Luke xxiii. 43. "Verily I say unto thee, to-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise." Spoken by Christ on the cross to the penitent thief. Here apparently the inference is a fair one, but look more closely. What did the thief request? "Lord, remember me when. thou comest IN (not "into," as in our translation, the Greek is not EIS but EN, in) thy Kingdom." Now what should be the reply? That will depend entirely upon the position of the comma. Observe, that the Greek text was originally written without punctuation, which was introduced by Manutius, a printer of Venice, in the fifteenth century, and in one instance (Matt. xix: 29) has been changed by our Bible Society within a recent period. Where, in this passage, then, is the true place of the comma? In the Septuagint and Greek New Testament the adverb to-day, (semeron) qualifies the following verb 51 times, qualifies the preceding verb 170 times. Then, as in Deut. viii: 19, "I testify against you this day, that ye shall perish," so here, according to the prevalent usage, we read, and the context demands it as a direct reply to the thief's petition; "verily, I say unto you this day, thou shalt be with me in Paradise." Besides, if it be assumed that Christ and the thief were that day together in Paradise, then we learn that henceforth in Paradise Christ is present in no other sense than he is now on earth. For when, on that assumption, he came back from Paradise to earth at his resurrection, he told Mary Magdalene, (John xx: 17) that he had not yet ascended to the Father; but the Father is in heaven, therefore Paradise, where we suppose him to have been, is not heaven; afterward he did ascend to the Father, and is now in heaven, (Heb.ix: 24,) consequently not in that hypothetical paradise. No, the promise was for that yet future time to which the thief referred, when Christ shall come "in his kingdom," and Paradise, with its tree of Life, (Rev. xxii: 2,) shall be restored to us.
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