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This is Glendale Presbyterian Church, People Moving Power. This tape includes the reading of scripture and a message by Reverend Mr. Bruce W. Thielman titled "On Being Captured by Glory." At the conclusion of side number one of this cassette, be sure to turn immediately to side number two for the remainder of the message. This tape is copyrighted and all

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rights are reserved. Let us continue in our worship by giving reverent attention to the reading of God's Word as it is recorded in the book of the Acts of the Apostles, the first chapter, beginning with the verse which is numbered six.

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So when they had come together, they asked him, "Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" He said to them, "It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority, but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. And you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea

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and Samaria and to the end of the earth." And when he had said this, as they were looking on, he was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes and said, "Men of the city, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus who was taken up from you into

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heaven will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven." Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet. And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his holy word. Let us pray. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

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I was about eight years old when my parents started to take me to church on Sunday mornings. Until that time, it had only been church school. But from that time until this, it's been church school and church worship. That means I've been attending worship services for a little over 31 years. And in that 31 years, I have never heard a sermon, insofar as I can remember,

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upon the ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ. Not only that, but I do not recall ever having read a sermon which focuses on the ascension of the Master. This is very unusual. It's unusual because the oldest creeds of the Church all assert the ascension as a basic doctrine of our faith. You find it recorded in the Apostles' Creed,

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in the Nicene Creed, and in the Athanasian Creed. There are three places in scripture where the ascension is described with some specificity, in Mark, in Luke, and in Acts. And there are eight additional references in scripture, in John and in some of the New Testament epistles, which speak to us about the ascension. It is then basic to scripture

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and the confessional position of our Church. Yet I have never heard or read a sermon about it. Now, I think I know why this is so. It is because the ascension is rather difficult to visualize or to imagine. It's very hard to read about Jesus ascending into heaven

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without getting some kind of picture of a first-century spaceman on his way to a star, or without seeing Jesus like some kind of Superman saying, "Up, up and away." Those kinds of pictures come into our minds. This has led some people to say that the description of the ascension, which appears in scripture, is only a figurative reference to the ascension,

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not a literal description of what actually occurred. Now there is no question that sometimes the Bible does use figurative language. When Jesus, for example, in one of his parables, describes God as an unjust judge, you know that he is speaking only figuratively and not literally, for God is perfectly just. Or when Jesus describes

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himself as a door, you don't imagine for one moment that he has a knob. Or when he calls upon us to be harmless as doves, he is not suggesting that we ought to be able to lay eggs. Figurative language is used in scripture just as we use it, and it is to be understood as such.

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If I said to you, for example, "I saw the sun rise above the Swiss mountains, bathing them in pink," I would assume that you understood exactly what I was saying. I would assume that you understand that I know the sun does not rise, rather the earth revolves. And I would assume you understand that I know that the Alps don't take baths in pink or anything

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else. I'm using figurative language, which I expect you to understand. When Robbie Burns wrote "My love is like a red, red rose," he didn't mean she had petals and thorns. So you see, the Bible uses figurative language sometimes, just as we do. But the question before us this morning is, does the description of the ascension which is recorded in scripture

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constitute figurative language? And I would suggest to you that it does not. I would suggest to you that, quite to the contrary, Jesus ascended to his Father just as scripture describes the event. And I think this is so because, and it may surprise you when I say this, because what is written in scripture about the ascension seems to me to be so natural. So natural.

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Why not say that Jesus went up to his Father? Is it more logical to say that he went down? Is it more logical to say that he went to the right or to the left? When we say he went up, we're not asserting that the universe comes in three stories, with heaven up here and the earth in the middle and hell down there. They didn't believe that in the first

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century. We don't believe that today. But there is something symbolically represented, you see, by Jesus ascending as he did and being received into a cloud. I think it's very important to recognize that Jesus' earthly ministry did come to an end. And if you're not going to accept the scripture's description of how it ended, then how did it end? Surely

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you're not going to say that he went away without even saying goodbye to the disciples, those with whom he'd fellowshiped so intimately for three years, and then laid down his life for. You're not going to suggest that he went off without so much as a closing or promising comment. And certainly whatever he would have said on that occasion would have been recorded

