246.  From the time when he began to tell his disciples that he must die, Jesus began also to teach that his earthly ministry was not to finish his work, but that he should return in glory from heaven to realize fully all that was involved in the idea of God’s kingdom.  His predictions resemble in form the representations found in the Book of Daniel and the Book of Enoch; and the understanding of them is involved in difficulties like those which beset such apocalyptic writings.  In general, apocalypses were written in times of great distress for God’s people, and represented the deliverance which should usher in God’s kingdom as near at hand.  One feature of them is a complete lack of perspective in the picture of the future.  It may be that this fact will in part account for one great perplexity in the apocalyptic sayings of Jesus.  In the chief of these (Mark xiii. and parallels), predictions of the destruction of Jerusalem are so mingled with promises of his own second coming and the end of all things that many have sought to resolve the difficulty by separating the discourse into two different ones,—­one a short Jewish apocalypse predicting the destruction of Jerusalem and the coming of the Son of Man within the life of that generation; the other, Jesus’ own prediction of the end of all things, concerning which he warns his disciples that they be not deceived, but watch diligently and patiently for God’s full salvation.  The difficulties of this discourse as it stands are so great that any solution which accounts for all the facts must be welcomed.  So far as this analysis seeks to remove from the account of Jesus’ own words the references to a fulfilment of the predictions within the life of that generation, it is confronted by other sayings of Jesus (Mark ix. 1) and by the problem of the uniform belief of the apostolic age that he would speedily return.  That belief must have had some ground.  What more natural than that words of Jesus, rightly or wrongly understood, led to the common Christian expectation?  Some such analysis may yet establish itself as the true solution of the difficulties; it may be, however, that in adopting the apocalyptic form of discourse, Jesus also adopted its lack of perspective, and spoke coincidently of future events in the progress of the kingdom, which, in their complete realization at least, were widely separated in time.  In such a case it would not be strange if the disciples looked for the fulfilment of all of the predictions within the limit assigned for the accomplishment of some of them.

247.  Whatever the explanation of these difficulties, the gospels clearly represent Jesus as predicting his own return in glory to establish his kingdom,—­a crowning evidence of his claim to supernatural knowledge.  It is all the more significant, therefore, that it is in connection with his prediction of his future coming that he made the most definite declaration of his own ignorance:  “Of that day or that