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reveal their intended message as to the limits of the kingdom? Such seems to have been the actual course of events, for the records and letters of the apostolic age make it clear beyond doubt that it was not through such an injunction from Jesus but by the onward pressure of new experiences that the eleven, or such portion of them as ever came to the view, widened their horizon so as to include "all the nations." Their course of action seems inexplicable if they had received from Jesus in the post-resurrection period the clear and impressive commission recorded by gospels LK and MT.

The endeavor may now be made to summarize briefly the Teaching of Jesus about the Future according to the Synoptic Gospels: I. The Destruction of Jerusalem.-Jesus foresaw and forecast the destruction of Jerusalem. On more than one occasion in his ministry, particularly toward its close, he spoke in most explicit and specific terms of the impending national disaster. He told his disciples that the Jewish state would fall within their own generation. That event would not come about without the most vigorous opposition by Jews to Romans; and of the terrors which would precede and accompany the fall of Jerusalem, Jesus spoke in strong terms. His confidence that the ultimate, deadly clash was not far distant seems to have been based in his interpretation of events as they were happening in his lifetime, especially in his observation of the uncompromising attitude and hopeless ideals of the leaders of the Zealot movement. He conceived of the ruin to be wrought by the Romans as complete and final; even the Temple itself would be utterly demolished. Fanatical zeal would be met by drastic measures.

II. The Rise of Messianic Claimants. From the standpoint of his own society, Jesus regarded the most serious peril of the period of the coming war to be the rise of claimants to messianic dignity and power, who, by specious promises of relief from the frightful distresses of the conflict with Rome, would lead his disciples to abandon their faith in Jesus and his messianic ideals, and to attach themselves to these Zealot movements. Recognizing the discomforts and terrors sure to attend a combat to the death by the Romans with his people, Jesus took full account of the power of appeal which would be present in the pretensions by messianic claimants to the ability to bring in the

glorious day of Jehovah, through resort to arms and by professed deeds of supernatural power. To all such appeals Jesus bade his disciples give not the slightest heed, asserting that in the days of their desire they would not see that Day so ushered in by Zealot claimants. As a powerful corrective to the conception that the day of Jehovah or his anointed was to be made actual by force of arms or by the powerful intervention of Jehovah through deeds of drastic destruction to the enemies of his people, Jesus sketched in simple and broad terms an outline of the day of the Son of man from which there were entirely absent all political interests, and to the bringing-in of which no man or men, whatever their claims, could contribute anything. Neither by martial activity nor by prolonged resistance of any form would the Day be deferred or hastened, for that Day when it came would be "as the lightning when it lighteneth out of the one part under the heaven and shineth unto the other part under heaven." And as to the time when that Day would come—" of that Day knoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father."

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III. The Mission of the Disciples.-Apparently it was not until the final week of his life that Jesus dealt with his disciples about their mission among men after his removal from their midst. He seems to have spoken first of their mission on the occasion when he dealt at greatest length with the national future, that is, on the Tuesday of Passion Week. As to their message, he gave them to understand that truths about the interpretation of himself, and about the nature and future of the kingdom of God, concerning which he had bidden reserve and silence during his lifetime, were to be spoken openly and boldly after his death. Nothing that he had said was intended permanently for limited circles; everything must come to the light and be made fully manifest. As to the effect of their message, they must expect that it would arouse the most violent antagonism and opposition. Upon this phase of the future, their persecutions, Jesus dwelt at some length, in the endeavor to prepare them for the worst that was to come. For them he defined his own mission as not a mission to give peace, but rather division. By precept and by parable, he urged faithfulness in their profession of him and in the prosecution of their future mission. The limits of the mission Jesus seems X not to have defined precisely for his disciples. Apparently he thought

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it best to suggest in broad outline his conception of a future, slow, gradual development into ultimate largeness and greatness, leaving it to the unfolding of history to give more precise content to the forms under which he had clothed his outlook.

IV. The Kingdom of God.-Jesus spoke seldom of the future of the kingdom of God. But his messages on that theme are among the clearest recorded in the gospels. Apparently he stood opposed to the conceptions of the kingdom current in his day; and his discourse in parables on the nature and future of the kingdom is intended in substantially all its parts, it seems, to set over against the thought of John the Baptist, and other modes of view as to the kingdom, his own convictions on that subject. Jesus believed the kingdom of God to be the ultimate product of certain forces which require favorable conditions and long time for their complete outworking. But he had the conviction that the conditions prevalent within the generation after his death would be favorable to the rapid and extensive spread of the truths which he had taught and for which he died. In this conviction, he assured his disciples that some of them would live to see developments of the kingdom not now expected by them.

