Coming Back

DEVOTION

THE BOOK OF ACTS

COMING BACK

Acts 1:9-11

9 After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. 10 They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. 11 "Men of Galilee," they said, "why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven."

NIV

Is there any more evidence we need other than this first hand eye witness account of Jesus ascending upward in bodily form as well as the fact he will return in the same manner? It would seem the obvious response to this eye witness account would be to believe. This is our hope, our life’s hope, to see Jesus come back from above for us. This gives way to the discussion as to how and when this will happen. Of course we just heard Jesus say that only the Father knows the time and date of this return, yet is there some other return for each of us as we finish this phase of our life? Does Jesus appear to us upon our last breathe to take us to the place he is or do we just sleep until that time and date when Jesus returns for the whole of his church and all at once, all believers rise from the grave and ascend upward to meet our lord in the air? This not knowing the time and date could refer to the hour of each of our deaths. Not one us know the exact time we will take our last breath.  So it is possible Jesus was talking about that time and date rather than the time of his return, or what we refer to as the rapture. Either way matters not, as we will see Jesus. The question which has some pondering is if we are absent from the body we are present with the Lord, when do we leave the body? We have always thought and believed we leave on our last breathe, so that we are then with Jesus, but it would appear only in a spiritual form. While Jesus was in the grave, his body remained there until God raised him from the dead. Certainly our bodies remain in the grave until the time and date God raises us from the dead. But Jesus, the spirit of Jesus, was not in the grave, he was elsewhere, as thus so will our spirits, the real us, the persons we truly are, the very essence of our being will not be captive to the grave, but only our bodies. We will be free of the confines of the flesh and we will be with Jesus. But a day is coming, and perhaps some of us will not have to experience death at all, for in an instance we will be changed, we will exchange this corruptible for incorruptible, perishable for imperishable, in a twinkling of an eye, and we will ascend to meet our Lord in the air, to be with him forevermore. Jesus is coming back!