By Martin L. Carey
On a clear day back then, you could gaze up into the blue Judean sky and see forever. One afternoon, a little cluster of people stood together on the Mount of Olives for a long time, gazing upward, hoping and longing. They could only see a bright cloud, now receding away into the blue. They kept staring hopefully at the cloud that hid Him from their sight, but He was gone. They suddenly noticed two men in white standing nearby, who now spoke:
Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven (Acts 1:11).
That day as they followed Jesus up the hillside above Bethany, they were filled with expectation of what He might say and do next. Climbing the dusty path behind Him, they watched Him and wondered. This man was the Jesus they had known and loved, a man with a real body, just as He had proven to them the night after His rising. He had flesh and bones like them, for they touched His scars and watched Him eat broiled fish. His body wasn’t an illusion or a simulation.
See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; touch Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have (Lk. 24:39).
Jesus Himself was with them again. Yet, He had changed since coming out of the tomb. On a walk to Emmaus with two disciples (Lk. 24), they were prevented from recognizing Him. They only recognized Him when He raised His hands to bless their meal, and then instantly He vanished. Later that same evening He suddenly appeared in a room with locked doors. This was no ordinary human body, and with His mysterious appearances and signs, they knew He had the power do anything.
Jesus had called Himself the “Son of Man,” placing Himself at the center of Daniel 7:13, where one like a Son of Man was presented to the Ancient of Days. Now the Son of Man and His disciples had stopped in a clearing, and they gathered around Him, ready to ask their big, burning question:
“Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6).
He answered with a gentle correction and a promise;
It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority; but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth (Acts 1:7–8).
This conversation wasn’t going the way they expected. Jesus’ kingdom would come with mighty power—not by military conquest, but by proclaiming that His kingdom had arrived. The Spirit’s power was coming to equip them to be the King’s witnesses, to proclaim His gospel with power to the world. It was time for cherished beliefs to be overthrown with something much better.
After speaking to them, He lifted up his hands to bless them (Lk. 24:51), and while still blessing them, His body began to rise off the ground. What a strange way for Him to leave them! There were no lights, angel choirs, or fiery chariots—just a man quietly rising higher and higher from the earth, blessing them. Then the cloud took Him out of their sight.
Watching Him, they wondered how they could be comforted when Jesus was gone, but they knew He had promised to send them the Holy Spirit:
“I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you” (Jn. 14:16-17).
By the Spirit of God since His ascension, Jesus has become ever-present with His children and will never abandon them, no matter what. Now, through His Spirit, Jesus lives in us and is closer to us than He was even to His disciples while they walked with Him on earth.
Where Did Jesus Go?
Since Jesus’ body ascended into space, we wonder where He went. Perhaps if we flew a space ship fast enough we could approach heaven, or with a big enough telescope we could sneak a peek at heavenly glory.
Some of us tried to do just that. Growing up with a love for the stars, I would point my little telescope at a glowing patch in the constellation of Orion. Adventists are taught by their prophet Ellen White that Jesus will return from somewhere in Orion. White’s “Opening in Orion” grew into an elaborate Adventist legend over the years, leading us to believe that God’s throne is somewhere inside the nebula M42, a glowing gas cloud. Astronomers tell us that M42 is about 1500 light years away,1 a relatively close neighbor in our Milky Way galaxy of 100,000 light years across. It is a beautiful object even in binoculars, regardless of what its clouds may hide. We know that M42 fills a limited amount of space, about 25 light years across. It glides along in the Orion arm of our Milky Way galaxy, and although the galaxy is vast, it is just one among 200 billion other galaxies—give or take a few billion. From Ellen White’s two statements, many Adventists have come to believe God’s heaven is contained in a gas nebula nearby. For you astronomers, that puts heaven’s address at RA 5h 35m | Dec -5° 23.2
Does God have an address inside our observable, physical universe? The reformer John Calvin once remarked,
What? Do we place Christ midway between the spheres? Or do we build Him a cottage among the planets? Heaven we regard as the magnificent palace of God, far outstripping this world’s fabric.3
How far into the heavens did Jesus ascend? Scripture gives no location in the universe for God’s throne, nor is there any mention of God coming from or living near Orion. Jesus’ actual ascension flight plan, however, is hinted at in Hebrews 4:14: Our great high priest “has passed through the heavens.” He is “separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens” (Heb. 7:26). The writer of Hebrews borrows language from David in Psalm 57:5: “Be exalted above the heavens, O God; Let your glory be above all the earth.”
