searching for who or what kind of time the Spirit of Christ, which was in them, pointed to, when he predicted the sufferings of Christ, and the glories that would follow them.
The phenomenon of prophets not being able to comprehend fully their own writings is one of utmost consequence in biblical interpretation; for it requires the deduction that the Spirit of Christ, speaking through them, did not merely give them the correct ideas, or thoughts, which they then were to present in their own words, but, contrarily, the words of truth were exactly what they did receive, words with ideas and thoughts contained which they did not understand at all!  It is a mystery why many modern commentators deny a proposition like this, especially in view of the fact that the apostle Peter himself, on Pentecost, uttered the words of God, which he did not at all fully comprehend at the time, the vital truth that the promises of the gospel are for "them that are afar off," clearly meaning, in retrospect, the Gentiles, but in no manner being fully understood by Peter at the time he spoke this.  One may legitimately wonder if Peter's analysis of his own example in this did not likewise reveal to him what had happened in the case of the ancient prophets of the old dispensation, leading to the truth uttered here.