"It was a vision you had," said our Saviour, "but it is true. Heaven is shut and is not to be opened until I die for the sin of the human race who put anger on My Father. It is not a common but a shameful death I shall get, but I shall rise again gloriously and open the heaven that was shut, and you shall be doorkeeper."
"Ora! Master," said Peter, "it cannot be that you would get a shameful death. Would you not allow me to die for you? I am ready and willing."
"You think that," said our Saviour.
The time came when our Saviour was to get death. The evening before that He Himself and His twelve disciples were at supper, when He said, "There is a man of you going to betray Me." There was great trouble on them, and each one of them said, "Am I he?" But He said, "He who dips with his hand in the dish with Me, he is the man who shall betray Me."
Peter said then, "If the whole world were against you," said he, "I will not be against you." But our Saviour said to him, "Before the cock crows to-night you will reneague (deny) Me three times."
"I would die before I would reneague you," said Peter; "indeed I shall not reneague you."
When death-judgment was passed upon our Saviour, His enemies were beating Him and spitting on Him. Peter was outside in the court, when there came a servant-girl to him and said to him, "You were with Jesus." "I don't know," says Peter, "what you are saying."
Then when he was going out the gate another girl said, "There's a man who was with Jesus," but he took his oath that he had no knowledge at all of Him. Then some of the people who were listening said, "There is no doubt at all but you were with Him; we know it by your talk." He took the great oaths, then, that he was not with Him. And on the spot the cock crew, and then he remembered the words our Saviour said, and he wept the tears of repentance, and he found forgiveness from Him whom he denied. He has the keys of heaven now, and if we shed the tears of repentance for our faults, as he shed them, we shall find forgiveness as he found it, and he will welcome us with a hundred thousand welcomes when we go to the door of heaven.