Solomon’s prayer when he dedicated the temple also reveals God’s transcendence over creation:
“But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain You, how much less this house which I have built!” (1Kings 8:27).
The term “heaven of heavens” is used in Scripture to indicate the realm of God’s immediate presence beyond the visible starry heavens. There is no place loftier or more glorious than His throne, a place beyond scientific observation. The Son of Man rules in heaven, a realm fitted for One who dwells in “unapproachable light” (1Tim. 6:16) where His will is done perfectly (Mt. 6:10).
The Scandal of Christmas
When Christians celebrate the Christ child in the manger every December, we sometimes forget the glorious scandal of Christmas. That night in Bethlehem, Mighty God became a crying little baby who needed His mama to change His swaddling clothes. That night, He brought the kingdom of heaven down to earth. The Word became flesh, and when the humble shepherds beheld His glory, they knelt down to worship the tiny baby. Who would believe the shepherd’s report?
The incarnation of the Almighty is a shocking, disruptive, even blasphemous message—that the eternal creator God entered a woman’s womb and became flesh! Yet that tiny baby was the Eternal One, not someone less divine than the Father. “For in Him, all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form” (Col. 2:9).
Jesus’ bodily ascension to heaven is an essential part of the gospel, yet its significance has been neglected throughout Christian history. A man’s body ascending into space is a fantastic-sounding story, very hard to believe. Yet to many it hasn’t seemed spiritual enough, writes Gerrit Dawson, and we look for ways to spiritualize Jesus’ return to heaven.4
Ancient Greek philosophers, especially Plato, still influence Christians into having a low opinion of physical flesh. There is a tendency to think that somehow the body corrupts and disables the human spirit. There is a great deal written about how we must liberate our spirits by cleansing our bodies with better diet and exercise. We tend to equate the body’s genetic inheritance with our tendencies to sin, especially if we were raised on the Adventist health message.
Yet God’s incarnation into mortal human flesh does not diminish His divinity or His humanity. That Christmas baby was Mighty God who still held all things together from the feed trough (Col 1:17).
We could change the story to say Jesus unzips His skin suit and then ascends to heaven as a spirit. Jesus arrives on earth appearing as a man, wearing human flesh as a costume, only to shed it before returning to heaven. Spiritualizing Jesus that way has a certain appeal, says Dawson.5 It might offer us a way to escape the messy limitations of physical reality as He did. This change to the story of Jesus would make the ascension story ethereal and give us a rather ghostly Jesus. Absent from earth, this ghostly Jesus would need us to finish His work on earth by transforming the world and building up His kingdom by putting humanity back into the presence of God, as Chester and Woodrow explain in their book, The Ascension: Humanity in the Presence of God.6
The ascension, however, protects us from such perversions of Jesus. It keeps us from reinventing Him into a “Christ principle,” says Dawson, or from creating a “Christ in you” ideal, or whatever else our imaginations desire. The truth is that Jesus is the man who walked the earth 2000 years ago, bringing us to know and worship the wondrous person who gave His life to save the world. The ascension keeps us grounded in the Jesus of Scripture.7
If the incarnation was scandalous, it was even more scandalous to both Jews and Greeks for Christ to return to heaven with a human body, as Chester and Woodrow point out. How could God (or any god) humiliate Himself by first becoming flesh, and then by carrying a lowly, servant body back to the heavens?
The scandal is not just that God has left heaven to be ‘enfleshed’ on earth, but that God returns to heaven in the flesh. As John (‘Rabbi’) Duncan, the Scottish theologian and missionary, said, ‘The dust of the earth sits on the throne of heaven.’”8
Origen, a third century church theologian and philosopher, taught that Jesus did not retain His human body when He ascended to heaven but returned to His previous form as a spirit to exist only as pure intellect. As a universalist, Origen believed that existing as only mind was the goal of salvation for all, that salvation comes by attaining purity of intellect over the flesh.9
In fact, Origen’s thinking is alive and well today among certain modern theologians, who promote Christ not as a person but as a set of principles and ideals that we emulate.
What does Scripture teach us about the present form of the ascended Christ?
