refer wlien He says, " a little while and ye shall not see Me," and " ye shall see Me " ? There are two answers.
(a) Some think, as Chrysostom, Cyril, and Hengstenberg-, that our Lord only meant, " in a few hours I shall be removed by death, and buried, and then you will not see Me ; and again after three days I shall rise again, and then you will see Me."
(6) Others think, as Augustine, Maldonatus, and Wordsworth, that our Lord meant, " In a short time I shall leave the world, ascend up to heaven, and go to my Father, and you will see Me no more ; and again, in comparatively short time, I shall return to the world at my second advent, and you will see Me again."
I decidedly prefer the second of these interpretations. To" explain the words, " Ye shall not see Me," and " Ye shall see Me," by our Lord's death and resurrection, seems to me a forced and unnatural interpretation. Moreover it completely fails to explain the words, " I go to the Father." Both here and all through the passage, I believe our Lord is speaking for the benefit of the whole Church until His coming again, and not merely for the benefit of the eleven apostles. The true sense is best seen by inverting the order of the words. " The time has arrived when I must leave the world, and go back again to my Father. The consequence is that in a little time you will no longer see Me with your bodily eyes, for I shall be in heaven and you on earth. But take comfort ! In a little time I shall return again with power and great glory, and then you and all my believing people will see Me again."
It is worth notice, in support of the view I maintain, that the expression in Greek, " a little while," is almost the same as in Heb. X. 37, when the second advent is clearly spoken of. More- over the expression " 1 go," is distinctly applied in several places to our Lord's final departure from the world, and seldom, if ever, to our Lord's death on the cross.
Alford thinks His meaning is manifold, and says, "'Ye shall see Mo ' began to be fulfilled at the resurrection, then received its main fulfilment at Pentecost, and shall have its final fulfil- ment at the return of our Lord." This strikes me as a very untenable view.
It is curious that the first "Ye shall see " is in the present tense, and is an entirely different word to the second, which is a future. The first would be rendered literally, " Ye behold, or gaze upon Me 1 "
17. — [TTien said some, etc.] This whole verse shows how little the disciples realized or understood our Lord's meaning at present, when He spoke of His second advent. Yet when we consider how widely different are the meanings put on our Lord's words by Christians in this day, we can hardly feel surprised that eleven weak believers, like the apostles, could not take in the
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