The Ascension, Authority, and Acts

Welcome to Halting Toward Zion, the podcast where we limp like Jacob to the Promised Land and talk about life, the universe, and everything along the way. I’m Emily Maxson here with Greg Uttinger and Rachel Voytek, and we are so close to the ascension of our Lord…so close. I think we promised last time that we would get Jesus at least halfway to the sky, so that’s our target for this episode. I think we’re in Matthew 28, is that right?

That’s right. We’ve been near the end of all of the gospels. We finished John. We didn’t quite finish Mark, but we’re going to let Matthew’s ending substitute for Mark. With Luke we came within one or two verses of being done, and since it fits right into Acts we’ll say we finished that. But the end of Matthew 28 is so important for a discussion of history that we don’t want to leave it out.

Jesus, before his crucifixion, had told his guys that after he was risen from the dead he would go before them into Galilee and that they should meet him there. The invitation was not limited to the apostles, but of course primarily would fall upon them, and so they went.

Last time we saw what happened there, at least initially. Many of the disciples decided that they didn’t know what was going on and where this was going, and they were going to go fishing, and Jesus shows up, restores Peter, and we’re left in John with the prophecy that Peter is going to do things for Christ and in the end be taken where he would not, signifying by what sort of death he should glorify God. And John is not going to live forever, but if he was, that’s God’s business and not ours.

We’re here in Matthew 28 and we’re in Galilee. Matthew does not take us as far as the ascension, not because Matthew didn’t know about it or didn’t believe in it, but Matthew was written relatively early. It’s the first of the gospels, not only in the order we have it but in the order it was written.

It’s not so much that the Church needs to know that Jesus is in heaven. That was a fundamental doctrine that the apostles preached. But when people are going away, what do we want to know. “Oh, before he left, what were his last words? Did he leave a message for me? Did he say something significant?”

Recently Jane Goodall died and I’m noticing, “Here are her last words and what they mean for all of us!” I’m sure she was a nice and very intelligent lady, but I honestly don’t care what her last words were.

I’m not even sure who that is, to be honest.

I don’t know who that is either.

That’s right, you’re a different generation. Jane Goodall was the lady who did a great deal of work with primates, going and living among them and relating to them. She died recently. I honestly didn’t even know she was still alive.

Robert Redford also died. That was the one that I was aware of.

Well, yes. That’s one that everybody was aware of.

I wasn’t aware of it. I’m apparently not reading enough news, or something.

It’s really sad if I’m reading more news than you are.

Yes. You also know about the primate lady. I’ve never heard of that, either.

Look her up. She appeared on the cover of a number of news magazines and was a big deal back in the ‘60s.

Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them.

That is, where he told them to go. He pointed that they should go to that mountain. We’re not told which one it was. It doesn’t matter particularly, and it doesn’t mean that they were necessarily the only ones there. We know from I Corinthians 15 that on one occasion Jesus appeared to more than 500 people. This may have been that occasion just before they went up, or just when they came down, or something.

Jesus had a lot of disciples in Galilee, so this would be about the time when that happened and maybe this is in the incident, but the focus is on the eleven as representatives of the church, as foundation stones.

And when they saw him, they worshipped him, but some doubted.

They’re still shaky in their faith, despite everything, because faith is not the product of the flesh. It’s not the product of human logic or empirical experience. It’s the work of God’s Spirit, and God gives his Spirit by measure on his own time. Nonetheless, Jesus does not wait until everybody has all of his spiritual ducks in a row. He gives them an assignment, and in giving it to them gives it to the Church universal, the Church catholic.

And Jesus came and spake unto them saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.

The word ‘power’ means authority. Yes, he also has all power, but the emphasis here is the authority to tell things and beings and entities and objects to go and do whatever he wants them to do. It’s not simply the mere power, it’s the right to tell them and the absolute assurance that he will be obeyed. The authority is both in heaven and in earth, so total sovereignty.

The Son of God, by being God, has always had this power. The point here is that Jesus is the God-man. Jesus in his incarnation is now claiming this, and thus the word ‘given.’ The Father has bestowed upon Christ in his incarnation, in his humanity/deity, the office of mediator, the office of Christ, the office of prophet, king, and priest, to accomplish what’s left, which is to work out the salvation of the world, to subdue all his enemies, to gather his Church and defend it. So all power is given to him in heaven and in earth.

