from WL Worcester (H Blackmer, ed.), 
The Sower.  Helps to the Study of the Bible in Home and Sunday School
 
(Boston: Massachusetts New-Church Union, n.d.)

Table of Contents

 

Lesson 33

Topical and Doctrinal Notes

Leading Thought: Ascension. Pentecost

Forty days after the Lord's resurrection from the tomb, He ascended to heaven in the presence of His disciples, and a cloud received Him out of their sight. We read in Mark, that He then "sat on the right hand of the Father." This is a figure of speech, and does not imply that the Lord Jesus Christ was a different Divine person from God the Father, but it means that He now possessed in His Divine Human all Divine power. We often read about the "right hand" and it always means the granting of power. "At Thy right hand are pleasures for evermore," does not mean that there are none on the left hand of the Lord, but that whoever receives the power from the Lord, also receives pleasures that last forever.

The cloud receiving the Lord out of the sight of the apostles reminds us of the Lord's prophecy that He will "come in the clouds of heaven." "Clouds" mean Divine truths that are not very clear to us, like the truths of the letter of the Word. The apostles were not yet advanced far enough to understand and retain all that the Lord had taught them, but they understood most things literally. They did not therefore clearly see the Lord, who is Divine Truth Itself, but to them He was covered with a cloud. But now that the Lord has made His second coming "in the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory," we are able to understand the Word, and so can also see the Lord more clearly, that is, we can understand His Divine-Human mind, for this is what He reveals to us in the Writings.

You will doubtless wonder what the Lord did during the forty days between His resurrection and His ascension, We learned from the last chapters of the Gospels of some of the things that He did. He appeared several times to His disciples and taught them. But most of the time, no doubt, He was hidden from them; that is, the eyes of their spirits were kept closed, so that they could not see Him.

What was He doing? He was doing a great work in the spiritual world.

Remember that the Lord came to set free the many people who were kept in "the lower earth" of the spiritual world, where they had been troubled, or infested, by evil spirits for a long, long time.

(If you are interested in knowing where in the, Word the lower earth is spoken of you will find the passages quoted in A. 4728, 7090.)

The lower earth is meant by "the graves that were opened, and many bodies of the saints that slept arose, and came out of the graves after His resurrection and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many." He delivered, or redeemed, or freed them when He arose. But before they could enter heaven they had first to undergo temptations. Now you know that the Lord, after His baptism, was tempted forty days in the wilderness. You also remember that the children of Israel wandered forty years in the wilderness before they entered the promised land of Canaan. So, no doubt, the forty days between the resurrection of the Lord and His ascension were spent in temptations by those who were of the spiritual church and whom He redeemed. He freed them when He arose, just as the children of Israel were freed from the Egyptian captivity when they left the land of Egypt. Then the Lord spiritually led them and protected them, fed them and instructed them for forty days, as He had naturally led and protected and fed and instructed the children of Israel for forty years in the wilderness. And finally the Lord raised those who were of the spiritual church into heaven, just as He had introduced the children of Israel into the land of Canaan, under Joshua.

And as the children of Israel formed a new nation, with a new worship, and new laws, in the land of Canaan, so those who were of the spiritual church constituted a new heaven, with the new worship of the Lord Jesus Christ as the God of heaven, and with the new laws of His spiritual kingdom to guide them.

Through this new heaven of that time, consisting of the ancient people who had lived since the time of the flood, the Lord was going to establish His new Church, the Christian Church, on earth.

The Lord had told His disciples, "Tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem until ye be endowed with power from on high." They did so, and on the fiftieth day after the Lord's resurrection, they were all assembled together with one accord, and there "came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing, mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat on each of them, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance." This outpouring of the Holy Spirit of course came from the Lord Jesus Christ in His Divine Body, but it came from Him in His New Heaven and through it.

The word "fiftieth" in Greek is "pentecoste," and therefore we call the day on which we celebrate this outpouring of the Holy Spirit "the day of Pentecost,", the fiftieth day after the Lord's resurrection. Some call it Whit Sunday.

Just as the Lord delivered people from the lower earth at His first coming, and founded a new heaven of them, so He did at His second coming. The Last judgment in the year 1757 was followed by the deliverance of many in the lower earth, where they had gathered during the Christian era, and they were instructed and purified by the Lord, and out of them the Lord formed the New Heaven, from which the New Church meant by "The New Jerusalem" in the book of Revelation, is now coming down upon earth. This New Heaven is below the ancient heavens.

Let us on Ascension-day and on the day of Pentecost also think of this New Heaven, and of our duty so to prepare ourselves by studying in the doctrines of the New Jerusalem, and thus "tarrying there as to our minds, that we may be filled with the power which the Lord sends us from on high, out of His New Heaven.

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