the dead they tell no man of their experiences on the mount,
prohibited them from informing even their fellows of the Twelve. Later,
after the Lord had ascended to His glory, Peter testified to the Church
of the wondrous experience, in this forceful way: "For we have not
followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power
and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his
majesty. For he received from God the Father honour and glory, when
there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my
beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And this voice which came from
heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount."[782] And
John, reverently confessing before the world the divinity of the Word,
the Son of God who had been made flesh to dw