2 Six days after that, Jesus asked Peter, James and John to go with him. Jesus led them up a high mountain, where they were alone together. Peter, James and John saw Jesus change in front of them. 3 His clothes became very white. They were shining. Nobody on earth could wash them and make them as white as that. 4 Then Elijah and Moses appeared in front of the three disciples. Elijah and Moses were talking with Jesus.
9:4Moses was a leader of God's people. He died about 1,400 years before Jesus was born. Elijah was one of God's prophets. He lived about 850 years before Jesus was born.
5 So Peter said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, it is good that we are here. Please let us build three huts. One hut will be for you. One hut will be for Moses. And one hut will be for Elijah.’ 6 Peter did not really know what to say. That was because the three disciples were very afraid.
7 Then a cloud appeared and it covered them all. A voice spoke from the cloud and it said, ‘This is my Son, and I love him. Listen to him.’
8 At that moment, the three disciples looked around. They saw that nobody else was there now. Only Jesus was there with them.
9 While they were walking down the mountain, Jesus said to the three disciples, ‘You must not tell anyone now about the things that you have just seen. One day the Son of Man will become alive again after his death. Then you can tell people about these things.’ 10 The three disciples kept these words secret. But they talked together about the words, ‘become alive again after his death’. They asked each other, ‘What does this mean?’
11 Then the three disciples asked Jesus, ‘Why do the teachers of God's Law say that God's prophet Elijah must return first, before the Messiah comes?’
12 Jesus said to them, ‘Elijah does come first. He makes everything ready. But what is written in the Bible about the Son of Man? It says that people will cause him to suffer a lot. They will think that he is nothing. 13 But I tell you that Elijah has already come. People did to him everything that they wanted to do. The Bible already showed that those things would happen to him.’
9:13When Jesus talked to them about Elijah, he was also talking about John the Baptist. See Matthew 17:11-13. 