Acts 1:11

1:6-11 They were earnest in asking about that which their Master never had directed or encouraged them to seek. Our Lord knew that his ascension and the teaching of the Holy Spirit would soon end these expectations, and therefore only gave them a rebuke; but it is a caution to his church in all ages, to take heed of a desire of forbidden knowledge. He had given his disciples instructions for the discharge of their duty, both before his death and since his resurrection, and this knowledge is enough for a Christian. It is enough that He has engaged to give believers strength equal to their trials and services; that under the influence of the Holy Spirit they may, in one way or other, be witnesses for Christ on earth, while in heaven he manages their concerns with perfect wisdom, truth, and love. When we stand gazing and trifling, the thoughts of our Master's second coming should quicken and awaken us: when we stand gazing and trembling, they should comfort and encourage us. May our expectation of it be stedfast and joyful, giving diligence to be found of him blameless.

Which also said; the two angels (in the form of men) before mentioned. Ye men of Galilee; that is, the apostles, who were of that country. Why stand ye gazing up into heaven? They are roused out of the ecstasy they were in at that glorious sight, to learn what was so much to their and our advantage. Shall so come: 1. Visibly. 2. In a cloud. 3. By his own power. 4. With the like majesty. 5. With the same soul and body.

Acts 1:11 . Γαλιλαῖοι , ye men of Galilee ) In apparitions which are vouchsafed to individuals, the angels employed the proper name: instead of which in this place the name of their country is employed, under which they all are included. Out of Galilee seldom, if ever, a prophet had arisen; hut all the apostles had come out of it.— τί , why? ) A similar Why occurs in ch. Acts 3:12 .— ἐμβλέποντες ) gazing earnestly , with a lingering look up into heaven, which now it serves no purpose to look at, since Jesus is no longer to he seen.— οὕτως , ὅν τρόπον , so, in like manner as ) A similar phrase occurs, ch. Acts 27:25 , “ even as it was told me:” 2 Timothy 3:8 .— ἐλεύσεται , shall come ) It is the Ascension of Christ, rather than His Advent to judgment, which is described in Scripture as His return . He is said to come , not only because He had not previously come to judge, but because His Adwent in glory shall be much more remarkable than His first Advent. The world had not believed that the Son of GOD had come : in respect to believers He is said to return : John 14:3 , “I come again (= return ) and receive you to Myself.” Then He shall be revealed in His own day. The verb cometh already was employed in the prophecy of Enoch, Jude Acts 1:14 .

He shall come , in a visible manner, in a cloud, with a trumpet, with an attendant train, and perhaps in the same place, Acts 1:12 , “the mount called Olivet.” Add Zechariah 14:4 , “His feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives , which is before Jerusalem on the east.” Comp. the annot. of Michaëlis, and the note on Matthew 24:27 , “As the lightning cometh out of the East , so shall the coming of the Son of man be” [It is probable that Christ’s coming will be from the East]. Not those who saw Him ascending are said to be about to see Him when He shall come. Between His Ascension and His Coming in glory no event intervenes equal in importance to each of these two events: therefore these two are joined together. Naturally therefore the apostles, before the giving of the Apocalypse, set before them the day of Christ as very near. And it accords with the majesty of Christ, that during the whole period between His Ascension and His Advent, He should without intermission be expected.

11. Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven, &c.—"as if your now glorified Head were gone from you never to return: He is coming again; not another, but 'this same Jesus'; and 'as ye have seen Him go, in the like manner shall He come'—as personally, as visibly, as gloriously; and let the joyful expectation of this coming swallow up the sorrow of that departure."

Verse 11. - Looking for gazing up , A.V.; this for this same , A.V.; was received for is taken , A.V.; beheld him going for have seen him go , A.V. In like manner ; i.e. in a cloud. The description of our Lord's second advent constantly makes mention of clouds. "Behold, he cometh with clouds" ( Revelation 1:7 ). "One like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven" ( Daniel 7:13 ; and so Matthew 26:64 ; Luke 21:27 , etc.). We are reminded of the grand imagery of Psalm 104:3 , "Who maketh the clouds his chariot, who walketh upon the wings of the wind." It may be remarked that the above is by far the fullest account we have of the ascension of our Lord. St. Luke appears to have learnt some further particulars concerning it in the interval between writing his Gospel ( Luke 24:50-52 ) and writing the Acts. But allusions to the Ascension are frequent ( Mark 16:19 ; John 6:62 ; John 20:17 ; Romans 8:34 ; Ephesians 4:8, 9 ; Philippians 2:9 ; Colossians 3:1 ; 1 Timothy 3:16 ; 1 Peter 3:22 , etc.). With reference to Zeller's assertion, that in St. Luke's Gospel the Ascension is represented as taking place on the day of the Resurrection, it may freely be admitted that the narrative in the Gospel does not mark distinctly the interval of time between the different appearances and discourses of our Lord from the day of the Resurrection to that of the Ascension.

