Ascension Cosmology | When Truth Meets Power

Where did Jesus go when he "ascended to heaven"? And why does our understanding of this event matter for how we understand our mission? In this clip from the course, When Truth Meets Power, Prof. Wright explains some of the confusion around Jesus's ascension, and a better way forward.

[ericbritt]

“Put Jesus at the center and rework everything around him.” Hallelujah!!!🙌🏼🙌🏼

[Max-kfns]

God has been telling me this lately as I study His word! Heaven is all around us but we just don't see it yet. This gives me a better understanding of the joy we have in our Christ Jesus! Thank you for this explanation N.T. Wright.

[hapennysparrow]

My mother passed away three years ago. Her atheist son in-law held her hand as she passed. He felt her spirit leave and trailed her fingers up his arm. He has no explanation for what he felt, but it was real . She delighted in finding shiny new pennies on the ground. She felt they were messages from her savior because the insignia on a penny says in" God We Trust." I am sorry to say, I found her penny thing silly. For the entire year after she passed, both my sister and I would look down to find shiny new pennies in the weirdest places, unexpected places, especially when in our grieving over her death. I concluded that " Heaven" was right there, within reach, not far away at all. It felt as if we could simply part a veil and be there. After one year, the pennies stopped, as suddenly as they appeared. The message, Trust in God. We are a Christian family, and my mother's faith a bulwark in our lives. You just said what I already suspected. Lovely.

[TimothyMatkin]

Thank you, Your Grace, taking difficult passages and concepts and helping make the Bible understandable for so many.

[tedclemens]

"Heaven and earth are the twin halves of God's creation. They are designed to interlock and overlap. They are made for one another.. They are designed to eventually come together as one." With Jesus as the focus of how the two realms unite, "Heaven and earth it seems are already secretly intertwined."

Wright has spelled out a conclusion I came to a while back. I'm SO glad to hear this from someone else. Thank you!

To take this one step further: In the Gospels, Jesus posed that people have been blinded to the truth. This is in contrast to the usual interpretation that scolds disobedience for having "done bad." The revelation ("their eyes were opened") that resulted from the disobedience is clearly stated in Genesis 3:7. The disobedience wasn't some kind of moral "fall." it was a "blinding."

[BlueSkiesVideoProds]

As refreshing and inspirational as ever! Thank God for N T Wright!

[Mountain_Spirit]

Wow thank you! For the longest time I couldn’t read the Old Testament and the Book of revelation that it until I started to listen to you and hearing a different way of thinking about the Bible. It makes so much sense to me. Thank you 🙏

[margaretinsydney]

This is wonderful. Complex truth expressed so succinctly. Thank you so much.

[NoJesus.NoLife]

Doc's teachings has changed my life. Thank you doc.

[adridelarosaj]

YES. THANK YOU. Put Jesus at the Center, and everything else fits perfectly around Him.... That of course is a much greater endeavor than our academic, intellectual, albeit fascinating, noble, endeavors, requiring the faith in and empowerment by the very Spirit of the living Christ we seek to understand.❤❤❤

[BrianWright-milc]

Thank you, Dr Wright! I was literally just thinking about this the other day when thinking about the ontology of angels and humans.

[rickfilmmaker]

Thank you for sharing your knowledge, it is very inspiring!

[darkknightsds]

I always appreciate Fr. Dr. Wright's take on the ascension from a theological point of view. He challenges us to get rid of our implicit cosmology and understand the meaning of the ascension. However, I have not heard him state plainly where he thinks Jesus' body is now. If we are really to believe in a physical resurrection of Jesus, then his body must be somewhere - but where? And if he didn't fly off into the sky as Acts suggests, then where did he go? Did he go "behind the curtain" into God's space, implying that there is a "portal" between the two worlds that only resurrected bodies can traverse? I would appreciate a response from my beloved Fr. Dr. Wright: Plainly, where did Jesus' body go?

Fr. Dr. Wright convinced me of the physical resurrection of Christ (as opposed to a spiritual one). But if that's the case, then he should state more plainly the answer to this question. After all, if we don't have a solid answer for where the body of Jesus is now, then it appears that the ascension as recorded in Acts is merely a teaching story crafted to give an answer for questions on the ceasing of Jesus' post-mortem appearances, and the early church's experience of the paraclete. I have no problem accepting the story as such, but I feel there are gaps in Fr. Dr. Wright's teaching on this, especially given how the earlier books of the New Testament lack the vivid, dramatic details as recorded in Acts. Thanks.

[delbert]

Watched the whole thing and still have no idea what question or objection is being addressed, lots of words though…

[returnoftheschaef]

It helps me to think of it as a higher dimension (a 4th dimension, if you will). One that we cannot see because we were banished from it since the fall of man. To be trapped in 3 dimensions is to be blinded to the reality of the 4th dimension. Much like a shadow on a wall is trapped in 2 dimensions, and can only express width and height, but no depth. We can only see the 4th dimension if we use faith to see it, but even when we do, it is a very blurry image.

[chaddonal]

3:40 “Put Jesus at the center and then rethink everything around him”

[legendsplayground]

I do have some questions when Jesus says I'm not the king of this world in John (where is the heaven then? I tot it's supposed to be on the earth?) how did Jesus go from dead to being alive? (modern biologists always claim it's impossible for dead cells to become alive again. So how are we going to understand this passage? God destroy the dead cell to create a new one? ) when Jesus ascend to heaven, does his material body got destroyed and vanished using his power and only his spirit ascend?

[tammywilliams-ankcorn]

Interesting! I’ve never heard this before. Ive always assumed when I die, I will go up to heaven where He has created a place for me. And then in the new heaven and earth, I might visit earth but live up there with God.

[easttexan]

Mr. Wright, my brother in Christ, that was a very interesting teaching. Thank you. I would ask if by chance you have studied the books of Enoch to any degree?
In the first book of Enoch, chapter LXX it speaks of the final translation of Enoch and he was set between the two winds between the north and the west where the angels took the cords to measure for me the place for the elect and righteous, and there I saw the first fathers and the righteous who from the beginning dwell in that place. Do you think this has any correlation to what you were speaking about?

[davidskolik]

He decomposed, like all life does in the end.