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he explained to them how he would be delivered and killed.
Thereupon Peter began to reprove and admonish him not
to repeat the same words about his passion and death.
According to this story of St. Matthew, Peter was perfectly
right when he said, “Master, be it far from thee!” If it be
true that his confession, “Thou art the

Messiah,” pleased Jesus (pbuh) , who conferred the title
of “Sapha” or “Cepha” on Simon, then to declare that “the
Son of Man” was to suffer the ignominious death upon the
Cross was neither more nor less than a flat denial of his
Messianic character. But Jesus (pbuh) became more positive
and indignantly scolded Peter, saying: “Get thee behind
me, Satan!” what follows this sharp rebuke are most
explicit words of the Master, leaving not a modicum of
doubt that he was not “the Messiah” or “the Son of Man.”
How to reconcile the “faith” of Peter, recompensed with
the glorious title of “Sapha” and the power of the keys of
Heaven and of Hell, with the “infidelity” of Peter punished
with the opprobrious epithet of “Satan,” within half an
hour’s time or so? Several reflections present themselves
to my mind, and I feel it my bounden duty to put them in
black and white. If Jesus (pbuh) were “the Son of Man” or
“the Messiah” as seen and foretold by Daniel, Ezra, Enoch,
and the other Jewish prophets and divines, he would have
authorized his disciples to proclaim and acclaim him as
such; and he himself would have supported them. The
fact is that he acted the very reverse. Again, if he were the
Messiah, or the Barnasha, he would have at once struck his
enemies with terror, and by the aid of his invisible angels
destroyed the Roman and Persian powers, then dominant
over the civilized world. But he did nothing of the sort;
or, like Muhammad (pbuh) , he would have recruited some
valiant warriors like “Ali, Omar, Khalid, etc., and not like
Zebedees and Jonahs, who vanished, like a frightened
spectre when the Roman police came to arrest them.