Mark 9:1-2

In one of the towns below Mount Hermon, in the area of Caesarea Philippi, we find Jesus and his followers in a stationary state. By that I mean they were either camped out or they had access to a house. Jesus and his disciples remained in that area for at least six days before the transfiguration.

There is no reason to think they had not already been there for some time. Indeed, a good bit at the end of chapter eight took place in that same region. In Mark 9:1-2 we find this timeline: Jesus told his disciples that some of them would see the powerful coming of the kingdom before their deaths, then six days later, he takes Peter, James and John up into the mountains.

Did Jesus specifically refer to these three disciples? I think a common misconception about the coming kingdom of God is that it will be the end result and culmination of a linear historical process. In other words, most of us are predisposed to imagine the kingdom of the book of Revelation: the kingdom that follows the apocalypse and the end of the world as we know it.

Here is my point in all of this – if Jesus specifically referred to the three disciples that witnessed the transfiguration, then the transfiguration they saw was the coming of the kingdom of God with power. That being said, we must understand that the revelation of God's kingdom to man is an individual spiritual experience rather than a historical event.