Matthew 28:10

Matthew 28:10. Fear not. This injunction was called for by the mingled emotions of those addressed. The language has also the vivacious form of joyous feeling.

Go, tell my brethren. A touching term coming from the Risen One, and applied to those who had forsaken Him. It indicates His continued affection and their fellowship with. Him in His glory.

That they depart into Galilee. In the excited, half doubting, half rejoicing mood which characterized all the believers, male and female, there was a necessity for a repetition of this command (see Matthew 28:7). Frequent appearances, repeated commands were called for; the first to convince them, the second to direct them. (According to our view of the harmony, this message had been given twice already by the angels: once without and again within the sepulchre.) Our own experience shows the same need. Hence we are prepared to expect that there were other appearances than those recorded here. Matthew passes over most of them, mentioning, probably, only those which impressed his own mind most, or seemed best adapted for his purpose.

And there shall they see me. This seems to refer, as in Matthew 28:7. to the whole body of the disciples, who under the leadership of the eleven returned to Galilee about nine days afterwards, many of whom came to Jerusalem again before the Ascension (Acts 1:13-15). Matthew is silent about the subsequent appearances to the Apostles in Jerusalem (Mark 16:14; Luke 24:36; John 20:19; John 20:26), though present on these occasions. As he wrote for Jewish Christians he may have wished to emphasize the appearances in Galilee, in order to lead their minds away from Jerusalem, to which their education would still make them cling. All theories of different traditions (Judean and Galilean) about the resurrection, are unsupported by the contents of the several Gospels.

All attempts to deny the historical character of the resurrection and the subsequent manifestations of Christ have failed. To suppose that the Apostles lied, as did the Sanhedrin (chap. Matthew 28:13), is a moral impossibility; that the resurrection was a mere reviving from apparent death is a physical impossibility; that the appearances were mere visions, ecstasies, having no reality outside the minds of the persons, is psychologically impossible; such visions are not so often repeated nor to so many persons. Phantoms, visions, the result of too lively imaginations (!) do not revolutionize the world. Consistency requires that those who deny the reality of the resurrection, deny the Apostolic history also; and what is then left to account for Christianity, a fact which must be accounted for?