For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus… (1Tim. 2:5).
The ascension of the man Jesus to heaven shows us that His incarnation, being made flesh with us and for us, is a continuous incarnation. He is the same Jesus, but now He has a glorious resurrection body that we will share with Him:
For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory (Phil. 3:20-21).
For both He who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all from one Father; for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren (Heb. 2:11).
Jesus’ humanity is an inseparable part of His nature (Jn. 1:14; Phil. 2:7) qualifying Him as a priest forever (Heb. 6:20). In fact, we can call Jesus our Brother because He took our flesh and blood, so that we might become like Him.
Open The Gates!
After Jesus ascended and was taken by the cloud, it was time for His return to the royal residency He had left 33 years before. What was this reunion like, and what happened there? From Psalm 24 we have a glimpse into that heavenly drama. The Son has changed since He left home; now He comes back as not only as the Son of God but also as the Son of David. In Psalm 24, King David describes a royal arrival that begins with, “The earth is the Lords, and all it contains!” He asks in verse 3, “Who may ascend into the hill of the LORD? And who may stand in His holy place?” Only the one with clean hands and a pure heart, with nothing false in him—he can stand in God’s presence and be blessed. Who is pure enough to stand in His holy place (v. 4)? There is only one “who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth” (1 Pet. 2:22). That blameless man can approach the gates of Zion with confidence.
Psalm 24 has been called the “Song of Ascension,” to be sung during David’s reign when the ark of the covenant was carried up the road to the gates of Jerusalem. We discover that this arrival of the ark to the holy city was a shadow of something greater: the arrival of the Lord of Glory, the Son of David. The triumphant king returns from battle and seeks entrance into the city. The King has come, ready to enter through the ancient doors in triumph.
In this Psalm we can imagine Christ’s ascension and return to heaven. Charles Spurgeon wrote:
“Our Lord Jesus Christ could ascend into the hill of the Lord because his hands were clean and his heart was pure, and if we by faith in him are conformed to his image we shall enter too. We have here a picture of our Lord’s glorious ascent. We see him rising from amidst the little group upon Olivet, and as the cloud receives him, angels reverently escort him to the gates of heaven.”10
The Son of Man approaches the eternal gates of heaven, knowing they have been shut tight against any man since Adam’s rebellion. But now as He approaches, thousands of excited angels gather around Him, and they shout to those inside, “Lift up your heads, O gates, and be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in!” (v. 7).
Those behind the gate ask, “Who is this king of glory?”
From the outside comes the shout, “The LORD strong and mighty, the LORD mighty in battle!” and they shout all the louder,
“Lift up your heads, O gates, and be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in!”
“Who is this king of Glory?” They want to hear His name again.
“The Lord of Hosts; He is the King of glory!”
The Lord Jesus is the Son of Man prophesied in Daniel 7, and He has arrived in a cloud of glory to be given sovereignty over all the kingdoms of the world (Dan. 7:14). Now having triumphed over all His enemies through the blood of His cross, He has one pressing appointment that cannot wait. Jesus immediately sits down at the right hand of His Father, at His side as the co-regent of all creation. He told His disciples, “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth” (Mt. 28:18). His ascension was the inauguration ceremony for the King of Kings, and He remains as our sovereign King to this day.
Now reigning in the heavens, Jesus is establishing His kingdom by sending us His Spirit, by distributing spiritual gifts for building up His church (Eph. 4:7-12), by representing us to the Father, and by asserting His control over all the powers of this world. His power extends to everywhere. As Tim Keller has stated, Jesus is still human and our Advocate, “yet now he has been so glorified that everything he does has a cosmic scope . . . any time-space limitation passes away.”11
The Veil Was Torn
Adventists have taught that Jesus had been in the first apartment of the heavenly sanctuary, the Holy Place, making intercession for us until 1844, when He entered the Most Holy Place and began a work of judgment to see who was worthy. This belief is central to the Adventist doctrine of the investigative judgment which we will not discuss in detail. In fact, Ellen White saw a vision in which Jesus was ministering in the Holy Place in heaven together with God the Father.12 According to this vision, God the Father entered the Most Holy Place just before Jesus did. The vision implies that for over 1800 years, Jesus and His Father were not in the Most Holy Place which apparently stood empty all that time. With Father and Son absent, the mercy seat was apparently abandoned, with no divine presence there. During that time before the Father and Jesus entered it, the Most Holy Place in heaven was being polluted by the accumulating sins of God’s people. At some point, according to Ellen White’s revelation, the heavenly sanctuary must be “cleansed” of all that pollution.