Go ye therefore, and teach all nations…

The “Go ye” is not a command. It’s a participle. We would probably render it more accurately as, “As you are going, therefore…” The going is assumed. Obviously you’ve got this great fantastic news, and you’ve got all the power of heaven and earth backing you, and the news is what it is. You know what the news is. The news carries the need, the necessity of going with it. “As you go therefore, teach…”

The marginal note says, “make disciples of” and the King James marginal note says, “that is Christians” of all nations, because in the New Testament, beginning with the book of Acts, Christian and disciple is interchangeable. The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch. So there’s no difference between saying a nation is being discipled to Christ, and a nation is being Christianized or won to Christ or being put under Christ’s covenantal authority.

The word ‘nation’ as it appears in English – the Hebrew and Greek words behind it in both testaments suggest an organized group of people who have some kind of relationship. Nations rise against nations. There’s an implied political connection and a social connection. These are not just random people groups.

You could look at scattered Latin Americans in the United States and say that’s a people group. Do they make a nation? No, they’re not a nation, they’re a people group. There are nations that are Hispanic or Latino or whatever the proper words are, but here the emphasis is upon not simply people groups but upon nations as nations.

We run into a good deal of fear these days from conservative Christians about Christian nationalism. I finally got to the point where I now know the question to ask. It’s not a question, it’s a statement or an order. “Define your terms. Before we can even begin to talk about this, what do you mean by that? And would the same kind of discussion apply to Christian marriage or Christian home? How about Christian church?”

“Only individuals are Christians.”

“Yeah, no – depends on what you mean by that.”

Can you disciple nations? Jesus just told us to do it, so yes, you can. Can a family be a Christian family? Yes. Does that mean flawless? Does it mean sinless? Does it mean everything is the way it should be? No. It doesn’t mean that for a Christian or a believer, for someone who’s been born again.

Can I throw in some present context? It’s not disagreeing with anything you’ve said, but I have recently become newly aware of a denomination based in Idaho that is trying to plant a church near my alma mater, so I was doing research about why I’m not a fan.

Talk to my wife.

I would love to. We will have to talk about this. Said denomination does not distinguish between the visible and invisible Church, so when they talk about Christian nationalism, this particular group employing the term, they believe that when they take over the government they are actually saving souls and advancing the kingdom of God by government takeover or by infiltration.

And the sad thing is that’s what post-millennialism and Christian reconstruction and a number of movements in the last 20-30 years have been accused of, and every one of those movements has said, “No, that’s horrible.”

Except for this group.

They sound more like the social gospel group.

Yes, you’ll find people who like social gospel and you’ll shake them out of all these other organizations or movements they once belonged to and they’ll form on their own and that’s what you’ll get.

We haven’t got to the end yet, but Jesus is not going to say, “Go disciple all nations by military takeover, and then imposing Christian morality and Christian education on all of the members of said nations.” That is not what he is saying. In fact, we probably should look and see what he actually says.

Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost [one of the classic passages for defending the Trinity], teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.

So to the apostles as the representatives of the visible Church he is saying, “Go teach. Baptize people. Then teach them some more so that they do everything I’ve commanded.” It doesn’t say, “Do it for them” or “Give them a list of legislation that needs to be enacted. Teach them as individuals to know and love and hear and obey everything I’ve ever said, then let them do their thing. Let them live out the gospel. I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” The power is in Christ’s presence and it’s tied here to the sacrament of baptism and to the preaching and teaching of the Word. That’s what’s put in the hands of the visible Church.

Now, individual Christians have other things going on. Parents have more authority with their children. Schools have some authority with children but not a whole lot. Towns and counties and states and national governments have varying kinds of authority to do different kinds of things. But until the nation as a nation embraces Christ, there is no hint that we’re supposed to go in and make everybody confess Christ or force them to observe every Christian ritual – something simple like go to church.

As was still traditional in Scotland 40 years ago, we can order businesses to close on the Lord’s Day, but we close things all the time in America for various reasons without impinging on anybody’s religious liberty. We’re not telling them what they have to believe. We’re telling them this is the day when people need to have a day off, which once upon a time was considered a good thing. Anyway, that’s completely tangential.

This is how Christ’s kingdom is different from all other kingdoms. All other kingdoms are going to send in their armies and their tanks and their drones and their nuclear weapons and force people into a way of living and thinking with external force.

