When Jesus ascended to heaven what happened?
J. Gresham Machen, in his prescient and potent little book Christianity and Liberalism, argued that Christianity is “an event-centered religion.” Christianity is based on historical events. Something happened in history, and all that man is, believes, and does is based on these events—events that occurred in history. Chief among these historical events is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. As the Apostle Paul so aptly put it, if Jesus Christ was not raised from the dead, we are the world’s most pitiable fools, and rather than following Christ, we ought to “eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” (1 Cor. 15:32). But because Christ has been raised from the dead, Christians frame their entire lives in the light of the resurrection. In short, we live resurrection lives that reflect our hope in the resurrected Christ. As central as the resurrection is to the Christian life, it is not the end of the work of Christ. After Christ was raised from the dead, He “ascended up into heaven,” as...