'And He led them out as far as to Bethany, and He
lifted up His hands, and blessed them. 51. And it
came to pass, while He blessed them, He was parted
from them, and carried up into heaven.'
--LUKE xxiv. 50, 51.
'And when He had spoken these things, while they
beheld, He was taken up; and a cloud received Him
out of their sight.'--ACTS i. 9.
Two of the four Evangelists, viz., Matthew and John, have no record
of the Ascension. But the argument which infers ignorance from
silence, which is always rash, is entirely discredited in this case.
It is impossible to believe that Matthew, who wrote as the last word
of his gospel the great words, 'All power is given unto Me in heaven
and in earth ... lo! I am with you alway....' was ignorant of the
fact which alone makes these words credible. And it is equally
impossible to believe that the Evangelist who recorded the tender
saying to Mary, 'Go to My brethren, and say unto them I ascend to My
Father, and your Father,' was ignorant of its fulfilment. The
explanation of the silence is to be sought in a quite different
direction. It comes from the fact that to the Evangelists, rightly,
the Ascension was but the prolongation and the culmination of the
Resurrection. That being recorded, there was no need for the
definite record of this.
There is another singular point about these records, viz., that Luke
has two accounts, one in the end of his gospel, one in the beginning
of Acts; and that these two accounts are obviously different. The
differences have been laid hold of as a weapon with which to attack
the veracity of both accounts. But there again a little
consideration clears the path. The very places in which they
respectively occur might have solved the difficulty, for the one is
at the end of a book, and the other is at the beginning of a book;
and so, naturally, the one regards the Ascension as the end of the
earthly life, and the other as the beginning of the heavenly. The
one is all suffused with evening light; the other is radiant with
the promise of a new day. The one is the record of a tender
farewell, in the other the sense of parting has almost been absorbed
in the forward look to the new phase of relationship which is to
begin. If Luke had been a secular biographer, the critics would have
been full of admiration at the delicacy of his touch, and the
fineness of keeping in the two narratives, the picture being the
same in both, and the scheme of colouring being different. But as he
is only an Evangelist, they fall foul of him for his 'discrepancies.'
It is worth our while to take both his points of view.
But there is another thing to be remembered, that, as the appendix
of his account of the Ascension in the book of the Acts, Luke tells
us of the angel's message;--'This same Jesus ... shall ... return.'
So there are three points of view which have to be combined in order
to get the whole significance of that mighty fact: the Ascension as
an end; the Ascension as a beginning; the Ascension as the pledge of
the return. Now take these three points.