Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.
Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? - q.d., 'as if He whom ye love were now lost to you forever.'
This same Jesus, х houtos (G3778) ho (G3588) Ieesous (G2424)] - 'this very Jesus,' who, as the babe of Bethlehem, received at His circumcision the name of "Jesus," who by His friends from that time forward was so known, and even by His enemies was called "Jesus of Nazareth" - this very Jesus,
Which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven. This most delightful assurance is couched in terms so emphatic and expressive as to demand special attention. First, two phrases are employed to express the close analogy which there is to be between the manner of His departure and that of His return: "He shall so come" х houtoos (G3779) eleusetai (G2064)]. and "in like manner х hon (G3739) tropon (G5158)] as ye have seen Him go" - that is, no doubt, as personally, as visibly, as gloriously. Next, the expression "into heaven" is thrice repeated in this one verse, emphatically announcing that the return would be just as corporeal and as local as the departure before their own eyes had been. By these exhilarating disclosures would these heavenly visitants signify to their wondering auditors that the joyful expectation of their Lord's return ought to swallow up the sorrow of His departure. And that effect it had immediately; because, as this same Evangelist tells us in his Gospel, "they returned to Jerusalem with great joy," as soon as the angelic messengers left them (Luke 24:52).
Remarks:
(1) Often has it been observed that while the Ascension of Christ is seldom referred to in the New Testament, His Resurrection is a theme to which its writers are ever recurring. The reason is obvious. In addressing unbelievers, the Resurrection of Christ was the only palpable attestation of His Messiahship to which an appeal could properly be made; and as to believers, it was the resurrection of Jesus which was the beginning of that new life in our nature-stripped of the curse and indwelt by the Spirit-which He brought in for them by being "made a curse for them;" that resurrection, too, was only in order to His ascension, and was soon followed by it, heaven being the proper element of the new life and the natural home of its glorious Head; and accordingly, wherever the resurrection of Christ is brought up to the view of believers, it is to be viewed as necessarily embracing His ascension to the right hand of the Majesty on high, as the designed, understood, and fitting sequel to it.
(2) On 'restoring again the kingdom to Israel,' two opposite errors are to be carefully avoided. The one is, to understand our Lord's check upon the curiosity of the disciples as amounting to a denial that anything of the kind was ever to be looked for: the other, to hold that He here virtually endorses the Jewish views of "the kingdom," that a visible Jewish theocracy over the whole earth was eventually to be erected-only with Jesus as the King-and that He merely checks their curiosity as to "times and seasons." This latter extreme puts quite as much into it as the former takes out of it. Of the nature of the kingdom to be restored to Israel, our Lord here says absolutely nothing. For this we must consult the sure word of prophecy. That "the house of David, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, when the Spirit of grace and supplication shall be poured upon them," shall yet, as a nation, "look upon Him whom they have pierced, and mourn for Him as for an only son, and for a first-born," and, as they come forth from the "fountain opened, for them for sin and for uncleanness," shall say, "Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord;" and that "so all Israel shall be saved:" - this much, surely, is plain enough.
And if Israel be God's first born "the root " of which the Gentiles are but the "branches;" if when "we are And if Israel be God's first-born, "the root," of which the Gentiles are but the "branches;" if, when "we are Christ's," we thereby become "Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise," while they, when brought to Christ, are but "graffed again into their own olive tree:" - will not this re-adjustment, by which "the Jew first" becomes a living reality, be in no mean sense a 'restoring again' of "the kingdom to Israel?" Yes, even although nothing beyond this be to be looked for now, and eventually realized. But should they, over and above this, come to "dwell in the land which He gave unto Jacob His servant, wherein their fathers dwelt, they and their children, and their children's children forever" (Ezek. 37:35) - though in no respect distinguished from other Christian nations, except as being the original stock from which they will gratefully own themselves sprung, as the visible people and kingdom of God-this would be such a still more palpable 'restoration of the kingdom to Israel' as to meet all that Christians seem warranted to expect or desire.
Be this latter opinion, however, well or ill-founded, the one thing which comes manifestly out of our Lord's words here is, that the disciples were to get no light from Him as to the time of the kingdom; that they had something else to engross their attention than prying into "times and seasons;" that the Father, whose proper business it was, would see to that; and that their souls, as soon as the baptism of the Holy Spirit came upon them, would be so set on fire, and their hands so full of work, in 'witnessing for Him in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth,' that they would willingly allow times and seasons to develop themselves to thoughtful observers in the majestic course of events. Not that all inquiry into revealed dates is hereby discouraged, else why should they have been given? "Things which, are revealed belong to us, and to our children" (Deuteronomy 29:29). But this we may safely say, that on the eve of great and engrossing duties a prying curiosity as to times and seasons is unbecoming and injurious to the spirit; that in no circumstances can such studies be expected to issue in the definite and certain disclosure of what "the Father hath put in His own power;" and that the utmost we are warranted to expect from our most reverential and penetrating inquiries, even into revealed dates, is confirmation of what other scriptures direct us to look for, and a more definite conception of the future stages and arrangements of the divine kingdom.
(3) Would that Christians realized more vividly the delightful and soul-stirring identity between the crucified, risen, ascending, and returning Redeemer-that as that very Jesus who ate and drank, and slept and waked, and wept and groaned, and bled and died here be low, is He who rose again from the dead, was seen with men's eyes to go into heaven, and now wields the sceptre of universal dominion; so He will at the time appointed so come in like manner as He was seen to go into heaven! Would not this put substance in place of the shadows in which our faith of such truths is apt to lose itself; and, connecting earth with heaven in that glorious Person on whom our faith reposes, impart to our Christianity the solidity of the one and the brightness of the other? Nor let the promised presence of the Spirit-precious compensation though that is for the absence of Christ-dim the recollection that our only full consolation under that absence is the assurance of His Personal Return (see the notes at John 16:1-33, Remark 3, at the close of that Section); in prospect of which, instead of looking idly upwards, we learn with joyful alacrity to "occupy until He come." (See also the note at Luke 24:53.)
Return to Jerusalem-The Upper Room (1:12-14)