Pagels examines Jesus’s central message—that God’s kingdom is at hand—and its multiple interpretations. Jesus’s followers expected the kingdom within their lifetime, but even his inner circle asked when it would arrive. Jesus warned of coming persecution, wars, and the Temple’s desecration. The Gospel of Mark, written around 70 CE, has Jesus predict the disastrous Jewish war against Rome that Mark’s audience had just experienced. This message resonated with Jews who had endured centuries of foreign domination and longed for the deliverance promised by prophets like Isaiah and Ezekiel. However, interpretations were divided between those advocating armed rebellion and those expecting divine apocalyptic intervention.

When the kingdom failed to arrive after Jesus’s death, many followers became disillusioned and abandoned the movement. The 18th-century historian Samuel Reimarus argued that Jesus was a failed revolutionary who tried to incite armed insurrection. Reimarus interpreted Jesus’s dying cry from the cross as admission of failure. However, some followers claimed that Jesus had been resurrected, and that resurrection became the rallying cry for early Christianity. Pagels draws a parallel to the modern Chabad movement, which grew around Rabbi Menachem Schneerson. After his death, followers insisted he was the Messiah and would return, documenting ongoing miracles—attracting about 100,000 adherents worldwide to this day.

While acknowledging Reimarus’s scenario as possible, Pagels argues that it is overly simplistic and strips the gospels of their transformative power. She cites the second-century martyr, Justin, who ultimately accepted execution rather than deny his faith. Pagels also references David Strauss, whose controversial 1835 work The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined argued that the gospels deliberately weave myth and history together to convey spiritual meaning. This complexity allows for multiple interpretations.

Later gospel writers addressed the problem of delay differently. Matthew and Luke incorporated the Q source, the hypothesized, lost written document of the sayings of Jesus, containing radical teachings like the Sermon on the Mount. These escalated demands made by Jesus—treating anger as equivalent to murder, loving enemies, offering the other cheek when struck, being perfect as God is perfect—suggest what scholars call an interim ethic for the brief time before the world’s end. Jesus’s beatitudes envision the current order reversed: The hungry will be filled, the weeping will laugh, but the rich and comfortable will face dire judgment. The central principle is reciprocity: How a person treats others now determines how God will treat them at the end of the world. The Lord’s Prayer, one of the central texts of Christianity, recited in some form by all Christian communities, anticipates the apocalypse, asking for the kingdom’s arrival, mutual forgiveness, and deliverance from the final period of testing.

To address continued delay, Matthew adds parables urging watchfulness and using metaphors of servants found abusing their positions and bridesmaids unprepared for the bridegroom’s late arrival. Matthew then shifts perspective with a parable of final judgment where the Son of Man separates nations based solely on compassion shown to the needy. Those who fed the hungry, welcomed strangers, and visited those in prison inherit the kingdom, while those who ignored such needs face eternal fire. This parable effectively transforms the kingdom into a posthumous, otherworldly reward for actions taken on earth.

Luke also grapples with delay, emphasizing sayings suggesting the kingdom’s present reality. When Pharisees ask when the kingdom will come, Luke’s Jesus responds that it arrives internally and without observable signs. Theologian Marcus Borg argues that this reveals Jesus’s intended meaning—the kingdom as inner spiritual reality rather than future apocalypse. However, Pagels notes that Luke also includes sayings about future signs, apocalyptic warnings, and promises of Paradise after death. This ambiguity, she suggests, has enabled enduring multiple interpretations.

The Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, discovered in 1945, goes further, claiming to reveal Jesus’s secret teachings. Thomas’s Jesus explains that the kingdom is not a spatial location in sky or sea but a state of spiritual awareness. When one knows oneself, one recognizes oneself as a child of God. The gospel contains some familiar sayings, but also over 50 new ones. Thomas correlates with Jewish mystical traditions (Kabbalah), equating the kingdom with the primordial divine light of creation. Jesus identifies with this light present throughout creation, teaching that everyone created in God’s image is potentially a child of light, just like Jesus. This message—that anyone could become like Jesus—was considered dangerous heresy by later orthodox leaders. Thomas concludes that the kingdom is already widespread, though often overlooked.

In sharp contrast, the Gospel of John radically revises the earlier tradition. John omits the message of the kingdom to focus entirely on Jesus himself as the message. John identifies Jesus as the divine Word made flesh. John’s Jesus identifies himself as the water of life, the bread from heaven, the way, and the resurrection. The Gospel of John mentions the kingdom only twice. First, it presents the kingdom as a spiritual state that only baptized believers can see. Second, when Pilate, at Jesus’s trial, asks about kingship, Jesus replies, “My kingdom is not of this world,” defining it as a supernatural realm for believers after death (John 18:36). Entry requires not repentance but belief in Jesus, sealed by baptism. John’s Jesus claims the divine name given to Moses and declares, “The Father and I are one” (John 10:30). John introduces the specific phrase “only begotten Son,” portraying Jesus as God incarnate (John 3:16). He reinterprets Jesus’s death as a sacrifice for the world’s sin, offering eternal life to believers but warning that unbelievers are condemned.

Pagels suggests that John wrote specifically to counter teachings like Thomas’s, insisting on Jesus’s unique divinity rather than shared divine potential. John’s revisionist message—that Jesus is God—was later codified in the Nicene Creed and has profoundly shaped orthodox Christianity. The chapter concludes by asking who chose the four canonical Gospels while excluding sources like Thomas, and why Jesus’s story remains compelling even if his apocalyptic prophecy failed.