It has been proved that in the thought of the Passion it is only the eschatological idea of the Kingdom of God which is in view. It has been shown likewise that the assumption of a period of ill[ ]success after the mission of the Twelve is without historical justification. This, however, constitutes the indispensable presumption for every such development as has been assumed on the part of Jesus. Therefore the eschatological notion cannot have been forced upon Jesus by outward experiences, but it must from the beginning, even in the first Galilean period, have lain at the base of his preaching! 2. The Eschatological Character of the Charge to the Twelve. “The Kingdom of God is at hand” (Mt 10:7)—this word which Jesus commissions his Disciples to proclaim is a summary expression of all his previous preaching. They are to carry it now throughout the cities of Israel. The charge of Jesus to the Twelve furnishes no means of determining in what sense this proclamation is meant. If the common conception is right about the significance of this mission of the Twelve, the words with which he dismisses them present an extraordinary riddle. Full of hope [pg 088] and with the joy of productive effort he goes about to extend the scope of his activity for the founding of the Kingdom of God. The commission to the Twelve ought therefore to contain instruction about the missionary propaganda they were to carry out in this sense. One must hence expect that he would direct them how they should preach about the new relation to God and the new morality of the Kingdom. The commission, however, is anything but a summary of the “teaching of Jesus.” It does not in the least contemplate instruction of a thoroughgoing kind, rather what is in question is a flying proclamation throughout Israel. The one errand of the Apostles as teachers is to cry out everywhere the warning of the nearness of the Kingdom of God—to the intent that all may be warned and given opportunity to repent. In this, however, no time is to be lost; therefore they are not to linger in a town where men are unsusceptible to their message, but to hasten on in order that they may pass through all the cities of Israel before the appearing of the Son of Man takes place. But “the coming of the Son of Man” signifies—_the dawning of the Kingdom of God with power._