One of the most extraordinary documents in the history of philosophy, The Oldest Systematic Programme of German Idealism would have been written in the Tübingen Seminary, where Schelling shared rooms with Hegel and Hölderlin, in 1796 or 1797. Only a few pages long, it offers not a system, but instead sketches the ambitions of a trio of brilliant students who had come under the threefold spell of Fichte's subjective idealism, the French revolution, and Goethe's Bildungsromane. The manuscript that we have was unearthed by Franz Rosenzweig in Berlin and published in 1917. It was then lost again, and rediscovered by Dieter Henrich in Krakow in 1979. While it is in Hegel's handwriting, its enthusiastic tone and emphasis on aesthetics would point to the other two. Herein, we wish to argue that the Programme remains true to its name, containing both the strongest elements of German Idealism, but also the seeds of its demise. The Programme begins with the claim that metaphysics will have to be completely overhauled in light of Kant's ethical philosophy. The complete system of ideas that was once the domain of metaphysics will now have to become a system of Kantian postulates. The first and highest of these will be human freedom. The author, speaking in the first person, announces the ambitious project of investigating the field of physics. The unifying thought in all these elements is the idea of beauty. Like a theology, then, the Programme has esoteric and exoteric elements. In brief, the Programme contains all the elements of a theory of revelation. Can the development of the Programme's ideas be saved from itself? This depends on whether the Concepts to which it gives rise begin to decay at their inception, or if the future, as Fichte famously prophesied in his Vocation, remains determinate but not determined. In brief, the Programme is the key to understanding the idea of revelation as it relates to German Idealism.