Jesus uses the force of the Holy Spirit, which is a spiritual power that we don’t control. He controls the Spirit. He orders and directs the Spirit, who is himself God and does as he pleases, which is what the Son and the Father want. In this method, by changing hearts, by people learning what Jesus has said and what he wants, are now empowered to live it out.

That’s the coming of the kingdom and it does have national implications, as it has familial implications, as it has implications for work, for industry, for economics, for finance, for ecology, environmentalism, chemistry, go down the list. It is a kingdom but it’s not like the kingdoms of this world, which is what Jesus has been saying now for 3-1/2 years. That doesn’t mean it’s a fake kingdom. It’s a more powerful kingdom than anyone can ever have imagined because it can touch the hearts of people, something that all the dictators of all the ages have never been able to do.

They wish.

They wish. “Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.”

Matthew leaves us there because, as I said, the church was well aware of where Jesus was, but Luke, being very thorough and systematic, takes us as far as Jesus ascending into heaven and sitting down at the right hand of the Father. Then in Luke he comes back and tells the story again because it’s a nice convenient link between the two. So let’s go ahead with Acts 1.

May I make one final comment on Matthew, since we’re going to go to the book of Acts, which will connect. Just as a reminder, when we’re thinking of the continuity of history and we speak of teaching all these nations, discipling all these nations, we’re about to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, which is two parts of the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham, that in him all the nations would be blessed, so this is the fulfillment.

Christ is saying go out and, in a sense, distribute the blessing of Abraham to all the nations, but they’re going to go with the Holy Spirit, which Galatians also tells us is the fulfillment of that blessing. We go out and teach, but as you’ve said, it’s only effective with the Holy Spirit. All of that ties back to the faithfulness of the Lord in history thousands of years before this.

For those of you listening, this would be a good time to maybe turn off the broadcast and go to Galatians 3 and read it a few times, because this is a point where sooner or later you’re going to have to make a choice and it’s going to affect your soteriology and your eschatology and your view of covenant.

Was the promise to Abraham one that concerned an ethnic group and a physical batch of land and a political rule, and the promise to the Church something spiritual and very different, or is it the same promise and we’ve simply often misunderstood?

Paul in Galatians 3 takes us back to the promise to Abraham and the blessing of Abraham and calls it the preaching of the gospel.

And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed. So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham.

He develops that idea of the blessing is, first of all, justification by faith, and secondly the gift of the Holy Spirit. It’s in Christ, and if we’re in Christ then we are Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise. And anyone who’s not in Christ is not Abraham’s seed, and all those promises that God made to Abraham’s seed he made to Jesus, and to us in him. So yes, as you say, the plan hasn’t changed.

Matthew, of course, was the gospel written for the Jews, so ending on that note is significant. “What about the promise to Abraham? All nations blessed?” Here we go. Go make disciples.

So when we come to Acts, that’s what the apostles would have us understand and that’s what the early church didn’t understand, because for the first 10-30 years most of their preachers were apostles or those trained directly by apostles and overseen by apostles. The gospel was relatively pure at this point, although the apostles did have to take on some heretics now and then.

And address them of their own errors at times.

When we come to Acts, it was written by Dr. Luke. It’s Luke part 2. He speaks of his former treatise. It’s written to the same man, Theophilus.

Most Excellent Theophilus, the friend of Bill and Ted.

[laughing] Nobody got that. Someone needs to recommend that in the recommendations.

The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, until the day in which he was taken up, after that he through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles whom he had chosen: To whom also he shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God. And, being assembled together…

There’s been discussion and I won’t say argument, but some banter back and forth as to what this book should be called. Calling it the former treatise doesn’t work, since that’s Luke. People say, “It’s the acts of the apostles, but really it’s only the acts of some of the apostles, and their helpers – well, a couple of their helpers.”

It’s mostly Paul.

“It’s some of the acts of apostles,” – “Yeah, of Paul, and Peter, and some of John, with some input from Stephen and Phillip, who were considered deacons and evangelists.”

That’s too long. That’s a Puritan title.

Worthy of a Puritan name for a small child.

We’ve kind of been told what the book is about. The gospel of Luke was about all that Jesus began both to do and to teach. The implication is that this book is about what Jesus continues to do and to teach.

Now you can add your sub-titles – through the Holy Spirit, through his Church, through certain key people that we will focus on, ending with the apostle Paul, during the transition time between the outpouring of the Spirit and Paul reaching Rome and taking away the keys, as it were.

