1 Peter 1:11

searching what, or what manner of time The two words have each a distinct force, the first indicating the wish of men to fix the date of the coming of the Lord absolutely, the second to determine the note or character of the season of its approach. Of that craving we find examples in the question "wilt thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" which was met by our Lord with the answer "It is not for you to know the times and the seasons" (Acts 1:6-7), in the over-heated expectations which St Paul checks in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12, in the hopes that were met by the mocking scorn which St Peter himself rebukes in 2 Peter 3:3-8.

the Spirit of Christ which was in them It will hardly be questioned that the name thus given to the Spirit, as compared with Romans 8:9 and Galatians 4:6, primarily suggests the thought of prophets who were living and working in the Christian Church rather than of those of the older Church of Israel.

when it testified beforehand the sufferings To the English readers these words naturally seem decisive in favour of the current interpretation, and against that which is here suggested. But they seem so only because they are a mistranslation of the original. When St Peter wishes to speak of the "sufferings ofChrist," he uses a different construction (chap. 1 Peter 4:13; 1 Peter 5:1), as St Paul does (2 Corinthians 1:5). Here the phrase, as has been noticed above, is different. St Peter speaks of the sufferings (which pass on) unto Christ. The thought is identical with that of St Paul's, expressed in terms so analogous that it is a marvel that their bearing on this passage should have escaped the notice of commentators. "As the sufferings of Christ abound toward us," St Paul says (2 Corinthians 1:5), "so also does our consolation." He thinks of the communion between Christ and His people as involving their participation in His sufferings. Is it not obvious that St Peter presents in almost identical phraseology the converse of that thought, and that the "sufferings" spoken of are those which the disciples were enduring for Christ, and which he thinks of as shared by Him, flowing over to Him? That predictions of such sufferings, sometimes general, sometimes personal, entered largely into the teaching of the prophets of the New Testament we see from Acts 11:28; Acts 20:23; Acts 21:11; 2Ti 2:3; 2 Timothy 2:12. That they dwelt also upon the "glories" that should come after the sufferings lies almost in the very nature of the case. Visions of Paradise and the third heaven, as in 2 Corinthians 12:1-5, of the throne and the rainbow and the sea of glass, and the heavenly Jerusalem, like those of St John, were, we may well believe, as indeed 1 Corinthians 2:9-10 sufficiently indicates, almost the common heritage of the prophets of the Apostolic Church.