Jesus said unto him, "Verily I say unto thee, that this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny Me thrice."
Still, Peter, confident in himself, and confident in his love for his Master, said that he would rather die with Him than deny Him! And so they all said.
But Peter had to find out, by bitter experience, that he was weak in himself; for when Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss in Gethsemane, and when the soldiers from the High Priest seized Him and too Him bound to Jerusalem, all the disciples forsook Him and fled!
PETER DENIES HIS LORD.
Peter, however, followed Him afar off, right into the High Priest's palace; but the servants round the fire in the hall charged him with being one of the disciples, and their raillery, and the accusations of a maid, were Satan's wiles to cause Peter, to stumble and fall: and so he denied all knowledge of Jesus, with oaths and curses.
And at that moment the cock crew; and Peter remembered what Jesus had said: and horrified at what he had done, he hurried to the door; and as he went, the Lord turned and looked upon Peter. And he went out and wept bitterly.
Poor sorrowful Peter! Ah, no one can fathom what he went through that night, and the next awful day of the Crucifixion: and the two following days, when the Lord's Body lay in the grave, and Peter recalled with agony that he had forsaken Him when He needed his love most! We can only picture it to ourselves; but it must have been truly dreadful.
At length came the third day, when Jesus had told the disciples He would rise from the dead.
Their hearts were so heavy with grief, and so slow to take in what our Lord had so constantly told them, that they did not expect, when they visited the grave on that third day, to find it empty!