The significance for a history podcast is the book of Acts is more history. Jesus in ascending to heaven didn’t abandon history. I guess that’s what I’m going for here. It’s easy to get this far and say that a Christian philosophy of history embraces everything we’ve talked about, including Jesus ascending to heaven, and one day coming again in history – and to sort of phase him back into Bible people, Bible times, Bible lands. What Acts is telling us and what Dr. Luke is saying is he’s still doing stuff in history. He’s doing it from heaven, but he’s really doing it.

He has all power in heaven and earth, all authority, so he himself is the one who is ruling the nations, smashing them with a rod of iron, striking them with the sword of his mouth. He is the one who brings storms and plagues, who decimates armies on battlefields, who delivers the poor and the wretched when they call on him. He is the one who summons and sanctifies his elect and builds and purifies his Church.

It’s all Jesus and he’s actually really doing it, and he, having become incarnate, is forever caught within this thing we call history. God is transtemporal. God does not exist in time as we understand such things. Jesus in his humanity does, and the things he’s doing, he’s doing within history with regard to an earth that’s moving forward in history.

To add on to that, Greg, having taught the book of Acts as a history book in church history, I have often been struck by how challenging it is for students to read it as a history book. When I assign something and I expect them to remember names and places and order of events, there’s such a tendency in our Bible reading to just kind of generally have an idea of what the passage has said. “I’m kind of going from the feel of the passage,” or “What does it speak to me and say?” and that sort of thing, very devotional. When we try to look at it sometimes and dig into all of the details, it’s very challenging.

Also I have found a lot of people don’t actually know what’s in the book of Acts – maybe the first couple chapters, but once you start getting into the missionary journeys and things like that, it’s very cloudy.

It’s been interesting to me to find how much of a lack of knowledge, and yet there are a number of semi-heretical groups, or very heretical groups, that have tried to abscond with parts of the book of Acts for their benefit. I think sometimes they get away with it because people don’t know what’s in there, so when you start saying, “This is what the early church did,” people go, “Okay, I guess that’s what the early church did.”

Somebody can read this one verse and it sounds like that’s what they’re doing, and we don’t understand the overall context of the flow of the book, and how it fits into the rest of the historical narrative of the Bible as well, and the rest of history, particularly Church history.

That’s my plug. If you’re listening, I challenge you to read the book of Acts as you’re going along with these podcasts, and try to read it as a history book and really grab on to all those details and try to think about it that way, instead of maybe some of the other ways we often will read.

Yeah, don’t read it as Bible stories but read it…

Grab a map and actually track with everything that’s going on and see what’s really happening.

And maybe pull out a Bible dictionary and find out what’s this city anyway, and why was it significant? Why would Paul go this way? There’s all kinds of things that the early church would have known, the way we know LA or Hollywood or Las Vegas or New York. We hear about them constantly. A lot of these cities were major cities. A few of them weren’t, but the church didn’t have to be instructed in much detail. We know so little.

There are many people who don’t know where the Mediterranean Sea is, or don’t know the bounds of the Roman Empire or how long it lasted, just basic historical facts. We’re trying to change a little of that but in this podcast we’re just catching main currents here as best we can, or currents we just happen to like because they’re cool to us.

You don’t get your total knowledge of church history or world history from us, but at least maybe if you hear something you’ll say, “Wait, I didn’t know that. Really?” or “I don’t know about that.” Then go look it up. Do some research. Educate yourself.

If you’re going to learn any geography, you should learn the geography that surrounds the Mediterranean Sea so you can at least understand your Bible, if nothing else.

Honestly, that’s part of the benefit – the chief benefit I think – of having been a history major myself. My degree is in history, and do I remember lots of the detailed timelines of the events that I studied? Honestly, no, but I did learn how to learn about stuff that sounded interesting.

Yes, learning how to learn.

I was thinking earlier – and I’ve written some articles about this – about how various textbooks treat history once Jesus rose again. First of all – and here I’m talking about American textbooks - those in the 1800’s acknowledge Jesus’ birth. They generally call him the Son of God or the Savior of the world or our Lord or something relatively flattering, without explaining what that title might mean. They tell us when he was born, during the reign of Augustus. Then they’ll mention that he was crucified during the reign of Tiberius.

