The thoughts of His followers were clinging to the last to the dream of earthly sovereignty. How difficult it is to get even the renewed and regenerated mind to understand and realise Heavenly things, and to wean it from what is of the earth earthy! He checks their presumption—He tells them these are questions which they may not pry into. There is to be no present fulfilment of these visions of millennial glory. That day and that hour are to be wrapt in unrevealed and impenetrable secrecy. The Church may not attempt rashly and inquisitively to lift the veil. She is not to know the time of the Saviour’s appearing, that she may live every day in the frame she would wish to be found in when the cry shall be heard, “Behold the Bridegroom cometh.” The apostolic band are, in the first instance, to be cross-bearers, as He their Master was,—witnesses to His sufferings, earthen vessels, defamed, persecuted, reviled,—before they become partakers of His purchased happiness and bliss!
Nevertheless, it was a grand and glorious mission He sketched out for them. How worthy of Himself—of his loving, forgiving, unselfish Spirit—was the opening clause in that wondrous Missionary Charter He then put into their hands. Even at the moment when all the memory of Jewish ingratitude was fresh on His heart, He inserts a wondrous provision of mercy and grace. They were to proclaim His name through the wide world; but was Jerusalem (the scene of His ignominy) to form an exception? Nay, rather they were to begin there! The Gospel-Trumpet was to be sounded in its streets. The assassins of Gethsemane, the murderers of Calvary were to listen to the first offers of pardon and reconciliation—“And He said unto them ... that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem!” Precious warrant, surely, are these words to “the chief of sinners” to repair to this gracious Saviour. If even for “the Jerusalem sinner” there is mercy, can there be ground for one human being to despair?
But “beginning” at Jerusalem, the Gospel Commission did not end there? It was to embrace, first, “Judea,” then “Samaria,” then “the uttermost parts of the earth.”[44] The ascending Redeemer’s expansive heart took in with a vast sweep the wide circle of humanity. From the elevated ridge of Olivet, on which He now stood with the arrested group around Him, He might tell them to gaze, in thought at least, far north beyond the Cedar Heights of Lebanon and Hermon;—Southward to the desert and the Isles of the Ocean;—Westward to the fair lands washed by the Great Sea;—Eastward across the palm-trees of Bethany and the chain of Moabite mountains on unexplored continents, where heathenism still revelled in its rites and orgies of impurity and blood. With Palestine as their centre and starting-point, the vast World was to be their circumference. The Gospel was to be preached “as a witness to all nations.” The Great Mission-Angel was to “fly through the midst of Heaven,” having its everlasting truths to “preach to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people.”
Are we faithfully fulfilling our Lord’s farewell Apostolic Commission? As members of the Church of God, component parts of the Royal Priesthood, are we doing what lies in our power, that His name, and doctrine, and salvation, be proclaimed to the uttermost parts of the earth? Or is it so, that we are looking coldly, suspiciously, indifferently on the Church’s efforts in the cause of Missions, suffering her funds to fail, and her schemes to languish, and her devoted servants to sink in discouragement? Or rather, are we prepared to incur the responsibility of heathen souls, through our neglect, passing hour by hour into eternity, with a Saviour’s name unheard of, and a Saviour’s love unknown? Go to the Rocky ridge above Bethany, and listen to the parting injunction of our Great Master. His last words, ere the cloud received Him to glory, were Missionary words, a Missionary appeal, a pleading for the Gospel being sent to heathen shores. Ah! our own Britain was then among the number! If the Apostolic Company had in these days, like many among ourselves, refused, on the ground of the home-heathen in Judea, to send any of their band abroad, where would we have been at this hour? With our Druids’ altars, our bloody sacrifices, our cruel rites! But their best and noblest were commissioned to speed from port to port in the Mediterranean and the Isles of the Gentiles, with the Gospel errand on their lips, and the blessing of God on their labours! All honour to these leal-hearted men, who, in spite of national and hereditary prejudices, implicitly followed the will of their Lord and Master, who had given to them, as He has given to us, a great Missionary motto—“The field is the world!”
And now His themes of instruction and comfort are over—He is about to Ascend! The symbolic cloud—(invariable emblem of Deity)—comes down to conduct Him to His throne. What a moment was that! Glory in view—the hallelujahs of angels floating in His ear—the air thronged with celestial hosts waiting as His retinue to bear Him upwards;—all heaven in eager expectancy for her returning Lord. And yet—how is He employed? Is the world, that had so disowned Him, disowned now in return? Are the disciples, who have so oft deserted Him, now deserted in return?—their name forgotten in the thought of the loftier spirits who are to gather around Him in the skies? Nay, His every thought is centered on the weeping band of earth. “He lifted up his hands and blessed them!”[45] His last words are those of mercy—His last act is outstretching His arms to bless! It was an act replete with meaning to the Church of God in every age. Jesus, when He was last seen on earth, wore no terror on His lips—but He left our world pouring a benediction on His redeemed people.
There is something, moreover, significant in the recorded fact that “while He blessed them, He was parted from them!” The Benediction was unfinished when the cloud bore Him away! As they gazed upwards and upwards till that glorious form was diminishing in the blue sky above, still His hands were extended;—the last dim vision which lingered on their memories was the True High Priest blessing the representative Israel of God! It would seem as if He wished to indicate that the act begun on earth was to be carried on and perpetuated in heaven—that though parted from them, His outstretched arms would still plead for them on the Throne. His voice could no longer be heard—but His blessing still would continue to descend till He came again!
Wondrous close to a wondrous life! We have traversed in thought many other memorials of Bethany. We have stood by the gate where Martha met her Lord—the silent sepulchre which listened to the voice of Omnipotence—the holy home where friendship was realised such as earth never before or since beheld. But surely not less sacred or hallowed than any of these is the scene presented on the green ridge rising to the west of the village, overlooking its groves of palm. Before superstition ventured to raise its cumbrous monument on the heights of Olivet, may we not think of the scene of the Ascension, rather in connexion with three living Temples? May we not think of it as oft and again visited by Martha, and Mary, and Lazarus? May we not well imagine it would form a hallowed retirement for solemn meditation! Amid more sorrowful thoughts, connected with their Lord’s absence from them, would they not there often muse in holy joy over the now fulfilled prophetic strains of their minstrel King?—“Thou hast ascended on high, Thou hast led captivity captive: Thou hast received gifts for men; yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell among them.”[46]
Do we love also to linger in spirit on that spot, and listen to that benediction?—“Blessed,” we read, “are they that know the joyful sound.” In these words there is a beautiful allusion to the sound of the pendant bells on the vestment of the High Priest in the Jewish temple of old. When the assembled multitudes in the outer court heard their music within the holiest of all, it conveyed the assurance that the High Priest was there, actively engaged in his official duties—sprinkling the Mercy Seat with blood, and pleading for the nation. They felt “blessedness” in hearing and knowing “that joyful sound.” Beautiful type of Jesus the Great High Priest within the veil! We seem, as we behold Him standing on the crest of Olivet, to listen to the first note of these gladsome chimes. He leaves His Church proclaiming nothing but blessings. As He rises upwards, and the diminishing cloud recedes from sight, still the music of benediction seems to float on the calm morning air. The Golden Bells are sounding—and though the celestial notes cease, it is only distance which renders them inaudible. They are still pendant at His Royal Priestly robes, telling us that still He intercedes! Oh, let us now hear His benediction! Let the comforting thought follow us wherever we go—“Jesus is pleading for me within the Veil.” He left this world blessing—He is engaged in blessing still. “He ever liveth to make intercession for us.”