Introduction
What is the Ascension of Jesus?
The Bible teaches that Jesus was crucified, that He died and was buried. On the third day, He rose again. After forty days, Jesus ascended into heaven. This means that Jesus is in heaven with both His body and soul.
Where does the Bible teach this?
Luke records the history of this event:
And after He had said these things, He was lifted up while they were looking on, and a cloud received Him out of their sight. (Acts 1:9)
Would Jesus’ ascension be one of the steps of His exaltation?
Yes, along with His resurrection, His sitting at God’s right hand, and His second coming in glory.
Is Jesus’ ascension spoken of in the Old Testament?
There are a number of such passages. We know this because the New Testament authors reference these verses as pointing to Jesus’ ascension. The first is Psalm 2.
Psalm 2
Where does Psalm 2 point to Jesus’ ascension?
Consider how the author of Hebrews refers to Psalm 2:
God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world. And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much better than the angels, as He has inherited a more excellent name than they. For to which of the angels did He ever say, “YOU ARE MY SON, TODAY I HAVE BEGOTTEN YOU”? And again, “I WILL BE A FATHER TO HIM AND HE SHALL BE A SON TO ME“? (Hebrews 1:1-5)
Clearly the first quote [in all CAPS] is from Psalm 2:7 which the author uses to show Jesus’ superiority over the angels. There is a mention here of Jesus sitting at the Father’s right hand which assumes the ascension. Otherwise, there is no reference here to Jesus’ ascension.
Psalm 8
Does not Paul make a reference to the ascension in 1 Corinthians 15?
Paul writes in this chapter:
…then comes the end, when He hands over the kingdom to the God and Father, when He has abolished all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be abolished is death. For HE HAS PUT ALL THINGS IN SUBJECTION UNDER HIS FEET. But when He says, “All things are put in subjection,” it is evident that He is excepted who put all things in subjection to Him. When all things are subjected to Him, then the Son Himself also will be subjected to the One who subjected all things to Him, so that God may be all in all. (1 Corinthians 15:24-28)
Again, the ascension is not explicitly mentioned here although it is assumed. When Jesus hands over the kingdom to the Father having defeated all His enemies, this implies that He has ascended up into heaven to announce to His Father that He has performed the mission assigned Him.
But this is in the New Testament, not the Old.
True, but Paul quotes here [again, see all CAPS] from Psalm 8:6 as proof of the fact that Jesus will win the victory over all His enemies. Paul understands this to have happened when Jesus ascended to heaven and returned to His Father. The same teaching and the same reference to Psalm 8:6 is found in chapter 2:
For He did not subject to angels the world to come, concerning which we are speaking. But one has testified somewhere, saying, “WHAT IS MAN, THAT YOU REMEMBER HIM? OR THE SON OF MAN, THAT YOU ARE CONCERNED ABOUT HIM? “YOU HAVE MADE HIM FOR A LITTLE WHILE LOWER THAN THE ANGELS; YOU HAVE CROWNED HIM WITH GLORY AND HONOR, AND HAVE APPOINTED HIM OVER THE WORKS OF YOUR HANDS; YOU HAVE PUT ALL THINGS IN SUBJECTION UNDER HIS FEET.” For in subjecting all things to him, He left nothing that is not subject to him. But now we do not yet see all things subjected to him. (Hebrews 2:5-8)
Thus, we can say that the Old Testament authors predicted the victory of the Messiah over all His enemies. This includes the ascension, but they do not make any direct reference to it.
Psalm 68
Psalm 68 speaks of someone ascending. Is this a reference to the ascension?
Paul understands this text to be a reference to Jesus’ ascension. He writes:
But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it says, “WHEN HE ASCENDED ON HIGH, HE LED CAPTIVE A HOST OF CAPTIVES, AND HE GAVE GIFTS TO MEN.” (Now this expression, “He ascended,” what does it mean except that He also had descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is Himself also He who ascended far above all the heavens, so that He might fill all things.) And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. (Ephesians 4:7-13) more
In this section, Paul is teaching about spiritual gifts and especially the fact that all these gifts come from Christ. He pauses his argument to show that Jesus is the Person referenced in Psalm 68. Jesus is the One who both descended and then ascended again. Clearly, Paul sees Psalm 68 as a reference to Jesus and the ascension figures prominently in Jesus’ triumph over all His enemies.
