«　WEEK 3　DAY 3　»

　　Acts 2:33 Therefore having been exalted to the right hand of God and having received the promise of the Holy Spirit from the Father, He has poured out this which you both see and hear.

　　36 Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made Him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you have crucified.

　　The resurrection of Christ enables us to be regenerated. It imparts Christ Himself into us as our life and nature, but His resurrection is not sufficient to equip us, qualify us, and authorize us. Therefore, we also need His ascension. Whereas resurrection is a matter of life, Christ's ascension is a matter of position, and position is a matter of authority....We can compare our position to the presidency. In the United States the president must be inaugurated. When he is inaugurated into office, he is put into a position that authorizes, equips, and qualifies him to act and exercise the power of the presidency. (CWWL, 1964, vol. 2, "A General Sketch of the New Testament in the Light of Christ and the Church, Part 1—the Gospels and Acts," p. 189)

　　The Lord's ascension was not the end of His activity. Rather, the Man-Savior's ascension was another initiation....Christ's ascension was His inauguration, His initiation, into His heavenly ministry....His conception was the initiation of His life and ministry on earth; His ascension was the initiation of His living and ministry in the heavens. Hence, Christ's ascension was not the termination of His activity; instead, it was His initiation into further activity—His ministry in the heavens.

　　The first book written by Luke, his Gospel, describes the Lord's first initiation and His life and ministry on earth. Now there is the need of the second book, the book of Acts, to tell us into what kind of living and ministry the Lord has been initiated through His ascension. Therefore, Luke had the burden to write a second book to unveil the living and ministry of the ascended Christ. (Life-study of Acts, pp. 2-3)

　　After the resurrected Lord finished the forty-day training,...He brought them all to the Mount of Olives where He was carried up into heaven (Acts 1:11-12). His ascension brought Him into a new stage—the stage of a resurrected man living in the heavens to execute the things God determined on this earth. This resurrected One is now sitting in the heavens to execute God's administration (2:36; Heb. 12:2).

　　After the resurrected Christ breathed the life-giving Spirit into the disciples as life, life supply, and everything related to their inner man, they all became God-men, men who had been mingled with God. They were filled with the divine life essentially, but they were not yet qualified to carry out God's economy. Therefore, the resurrected Christ had to ascend to the heavens to be exalted by God and to be given the kingship, the lordship, and the headship over all things. He also obtained the throne, the glory, and all the authority in the universe. While the one hundred twenty were praying on the earth for ten days, God was making the exalted Christ to be the King, the Lord, and the Head of all things. God was giving the authority, the throne, and glory to His exalted One—Christ as the One in ascension.

　　Christ is the Lord not only of God's chosen people, but also of the angels and of all those who will be in the millennium and in the new heaven and the new earth....He is the Lord of the heavens, the earth, and everything and everyone He has redeemed.

　　Since the lordship of Christ was fully established in His ascension, we—the members of His Body identified with Christ the Head—only need to realize this heavenly fact (Eph. 1:20-23).

　　Christ in His ascension has not only been made the Lord of all but also the Christ of God to work out the spreading of the gospel and the building up of the church. (The Conclusion of the New Testament, pp. 2975-2976, 2979-2980)

　　Further Reading: The Conclusion of the New Testament, msg. 290