That’s it, because in the 1800s the fear was, “We don’t want to be guilty of sectarianism, so we really can’t say a whole lot about Jesus because we not only want to keep the Baptists and Presbyterians and Lutherans happy, and even the Roman Catholics – we also want to keep the Unitarians happy, and if we start talking about Jesus being God of God, Light of Light, they’re going to say that we’re guilty of forcing our religion on them. So we’ll just mention those things in passing that everybody agrees on because it really doesn’t affect understanding history, does it.”

As we move into the 20th century, history books take a change toward Hegelian rationalism, where we’re going to be gentlemen and admit that everybody has a point of view. We’re no longer threatened by Christianity so we’ll tell you the Christian point of view as best we understand it, which isn’t great but we’re trying – and the Buddhist take, and the Muslim take, and so on. We’ll try to do justice to everybody and then go on.

Then we get to Christian textbooks that try to respond to that, but they’re still trying to reach a secular market so they’re still back at playing the games of the 1800s. “We want to tell you about Jesus because we’re Christian writers writing a Christian textbook for a secular audience that could be adopted by public schools.”

Okay, we’re dead in the water already, and rather than simply admit that this is a stupid project and we just wasted a lot of money from God’s people, they try to tell the story of Jesus. “Well, Jesus claimed… The early church believed… They said… They confessed…” and that only goes so far.

Eventually you get to the point of, “Alright, Jesus is now safely in heaven and we don’t have to mention him anymore. We’ll talk now a little bit about the church and Christian ideas,” and Jesus gets left behind. Reverse rapture, I guess – we rapture Jesus out of history. We give acknowledgement, a nod of the head, a tip of the hat to his status as Lord and High Priest and God, but we don’t really connect that with say World War 1 or the recent pandemic or the Black Death in the Middle Ages or the discovery of American by Europe in the 1400s-1500s.

“Where is Jesus?”

“He’s in heaven so…”

“What’s he doing?”

“Umm. But we’re talking about history.”

“Yeah, we thought we were.”

Let’s continue on with this passage and see this important central event.

And being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith he, ye have heard of me. For John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.

This is 40 days after his resurrection. Pentecost is 10 days away. There were 10 days between Ascension Day and Pentecost. His disciples ask a question, and unfortunately we’re not there to ask them what they meant.

When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?

Given their tendencies they probably meant, “So we’re going to get back on track, and all that stuff we thought was going to happen is going to happen now?” It’s possible, however, in light of the fact that Israel just murdered him, that they’re saying, “You’re not going to restore the kingdom to Israel, are you? You’re going to restore the kingdom to Israel now? Don’t we need more repentance or judgement or something?”

We don’t know exactly what was in their minds or what they may have been arguing back and forth, but it gives Jesus the opportunity to give an answer.

And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father hath put in his own power.

In other words, “I’m not going to tell you.” In the Olivet discourse Jesus had said, “I don’t know the time of my second coming,” that is in his human nature he didn’t know. The Father hadn’t told him.

This therefore shuts the mouths of all of the false teachers historically who have all tried to discern the times and the coming and all of these things. “When is this going to happen? When is that going to happen in history?”

When we look at history, we acknowledge that Jesus is reigning and he is perfectly fulfilling his plan, but we are not able to discern fully what he’s doing or particularly when he’s going to do something in the future. We can attempt to discern the current times, but we get in trouble when we start to reach into the future because that does not belong to us.

And the problem with that is that as we try to discern the current times without knowing the future, it’s rather hard to discern the current times. Kids at school will often want to know, “Why isn’t the pandemic in the history texts?”

“Guys, you just lived through it.”

We don’t know what it means yet.

Exactly.

Speaking of history – this is a history podcast – my favorite article about Civil War paintings is called “Why are these paintings so terrible?” It was honestly the most insightful thing I read for this project that I did on American paintings. People were trying to create these grand historical paintings of things that had just happened, but they were trying to churn them out so fast that there was not time for the dust to settle and for people to figure out where things really stood. So we have all these paintings of what were really insignificant battles, because they had just happened. There was not time.

Now we can look back and say, “Well, this battle was important because it changed this about the war.” These paintings were also just bad quality, but that’s a different issue.

And even with the important battles we have to ask the question, “Important for what?”

Yes, with reference to what?

If we’re referring to the Civil War and its outcome, at least we have some boundary lines there. All of American history to this point? Ok, maybe we can figure that out to a degree, although many of the things that were torn open by the Civil War still have not been solved. But do we understand its ultimate purpose within Christ’s plan to bless all nations? Probably not.

