nty of his coming
death. In Gethsemane his heart pleaded against it, while his will bowed
still to God in perfect loyalty. It is not for us to explain his
prediction of death by appealing to the connection which the apostolic
thought established between the death of Christ and the salvation of men,
for we are not competent to say that God could not have effected
redemption in some other way if the repentance of the Jews had, humanly
speaking, removed from Jesus the necessity of death. All that can be said
is that he knew the prophetic picture, knew also the hardness of heart
which had taken possession of the Jews, and knew that he must not swerve
from his course of obedience to what he saw to be God's will for him.
Since that obedience brought him into fatal opposition to human prejudice
and passion, he saw that he must die, and that such a death was one of the
steps in his establishment of God's kingdom among men. So he went on his
way ready "not to be ministered unto but to minister, and to give his
life a ransom for many" (Mark x. 45).

245. With his prediction of his death the gospels usually associate a
prophecy of his speedy resurrection. As has been already remarked (sect.
210), it is being generally recognized that if Jesus believed that he was
the Messiah, he must have associated with the thought of death that of
victory over death, which for all Jewish minds meant a resurrection from
the dead. Jesus certainly taught that his death was part of his Messianic
work, it could not therefore be his end. The prediction of the
resurrection is the necessary corollary of his expectation of death; and
it may reverently be believed that his knowledge of it was intimately
involved with his certainty that it was as Messiah that he was to die.

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 pers