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in scripture. It was a supremely important and poignant moment. I would submit then that it was recorded because it was so important. And the record of it is exactly what we have written. He ascended to be with his Father. And furthermore, when you think about the wonderfulness of the life of Jesus, when you think about the miracle and the marvel that

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was always a part of it, it's not difficult to imagine at all that he would close his earthly ministry as he did. I believe if we had been there in Jerusalem, and we had met the disciples later that day, and they had walked up to us and said, and after he had spoken to us, while we were still looking on, he was lifted up and a cloud took him

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out of our sight. I believe when we'd hear the disciples say that, we wouldn't be amazed at all, but would on the contrary think to ourselves, that's just the way it ought to be. Jesus now caught up, captured by glory. And I think we would be, as the disciples were, very glad. Now I know it's somewhat surprising to suggest that anyone would be

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glad when Jesus went away. But nonetheless, this is what occurred. And it occurred because he was caught up into glory. That's what's meant by his being received into a cloud. You see, the disciples were all Jews. And to the Jew, the cloud represented the present glory of God. They referred to the cloud, which contained the glory of God, as the Shekinah.

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And it's very basic from the very beginning of Judaism, when the Israelites were walking through the wilderness to the promised land. They were led by the glory of God in the form of a cloud by day and a fiery cloud by night. When Moses went up to the top of Mount Sinai to meet with God, to receive the commandments, God came down upon the mountain in the form

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of a great cloud. After the tabernacle had been built, the first place in which to worship God, it is recorded in Exodus 33 that when Moses entered the tabernacle, a pillar of cloud descended and stood at the door of the tabernacle while the Lord spoke with Moses. Or again, when the first temple was dedicated by King Solomon, it is written in 1 Kings

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8 that a cloud filled the house of the Lord and the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord. And when Jesus had that intimate communion with Elijah and Moses and with his father, which he knew on the Mount of Transfiguration, while the disciples looked on, it is written there that a great cloud overshadowed them. To the Jew, you see, the cloud, the glowing

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cloud, the Shekinah, represented the glory of God. And here Jesus is ascending and being taken into a cloud, into this glory of God. Now, this glory was reserved only for God and here Jesus is being received into it. So here is the testimony sure, the certainty, the proof positive of the full deity of Jesus Christ. Here in this one act, we see the repeated

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promise of Scripture fulfilled. Scripture says in Revelation 1 that he will rule over all the kings and the emperors of the earth. It says in Revelation 5 that all of the creation will sing his praise. It says in 1 Corinthians 15 that every one of his enemies will be defeated. It says in Ephesians 5 that his authority is beyond all other authorities. It says in

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Philippians 2 that there is no name on heaven or earth which is higher than his name. It says in Matthew 28 that there is no limit whatever to his kingship. And here in this moment when the glory of God is his because he is very God of very God, that is asserted tremendously, magnificently, splendidly.

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Earlier this last week I was looking over some maps working on this speaking tour which I will be making in Africa in August. And as I looked over the maps of many places where I've been before, I paused to thank God for the blessings he has given me in letting me see so much of the earth. I remembered where I had walked, where the armies of the Persian

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Emperor Xerxes walked. I stood where the men of Alexander won and where the men of Alexander were defeated. I have marched in the same place where Caesar's legions marched. I have stood where Napoleon launched his campaign and I have also stood where Napoleon met his Waterloo. I have ferreted out the corners of Hitler's home at Berchtesgaden and the

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corners of the concentration camps at Dachau and Delsen and Auschwitz. And I've been to the bunker in which he took his own life and was cremated. I followed the course of our armies across the sands of Morocco or up the boot of Italy or across the belly of France. In the providence of God I've been permitted to see all of those places. And you know something?

