When did we see you a stranger and receive you hospitably, or naked, and clothe you?

41. (a) What do these righteous “sheep” indicate about the parousia by repeatedly asking, “When did we see you?” (b) In this regard, why did the parousia have to be an extended period of time?

⁴¹ By their repeatedly saying, “When did we see you?” when they inquired about the things the King Jesus Christ said they had done to him, the righteous sheeplike ones make it manifest that they did not see him in the flesh. Rightly so, forasmuch as his royal presence or parousia is invisible to human eyes, he being now one “whom not one of men has seen or can see.” His parousia had to be an extended invisible presence for them to do to him all the things that he enumerates, in an indirect manner.