Elijah, however, had not as yet appeared, for the Baptist had not legitimated himself as such. He lacked to this end the display of supernatural power. Signs and wonders, however, belonged necessarily to the epoch which immediately preceded the Kingdom. A general pouring out of the Spirit and prophesying, wonders in heaven and upon earth,—all that was to occur before the Day of God comes. So it was defined by the prophet Joel (3:28 [2:28] ff.). Peter in his sermon at Pentecost appealed to this passage (Acts 2:17-22). One ought to recognise from the supernatural ecstatic “tongues” that one is approaching the end of the days. The crucified Jesus hath God raised up to be the [pg 141] Messiah in the Resurrection, and the Kingdom will soon dawn. This passage in Joel was therefore applied to the time immediately preceding the messianic age, the time of miracles, in which according to the prophecy of Malachi the Forerunner should appear (Mal 4:5-6). Moreover, the selfsame refrain unites these two fundamental passages of pre-messianic expectation: Mal 4:5 is the same as Joel 2:31—“Before the coming of the great and terrible Day of the Lord.” _The Forerunner without miracles in an unmiraculous age was therefore unthinkable._ For the contemporaries the characteristic difference between John and Jesus consisted precisely in the fact that the one simply pointed to the nearness of the Kingdom of God while the other confirmed his preaching by signs and wonders. Men had the consciousness of entering with Jesus upon the age of miracles. He was the Baptist,—but the Baptist, as it were, translated into the supernatural. After the mission of the Twelve, as his emergence and his signs became known abroad together with the news of the death of the Baptist, people said: The Baptist is raised from the dead. Hence the Disciples answered him at Cæsarea Philippi [pg 142] that men took him for Elijah or for the Baptist (Mk 8:28). Herod as he heard of him would not give up the notion that he was the Baptist: “The Baptist is risen from the dead, and therefore do these powers work in him” (Mk 6:14). Also the significance which Jesus ascribed to the signs must have led his hearers to suppose that they were in the midst of the era of the Forerunner. Their significance consisted, namely, in the fact that they confirmed the nearness of the messianic Kingdom. The people ought to believe him for the sake of the signs and repent unto the Kingdom of God.