And having said these things he was taken up, they beholding [him], and a cloud received him out of their sight.
One moment separates the Lord's last words from all that follows in Acts: a cloud hid Him from His disciples. Much of the book turns on where He went and what that cloud was.
Luke says three times in this chapter that Jesus was "taken up." One writer asks who is doing the taking:
Three times in Acts 1 Luke records that Jesus was "taken up" (Acts 1:2, 9, 22). Through Luke, the Holy Spirit draws our attention to the fact that the Lord went up to heaven, and also to the way He went. It was God who took His Son to heaven. In this He made known His delight in all that His Son had been, and had done, for Him while here.
This was no ordinary cloud. One writer ties it to a sign Israel had seen before:
A cloud took Him out of their sight. That cloud was not an ordinary cloud of vapour. It was the glory-cloud — the same cloud of glory that had filled Solomon's temple. Again and again in Israel's past it had appeared as the outward sign that Jehovah was present.
If the cloud is glory, then a welcome is happening here. Another writer says what that welcome begins:
It is the Man Christ Jesus, welcomed by the Glory into which He is taken. No vision of angels would fit as well as this one. No, angels have no place here... The Glory greets Him here, now perfected. And His work as priest is what all the outflow of divine grace that fills this book depends on.
One writer sets this beside the way Elijah left the earth:
The chariot and horses of fire that carried Elijah up were angels (2 Kings 6:17). At the ascension of the Saviour it was not like this at all. He did not need a procession of angels to serve Him or to carry Him into heaven. He went up by His own power, since His resurrection had declared Him Son of God in power. A cloud, the dwelling place of the divine glory, received Him at once and carried Him up from before the eyes of His disciples.
The disciples did not watch a spirit fade. The wording itself argues for a real body:
In that same body He was "carried up into heaven" (Luke 24:51). "A cloud took Him out of their sight" (Acts 1:9). You could not say that a spirit was carried up, and no cloud is needed to hide a spirit from human sight. He was still a Man.
The disciples were left with a task and a hope. One writer ties both to what they had just seen:
Their mission was to be witnesses to the ascended Christ; but their hope was to be His return just as He went. His going was not something figurative, shadowy, mystical, but actual and literal. His coming will be actual and literal in like manner.
Most departures break the tie between friends. This one did not:
He stood among them on the brow of the Mount of Olives. Then He was parted from them, and a cloud took Him out of their sight. Yet though He had gone from them, they had not lost Him. The Holy Spirit, who came down from Him, joined them to Him. Their hopes now rested in Him — not as the lowly Nazarene walking the rough road to the cross, but as death's Conqueror, exalted to the right hand of the Majesty on high.
The same hiding will happen again when His people are taken up:
When the Lord left this earth from the mount of Olives, the cloud concealed Him from the gaze of His disciples (Acts 1:9). In the same way, when the Lord comes "in the air," the clouds will hide the taking up of the saints from the knowledge of this world.
- Taken up — Acts 1 says three times that Jesus was "taken up." God took His Son to heaven, showing His delight in what His Son had been and done.
- Received by glory — the cloud is the glory-cloud that marked God's presence in Israel's past. So the ascension is a welcome. And the work as priest that it begins supplies the grace filling the rest of Acts.
- By His own power — unlike Elijah's fiery chariot, He needed no escort; He ascended as the One declared Son of God in power by resurrection.
- Still a Man — a spirit needs no carrying and no cloud to hide it. The disciples watched a real body go into heaven.
- Coming the same way — His going was literal and seen, so His promised return is literal too. Meanwhile He is hidden, but not lost: the Spirit came down from Him and joins His people to Him.
And as they were gazing into heaven, as he was going, behold, also two men stood by them in white clothing,
The disciples' last sight of Jesus was of Him rising out of view, and their eyes stayed fixed on the sky where He had been. Two men in white then stand beside them. What they say sets the direction of Christian hope from that day on.
Luke calls them men. Commentators identify them as angels, and Scripture elsewhere speaks of angels in the same way.
Angels were created spirits — "He makes His angels spirits," yet they are spoken of as men in Acts 1:10 and elsewhere. We also read of "the man Gabriel," who was an angel (Dan. 9:21).
Their number matters as well. One writer connects it to a rule of evidence in the law.
Jewish law, and here we are in the middle of Jewish circumstances, called for two witnesses to give competent evidence (Deut. 17:6; 19:15). Two angels bore testimony to the resurrection of the Lord (John 20:12), and two men to His ascension (Acts 1:10).
Their looking was steady, not a passing glance. One writer follows that same steadiness through the opening chapters of Acts.
Notice here that they looked STEADFASTLY. In Acts 2:42 they continued STEADFASTLY. In Acts 7:55 Stephen looked up STEADFASTLY into heaven. It is a great thing to be steadfast; we are often unsteady, and so there is no power. But they hear wonderful news as they steadfastly look up.
Why did they come at that moment? One writer looks at what was in the disciples' hearts as they stared upward.
He had just told them of the coming of the Holy Spirit; they would be clothed with power then. But they were not thinking of power as they gazed up into heaven after their beloved Lord — they were thinking of Him. So the angels are present in a moment to answer what He knew was passing in their hearts. In the same way, when the women were seeking the precious body of Jesus in love, though without understanding, the angel of the Lord came down from heaven — his clothing white as snow, his face like lightning — and rolled away the stone... Those who care for Jesus can be sure of comfort from above. It may come as angelic help, unseen but real, or as a word through the Comforter, who is now present.
The timing of their words matters as much as their content.