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There are no armies there anymore. All of those legions have disappeared. All of those countless thousands and millions of men marching at the command of one king or another have vanished utterly from the face of the earth. And every one of those kings, emperors, dictators, tyrants, call them what you will, every one of them has gone down to dusty death. But

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this September, God willing, I'll kneel at a spot in Bethlehem where a baby king was born and laid in a manger. And the increase of his kingdom has never stopped. It circles the globe so that more men bow at the name of Jesus today than ever before in history. And more men and women, boys and girls, have laid down their lives to the honor and glory

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of his name than that of any other name that has ever been known by any man. Jesus Christ king of kings, Lord of lords, marches on and his legions march on with him. And he is full of the glory which is his. Sometimes people come to me and they say that the day of Christianity has passed and that

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the Lord Jesus himself has been superseded. I can't believe that that's true. Oh, it may very well be that someday the Presbyterian church will be forgotten. But any person who knows Jesus Christ personally knows that he will never be superseded. It is not mankind that judges Christ. It is Christ who judges mankind. And he will never disappear into

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the pantheon of forgotten deities. I like to say to those who think they have found something higher, would you really maintain that you are living life on a level that Jesus lived it and so are ready to go beyond that now? Would you really seriously argue that you have found a rule for the world that is

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more beneficent than his rule of love? Would you really seriously suggest for even a moment that you found an ethical system in some way better than the Sermon on the Mount? Oh, no. Jesus Christ stands pure and undefiled, the same yesterday and today and forever because he is who he is. And the ascension is being received into glory, testifies to the deity

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which belongs to him now and always. That's one of the reasons why the ascension was a glorious thing to behold. But there's another reason, too. And that is that in the ascension, Jesus went away from us in the body to be with his Father. Now, it upsets some people when you say something like that.

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And these people are very sincere and earnest. Haven't you heard someone say, "Oh, how I wish Jesus was still here. How I wish I could see him face to face. How I wish I could touch his hand or at least the hem of his garment." You've heard people say things like that. Perhaps you've said that yourself. And it's a beautiful thought, and I would not belittle

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it for one moment. But really, it's rather short-sighted. Think what it would be like if Jesus were here. First of all, where would he be? Well, let's say he would be in Reykjavik, Iceland; Paris, France; Berlin, Germany; Washington, D.C.; Mexico City; Lima, Peru. You pick the spot. Now, how much chance do you think you'd get to see him there where he is? How long

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would the lines of people be while millions crowded into his presence? The poor would, of course, never have the opportunity to go. They wouldn't have the funds to be able to get there. But if you somehow were able to beg, borrow, or steal the necessary capital to get there, when you got into line, and there would, of course, be millions in line,

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when you got into line and finally got into his presence, how much of his time do you think you'd be allowed to have, remembering that there are still millions behind you and the line is always getting longer, not shorter? And if you were fortunate enough to see him on this one occasion, do you think you'd ever see him again? If you had your one chance,

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would you ever have another chance? Or would you know when you walked out of his presence after your minute with him that for the rest of your life you would never see him or know him personally again? You see, for Jesus to be here in the physical body was adequate when there were twelve disciples and a small group of followers in Palestine.

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But when the legions of the Lord include countless millions, that's no longer adequate. And that's the reason why he ascended in the body to be with his Father, but at the same time gave to the disciples the gift of his Holy Spirit. The last thing that he said to them before departing is, "My Holy Spirit will now come upon you." The Holy Spirit, the third

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person of the Trinity, just as real as Jesus. But the Spirit, you see, is not contained in any one physical point, but instead takes up residence within the heart of everyone who believes. And therefore, you see, you don't have to go to Lima, Peru, or Paris, France, or Washington, D.C., or Reykjavik, Iceland. Rather, Christ dwells in you by the

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power of his Spirit. You don't have to stand in line to come into his presence. And when you are in his presence, you do not have to worry about those who are behind you, for he is with you always, even unto the end of the age. And you can come to him in the daytime or in the nighttime, for every day or for every night of the whole rest of your life.

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It's the reason it's so glorious to remember that at the moment that he went in the body to be with his Father, he gave us the Spirit that we might continue to be with him forever, too. Now, at this point, I have to say something that I don't want to say. But I have to say

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it because there is a certain false doctrine being spread abroad this day which attacks this glorious truth which I've just announced to you. There are those of Pentecostal or Neo-Pentecostal belief who suggest that Jesus has not given his Holy Spirit to everyone, but rather that his Holy Spirit is received only by those who have had a special baptism

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of the Holy Spirit, a baptism which is separate from water baptism and comes after you have accepted Christ as Lord. They suggest that you must have this special baptism and that the invariable sign of the reality of this special baptism is your ability to speak in strange and unknown tongues.