This doctrine raises some questions:
1. Why would Jesus imitate the futile ancient daily sacrifices, which never took away sin? His completed atonement put away sins once for all (Heb. 10:11-12).
2. If God was not present in the Most Holy Place before 1844, what made it holy? Isn’t the most holy place where God is?
3. Why would the heavenly sanctuary need two compartments, divided by a veil? The veil of the earthly temple was a shield between the glory of God and the sinful priests. That veil was torn down the moment Jesus died, announcing complete access to the Father. Jesus’ torn body gave us fearless entrance into the very throne room of the Father.
Let’s look again at a familiar text, and consider if any Christian believer since AD 33 was ever excluded from complete, immediate access to the mercy seat and the Father:
Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh, and since [we have] a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith” (Heb. 10:1-22).
When Jesus was wounded for our transgressions, heaven and earth were shaken to allow believing sinners bold entry into the throne room. Jesus went immediately to the Father’s right hand, where He has remained for 2000 years.
As Charitee Lee Bancroft wrote, “Before the throne of God above I have a strong and perfect plea, A great high priest whose Name is Love, Who ever lives and pleads for me.”13
Who Shall Separate Us?
He entered heaven in our name so that by His blood we may enter also, even though we are by nature filthy and unworthy sinners. That statement means that right now, if you know and trust in Christ, you are seated with Him in heavenly places. This fact is not just a pretty metaphor, but a spiritual reality. He lives in us by His Spirit (Eph. 1:13-14), and we have our life in Him. The Christian’s life is joined to Christ’s life forever:
For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory” (Col. 3:3-4).
Full assurance of faith stands in contrast with the teachings of Ellen White, who said that at some unknown moment, Jesus will abruptly end His priestly intercession in heaven for us. On that day, there will be no further possibility of any sins being forgiven:
“Those who are living upon the earth when the intercession of Christ shall cease in the sanctuary above, are to stand in the sight of a holy God without a mediator. Their robes must be spotless, their characters must be purified from sin by the blood of sprinkling. Through the grace of God and their own diligent effort, they must be conquerors in the battle with evil.”14
Many Ellen White statements threaten believers with Jesus abandoning them if they are not perfect when their names come up for judgment. Thank God, His word remains true, even during the Time of Trouble:
Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? (Rom. 8:34-35).
“I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Heb. 13:5).
But he holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever. Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them (Heb. 7:24-25).
Nothing “can separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:37-39).
Our Mediator will never walk off the job or turn against His own children, for His priestly work always continues. Would He ever stop making intercession for us? No! His intercession and our eternal life are guaranteed, because Jesus can never die again (Rom. 6:9)! With Him, our place in heaven is as secure as He is, where no power can remove Him.
As Charitee Bancroft continues in her poem, “My name is graven on His hands, My name is written on His heart, I know that while in heaven He stands No tongue can bid me thence depart!”15
We Have Such a High Priest
The high priests of ancient Israel were men appointed to mediate between sinful people and their holy God. Moses set the pattern for them when he ascended Mt. Sinai and entered the cloud alone to speak with God (Ex. 20:21). Later, the tabernacle became the meeting place between God and man. On the Day of Atonement every year, the high priest entered the most holy place of the tabernacle, carrying the blood of sacrifice to the mercy seat on behalf of all God’s people (Lev. 16:29-34). When Jesus ascended to heaven as our High Priest, the Father had already accepted His shed blood on behalf of all who trust in Him. As our Substitute, Jesus had broken the curse of death, and we who believe enter the presence of God in Him. If you trust in Jesus, you are there now with the Father, with no “sin pollution” barrier. We have “this seal, ‘The Lord knows those who are His” (2 Tim. 2:19). The Ascended One personally brings us to God.
For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God (1Pet. 3:18).
Jesus is a better high priest because He is not like the priests of the Old Covenant:
1) He is a priest forever, unlike the priests of old who died (Hebrews 7:24). He “always lives to make intercession for them” (v. 25).
