I'll Be Back

Forty days.

Forty days Noah heard rain falling on the earth.

Forty days Moses spent on Mount Sinai to receive the law.

Forty days Elijah fasted when he ran from Jezebel.

Forty days Israel’s army heard the challenge of Goliath.

Forty days Ezekiel lay on his left side to symbolically bear the sins of Israel.

Forty days Jonah told Nineveh was how long they had before being overthrown.

Forty days Jesus was in the wilderness being tempted.

Forty days Jesus appeared to His followers before His ascension back to heaven.

Jesus had appeared to many since He rose from the grave. He gave His eleven disciples their instructions:

“All authority had been given to Me in heaven and earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

At the end of the forty days, the time came for Jesus to return to heaven. He had finished everything He came to do during His birth, ministry, death, burial, and resurrection. He told His disciples to stay in Jerusalem until they received the Holy Spirit (which descended on them on Pentecost-fifty days after His resurrection.)  

 “Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?” the eleven asked Jesus. They still didn’t understand.

“It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority; buy you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth,” answered Jesus.

The disciples watched Jesus as He ascended up and disappeared into a cloud.

The eleven were staring into the sky, dumbfounded.

Then two men (angels) dressed in white appeared.

“Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven,” said the angels.

And one day Jesus will return in the same way at His second coming. (The second coming is different from the rapture. Believers alive and dead will meet Jesus in the clouds at the rapture.)

Jesus described the day of His second coming like this:

“For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of His Father with His angels; and will then recompense every man according to his deeds.” Matthew 16:27.

“You have said it yourself, nevertheless I tell you hereafter you shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven.” Matthew 26:64.

Carla Killough McClafferty