My first year teaching I asked my students – I think there were about 30 of them – “What events within your memory do you think will warrant being put in history books?” Some of them I think simply didn’t know. I think a few mentioned whoever had just won the World Series, which was as close as just about anything.

The only one historical event that I remember that a number of them put down was the marriage of Prince Charles to Princess Diana. That was the thing in the 1980s that was going to down for all time. Okay, but probably not the way anybody thought about it. We might be talking an heir to the throne. Instead we’re talking about death under mysterious circumstances, and you can go from there.

I tried to suggest, “How about the Christian school movement? How about the pro-life movement? Do you think that maybe these things might go down in the history books?”

“Huh? What? Christian school movement? What are you talking about?”

We’re bad at figuring out what’s important even now. As you say, we don’t know what’s important yet. We don’t know what it means now.

It seems like the Covid pandemic may prove important to the history of the Christian school movement.

Yes, and to the history of the church in America eventually, in terms of how we responded or didn’t respond, as the case may be. It’s not for what it was as such, but for how badly the church was prepared to deal with it. We’ll see. Maybe we learned nothing, in which case it really won’t have meant a whole lot. We’ll probably see from heaven. Our great-great-grandchildren may figure it out.

And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power. But ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria [crossing cultural boundaries], and unto the uttermost part of the earth.

In the book of Acts they never really reached the uttermost parts of the earth. They only get as far as Rome, which is not even Tarshish, although Paul wanted to go to Tarshish, so it’s open-ended. There’s more than what the writer is going to tell us about. Even by the time the book is finished, Paul had reached Rome but there were still more boundaries to the empire and big civilizations – China, India – that laid beyond the boundaries of Rome, that the church did not reach until probably after AD 70 when Jerusalem fell.

We’re given an outline. We’re given a forecast. We’re given a general direction. But as for the details, basically Jesus says, “None of your business. You have a job to do. You don’t have to know how it’s going to fall out, in what order, on what timetable.”

It’s interesting if you look at verse 6 and their question in verse 8, because they say, “When are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” and his response is, “I’m going to give you power through the Holy Spirit to send my kingdom everywhere, and Israel is going to be everywhere because it will be my church.”

There’s an interesting interplay between their question and what he actually says, because again it’s giving the Holy Spirit to the nations, so it’s the spreading of Abraham’s seed to the world, or gathering in his seed, I guess you could say, from the world.

They’re going to do it in a way that they don’t know, because as in parables and other things, the preachers preach. They broadcast the seed, but they don’t know who the Lord is going to draw and where it’s going to prosper. Their goal or their command is simply to go everywhere and to trust the Holy Spirit to do his work according to Christ’s power to call whoever he will.

I hate to speed us along, but I did promise we would get Jesus halfway up into the sky and we have like 10 minutes.

Okay.

And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up and a cloud received him out of their sight. And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel 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. Then returned they unto Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is from Jerusalem a sabbath day's journey.

An interesting thing here – once they’re reminded he’s coming back, they don’t do a quick neck-snap back and look at the sky, “Where? Where? When?” It was just, “Oh, he’ll come back. I think we have work to do. Let’s go back to Jerusalem and to the upper room and let’s start making plans and talking about what this means – waiting for the promise of the spirit. Hmm, I wonder what that’s going to look like, what that’s going to do.”

They still didn’t know. He had opened their understanding but there’s still more and they’re still lacking all of the power they’re going to need for what they’re doing.

Luke in his gospel tells us this –

And he led them out as far as to Bethany, and he lifted up his hands and blessed them. And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them and carried up into heaven. And they worshipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple, praising and blessing God. Amen.

And Mark’s add-on –

So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven and sat on the right hand of God. And they went forth and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word with signs following. Amen.

So the gospels end and Acts begins with Jesus ascending to heaven and sitting at the right hand of the Father. Heaven is a real place that can contain physical biological bodies, where they can apparently breathe and eat and walk about and sit on things. Elijah and Enoch are there, but so are angels and so are the departed saints.

“How does that work?” I have no idea and we’re not told.

And can we be very clear that you mean that Jesus is in heaven with his physical body, that he is still fully human? That was my story. I mentioned a few weeks ago that my husband is teaching a group of pastors in another country and he was doing a review of Christology and asked the question, “Does Jesus still have a human nature?” and pretty much all of them said no, because they had not thought about it.