2) He was the perfect and sinless priest, and sacrifice (v. 26). He is “holy, innocent, undefiled, and separated from sinners.”
3) He made one sacrifice, “once for all when He offered up Himself” (v. 27).
To be all of those things, Jesus had to share our flesh and blood to be our sympathetic and merciful high priest. He knows what pain, joy, grief, and fear all feel like because He is our brother.
Therefore, He had to be made like His brethren in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people (Heb. 2:17).
Our high priest is forever one of us, and only in Him we are complete and “faultless to stand before the throne.”
This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast and one which enters within the veil, where Jesus has entered as a forerunner for us, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek (Heb. 6:19-20).
Standing before the Father, Jesus is our Mediator and Intercessor: He prays for our salvation, for our joy, for protection against the evil one (Jn. 17:9-14). Jesus knows what we need every moment.
Just how desperately do we need His prayers? My mom was single when she raised us three kids and was often at her wit’s end dealing with us. I confess, we were a handful. I remember certain nights hearing her fervently praying for us in her bedroom. She sounded so helpless and needy as she poured out her tears on the throne of grace. I wondered if God was taking her seriously. Now, years later, I know the answer. We have someone praying for us in the very highest heaven, one whose prayers are powerful and never failing. We are more helpless and wayward than we can know. As Robert Murray M’Cheyne wrote:
“If I could hear Christ praying for me in the next room, I would not fear a million enemies. Yet distance makes no difference. He is praying for me.”16
He will never abandon the struggling soul who calls on Him; for He saves to the uttermost. We are commanded to put sin to death and live by the Spirit (Rom. 8:14). As we will and work to please Him, our victory only comes by His willing and doing in us (Phil. 2:12-13). It is foolhardy to think of ever living apart from Him—as if we could prove our ability to live on our merits. He has a better plan:
For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus (Phil. 1:6).
If you trust in Jesus, you are there with Him now, victorious in the Father’s presence. He will be our righteous Mediator tomorrow, at world’s end, and a trillion years from now. Our lives are always hidden with Him.
“One with Himself, I cannot die; My soul is purchased by His blood; My life is hid with Christ on high, With Christ, my Savior and my God.”17
Endnotes
- Kenneth Hewitt-White, “Observing the Great Orion Nebula”, Sky and Telescope, https://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/celestial-objects-to-watch/observing-the-great-orion-nebula/
- Earthsky, “Messier Objects, Messier 42: Orion Nebula”, http://earthsky.org/clusters-nebulae-galaxies/orion-nebula-jewel-in-orions-sword
- John Calvin, Tracts and Treatises of John Calvin, Wipf and Stock, Publishers, 2002, 290.
- Gerritt Dawson, “Why the Ascension of Jesus Matters: An Interview with Gerritt Scott Dawson and Jonny Woodrow”, 5/8/2013, https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/why-the-ascension-of-jesus-matters-an-interview-with-gerrit-scott-dawson-and-jonny-woodrow
- Dawson, Ibid.
- Tim Chester and Jonny Woodrow, The Ascension: Humanity in the Presence of God, Christian Focus Publications, Fearn, Scotland, & Porterbrook Network, Sheffield UK, pp. 80-81.
- Dawson, Ibid.
- John Duncan, quoted by Tim Chester and Jonny Woodrow, The Ascension: Humanity in the Presence of God, Christian Focus Publications Ltd., Scotland, 58.
- Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Origen of Alexandria”, https://www.iep.utm.edu/origen-of alexandria/#SH5b
- Charles Spurgeon, Treasury of David, Psalm 24, https://biblehub.com/commentaries/tod/psalms/24.htm
- Tim Keller, Encounters With Jesus, Unexpected Answers to Life’s Biggest Questions, Penguin Books, New York, New York, 176.
- Ellen White, Early Writings, p. 55, http://www.gilead.net/egw/books2/earlywritings/ew2300days.htm
- Charitee Lees Bancroft, “Before the Throne of God Above”, https://www.hymnal.net/en/hymn/h/327
- Ellen White, The Great Controversy, p. 42. http://www.whiteestate.org/books/gc/gc24.html
- Bancroft, Ibid.
- Robert Murray M’Cheyne, The Robert Murray M’Cheyne Resource, https://www.mcheyne.info/quotes.php
- Bancroft, Ibid.
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