The disciples stood in silent wonder as the cloud of glory carried the Lord out of their sight. Then the voice of two men in white clothing broke that silence... They had come swiftly from the very gates of the glory the Lord had entered. They brought THE FIRST MESSAGE from Him, as the ascended and glorified Christ, to His servants on earth. So at the very moment He took His place at the right hand of the Majesty on high, the announcement went out on earth that He would return to it.
Why break off a look that seems entirely right? Commentators differ on the emphasis. One weighs the direction of their gaze against the moment they were in.
The angels turn their gaze from heaven, where Christ had gone, toward the earth to which He will come. At first we might wonder at this. Surely it was a right thing to look up to heaven where Christ is? Yes, in due time it will be right, but the moment had not yet come to look up.
Others read the words as comfort, and measure them by what the eleven disciples did next.
Just at that moment the hearts of the little band — the Eleven — might well have sunk. Two men stood by them in white clothing and spoke words of comfort. Those words came at the right time for people still gazing upward... The words of those men were enough. They stopped gazing upward and returned to the city of Jerusalem, without the Lord. Downcast, shall we say? No. With great joy, as Luke recorded in his Gospel (24:52).
- Witnessed. Two messengers in white stand as the pair of witnesses the law required. Two also testified at the empty tomb.
- Steadfast. Their steady look is the posture that receives the news. Where steadiness is missing, power is missing too.
- Comforted. The angels came because the disciples' hearts were full of Him, not of power. Those who care for Jesus can be sure of comfort from above.
- First. Before the Spirit came and before any preaching, the first word from the glory was this: He is coming back.
- Sent. The angels then point them from heaven back to earth, and the eleven walk back to Jerusalem — not in despair, but with great joy.
who also said, Men of Galilee, why do ye stand looking into heaven? This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven, shall thus come in the manner in which ye have beheld him going into heaven.
Two men in white speak the first words of comfort after the Lord goes out of sight. Their message is not about the heaven He entered, but about the earth He will come back to.
The wording of the promise is deliberately heavy, and one writer takes that heaviness as proof that nothing here is figurative.
The way the angels bear witness to the men of Galilee could look like mere repetition. But, as we well know, there is — there can be — no such thing in the book of God. What we see in this testimony is lovely fullness, divine completeness. From it we learn that the very same Jesus who left this earth, and went up into heaven in front of many witnesses, will come in the same way as they had seen Him go into heaven. How did He go? He went up personally, literally, actually. It was the very same person who had just been talking with them as a friend. They had seen Him with their eyes, heard Him with their ears, handled Him with their hands.
Because the manner of the return matches the manner of the departure, the destination is fixed too. He left from the earth; He comes back to it.
He will come as He went (Acts 1:11). "On that day his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives that lies before Jerusalem on the east." To this earth He is coming, not to the new earth in the eternal state. According to the Scriptures, He will come back to the same world where He suffered.
The Lord had already promised to come and take His own to the Father's house. Commentators distinguish that promise from the one the angels give here.
After the Lord's supper, the Lord had told the disciples that He was going to the Father. The first comfort He gave them was that He would come again and take them to Himself in the Father's house, where He was going to prepare a place for them… There He speaks of His coming to bring His own into the Father's house. Here the word is of His glorious appearing, when He will make Himself seen from the place where He has gone… Here it is His return in glory, and it will be like His going away.
One writer puts the two in order, giving the earlier one its usual name, the rapture:
He will yet come in the same way to the same place, the Mount of Olives, when He takes His rightful place of glory and majesty. Nothing here says how long the wait would be, and the rapture will of course take place before this.
The angels redirect their eyes downward, and that seems strange until the following chapters are read.
The angels turn their gaze from heaven, where Christ had gone, toward the earth to which He will come. At first we might wonder at this. Surely it was a right thing to look up to heaven where Christ is? Yes, at the right time it will be right, but that moment had not yet come. As we listen to Peter preaching to the nation, we can understand why the disciples' thoughts were to stay a while on earth. Peter says to the guilty nation, "Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus" (Acts 3:19-20). This was the final message in grace to the guilty nation. If they will repent, Jesus will come back to earth.
The same look is later approved, once the Spirit has come:
Note very carefully — to the disciples who were looking up after Jesus, the angels' word is, "Why do you stand looking into heaven? This same Jesus will so come," etc. Stephen, being full of the Holy Spirit, gazed steadily into heaven and saw Jesus there, "the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God," and prays that his spirit may be received by Him.
Three things now shaped the disciples' outlook: the Spirit promised, a work given, a return assured.
They knew, on the word of the Lord, that the Father would soon fulfil His promise in the gift of the Holy Spirit. Instead of the kingdom being restored to Israel, they were to be witnesses of Christ everywhere, to the ends of the earth. And they had this assurance: the Lord Jesus, who had just gone up, would come in the same way as they saw Him going to heaven.
Both the Lord and the angels led with the same promise:
The Lord Himself declared it in His love, and the angels revealed it. Either way, the first thing in the Saviour's heart, and in what God reveals, is that He will come again. The gift of the Spirit during His absence is immense, and the place redemption has given God's people here below is immense for ever. But their hope is, and the height of their joy will be, to see the Saviour as He is, to be always with Him, like Him.
- Same Person — the very same Jesus the disciples saw, heard and touched is the One who comes back.
- Same manner — He went up in person, in a real and literal way, and He returns the same way.
- Same place — He left from the earth, and to this earth, to the Mount of Olives, He comes back.
- Not the same event — commentators separate this glorious appearing from His coming to take His own to the Father's house. That coming happens first.
- Same hope — the angels turned the disciples from gazing to witnessing, with one comfort to hold: He will come again.