472 Gustavo Martin killed. Their suffering notwithstanding, the disciples should draw significant encouragement from the fact that it is God, not their temporally bound oppressors who ultimately drives events forward. The two positive references to the necessity of things (vv. 7,10) suggest divine providence and ordering of events. Further, in vv. 19-20, at the height of the suffering, Mark goes out of his way, grammatically, to highlight God’s agency in creation and election: “Since the beginning of God’s creation, which He created” (v. 19) … on behalf on the elect, whom He chose” (v. 20). Rather than cooling off eschatological expectations, the o{tan clauses in this section point forward irrevocably and by means of road signs to the events described in vv. 14-16. After those final instructions, Jesus refers back to the question and is able to say with unmistakable finality: “But you watch out, I have told you all things”, that is, I have answered your question, I have given you the road signs that will precede the temple’s destruction. The procedural-paraenetic language of this section, the language of road signs with its increasing urgency and relevance, makes sense while human action is a possibility. That appears not to be the case in the following section of the speech. 3. The Coming of the Son of Man: vv. 24-27 The strong adversative ΔAlla. separates the material starting in v. 24 from the previous section and introduces a new scene (51). While Mark does repeat the ejn ejkeivnai" tai'" hJmevrai" of the previous section, the adversative together with the preposition meta; qualifying the phrase thn qli'yin ejkeivnhn indicates a new, later time frame. The distinction of ; vv. 24-27 as a separate section, however, does not rest upon the presence of the two particles. Missing from this section is everything that drove the message home to Jesus’ audience in vv. 5b-23: Imperatives, second person verbs and pronouns, anaphoric references to the disciples’ question, the language of road signs as described above including the o{tan clauses, and any reference to deceivers, opponents, or any human action whatsoever. The overall urgency and immediacy of the previous section are absent from vv. 24-27. Vv. 24-25, described fairly by Dyer as “a Markan pastische of (51) Thus TROCMÉ, L’Évangile, 327; LAMBRECHT, Die Redaktion, 174. MATEOS (Marcos 13, 331) though believes it remains connected with the previous one by the repetition of tribulation, “in those days”, and “then”. FRANCE (The Gospel, 531-532) however, warns against deriving too much from the adversative.