The purpose of God in the history of man was accomplished when Jesus breathed his last upon the cross. The cry “It is finished” was not a mere gasp of a wornout life; it was not the cry of satisfaction with which a career of pain and sorrow is terminated; it was the deliberate utterance of a clear consciousness on the part of God’s appointed Revealer that now all had been done that could be done to make God known to [humans] and to identify him with [them].

—Marcus Dods, Footsteps in the Path of Life