Acts 1:6-11--The Ascension

Acts 1:6-11
English Standard Version
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The Ascension
6 So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” 7 He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” 9 And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. 10 And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, 11 and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”

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We now see the Ascension in a different light.  It is not the end of something, as it appeared to be in the gospel of Luke, but instead is the beginning of something new that Jesus is doing through the work of the Holy Spirit and what we will call the Church.

As Jesus prepared to return to His Father in heaven, He gathers all of His disciples around Him on the Mount of Olives and they are asking about the coming of the kingdom, for this was the last great sermon that He preached from that mountain before His crucifixion (see Matthew 24:1-25:46, Mark 13:1-37, and Luke 21:5-36 where Jesus gives many parables and teaching about the coming kingdom.  It was somewhat natural for His disciples to think that now that He had conquered the spiritual enemies of sin and death that He would now also defeat their physical enemies like the Roman empire and usher in His kingdom here on earth.

Instead, Jesus says that the timing of when the kingdom is supposed to come is not something that they are know.  The Father has fixed those dates by His own authority and even Jesus waits for the Father to tell Him that it is time.  Until then, He has gone to prepare a place for us, that where He is, there we might be also.  (See John 14:2-3).  Then Jesus seems to change the subject, but maybe not, when He tells that that they will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon them and that they will be His witnesses, "in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."  Only after He made this promise to them was He taken up from them and hidden by a cloud (I think this was the cloud that we see in the Old Testament that we call the glory of the LORD, but it acts as a veil so that we do not look on the fullness of God's holiness and glory).

The apostles were left wondering what had just happened and they were staring up into the sky to see if they could catch some glimpse of where Jesus went when two angels appeared to them (maybe the same two angels that appeared at the tomb) and they say, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”  So then we have a promise that Jesus will return on the clouds with power and authority.  We see that in Daniel 7 and Jesus referenced this in the trial and I believe it is referenced in Revelation 14:14-16 where we see the harvest of the good grain for we are told at that point that the angel will declare, “Put in your sickle, and reap, for the hour to reap has come, for the harvest of the earth is fully ripe.” (Everyone who will be saved has been saved and no one is going to be left out of the harvest).  It was only after everyone who was to be saved was safely inside the Ark that the judgment of the Flood came and it was only after the Lot and those that wanted to leave Sodom and Gomorrah with him were at a safe distance that the fire an brimstone began to fall, and there are also similarities to how the angel of death did not come at Passover until all God's people had a chance to gather safely in their houses and mark themselves and their families with the blood of the Passover lamb.

The disciples will return to Jerusalem, but they won't do so well with the waiting part of this command.  They will feel inclined that they have to replace Judas Iscariot and once again become "The Twelve" instead of just "The Eleven."  We'll pick up in Acts 1:12 next time at this point in the narrative.