Peter explained that his reminder came from one who was an eyewitness of Jesus Christ during His earthly ministry. He did so to heighten respect for his words in his readers' minds. This section begins Peter's defense of the faith that the false teachers were attacking, which continues through much of the rest of the letter.
1:16 The apostles had not preached myths to their hearers, as the false teachers to whom Peter referred later in this epistle were doing. The apostles' testimony rested on historical events that they had observed personally. They had seen Jesus' power in action during His first coming as God's anointed Messiah. Jesus Christ's majesty appeared especially clearly on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matt. 17:1-8). "Power"and "coming"are a hendiadys that means "powerful coming"with emphasis on the fact that Jesus' coming was with power. This is the only explicit mention of the Transfiguration outside the Synoptic Gospels.
1:17-18 The apostles' message was essentially that Jesus was the Christ (i.e., God's promised Messiah; cf. 1 John 5:1). God had revealed this clearly at Jesus' transfiguration when He had announced that Jesus was His beloved Son (Matt. 17:5; Mark 9:7; Luke 9:35). Peter referred to that event to establish the credibility of his witness and that of the other apostles. The terms "honor,""glory, "Majestic Glory,"and "holy mountain"all enhance the special event that was the Transfiguration.
"The author is . . . pointing out to his readers that the Transfiguration, to which the apostles bore witness, is a basis for the expectation of the Parousia. . . .
"The emphasis of the account is that God himselfhas elected Jesus to be his vicegerent, appointed him to the office and invested him with glory for the task."59
