Mark 1:15 read as four distinct claims packed into one verse - the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of heaven is at hand, repent, believe in the gospel - and then a conclusion drawn from the order of them that cuts against the whole idea of repentance as a condition of entry. Everything before this moment in eternity was only preparatory; the time had to be filled up, and at this moment it begins to unfold like a flower. But it is not said that if you and I repent we will in any way be able to cooperate with God in bringing in the new order. The new order is coming whether we repent or not, and no one can stop it, because it is God’s purpose and his plan. Yet we are invited to repent, and Neville insists we should, every moment of time - not to help God, but for our own sakes while we are still shut out. Repentance makes the interval easier to live in, and that is all it does; it does not earn the kingdom and cannot delay it. At 1238 the same argument is used to reach a further conclusion he states flatly: fitness for the kingdom is the consequence, not something a man has earned - it is the consequence of the grace of God. At 1966 the premise is put as hatching: God’s period for hatching out has come and they are all being hatched out, so the door is open for everyone to enter, not because of their repentance, and when the time is fulfilled for the individual he enters whether in the interval he repented or not. The motif therefore sits alongside M697 (repent means a change of mind, which says what repentance IS) and M190 (the vision has its own appointed hour, which says why the timing is not ours): this one says what repentance CANNOT do. NOTE FOR THE ATTACH LANES: the bare phrase 'the time is fulfilled' occurs in 39 lectures and 'repent, and believe in the gospel' in 9, far more than the three lectures (1238, 1874, 1966) in which I have verified this particular argument. Many of those will be the quotation alone, or will belong to M190; please verify rather than attach on the phrase.