Section 144 & 145, The Ascension

Section 144
THE ASCENSION
(Olivet, between Jerusalem and Bethany)
MARK 16:19, 20
LUKE 24:50-53
ACTS 1:9-12

"How strangely calm and brief is this record of so stupendous an event! Do these sparing and reverent words sound to you like the product of devout imagination, embellishing with legend the facts of history? To me their very restrainedness, calmness, matter-of-factness, if I may so call it, are a strong guarantee that they are the utterance of an eyewitness, who verily saw what he tells so simply. There is something sublime in the contrast between the magnificence and almost inconceivable grandeur of the thing communicated, and the quiet words, so few, so sober, so wanting in all detail, in which it is told." -MacLaren

"And while they were looking steadfastly into heaven as he went, behold, two men [angels in human form] stood by them in white apparel;  who also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye looking into heaven? this Jesus, who was received up from you into heaven shall so come in like manner as ye beheld him going into heaven." Acts 1:10-11

"But the decision to depart, and the choice of a time, came not from Him: He did not go, but was taken." -Expositor's Bible

"He was received up into heaven!" What sublime mysteries are covered by that simple phrase. It was He who taught us to make, even of the mammon of unrighteousness, friends who shall welcome us, when mammon fails and all things mortal have deserted us, into everlasting habitations. With what different greetings, then, do men enter the City of God." -Expositor's

"His High Priesthood is with authority. "Every high priest standeth," but He has forever sat down on the right hand of the throne of the majesty in the heavens, a Priest sitting upon His throne (Heb_8:1; Zec_6:13). And therefore it is His office, Who pleads for us and represents us, Himself to govern our destinies." -Expositor's Bible

Section 145
OUR LORD APPEARS AFTER HIS ASCENSION
I. COR. 15: 8.

"...and last of all, as to the child untimely born, he appeared to me also." 1 Corinthians 15:8

"Since Paul reckons this among the bodily appearances of our Lord, we have included it in our work; but it borders upon those spiritual appearances which belong rather to apostolic history and may be classed with the vision of Stephen (Acts 7:55) and John (Rev. 1:9- 17), to which it was near kin. Accounts of the appearance will be found in the ninth, twenty-second and twenty-sixth chapters of Acts. For completeness' sake we might also add the words of Jesus at Acts 20:35, viz.: It is more blessed to give than to receive. These words quoted by Paul are not found in the gospel. The earthly life of Jesus shades off into the celestial, but we think that he have now given all that may be rightly included in the former." -Fourfold