After Jesus was raised from the dead, He appeared to His Apostles from time to time for forty days. Then He ascended into heaven.
“In my first book I told you, Theophilus, about everything Jesus began to do and teach until the day he was taken up to heaven after giving his chosen apostles further instructions through the Holy Spirit. During the forty days after he suffered and died, he appeared to the apostles from time to time, and he proved to them in many ways that he was actually alive. And he talked to them about the Kingdom of God.
Once when he was eating with them, he commanded them, “Do not leave Jerusalem until the Father sends you the gift he promised, as I told you before. John baptized with water, but in just a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”
So when the apostles were with Jesus, they kept asking him, “Lord, has the time come for you to free Israel and restore our kingdom?”
He replied, “The Father alone has the authority to set those dates and times, and they are not for you to know. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
After
saying this, he was taken up into a cloud while they were watching, and they
could no longer see him. As they strained to see him rising into heaven,
two white-robed men suddenly stood among them. “Men of Galilee,” they
said, “why are you standing here staring into heaven? Jesus has been taken from
you into heaven, but someday he will return from heaven in the same way you saw
him go!”
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