Today is Ascension Day, and has traditionally been observed on the 40th day from Resurrection Day (i.e. "Easter") following the chronology in the Book of Acts 1:3 that states Jesus appeared to His disciples for 40 days after His resurrection.
This is the day that Jesus -- during His trial with the high-priest and elders right before His crucifixion -- was referring to when He declared that they would see Him the "Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of Heaven." (Matthew 26:64-65; Luke 22:69). This "coming on the clouds" talk wasn't concerning some distant, apocalyptic time in the future; No, this is Jesus declaring that He is the Son of Man spoken of by Daniel in chapter 7:13-14. Jesus was declaring to be the person who will come on the clouds to the Ancient of Days and be "given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him; His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and His kingdom one that shall not be destroyed." And in both Matthew and Luke Jesus declares to the elders and high-priest that "from now on..." they will see Him as the triumphant, ruling Son of Man, and not future "somebodies" "someday" in the by-and-by.
So, we see Jesus was given the Earth 2000 years ago as His Kingdom, and beware, it wasn't just a "heart" or "spiritual" kingdom either. And why it cannot be an ethereal kingdom is due to what Daniel says this Son of Man will be given by God. The Son of Man (Jesus) is said to be given people, nations, and languages; and that entails living bodies, corrupt governments, tornados, sloshing oceans, and oh, I don't know... ponies and aardvarks. You get the drift.
This is extremely difficult for us to see...
....but we don't need to fully understand how Jesus is remaking His world -- He, the second Adam -- but we need to trust by faith that He is. We can only do that by seeing it in His Word, and Scripture tells us that everything HAS been placed in subjection under Him; but not only that, it tells us something more, something to reassure us, "Now in putting everything in subjection to Him, He [God the Father] left nothing outside His [Jesus] control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to Him." (Hebrews 2:8)
This "seeing" of Christ's Kingdom as this world takes faith, and it should be faith reminiscent of Abraham and not of Thomas. Abe back in the day only saw a land of wicked, idolatrous people in Canaan, but he by faith had "the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." (Hebrews 11:1) He knew God was going to create a great people out of him and bless that plot of land called Canaan as well, even though very little of that looked likely when he opened up his eyes every morning.
This kind of faith in God's Word is what Christ's Household needs to acquire again, and in truckloads. We must see and trust that Jesus really, truly was and is the Rock made without hands that Daniel forsees in Daniel 2:31-35, 44-45, and that -- through His New Covenant people -- destroyed Rome and from that point on in history began to fill the whole Earth. And, again, not at some future date or time.
Without the recovery of this teaching of Scripture, Christ's People will continue to be confused, continue to ring their hands during Fox News, and continue to predict and wait with ghoulish delight for *sigh* the RAPTURE! (the Rapture deserves all caps and an exclamation mark, don'tcha think?)
So here's why I'm writing about Ascension Day: I believe when it is celebrated it can serve as one small way to recover and imbibe the understanding of Christ's Lordship over all the Earth as a central part of the Good News we herald. This recovery will hopefully aid us to regain some lost ground and to plough-up some new as well.
This festival though can only be really celebrated by latching onto a full, robust, Biblical understanding of Jesus' coronation (Psalm 110; Daniel 7; Matthew 28) and Satan's crushed head at the Cross (1 John 3:8; Hebrews 2:14) and the implications that are drawn out through those Biblical doctrines.
My prayer is that the celebration of Ascension can be a catalyst to bring the Bride back to living in a faith that looks and acts more like Abraham's and less and less like Thomas'.
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