That was what David discovered, that they didn’t understand the implications of taking away his human nature for us now as our High Priest, as our intercessor, as our flesh in heaven, that is our anchor, our promise, all those things.

It reminded me that lots of people just don’t even think about it. They don’t know. “Why does it matter if Jesus is still human?” so there’s another challenge. Think about why it’s so important that Jesus is human.

That might be a good thing to revisit at some length when we begin next time. This is a history podcast, but I think there’s still more theology we need to talk about here, what the New Testament says about the fact that Jesus in his humanity, in his human body, is sitting at the right hand of God.

The point I started to make is that heaven is a real place. He didn’t vanish into Never-Never Land. And you rightly added that in that real place he’s a real person. He’s a real human being. He’s also still God.

I’ve run into that thing too. “You mean Jesus still has a body?”

“Isn’t that icky? Aren’t bodies bad?”

I’ve also run into, “You mean in heaven we’re still going to be creatures?”

“What were you planning to be, a god?”

That would be the alternative. A lot of our problems come because we don’t think seriously. As we pointed out at the beginning, thinking seriously means you have to define terms.

For instance, I was asking my class this week about where our salvation climaxes or culminates or where it’s going, and one of my students rightly said, “Glorification.”

“Very good, but what does that mean?” and another student said, “That means going to heaven.” No, that is not what it means.

It took a few seconds for a couple other students to pull it out of the fire and say, “Oh wait, the resurrection, the resurrection!” Yes, that. That’s the beginning of our glory. If we don’t exist anymore as physical beings, the story just took a radical turn to the left and we don’t even have us anymore.

I think we need to come back next time and define why this is important, what doctrines it touches on, what it leads into, what its implications are. So next time let’s not plan on getting any further than where we are in terms of the flow of history, but let’s talk about what it means for the rest of history for Jesus to be enthroned in heaven, to actually be in this place called heaven, really physically be there alive and ruling, and what that means for Christianity as a faith, as a system of doctrine and truth, and what it means for history for what he’s accomplishing.

Sounds great. Shall we wrap up with some recommendations? I have a recommendation that I’m pretty sure neither of you have ever recommended or will ever recommend. It’s a movie called KPop Demon Hunters.

Oh, I have seen it, though.

I’ve heard of it.

I’m sure you have. It’s quite the phenomenon. I think it’s made Netflix more money than anything else they’ve ever made.

How does Netflix make money from something that’s on their streaming service if you just pay the streaming service?

More people subscribe, probably.

I don’t know, views?

I don’t know how that works.

Why should we watch this?

Because it deals with some really great themes of actual sin and guilt and shame, and living as a redeemed creature. What does that mean? What does that look like? How do we relate to ourselves, if I can use that kind of paradoxical language, as people who have sinned, who are sinners, and yet are called to fight for the Lord, fight the battles of the Lord.

I’ve heard some concerns that it kind of falls into the Greatest Showman kind of message, where it’s like self-acceptance is the sum total of its message, and I kind of disagree. There’s an anthem that’s compared to that other movie’s anthem of self-acceptance, and it’s released in the first act of the movie because it’s not enough and they have to revisit it, and you have to find that grace has to come from outside of you. You can’t give yourself forgiveness.

It’s more than, “Oh, I’ve been not true to myself. I’ve been living a lie.” No, the hero actually told concrete lies to her friends, so there’s a moment when those friendships are lost because she has lied to them, and you say, “Yeah, you did that. What are you going to do now, and how is the world going to be saved now?”

It’s also refreshingly frank about how serving demons is not a good time. I’m so jaded because you’ve seen it so many times where it’s like, “Oh, maybe the demons are misunderstood and they’re not actually evil.” This movie did not say that. It was like, “Demons eat souls, and they actually consume people and enslave them and that’s a bad thing.”

Apparently, South Korea is like the most Christian country in the world per capita or something like that, so it makes sense that these themes would come up in such a stark way. It’s also just a really fun time. The music is catchy and also insightful in these interesting ways. That’s KPop Demon Hunters.

My recommendation is a podcast that I listened to recently. We know that I love the Alisa Childers podcast. She was actually able to attend the Charlie Kirk funeral or memorial, and she did a podcast on her own reflections of it. I never watched any of it, but heard various things, so it was very helpful to have her say, “This was the great stuff. This was the bad stuff,” and talk a little bit about some of what she’s seeing right now in reaction to what happened there, with a lot more people seeming to be interested in church, in learning about Christ. She was talking about what seemed to be sparks of revival, so it was very interesting, helpful, and encouraging to hear.

