Israel had many expectations of God. One of the strongest of these expectations was that God would come. This expectation was expressed in two different ways. The first was that God would send a Messiah and, through this representative, would lead the people into freedom. Another expectation gave rise to Israel's very specific notion of time and history. Many other nations thought of time in the same way they thought of the cycle of nature. As the seasons followed one another in a cycle, so they saw history as a closed circle, endlessly repeating itself. Israel, on the other hand, was sure that history moved forward towards a distant objective, the "day of the Lord". Though they could not have used such a modern term, Israel knew that God was "the Lord of history", and that a day of reckoning would come. Jesus sometimes referred to this day of reckoning, warning us that we do not know the day or the hour when the Lord will come. In another sense, the coming of the Messiah and the "day of the Lord" could be combined. Jesus hints at such a combination when He insists: "Today, this prophecy is fulfilled". This "today" is a time of judgement, a time of grace.