John 16:4

These things have. told you... that ye may remember.

When the hour of trial would come there would come also the remembrance that the Lord had foreseen it from the beginning, had promised to be with them, and even to give to them what they should say to their accusers.

These things. said not in the beginning because. was with you.

His instructions had been lesson by lesson as they were prepared to receive it. Only gradually had he unfolded to them the dark, rugged and bloody pathway that they should be called to tread. In the beginning of his ministry he did not teach of these things, in the second year of his ministry he began to present the lesson, but only in the hour of departure does he fully reveal the trials before his disciples. The greatest of all their trials, unless the promised Comforter came, would be the departure of the Lord. While he was upon the earth the bolts of hatred would strike him instead of his followers; but when he was gone and they represented him on the earth these bolts would strike them.