So when the story that Jesus has told—the abomination of desolation, the great tribulation, the chaos of catastrophic world events—comes to pass, this will be to the disciples the sign that they asked for at the start of the chapter.

The ancient Jews were creational monotheists. For them, God’s great future purpose was not to rescue people out of the world, but to rescue the world itself, people included, from its present state of corruption and decay.

Jesus understood his own vocation as that of a prophet announcing that Israel’s god was now at last becoming king. This had two particular focal points: the return of Israel from exile (chapter 6 above), and the return of YHWH to Zion (chapter 14 below). Both of these themes relate closely and obviously to the Temple. When the return happens, the T

it is in the four canonical gospels, not in some dodgy reconstruction behind or beyond them, that we find the great emphasis on the coming of God’s kingdom in the actual events of Jesus’s life, death, resurrection, and ascension. But the coming of the kingdom is conspicuously absent not only from the great creeds, but also from “the gospel” as envi