Psalm 110
Are there other references?
Yes, consider Peter’s quotation of Psalm 110 in his Pentecost sermon:
This Jesus God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses. Therefore having been exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured forth this which you both see and hear. For it was not David who ascended into heaven, but he himself says: ‘THE LORD SAID TO MY LORD, “SIT AT MY RIGHT HAND, UNTIL I MAKE YOUR ENEMIES A FOOTSTOOL FOR YOUR FEET.”‘ Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ–this Jesus whom you crucified. (Acts 2:32-36)
Here Peter quotes Psalm 110 to show that it was not David who ascended into heaven but Jesus.
How does this quote from Psalm 110 show that it was Jesus and not David who ascended?
Because Peter understands David to be the author of Psalm 110. David says in this Psalm that YHWH said to my Lord, “Sit at My right hand…” We know that David never ascended into heaven. Therefore, the “my Lord” of whom David speaks and who will sit at God’s right hand must be referring to someone else. Peter understands that Person to be Jesus and that He is now both Lord and Christ.
Does not Paul also refer to Psalm 110?
Paul references Psalm 110:1 in 1 Corinthians 15:25 when he speaks of Christ’s victory over all His enemies.
Daniel 7
What does Daniel teach us about the ascension?
Daniel describes the rise of four monstrous beasts from the sea. (Daniel 7:1-8) This is an apocalyptic way of speaking about the rise and fall of kingdom’s. The sea is rough and stormy which represents a society full of turmoil. While Daniel is describing this scene on earth, he abruptly switches from earth to heaven:
I kept looking until thrones were set up, and the Ancient of Days took His seat; His vesture was like white snow and the hair of His head like pure wool. His throne was ablaze with flames; its wheels were a burning fire. A river of fire was flowing and coming out from before Him; thousands upon thousands were attending Him, and myriads upon myriads were standing before Him. The court sat, and the books were opened. (Daniel 7:9-10)
How do you know this scene is taking place in heaven?
Because the Son of Man enters “with the clouds of heaven.”
I kept looking in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven One like a Son of Man was coming, and He came up to the Ancient of Days and was presented before Him. And to Him was given dominion, Glory and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations and men of every language might serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which will not pass away, and His kingdom is one Which will not be destroyed. (Daniel 7:13-14)
Why does this reference to clouds indicate that this scene is in heaven?
Because God and heaven are so closely associated with clouds:
- God makes the cloud His chariot (Psalm 104:3),
- He uses a cloud as a blanket to cover His people. (Psalm 105:39)
- When God appeared to Moses, He came out of a cloud (Exodus 24:16; 34:5) and speaks to His people from a cloud (Numbers 11:25, Deuteronomy 5:22) and leads them from the cloud (Exodus 13:21, Ps 78:14).
- God also spoke to Jesus, Peter, James, and John from a cloud. (Matthew 17:5, Mark 9:7, Luke 9:34, 35)
Thus, in this reference, coming “with the clouds of heaven” means this is taking place in the heavenly realm, the dwelling place of God.
Is the Ancient of Days in this vision God the Father?
Yes.
What is meant by the title “son of man”?
This means human. The figure who enters the scene is said to be One like a son of man; i.e. one who appears as a human. From the rest of this vision, we can see that this Person is more than a human even though He has the appearance of one.
This Son of Man is given an everlasting kingdom.
Yes, which shows us that this Person is the Lord Jesus Christ who has come to claim what He has rightfully earned. (Luke 22:29)
How did Jesus earn the right to an everlasting kingdom?
By coming to earth and making atonement for the sins of His people.
Where do we read this?
This is the meaning of the heavenly scene given us in Revelation 5. In these verses, it is the Lamb of God who has the right to open the seals of the book. Then the heavenly attendants sing, “You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God; and they will reign upon the earth.” (Revelation 5:10)
Paul also says that God highly exalted Jesus and bestowed on Him the Name which is above every name because He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:8-9)
How do these verses in Daniel speak of Christ’s Ascension?
There is no explicit reference here to the ascension of Christ. Nevertheless, Christ’s ascension is the best choice for what is happening here.
