Deliverance from the Cross — Page 102
and did eat before them'. (Luke 24:41-43) Had he not taken such pains to convince them of his humanity they might have been left under the impression that he had died upon the cross and that they were now beholding his spirit. Each time and wherever he was in their company, he ate with them to emphasise his physical needs. Nowhere did Jesus himself give any indication of his intended physical ascension to heaven. So far as the Gospels are concerned they do not today contain any positive affirmation that Jesus had ascended physically to heaven. The narrative in Matthew and John stops short of the alleged event of the ascension. All that Mark and Luke state in this context is: 'So then after the Lord had spoken unto them he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God'. (Mark 16:19) This is more a statement of belief than a record of a physical observable event. The statement in Luke does carry the matter any further: not And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven'. (Luke 24:51) Once he was parted from them they ceased to be witnesses of what happened to him. Another difficulty in the way of the bodily ascent of Jesus to heaven is, what became his habitat after such 102