The Beginning of the End

By: Richard Tarsitano 

“Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11). 

The Ascension of our Lord is the beginning of the end of our broken world. However permanent the pain and death and curses may seem, however impossible it may seem to resist the festering evil of our age, the last days of the fallen creation are bracketed by the Ascension of Jesus Christ and his return to the earth on the Last Day. Long before the first sin dragged the creation itself into bondage, God had already decided when the world will end. The date and time are rightly hid from our eyes, but He knows it, and His Providence is always at work bringing his work with this world to a close. 

In fact, God’s most important work is already complete. Jesus Christ, the Son of God made Man, invaded our world to save it, and we have every reason to place our faith in His, “It is finished.” Christ has made himself a curse on the cross as a sacrifice for our sins, atoning with his own Blood for our rebellion against his Father. He has risen from the dead to become our great High Priest, a glorified human being as well as the Son of God, making atonement for his yet-to-be-glorified fellow men that we may become by adoption and grace the sons of God in him. He has already gone home to heaven, into the Holy of Holies not made with hands, into the living presence of God his Father, to offer his one sacrifice of himself for all sin, for all time, to make His Father our Father forever. 

And now Jesus Christ is seated at the right hand of our Father, in the place of the highest honor and glory, because his work of salvation is complete. Every human being who will ever be saved is saved by that one sacrifice of Christ once offered. There is no other price for sin, no other savior, no other hope of eternal life. There is nothing we can do to add to the pure gift of salvation Jesus Christ has given to us and to all who believe in him. We are called not to worry or fear or despair but rather to pray to the world’s savior that he will intervene and save our friends and neighbors and enemies, not by dying again, but by giving them the gift of faith in his death, resurrection, and ascension. 

Jesus Christ’s Ascension then is not only the means of our salvation, since by his ascending he has gone to the one place where a permanent offering for sin can be made, but further, his Ascension is also the proof of our salvation, since he is true man as well as true God, and he has taken human flesh and blood into the very presence of God. No one can ever say again that there is no place for man in heaven or before the throne of God because Man in Jesus Christ is already there. Through this resurrected Man, mankind is fitted by salvation and grace for eternal fellowship with God, so that where Christ is now, one day, on the Last Day, all of redeemed humanity will gather before the Father’s throne in their own resurrected and glorified bodies. 

Until Christ’s return to judge the living and the dead, there is only one main task before mankind, and that is getting ready for Christ’s return and the end of the world. Preparing for the end of the world, however, has nothing to do with trying to interpret blood moons or worrying a lot about middle eastern politics. Since God has reserved the time and the hour of the end to himself, trying to predict the end is a complete waste of time. The same is true of the desperate ‘prepper’ hoarding treasures which will be worthless at the true end of days. The only thing worse is those who have made comfort their idol sitting quietly and waiting for the end to come. 

After all, Jesus Christ has told us what we must do in order to prepare for the end of the world, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles:  “But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Since the Holy Ghost did come on Pentecost, the way that we are to prepare for the end of the world is to witness to Jesus Christ everywhere from our own homes and towns to the uttermost part of the earth. This witness is not merely ‘talking about Jesus,’ but showing people Christ alive and at work in us by the Christian lives we are living in him and through him. The way we work, pray, and do charity; the way we stand up for justice, especially for the weak; the way we relax and amuse ourselves as the children of God and not as the children of Adam and the Devil; the way we embrace the joys and the sorrows of our lives with hope and grace: if we do these things in Christ, knowing that Christ is alive and glorious at his Father’s side and that our salvation is the already accomplished work of the Son of God made man, then we do very much witness to Jesus Christ by our living. Then we are actually preparing ourselves and our neighbors for the end of the world, whenever it comes. 

As the angels who attended the Ascension told the Apostles, we do not need to stare up at the heavens. What Jesus Christ has already done is a sure and certain thing. We do not have to watch it to make it true. So, also, is Christ’s Second Coming a sure and certain thing, making it completely unnecessary to worry about Christ’s return as if worrying will make it so or change the timetable God has established from before he created the world. 

God will have his way. He will have the redeemed as his image and likeness in a fellowship of love forever. Jesus Christ has already made this so. Our job is to start living that fellowship right now, as much as we are able, knowing that God in heaven has already decided when he will make our lives perfect by sending his Son in his glorious manhood to bring this world to its perfect conclusion in him.