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I would submit to you that this is a false doctrine. I would point out to you first of all that this doctrine is not even mentioned in Scripture. The phrase "the baptism of the Holy Spirit" never appears upon the pages of Holy Writ. Further I would point out to you that Jesus in Luke 11 specifically points out that God

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is more willing to give his Spirit to his children than an earthly father is willing to give good gifts to his children. Now that being so, you can imagine my agony when I have seen with my own eyes people groveling on the floor or quivering with emotion, crying out, screaming, weeping, pleading, being encouraged to do so, prodded by others, trying to bring

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themselves into some kind of an emotional jag in which they can claim that they have finally earned what God is so freely and by the testimony of his own Son so ready to give to everyone who believes. It is a dangerous thing to suggest in any way, shape, or form that the work of Jesus

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Christ is somehow not sufficient. And that's what this false doctrine suggests. It's not only its poor scholarship. Pentecostalism has always been noted for a deficient scholarship. We can lay that aside. What is important is that this doctrine dishonors Jesus Christ. For Jesus Christ is complete. What is faith? The faith that saves is a personal relationship

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to Jesus Christ. When you have Christ, you are saved. You are in fellowship with God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Nothing else is necessary beyond that. When you have Him, you have everything. You are not shortchanged when you receive Jesus Christ into your life.

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There was a time in the early history of the Church when certain people came along and said, "Oh yes, you're saved when you receive Jesus, but there's something more. You should also be circumcised." Well, Paul wrote a letter about these people whom he called the Circumcision Party. It's the letter we call the Book of Galatians. And in the second and the fifth

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chapters of that letter, he condemned those who maintain that you need anything beyond Jesus Christ. And the harshest words in the entire New Testament are used by Paul to condemn the idea that Christ is somehow not sufficient. I'm going to tell you what those words are just to indicate to you how seriously Paul views this matter and how seriously we should

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look upon it. Paul says that those who maintain that something is needed for the full blessing of God beyond the reception of His Son, Paul says in Galatians 5 that they should be castrated in order that they might not be able to bring into the world any children who would rise up and proclaim the same false belief which is theirs. That's rough talk, but he means

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it to be just as it is, and the Holy Spirit has recorded it on the pages of Scripture. When we receive Christ, we receive the Spirit. All that is necessary is for us to depend upon Him. He is our fellowship with God. We must trust Him and enjoy Him forever. Nothing else is necessary. That's part of the glory of the Ascension. And it's also glorious to

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notice this about the Ascension, that when Jesus went to be with His Father, He went in His resurrection body. That is, a resurrected body is now present in the Kingdom of Heaven, sitting at the right hand of God. That's a great truth. It means, you see, that just as God came to us in the form of a man, so now we can go to God through our own form,

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the form of a man. Jesus is King. Now, a King is a King whether He's sitting on His throne or not. But now that Jesus is upon His throne, it's a tremendous thing to know that He is there in the same kind of resurrection body which we will have, that He ascended to His Father in the body, and that there He speaks to His Father day and night, constantly, and

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that our names are always on His lips. In the book of Hebrews, He is described as the great High Priest. The High Priest was the one who went into the Holy of Holies and there made sacrifice for the sins of the people and received the pardon of God. Jesus, in His Ascension, went into the Holy of Holies, fellowship with His Father. His sacrifice

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was, of course, His own death upon the cross, and then He received and bestows upon us the forgiveness of all of our sins. And it's a tremendous thing to know that as He sits there in the courts of the Eternal, He sits there in a resurrected, perfect body, and we shall see Him and we shall be like Him. And you know what that means? That means that we,

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too, shall be captured by glory, that we, too, will know all of the splendor and glory that our Lord Jesus Christ Himself knows. If you know anything about the game of chess, you know that it's a game of relationships. One move is related to all of the other moves. A great chess player can watch two other great chess players play, and after he's watched

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about the first dozen moves, he can go into another room, not even see the rest of the game, and write down every other move that will occur. Why? Because the game is won in the first moves. After those moves are over, everything else is automatic. Well, when Jesus came, He entered into a contest, a game with evil, and He made the necessary moves, and

