The kingdom of God is near

‘The kingdom of God’ is God in saving action, God taking control in his world, or, to use our title, ‘divine government’. 

… Mark begins his book with a prologue designed to appeal to Jewish expectations of the fulfilment of the hopes of Israel, and to point to Jesus of Nazareth as the one in whom that fulfilment is to be focused. At the same time he has alerted his readers that the stage on which the drama is to be played is not merely that of human relationships, even of national politics, but of the cosmic encounter of the Son of God with the kingdom of Satan. (Divine Government: God's Kingship in the Gospel of Mark p21)