Acts 1:9-11

The Ascension, 9-11.

In three verses the story of the Lord's ascension is told. St. Luke and St. Mark in their Gospels simply record the fact; they add no details whatever, with the exception of one beautiful and touching incident in St. Luke: Jesus was in the act of blessing them when He was parted from them; ‘He loved them unto the end.' Now it has been asked with some show of reason why the great event of the ascension is not more frequently alluded to in the New Testament? The answer seems to be that the writers of the New Testament never seem to have regarded the ascension except as ‘a scene' in the resurrection glory of Christ. On the resurrection they dwelt with deep earnestness, as the triumph of the Redeemer over death; they ever looked on the ascension as necessarily included in the exaltation of the glorified Jesus, of which St. Paul speaks in such passages as Ephesians 1:20; Philippians 2:9; 1 Thessalonians 1:10; 1Th 4:16; 2 Thessalonians 1:7; 1 Timothy 3:16; and St. Peter in his First Epistle, Acts 1:21; Acts 3:22; and St. John in many passages of his Revelation.