“The Christ … who was to come …” Jesus affirmed these words. Yes, he is the Christ. AND he is the Christ who WAS to come, to come into the world. That crucial concept WAS TO COME. Before he actually came, he was to come. There was, in other words, a time before he came, when he WAS (note this is a kind of existence) to come. That note: there was the time when he had not yet come. But at that time, the Christ WAS to come. It might seem a fine point to make, but do not miss it, because it is a vital part of what Peter and Martha expressed about their belief about the Christ, and their persuasion that Jesus was this Christ. The Christ had a kind of existence of sorts, even before coming, where there was the existence of a reality that the Christ was coming. To a person living years beford the birth of Jesus Christ, they would gave known a time when the Christ existed as a person of prmoise who was going to come. At that point no human Christ Jesus was conceived by the overshaddowing of a virgin maiden by the Holy Spirit, yet this Christ was there as something foretold, something in people minds planted there as a seed of thought by God through prophecy, a promise, the word given by God Himself that a Christ was going to come. This is not a complete lack of existence. Before Abraham was born, even. Even then. Even before laws were given, before Moses, long before John the Baptist, or even the foretelling of John the Baptist coming. Even then.