It seems to group them according to their logical connection rather than according to their chronological sequence, and to be a general account of what Jesus said between the Resurrection and the Ascension. But there is nothing whatever in the text of St. Luke to indicate that what is related in the section Luke 24:44-49 took place at the same time as the things related in the preceding verses. And when we compare with that section what is contained in Acts 1:4, 5 , it becomes clear that it did not. Because the words "assembling together with them," in ver. 4, clearly indicate a different occasion from the apparitions on the day of the Resurrection; and as the words in Luke 24:44-49 correspond with those in Acts 1:4, 5 , it must have been also on a different occasion that they were spoken. Again, the narrative of St. John, both in the twentieth and the twenty-first chapters, as well as that of Matthew 28:10, 16 ; Mark 16:7 , precludes the possibility of the Ascension having taken place, or having been thought to have taken place, on the day of the Resurrection, or for many days after, so that to force a meaning upon the last chapter of St. Luke's Gospel which it does not necessarily bear, and which places it at variance with St. Luke's own account in the Acts (Acts 1:3; 13:31), and with the Church traditions as preserved by St. Matthew, St. Mark and St. John, is a violent and willful transaction. Acts 1:11

11 . Ye men of Galilee ] The Galilæan dialect was a marked peculiarity of the apostolic band. It seems also to have been our Lord’s manner of speech. For when Peter is accused ( Matthew 26:73 ) of being one of Christ’s followers the words of the accusation are “Surely thou art one of them , for thy speech bewrayeth thee.” shall so come ] This promise of the return of Jesus, on the immediate expectation of which so many of the first Christians fixed their thoughts, explains those words in the abridged account of the Ascension in St Luke’s Gospel ( Luke 24:52 ), “They returned to Jerusalem with great joy.”

(11) Shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven. —So our Lord, following the great prophecy of Daniel 7:13 , had spoken of Himself as “coming in the clouds of heaven” (see Note on Matthew 26:64 ), in visible ‘majesty and glory. Here, again, men have asked questions which they cannot answer; not only, when shall the end be, but where shall the Judge thus appear? what place shall be the chosen scene of His second Advent? So far as we dare to localise what is left undefined, the words of the angels suggest the same scene, as well as the same manner. Those who do not shrink from taking the words of prophecy in their most literal sense, have seen in Zechariah 14:4 , an intimation that the Valley of Jehosophat (= Jehovah judges)—the “valley of decision”—shall witness the great Assize, and that the feet of the Judge shall stand upon the Mount of Olives, from which He had ascended into heaven. This was the current mediæval view, and seems, if we are to localise at all, to be more probable than any other.

Luke - ActsTHE ASCENSIONWAS, IS, IS TO COMELuke 2:16 . - Luke 24:51 . - Acts 1:11 . These three fragments, which I have ventured to isolate and bring together, are all found in one author’s writings. Luke’s biography of Jesus stretches from the cradle in Bethlehem to the Ascension from Olivet. He narrates the Ascension twice, because it has two aspects. In one it looks backward, and is necessary as the completion of what was begun in the birth. In one it looks forward, and makes necessary, as its completion, that coming which still lies in the future. These three stand up, like linked summits in a mountain. We can understand none of them unless we embrace them all. If the story of the birth is true, a life so begun cannot end in an undistinguished death like that of all men. And if the Ascension from Olivet is true, that cannot close the history of His relations to men. The creed which proclaims He was ‘born of the Virgin Mary’ must go on to say ‘. . . He ascended up into heaven’; and cannot pause till it adds ‘. . . From thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.’ So we have then three points to consider in this sermon. I. Note first, the three great moments. The thing that befell at Bethlehem, in the stable of the inn, was a commonplace and insignificant enough event looked at from the outside: the birth of a child to a young mother.

It had its elements of pathos in its occurring at a distance from home, among the publicity and discomforts of an inn stable, and with some cloud of suspicion over the mother’s fair fame. But the outside of a fact is the least part of it. A little film of sea-weed floats upon the surface, but there are fathoms of it below the water. Men said, ‘A child is born.’ Angels said, and bowed their faces in adoration, ‘The Word has become flesh’. The eternal, self-communicating personality in the Godhead, passed voluntarily into the condition of humanity. Jesus was born, the Son of God came. Only when we hold fast by that great truth do we pierce to the centre of what was done in that poor stable, and possess the key to all the wonders of His life and death. From the manger we pass to the mountain. A life begun by such a birth cannot be ended, as I have said, by a mere ordinary death. The Alpha and the Omega of that alphabet must belong to the same fount of type. A divine conformity forbids that He who was born of the Virgin Mary should have His body laid to rest in an undistinguished grave. And so what Bethlehem began, Olivet carries on. Note the circumstances of this second of these great moments. The place is significant.