What does Matthew 28:16 mean?

More than the other gospel writers, Matthew focuses on Jesus' promise to His disciples to meet them in Galilee after His resurrection from the dead: "After I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee" (Matthew 26:32). After He is resurrected, the message Jesus gives to the women for the disciples is, "Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me" (Matthew 28:10).

Part of the appeal for the disciples may have been that Galilee was home. Not only would Jesus be raised from the dead, He would also meet them back at home in the region of Galilee, in the northern part of Israel, where they had all spent so much time and had done so much good together.

Matthew does not include Jesus' interaction with the disciples in Jerusalem on the day of the resurrection (Luke 24:36–43). Nor does he mention other meetings with the resurrected Jesus as reported in the other Gospels. Matthew tends to condense the action and skip details to keep the story moving. In this case, he jumps forward to an encounter with the eleven remaining disciples, and maybe many others, at a prearranged meeting place on a mountain in Galilee.