Message

John the Baptist in the Wilderness by Geertgen tot Sint JansAfter announcing John's existence, the Gospel of Matthew immediately goes on to portray him as delivering the message Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is nigh, a saying adopted by doom-sayers everywhere in the western world. In both Luke and Mark, however, the message is absent. Clarke notes that this is the first of twenty-nine references to the Kingdom of Heaven in the Gospel of Matthew. Luke and Mark tend to prefer the term "kingdom of God." That Matthew uses the word heaven is often seen as a reflection of the sensibilities of the Jewish audience this gospel was directed to, in this case Matthew trying to avoid using the word God. Most scholars believe the two phrases are theologically identical because of the large number of parallel passages in Matthew and Luke in which Matthew uses "heaven" and Luke uses "God." Robert Foster rejects this view, arguing that Matthew does use the phrase "Kingdom of God" in places. He asserts that the Kingdom of God represents the earthly domain that Jesus' opponents such as Pharisees thought they resided in, while the Kingdom of Heaven represents the truer spiritual domain of Jesus and his disciples.Some scholars[who?] believe that when it was written this phrase was intended to be eschatological with the Kingdom of Heaven referring to the end times. According to this theory, when the last judgment failed to occur, Christian writers gradually redefined the term to refer to a spiritual state within, or worked to justify a much delayed end time. This passage, they say, presented a difficulty in this later endeavour as the phrase translated as "at hand" or "is near" both refer to an imminent event. Albright and Mann suggest that a better translation would be, The kingdom is fast approaching. France sees it as even more immediate suggesting that the phrase should be read as referring to "a state of affairs that is already beginning and demands immediate action."; i.e., "The kingdom of God is here."Others such as O. Cullmann interpret John (and Jesus -- Mark 1:15 to refer to an inaugurated kingdom; one which is present now but is not yet come in all of its fullness, i.e. the kingdom being here (because the king has arrived), but without being in the fullness of its glory.