Big Idea: The kingdom of God is already here, but there will be a future appearance of the Son of Man for which people will be unprepared.
Understanding the Text
The kingdom (reign) of God has been at the heart of the preaching of Jesus and his disciples since 4:43 (see note there). In 10:9, 11 it was said to “have come near” (cf. 11:20), while in 11:2 Jesus taught his disciples to pray for it as apparently something still future (cf. 9:27). Now a question from Pharisees invites Jesus to clarify this central aspect of his teaching. But in his response and his following teaching to the disciples Jesus moves away from the kingdom of God to speak instead of “the days of the Son of Man” in a way that clearly goes beyond the present scene to a climactic moment of history.
In Mark 13 and Matt…