Mark 9:7,8 - This is my beloved Son

9:7

God, however, knew exactly what He was doing! A cloud covered the whole situation and a voice came from the cloud “This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to Him!”. We don’t appreciate the full significance of this. In Deut 18:15 it says “The Lord your God will raise up a prophet like me (Moses) from among your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him” (NIV). So God is making clear that Jesus is the one that Moses was speaking about. This is very important for understanding the relationship of the Old and New Testament. The Old was pointing forward to Jesus. Moses never imagined that he was “it”. someone far greater would come. One of the reasons found the gospel so hard to accept was that they thought it was going against the Law, when in fact it was fulfilling the Law.  By the way, Islam claims that Deut 18:15 is speaking of Mohammed, not Jesus. Of course this is not the case, but it is worthwhile being aware of this claim.

9:8

Then everyone except Jesus were gone, ie no more Moses and Elijah. The “suddenly” brings out the vividness of the description, reflecting the account of an eye witness. This tells us something about visions, or visitations, depending on how we want to refer to this incident. They do happen from time to time, but they happen for a purpose. They are not an end in themselves, and we must not build “altars” to them, definitely no physical ones, but not mental ones either. We can all hanker back after some religious experience. Now remembering them is not wrong, Paul recounted the Damascus road experience in the later chapters of Acts. But the main thing is the message that God gave, the purpose for the revelation. Here it was to assure them that Jesus really was the hoped for Messiah, and that they must listen to Him. In Paul’s case it was that he was to take the gospel to the Gentiles, and this he did with great determination.