I can say with very much certainty that about 2,000 years ago on this very day, Jesus ascended up to heaven right before the eyes of His disciples. It’s not some privately imparted revelation I received from our Dear Heavenly Father or by the Holy Spirit. No, Jesus revealed this to me through Himself, His Word. Remember, Jesus’ incarnation was “The Word Made Flesh”
John 1:14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
I can’t take all the credit for learning and thus knowing this from studying the Word of God because someone reminded me of it yesterday. Yesterday morning when I woke up, my 1st conscious thought was, “Jesus ascended to heaven on the 40th day, that’s tomorrow.” I believe that while my mind was in neutral, that stage of coming out of sleep and yet before it had time to get in high gear and start “thinking” of all the things I wanted to do, the Holy Spirit said, “Now’s my chance to plant My thought into Tony’s mind.” Almost every day, my very first concern is getting into studying the Word of God. That’s my routine and I’m sticking to it. But I absolutely love it when God injects His thought into my mind to start my day. When I haven’t had time to “pop the clutch” of my mind with my thoughts. I can chew on His thought all day long by considering what scriptures relate to it.
Oh, the other reason I knew that today would be the 40th day is because I do the Biblical thing God commanded His followers to do. I have been counting the omer. Father God has decreed His “appointed times and seasons” that His followers should observe. It doesn’t mean I have to find a goat or lamb to sacrifice because Jesus fulfilled those ordinances. I have chosen not to ditch the Old Testament or “get unhitched from it” as Andy Stanley put it. All of the Word of God is relevant. All scripture points to Yeshua Jesus.
John 5:39-40 You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.
Is some of Jesus NOT Relevant? He IS the Word Made Flesh Remember? The New Testament Didn’t Exist Yet. Jesus Was Speaking of the Old Testament!!!
Leviticus 23:9, 15-17 And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 15 ‘And you shall count for yourselves from the day after the Sabbath, from the day that you brought the sheaf of the wave offering: seven Sabbaths shall be completed. 16 Count fifty days to the day after the seventh Sabbath; then you shall offer a new grain offering to the Lord. 17 You shall bring from your dwellings two wave loaves of two-tenths of an ephah. They shall be of fine flour; they shall be baked with leaven. They are the firstfruits to the Lord.
It’s no secret that Jesus ascended to heaven on the 40th day. For the year 2020 that would be today May 19th.
Acts 1:1-12 The former account I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, 2 until the day in which He was taken up, after He through the Holy Spirit had given commandments to the apostles whom He had chosen, 3 to whom He also presented Himself alive after His suffering by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during forty days and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.
The Holy Spirit Promised
4 And being assembled together with them, He commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the Promise of the Father, “which,” He said, “you have heard from Me; 5 for John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” 6 Therefore, when they had come together, they asked Him, saying, “Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” 7 And He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority. 8 But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
Jesus Ascends to Heaven
9 Now when He had spoken these things, while they watched, He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight. 10 And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as He went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel, 11 who also said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven.”
This is a side note to this post. Notice in verse 10, it clearly states, “behold, two men” appeared in white apparel. We can assume without doubt that they were angels of the Most High God because,
- 1. They were robed in white, a sign of purity
- 2. They testified of Jesus’ return in the same manner that He departed, “with clouds.”
- 3. They agreed with the testimony of Jesus
Mark 13:26 And then shall they see the Son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory.
What it DOES NOT say is “they were angels” and most importantly, it does NOT say they had wings with feathers. If they had protruding wings with feathers, I have little doubt that it would have been mentioned. The only place in scripture where I read of angels have wings is in visions, seen in the realm of heaven, around the throne of the Most High God.
Today there is a widespread misdirection to get people to focus on angels and a lot of it centers on “feathers.” “I found a feather where there couldn’t reasonably be one so I must have been in the presence of an angel.” So much attention being paid to angels when all of our focus should be on the LORD of Host, the LORD of Heaven’s Armies, The Most High God – El Elyon and the Lord Yeshua Jesus Christ. Jesus said,
Matthew 26:53 Or do you think that I cannot now pray to My Father, (The Most High God – El Elyon) and He will provide Me with more than twelve legions of angels?
In the time of Jesus, a standard Roman legion consisted of about 6,000 men. That means Jesus could have asked Father God to send over 72,000 angels.
Don’t fall for the trap of the enemy and get side tracked into looking for feathers, jewels or gold dust. Search the scriptures and try to find Jesus in them.
Hebrews 10:5-7 Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me:
6 In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure.
7 Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God.
The world and much of the Christian world will tell you “everybody sins, God’s ok with it, just confess it and claim the blood. We are under grace, not law. The law don’t matter anymore.” Like just leave that Old Testament alone, we serve a new and improved, chilled out God, God 2.0
If you keep your mind in the Word of God and confess your sins and claim the Blood of Jesus for the remission of those sins enough a remarkable thing will happen. The things the world tells you will begin to “not add up.” You will begin to realize that the sacrifices for sin was not God’s Perfect Will for His children because it brought death, the shedding of innocent blood. God has NO Pleasure in that!!! It NEVER did!!! What does please Him is a heart that would only desire to not sin which is impossible for a normal human. God’s answer is to give them the promise Jesus told the disciples to go and wait for.
Acts 1:4-5 And being assembled together with them, He commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the Promise of the Father, “which,” He said, “you have heard from Me; 5 for John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
A True Christian will have the Holy Spirit indwelling them. It will convict of sin to bring repentance. Unlearning to live a sinful life takes time. Father God knows that and while He is patient, He does expect to see maturity develop in His children.
Jeremiah 31:33-34 But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.
Having the Holy Spirit Indwelling you is the ONLY Way to live the Christian life. It’s impossible without it and even hard at times with it. It’s a fight. The odds are against it happening in a way because it 2 against 1. Our flesh and old nature/spirit want to have it’s way. They don’t want to change, BUT GOD through the Holy Spirit who is all powerful will coax and plead and convict of sin and teach and so much more if we will only cooperate with Him as best we can. God isn’t looking for perfection so much as willingness on our part.
As we do, we will wake up some days with a thought from our Dear Heavenly Father who we now genuinely love with an “Agape Kind of Love.” The “Agape Kind of Love” is imparted to us by God but develops in us because we notice things changing in our human nature that we didn’t initiate. Thoughts come from left field to say or do things unnatural to our “normal” self. We sense a “Driving Force Greater” that our self motivating us along to bring us to maturity in Christlikeness.
I really loved my mother. There are things I did in my life, really really wicked things. I could have NEVER done those things if I knew she was watching me because of my genuine love for her. At that time I said “I love God” but it wasn’t enough to stop me from doing those wicked things even though in the back of my mind I knew He saw it all.
The difference is knowing about God and having the Spirit of God, His Holy Spirit in you to help you change into the person God wants us to be. I pray that if you don’t “Know” Jesus this way, the intimate way of loving Him, that you would give up your fight to being a good person in your own strength. You may win some battles but you will certainly lose the war for your soul because Jesus requires that we “Know Him.”
Matthew 7:21-23 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. 22 Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ 23 And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’
I write this blog not because I was always interested in writing, actually I wasn’t. God, out of the blue, gave me a love to write about how He changed my life. I love to write about the truths I learn in His Word from His hearts point of view. I search God’s Word to see how Jesus fulfilled it, is pictured in it and brings Life to it. God’s Word is Living and Powerful. It isn’t boring. Taste and see that the LORD is good. Eat the Word.
The myths and schemes of men will be revealed to you along the way too!!!
In The Word 