Her #1 point was that multiple people preached the gospel very clearly. Other people said terrible things, very bad theology, but it was really encouraging to hear her take on some of those things, and just some of the encouragement that potentially – again, as we talked about, we don’t know where the Lord is taking things, but it seems that He may be using some of this as a means of revival in our culture.

I’m going to recommend something very odd – prayer.

Oh, that’s so odd!

It is. I think most Christians are in the habit of praying for their immediate needs, particularly illness or financial difficulties, and for near relatives or close friends who are ill, and one hopes for the salvation of unsaved loved ones and friends, and I have nothing to say against that. That’s all great. That’s all wonderful. We should be doing that.

But the traditional prayers of the Church as the Church – not just as individuals but when the Church has gotten together and prayed collectively – they’ve always included the theme from the Lord’s Prayer – “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

We as the Church need to start praying for that revival. It may not come from anything we’ve seen so far, or it may. I keep hearing little things here and there. This Christian university’s worship service keeps going and going. This Pacific Coast town, people are getting baptized by the dozens and dozens. Charlie Kirk’s funeral…

These are little sparks that God could turn into something else, or maybe it will come from someplace completely different. I don’t know, and that’s kind of been the theme tonight. We don’t know, but we do know that God uses prayer to accomplish his purposes. And as long as our prayers are more less self-centered, then there are things that he’s going to hold back on. He’s going to wait until we start getting serious about seeing all nations blessed.

I tried to do this with my children when they were young, and I did not follow through. I did a very bad job, but I tried to get them to find a country that they knew something about, and to start telling us about it at the dinner table and we would start praying for it. Again, I failed there miserably, but at least it was an idea.

Our own church supports mission works in Pakistan, in Nepal, and in Myanmar, and I’m trying to keep my own prayers for those nations regular and faithful, and I’m also trying to pray for all the nations.

When I was younger and read a lot of books about, well, let’s face it, a post-millennial interpretation of prophecy, I prayed more for the nations, and then I got kind of fat and sassy and self-centered and just started praying for things I knew closer. Again, that’s good but it’s not enough. We’re to pray for the salvation of the nations.

So for those of you listening, you’re listening to a history podcast. Why are you doing that? You’re concentrating on the mid-point of the story, the climax of the story, but the end of the story is still off in the future. Do you want to be a part of it? Do you want to see this story unfold? Do you want to have a part in where it’s going?

You’re probably not going to be Paul. You’re probably not even going to be George Whitfield or John Calvin. But by your prayers you can change the history of the world, and that’s exactly what Jesus calls us to do. There’s nothing megalomaniacal about that. It’s simply what the Church is supposed to do.

So in your own prayers, in the prayers of your church, let’s start thinking about praying that the Great Commission actually will be fulfilled and that we’ll begin to see some of it while we’re still alive, because we want to be in on the action. Yes, that’s a little selfish, but oh well. Maybe God will honor it, as long as we get busy and do what we can now while we can. So I recommend praying for the nations.

Do you ever just marvel at the idea that God finds our prayers pleasant? They’re described in the Bible as this sweet fragrance like incense. Wow, really? God is listening to me, and he likes it?

Yes, it’s the liking part that’s kind of amazing. The “I’m desperate and I need help” – that part I get, but God is well-pleased.

It’s a beauty in his throne room.

Yes, which is what the tabernacle incense portrayed. It’s stinky and smelly out in the outer court where the sacrifices are being offered, but by the time it reaches him in the Holy of Holies it is sweet perfume because it’s sanctified by the offering of Christ, and he loves his Son, and he loves us and loves to hear from us. Let that also be an encouragement to us.

Thank you both so much for this conversation. I look forward to our next one. Thanks also to David, our producer and my lawfully-wedded husband. A big thank you to our financial supporters for keeping the show rolling.

If you’d like to get in touch with us you can send us an email at [email protected], and that’s all of you listeners. You don’t have to be a financial supporter to send us an email. We would be delighted to hear from you, even as our Lord is delighted by our prayers? No, I’m going to stop myself right there, Patrick.

That’s problematic, Patrick.

Thank you for listening to this history podcast. Have a good night.