What other options are there for understanding this text?
It could be God the Father’s gift of the eternal kingdom to His Son in the covenant of grace long before time began. This is the promise God gives to His Son which we read of in Psalm 2:
He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord scoffs at them. Then He [the Father] will speak to them in His anger and terrify them in His fury, saying, “But as for Me, I have installed My King Upon Zion, My holy mountain.”
“I [the Messiah King] will surely tell of the decree of the LORD [God the Father]: He said to Me, ‘You are My Son, Today I have begotten You. Ask of Me, and I will surely give the nations as Your inheritance, and the very ends of the earth as Your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron; You shall shatter them like earthenware.'” (Psalm 2:4-9)
Jesus also makes reference to this in Luke 22:29.
Or it could be a reference to Jesus’ birth as when the angel announced to Mary:
“Do not be afraid, Mary; for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name Him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David; and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and His kingdom will have no end.” (Luke 1:30-33)
But all these options have a problem.
What is that?
The Son of Man in Daniel receives the kingdom after His victory, not before. When the Son of Man enters the heavenly court, the work is already finished as is clear from the previous verses:
Then I kept looking because of the sound of the boastful words which the horn was speaking; I kept looking until the beast was slain, and its body was destroyed and given to the burning fire. As for the rest of the beasts, their dominion was taken away, but an extension of life was granted to them for an appointed period of time. (Daniel 7:11-12)
It’s after this, that the Son of Man enters the heavenly court to receive the kingdom.
In the verses you just quoted, who was the one who neutralized these beasts?
The text doesn’t say. What’s interesting here is that we would expect the Ancient of Days to be the One who destroyed them since He is the One mentioned in the previous verses, but this is not said. All these verbs in verses 11-12 are in the passive voice and the agent of these verbs is not specified. From this, it is likely that the Agent is the Son of Man, not the Ancient of Days, and the kingdom is His reward for His victory over the beasts.
Is this then a reference to the ascension of Christ?
Yes, Christ has ascended to heaven; and once in heaven, He appears in the heavenly court to claim the promised reward.
Jesus
Does Jesus ever speak of His ascension?
It is possible that Jesus made a reference to His ascension in His reply to the High Priest:
The high priest stood up and came forward and questioned Jesus, saying, “Do You not answer? What is it that these men are testifying against You?” But He kept silent and did not answer. Again the high priest was questioning Him, and saying to Him, “Are You the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?” And Jesus said, “I am; and you shall see THE SON OF MAN SITTING AT THE RIGHT HAND OF POWER, and COMING WITH THE CLOUDS OF HEAVEN.” (Mark 14:60-62)
The first quote here is a combination of Daniel 7:13-14 “Son of Man” and Psalm 110:1 “at the right hand.” As before, sitting at God’s right hand would imply an ascension to heaven.
Paul
Others
After Jesus’ resurrection, He did not die again. Are there others in Scripture who passed into glory without ever dying?
Yes, the Bible records this about Enoch:
- Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him. (Genesis 5:24)
- By faith Enoch was taken up so that he would not see death; AND HE WAS NOT FOUND BECAUSE GOD TOOK HIM UP; for he obtained the witness that before his being taken up he was pleasing to God. (Hebrews 11:5)
and Elijah:
When they had crossed over, Elijah said to Elisha, “Ask what I shall do for you before I am taken from you.” And Elisha said, “Please, let a double portion of your spirit be upon me.” He said, “You have asked a hard thing. Nevertheless, if you see me when I am taken from you, it shall be so for you; but if not, it shall not be so.” As they were going along and talking, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire and horses of fire which separated the two of them. And Elijah went up by a whirlwind to heaven. Elisha saw it and cried out, “My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and its horsemen!” And he saw Elijah no more. Then he took hold of his own clothes and tore them in two pieces. He also took up the mantle of Elijah that fell from him and returned and stood by the bank of the Jordan. He took the mantle of Elijah that fell from him and struck the waters and said, “Where is the LORD, the God of Elijah?” And when he also had struck the waters, they were divided here and there; and Elisha crossed over. (2 Kings 2:9-14)
Do these verses teach that the bodies of Elijah and Enoch along with their souls were taken up to heaven?
