Apart from the two accounts we have from the inspired pen of Dr. Luke, the beloved physician, we really have no information about the ascension of Christ. The good doctor mentions it in both of the books he wrote, both in Luke and in the Acts…and in Luke, it’s the last chapter, and in Acts, it’s the first…and it had to have been really something.
Christ told them earlier He would be returning to His Father… didn’t way exactly when or exactly how. It isn’t likely they expected it to happen as it did, bodily, right before their very eyes. He had just promised them they would soon be especially empowered by the Holy Spirit, and they should remain in Jerusalem until it happened. Then, all of a sudden, right before their very eyes, their Lord literally begins lifting off the ground physically, rising higher and higher until, just as a speck in the sky, He’s gone. They all stand their looking upward, stunned by what they just witnessed. They could not take their eyes off where they last saw Him become smaller and less visible, until gone. Keep looking! Keep staring! Maybe He will come right back somehow. But, no, He was gone.
It took the intervention of two angels to interrupt their intense gaze into the upward regions. The angels offered a mild rebuke in the form of a question, “You men from Galilee, why are you standing here gazing up into Heaven? This same Jesus shall so come again in like manner as you have seen Him go into Heaven.” Well, why wouldn’t you stand there and gaze? Who wouldn’t? You’re pinching yourself to make sure you’re awake, and that you did, in fact, witness what you thought you just saw. Still stunned by it all, the apostles look at each other quizzically as if to say, “Did you all see what I just saw?” The angels jarred them all back to the matter at hand, and, while Dr. Luke doesn’t say it in Acts 1, he does in the gospel bearing his name, Luke 24, where he records his other account of the ascension and what followed immediately, saying, “And it came to pass, while He blessed them, He was parted from them, and carried up into Heaven. And they worshiped Him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the Temple praising and blessing God.” Well, I guess! Great joy! The Greek calls it “mega joy”. How could it be less? They knew what they knew, and they knew they knew it. No chance anyone under any circumstances could ever take this from them, nor the joy that accompanied it. One could only imagine the repeated times they would each relive this event, the ascension of their Lord right before their eyes. And the angel! The whole bit! And they worshiped with a perpetual joy.
Can you not see how this compelled and impelled these devoted followers to do as they did and give as they gave to make this wonderful Gospel of the death, burial and resurrection of their Lord available to all? Great joy? Of course!
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