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the checkmate move, the move which decides the whole course of the game, was made on Calvary's cross. And after that move was made, the game was won. Oh, the game still goes on. The other moves will follow through automatically. But the game was won there. He has gone off to heaven. He has received the trophy, the reward. It is already His. The glory has been

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bestowed, and because He has it, we know that because we are in Him, we, too, shall have it. So as we watch the game still going here, and sometimes it seems to be going against us, don't be discouraged, because the moves from this point on are automatic, and the victory is sure. We can't lose. That's the promise of the Ascension. And there's another

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promise, too. There's a promise that our loved ones already know that joy. Sometimes we wonder about our loved ones who have gone on before, those who have already fallen asleep in Christ Jesus. We wonder if they think about us. We wonder if they miss us. We wonder if there was anyone waiting for them to give them welcome home. Well, here's the promise in the doctrine

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of the Ascension. You remember how Jesus said in John 14, "In my Father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you." That's the Ascension. "And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am right hand of God, there ye shall be also." And that

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means, you see, that the moment our loved ones' eyelids closed in death, at that moment, Christ appeared to them and said, "I know your name, and you are mine, and come with me. I want to introduce you to my Father. We need have no worry, no anxiety. I hath not seen nor ear heard the joy that is already bestowed upon them." And one more thing, the

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same joy that they know, we're going to know. And the same resurrection body that belongs to Jesus, we too shall know. Let me close with this. Cecil B. DeMille, the great motion picture director, was also a committed Christian. Shortly before his death, he wrote of an experience which was his. He was on vacation. He was out in a canoe on a lake, and he had stretched

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out in the bottom of the canoe, all by himself, just lazing in the sun and letting the canoe drift on the lake wherever it wanted to go. And while he was resting there, an ugly black water beetle climbed up the side of the canoe and over the top and onto one of the spanners. And DeMille, just lying there idly, watched it. It came to rest in the bright sun there

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on the edge of the canoe and proceeded to die. A few minutes after it had died, before DeMille's very eyes, the shell on the back of this ugly black beetle began to split. It broke from one end to the other. The carapace parted. And out of this shell came a white and formless mass. It sat there in the warm sun. And as the sun heated it, it began to

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expand until it unfolded beautiful wings, wings which sent back the light of the sun in a thousand different scintillating colors, hues, and shades. The wings were lifted almost as if they were in prayer. And then, as the sun continued to pour upon this formless creature, its body began to expand and to take shape until before his very eyes there was a beautiful

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dragonfly. And suddenly it lifted itself up and flew out over the water, soaring, swooping, dipping to the surface, and then climbing up into the sky. Here on the edge of the canoe, still the ugly broken shell left behind. But there, sparkling with sunlight and soaring in the heavens, beauty personified. And DeMille wrote, "If God does something like that for

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the lowest in his creation, how much more will he do for us the crown of everything he has made?" The resurrection body that belongs to Jesus will be ours. John says, "We shall see him as he is, and we shall be like him." So why don't we preach more sermons about the ascension? Because the ascension says to us, "Jesus Christ is God, and the glory

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of God is his." The ascension says to us, "He has ascended to be with his Father, and there makes intercession for us, but has also given to us the gift of his Holy Spirit, that he might be with us in every moment of our days and of our nights." The ascension says to us that we are saved and that our victory over sin is assured. The ascension testifies

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to us that our loved ones already know a beauty we can't imagine. And the ascension proclaims to us that we shall be in glory as Jesus himself is. That's the reason we say, and we must say it with an overflowing happiness every time we gather together to worship. I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son,

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our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried, but the third day he rose again from the dead and he ascended into heaven, captured by glory. Let us pray. O God our Father, we thank thee for this blessed and precious truth, and we

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ask that the picture of your ascending Son might be engraved upon our minds, and that the promises evident in that magnificent moment might be claimed in every part of our lives. If there are any in this fellowship this day who want these promises to be theirs, then by the power of thine own indwelling Spirit, move them to offer themselves to thee, and

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to know glory now and through Christ Jesus glory forever. And the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you, and give to you and to all those whom you love and to all those whom nobody loves his peace.

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Enjoy Jesus with us. Share Jesus with us. [music] [music]