This is not said explicitly, but it is implied.
Were there others?
Roman Catholics teach that Mary was assumed into heaven body and soul. Pope Pius XII defined (see §44) this doctrine ex cathedra:
44. For which reason, after we have poured forth prayers of supplication again and again to God, and have invoked the light of the Spirit of Truth, for the glory of Almighty God who has lavished his special affection upon the Virgin Mary, for the honor of her Son, the immortal King of the Ages and the Victor over sin and death, for the increase of the glory of that same august Mother, and for the joy and exultation of the entire Church; by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own authority, we pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma: that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.
45. Hence if anyone, which God forbid, should dare willfully to deny or to call into doubt that which we have defined, let him know that he has fallen away completely from the divine and Catholic Faith.
This is the culmination of a long history of Mariolatry; see Schaff §130.
Where does the Bible teach this?
This doctrine, it is claimed, is not found in the written tradition; i.e. the Bible. Roman Catholics affirm that this is a teaching taken from the unwritten teaching of Jesus and the apostles. On the unwritten traditions, see here.
Are Roman Catholics asserting that Jesus Himself and the apostles taught this doctrine?
Yes, Piux XII teaches (see §12) that Christ Himself gave this doctrine to the church to faithfully preserve and define:
But those whom “the Holy Spirit has placed as bishops to rule the Church of God” gave an almost unanimous affirmative response to both these questions. This “outstanding agreement of the Catholic prelates and the faithful,” affirming that the bodily Assumption of God’s Mother into heaven can be defined as a dogma of faith, since it shows us the concordant teaching of the Church’s ordinary doctrinal authority and the concordant faith of the Christian people which the same doctrinal authority sustains and directs, thus by itself and in an entirely certain and infallible way, manifests this privilege as a truth revealed by God and contained in that divine deposit which Christ has delivered to his Spouse to be guarded faithfully and to be taught infallibly. Certainly this teaching authority of the Church, not by any merely human effort but under the protection of the Spirit of Truth, and therefore absolutely without error, carries out the commission entrusted to it, that of preserving the revealed truths pure and entire throughout every age, in such a way that it presents them undefiled, adding nothing to them and taking nothing away from them. For, as the Vatican Council teaches, “the Holy Spirit was not promised to the successors of Peter in such a way that, by his revelation, they might manifest new doctrine, but so that, by his assistance, they might guard as sacred and might faithfully propose the revelation delivered through the apostles, or the deposit of faith.” Thus, from the universal agreement of the Church’s ordinary teaching authority we have a certain and firm proof, demonstrating that the Blessed Virgin Mary’s bodily Assumption into heaven–which surely no faculty of the human mind could know by its own natural powers, as far as the heavenly glorification of the virginal body of the loving Mother of God is concerned–is a truth that has been revealed by God and consequently something that must be firmly and faithfully believed by all children of the Church. For, as the Vatican Council asserts, “all those things are to be believed by divine and Catholic faith which are contained in the written Word of God or in Tradition, and which are proposed by the Church, either in solemn judgment or in its ordinary and universal teaching office, as divinely revealed truths which must be believed.”
What did the early church fathers say about Mary’s assumption?
There is no record of anyone speaking of it until after the council of Chalcedon (451ad). Pohle writes (p109):
It may be objected: If the Assumption of Our Lady cannot be demonstrated to be an historic fact, how can theologians speak of it as “certain” and express the hope that it will eventually be raised to the rank of a dogma [this was written prior to the time when Pius XII defined this doctrine as a dogma]? The answer is that an insufficiently attested fact may be as surely proved by the dogmatic as by the historical method. Thus, for instance, there is no historic evidence by which we could establish the Immaculate Conception or the sinlessness of our Lady. Similarly, belief in the Assumption did not originate entirely in historic documents, but mainly in dogmatic considerations connected with our Lady’s prerogatives as Deipara [mother of God] and confirmed by an Apostolic Tradition, which at first lay hidden, but came to the surface about the sixth century and continued its course to the present time, with all the marks of a revealed tradition.
Essentially, this is an admission that this teaching has no basis in historical fact. The Roman Catholics invented this doctrine and claim that it was handed down by a tradition from Jesus and the apostles and that it is known only to them. Protestants protest.