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The Fundamentals ably be difficult to persuade others that it was the true rea- son. Why then is this little utterance of Jesus put in the Gospel record without a word of explanation, and which it has taken eighteen centuries to explain, and which is not altogether satisfactorily explained yet? Certainly a writer making up a story would not put in a little detail like that without apparent meaning and without an attempt at an ex- planation of it. Stories that are made up are made up for a purpose; details that are inserted are inserted for a pur- pose, a purpose more or less evident, but eighteen centuries of study have not been able to find out the purpose why this was inserted. Why then do we find it here? Because this is exactly what happened. This is what Jesus said; this is what Mary heard Jesus say; this is what Mary told, and therefore this is what John recorded. We cannot have a fic- tion here, but an accurate record of words spoken by Jesus after His resurrection. We find still another instance in John 20:4-6: “So they ran both together; and the other disciple did outrun Peter, and came first to the sepulchre. And he, stooping down and looking in, saw the linen clothes lying; yet went he not in. Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie.” This is all in striking keeping with what we know of the men from other sources. Mary, returning hurriedly from the tomb, bursts in upon the two disciples and cries, “They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid Him.” John and Peter sprang to their feet and ran at the top of their speed to the tomb. John, the younger of the two disciples (it is all the more striking that the narra- tive does not tell us here that he was the younger of the two disciples), was fleeter of foot and outran Peter and reached the tomb first, but man of retiring and reverent disposition that he was (we are not told this here but we know it from a study of his personality as revealed elsewhere) he did not
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