The preaching of renunciation finds a new force in this notion; everything in the world is death, and all human fear is insignificant before the thought of unconditional condemnation. "Do not be afraid of those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul; fear rather him who can destroy body and soul in hell" (Matt. 10:28).

It is in vain that writers who seek to modernize the teaching of Christ try to convince themselves and others that these ideas are either ascribed to Him by the Evangelists, or outwardly borrowed by Him from the apocalyptic of His time. If only they were to be found only in His apocalyptic speeches: but His entire preaching is imbued with the thought of judgment, the thought of the incompatibility of the kingdom of God with the evil that reigns in the world: in God evil is condemned, and this judgment cannot but be revealed; God's righteousness would not be unconditional truth if God's judgment were not justified in reality in a universal and unconditional way. Since the world opposes this truth, it judges itself, as indicated in the fourth Gospel, which opposes God as life and light to death and darkness, which rule in the world. Even if this antithesis belongs to the fourth evangelist, it corresponds to the teaching of the synoptics about judgment, about the world, about God, and corresponds to the entire God-consciousness of Christ. If in John everything that does not have life in itself is doomed to death, then in the Synoptics everything barren and perishable, everything that is not of God and that "does not grow rich in God" is doomed to it.

Christ preaches salvation because He is aware of the nearness and inevitability of righteous judgment. Salvation is understood in God and with God, since death is outside of Him; salvation is given freely, together with forgiveness, by the mercy of God. But this salvation must be accepted and assimilated, which requires active repentance or conversion of the will (μετάνοια). Judgment is the condemnation of inner unrighteousness or sin, an unconditional condemnation, which therefore cannot but be revealed in its external consequences: forgiveness, on the other hand, by destroying the moral barrier between God and man, is a necessary condition for the restoration of communion with God, communion in which man receives "life." Therefore, finally,

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and repentance itself must be an active conversion (μετάνοια), with which regeneration is connected. For repentance is recognized as necessary for salvation, and it has its source in God, who, filling the mind and heart of man, regenerates him, gives him a new meaning and content to his life. But an effort is required from the will of man to accept and assimilate the will of God, as it is directly indicated in the Gospels: having heeded the preaching of repentance, the people and tax collectors "justified God"; on the contrary, the Pharisees and lawyers, not accepting it, "rejected the will of God for them" (Luke 29-30).

The gospel of the kingdom begins with the preaching of repentance, and this alone is sufficient to show how closely the concept of judgment is bound up with it. With the baptism of John the "gospel" begins (Mk. 1:1; cf. Acts 1:22, 10, 27; John 1:6 ff.). "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand... Spawn of vipers, who inspired you to flee from the wrath to come? Those who bore fruit worthy of repentance... Already the axe is at the root of the trees: every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. I baptize you with water, but he who follows me is stronger than I... He will baptize you with the Holy Ghost and fire. His spade is in His hand, and He will clear His threshing floor, and gather His bread into the garner, and the chaff He will burn with unquenchable fire" (Matt. 3:1-12; Lk. 3:7-17). "Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand" – thus Christ began His preaching, and so the Apostles continued it (Mk. 1:14-15; b:12; Matt. 4:17; cf. Lk. 24:47). John's preaching is "the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ" (Mark 1:1); and Jesus' last word to the Sanhedrin of priests, the word for which he was condemned to death, was a solemn testimony to the coming judgment that the Son of Man would perform: "I am (the Son of the Blessed), and you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming with the clouds of heaven" (Mark 14:62). In view of these testimonies, all recent attempts to diminish the significance of eschatological teaching, or even to isolate it altogether from the preaching of Jesus, appear to be false from a purely historical point of view. Historians and moralists are free not to accept this teaching, but nothing gives them the right to strike out from the gospel what they do not like on the basis of personal sympathy or antipathy. Jesus

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undoubtedly recognized Himself as the Christ, the Son of Man in the sense of the prophecy of Daniel (7), and despite the profound reform He made in the messianic beliefs of His people, He did not renounce their religious essence: the coming judgment and salvation are as immutable as God Himself and as the word of God testified in Him, the Son of God.

This is what the prophets had already taught, and Jesus saw in himself their fulfillment. The eschatological concept of the kingdom is closely connected with the basic religious idea of Christ, and with the concepts that were developed during the history of Old Testament Israel. The Kingdom of God comes by the power of God, and not by the effort of man. The effort of the human will is needed to bring forth the "fruits of repentance" or the "fruits of the kingdom"; it is needed in order to "rapture this kingdom" (οἱ βιασταὶ ἁρπἄζοθσιν αὐτὴν, Μph. 11:12) or to "enter into life" by fulfilling the received word. But just as the seed of the word is given by God (as a gift and as a task), so the kingdom or dominion of God itself depends on the Father alone. No one knows about the day and hour of his coming, not even the "Son" himself – only the "Father" knows (Mark 13:22 = Matt. 24:36). Further, this kingdom in its power and glory is by no means the mere realization of a perfect, moral society or union of men. The very image of judgment, so closely connected with every word of Christ's preaching, just as the image of the wedding feast with the heavenly bridegroom, points to other ideas. That the messianic feast (Psalm 25:6ff) is understood here in a real sense is also indicated by the early Christian apocalyptic tradition, in addition to the parables of Christ and His words at the farewell supper (Matthew 26:29). Finally, the coming kingdom of eternal life is the "resurrection of the dead," and the "sons of the kingdom" become sons of God and sons of the resurrection, and can no longer die equal to the angels (Luke 20:36, ἰσάγγελοι). This belief in the resurrection, attested to by the entire New Testament, is inseparable from the teaching of Christ: God is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living (θεὸς δὲ οὐκ ἔστί νεκρῶν ἀλλὰ ζώντων, πάντες γὰρ αὐτῶ ζῶσιν {47} ib. 38).

Thus, the kingdom of God is defined as the work of God. It is the realization of God on earth, which depends on God. Man must "seek" this kingdom, knock on it,

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