He Ascended into Heaven

Beyond the Cloud

When the beggar, Lazarus, died, he was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom; when Elijah passed home he went by a chariot of fire, sent from the Father’s Home, in honour of His brave servant and son; but when Jesus ascended up where He was before, it was by the innate beauty and dignity of His character. It was as though its specific gravity was too light for the dense atmosphere of our world, and naturally sought its own divine and heavenly level.

The last vision that man had of the ascending Lord, as He departed out of this world unto the Father, was of His outstretched hands in the act of Benediction. Still His words fell in flakes of music, still His pierced hands blessed them, and still they gazed after Him, as He went, until the chariot-cloud, moored in mid-air for the purpose, received Him, or to use another metaphor, fell between them and His receding figure, as the curtain of the Tabernacle behind the figure of the

High Priest.
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But what happened on the other side of that cloud? Where the Evangelist leaves off, the Apostle begins, and tells us that between that cloud and His throne were gathered principalities and powers, might and dominion (Eph. i. 21). We gather from a comparison with a subsequent paragraph in the same Epistle, that these were not friendly but antagonistic. They were the rulers of the darkness of this world, the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places (vi. 12).

It was as though a summons had been sent forth to all the dark powers of Hell to make one last rally to prevent the Saviour’s final ascent. Of course, there could have been no. thought whatever of successfully preventing the return of the Son to the bosom of the Father. He had come from the abysmal depths of Deity, these were His native Home. Even whilst He had been a pilgrim and sojourner in this far country He had been in Heaven (John iii. 13). God must go to God. But the great object of contention was the proposal to take our human nature with Him to the right hand of God, raising it to the supreme place in the Universe. It was this that aroused the intense opposition of those fallen spirits, which, as we are assured by Scripture and observation, throng the lower heavens.

They regard themselves as beings of a superior order to ourselves. Created earlier, and perhaps endued with larger powers, the angels “that kept not their first estate” claim a priority in the ranks of existence over that youngest born of the family of moral beings — man. It was therefore, an unwelcome discovery to learn that the Son of God was not content to wear our humanity for a few brief years, but was bent on bearing it, married in.indissoluble union with His own, beyond the highest heavens.

It would seem, therefore, that the Prince of the Power of the Air, the Spirit that works in the sons of disobedience, summoned all the forces of malign and wicked spirits to bar the way of the Ascending Lord. Again it was the hour of the power of darkness. The conflict of the Garden and the Cross was renewed. Christ’s assailants gathered for their last great stand, until that yet future day when their ranks will be broken for ever before the charge of the armies of heaven, following Him on white horses, and clothed in pure linen, white and clean (Rev. xix. 11-16).

But you might as well endeavour to keep a cork at the bottom of the ocean by heaping miles of sea-water on it, as repress the ascending Lord by massing against Him the black squadrons of dark demon hosts. He cleft His way through them, as a sunbeam might cleave the morning mists. “God set Him at His own right hand in the Heavenlies, far above all principality, and power, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but in that which is to come.”