V. The Time of the Events.-Jesus made statements about the time of three different events, namely, the destruction of Jerusalem, the day of the Son of man, and the kingdom of God. Of the first, he asserted that it would happen within the generation; of the second, he said that no one but the Father knew the time; of the third, he forecast that before the last of his disciples had passed away they would see the kingdom attain to great power. Of the destruction of Jerusalem and the day of the Son of man, Jesus spoke in the one discourse and in closest conjunction. The reason for this conjunction lay in the fact that the necessity for any statement at all from Jesus on the day of the Son of man arose from the circumstance that the messianic claimants, against whose notions the statement was directed, were the accompaniment of the war with the Romans. Jesus had forecast the war and the siege; he had said that those days of conflict would result in longing for some relief; that relief he asserted would be proffered by men who would promise to bring in the new era; against such claimants he forewarned his disciples; as the most effective means to assure heed to the warning, he set forth the transi

tion to the new era in terms which excluded its realization under Zealot forms. The result of this conjunction of two different events by Jesus was that his prediction as to the time of the one was applied later by his disciples to the time of the other. In this way, it came about that the day of the Son of man was expected within the generation, and the tradition of Jesus' words so represents Jesus. In addition to this initial confusion, there was given to certain sayings of Jesus about the kingdom of God a meaning different from that originally intended by Jesus, because the early disciples made the day of the Son of man synonymous with the kingdom of God. This identification of the two terms was made more reasonable because Jesus had forecast that the disciples would see the powerful spread of the kingdom within their lifetime. This promise seemed like the equivalent of the assertion that the day of the Son of man would be realized within the generation. This double confusion of events kept separate by Jesus resulted not only in the faulty transmission of the discourse in which Jesus had dealt with two of them in conjunction, but also in most serious modifications and additions in many other sayings, changes which can, for the most part, be detected by the comparison of document with document or of gospel with document.

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VI. The Church and its Institutions.-Because the document MK, which furnished the historical framework for gospels LK and MT, contained the final discourse on the future in a form which attributed to Jesus the coming of the Son of man within the generation, this expectation controls the outlook on the future which dominates in gospels LK and MT, especially the latter in the form in which apparently it came from its original framer. But the failure in the realization of the return of Jesus within the allotted time led x later to the conviction that some other limit must be set. That chosen as the later terminus was the time when the gospel should be preached throughout the whole world; this seemed in keeping with the course events had taken during the first generation. A saying to this effect (Matt. 24:14), and slight modifications and additions to other sayings of Jesus, found a place in gospel MT; and the former was subsequently taken up by document MK itself. Thus within gospel MT there now stood sayings attributed to Jesus which were

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in contradiction as to the limits of the mission, the one a natural inference by the framer of gospel MT (Matt. 10:23), the other an addition by a later editor (Matt. 24:14), both more precise than any utterance originally from Jesus. Yet later perhaps, surely subsequent to the time of the framer of gospel MT, there was added the introductory setting and the statement of the Great Commission. Within that commission there is the establishment of the rite of Baptism for those who become disciples in response to the propaganda. For this institution as from Jesus there is no other support in the Synoptic Gospels; it seems to have come from within the early community. Similarly, the institution of the Supper is supported in the records by a single passage only, which apparently has come into gospel LK from a letter of Paul. Certain physical immunities in the mission are promised, and there is the delegation of immeasurable authority to Peter, and later to the Twelve as the leaders in the new society, "the church." But the passages which convey these sayings are found to belong apparently to the latest strata of material in the gospel tradition. There is the assignment of judicial activities to "the church," and the promise of the post-ascension presence of Jesus, but the evidence seems to compel the conclusion that these sayings are the product of notably rich and enlarging experience. Jesus seems to have dealt with the future of his society under the term, "the kingdom of God," not under the term, "the church."

VII. The Day of Judgment.-The notion of a day of judgment, under the forms in which it appears in the Synoptic Gospels, seems clearly to be traceable to sources other than Jesus. The expectation of such a day is confined, with a single secondary exception, to the Gospel of Matthew, where it appears under one form or another several times. There it is a product apparently either of modification which can be detected by comparison with the document, or of additions to the original sayings, some of which can be traced by the comparison of gospel with document, others of which can be determined with reasonable certainty by other valid methods.

VIII. Life after Death.-Jesus stated with clearness and positiveness his belief in the resurrection and the resurrection life. He did not define with precision the scope of the resurrection, though the implications of his basis of belief in its certainty, taken with other

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