Note Note 6 — NOTES TO CHAPTER 23.

6. Mention of the Lord's Approaching "Decease."—Of the three synoptists, Luke alone makes even brief mention of the matter upon which Moses and Elijah conversed with the Lord at the Transfiguration. The record states that the visitants, who appeared in glory, "spake of his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem" (Luke 9:31). It is significant that the decease, which the Lord should accomplish, not the death that He should suffer or die, was the subject of that exalted communion. The Greek word of which "decease" appears as the English equivalent in many of the MSS. of the Gospels, is one connoting "exodus," or "departure," and the word occurring in other early versions signifies glory. So also the Greek original of "accomplish," in the account of the Transfiguration, connotes the successful filling out or completion of a specific undertaking, and not distinctively the act of dying. Both the letter of the record and the spirit in which the recorder wrote indicate that Moses and Elijah conversed with their Lord on the glorious consummation of His mission in mortality—a consummation recognized in the law (personified in Moses) and the prophets (represented by Elijah)—and an event of supreme import, determining the fulfilment of both the law and the prophets, and the glorious inauguration of a new and higher order as part of the divine plan. The decease that the Savior was then so soon to accomplish was the voluntary surrender of His life in fulfilment of a purpose at once exalted and foreordained, not a death by which He would passively die through conditions beyond His control. (See pp. 418, and 662).