The night before the cross, Jesus told his followers in the upper room that he would return some day. In a meeting that was both sober and celebrative, Jesus offered this comfort to his followers:

“Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.” (John 14:1–3)

Having just commemorated the Passover feast together, the mood in the upper room was no doubt festive. Israel’s annual reminder of the Exodus and all that God had done to rescue their forebears from slavery in Egypt was (and remains today) one of the highest and holiest nights of the year for God’s chosen people.

That celebratory atmosphere clouded dramatically upon Jesus’s statement of his coming departure. His own “exodus.” Notice the elements of his promise to his disciples:

• A call to trust (“believe also in me”)
• A promised home (“a place for you”)
• A designated task (“I go to prepare a place for you”)
• A promised return (“I will come again”)
• An unbroken communion (“where I am, you will be also”)

Jesus’s promise to return was reinforced forty days after his resurrection by angelic messengers who encountered the disciples following Jesus’s ascension

And as they were gazing intently into the sky while he was going, behold, two men in white clothing stood beside them. They also said, “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.” (Acts 1:10–11)

While the “two men in white clothing” are not specifically described as angels, Christian teaching has long held that to be the case. And that makes sense. The word angellos means “messenger” and these two are most definitely functioning in that role with the dumbfounded disciples. The fact that the messengers question why the disciples are fixed to the spot and staring into heaven may imply that they expected Jesus’s promised return to happen right away! In The New Bible Commentary, Conrad Gempf wrote:

Just as the phrase ends of the earth is picture–language (since the globe does not really have ‘ends’), so the description of Jesus moving in an upward direction is merely an attempt to fit into earthly words a type of motion that is outside the limits of human experience and language. He was leaving the earth and the only way to leave the earth is upwards! After all, we do not really imagine that heaven is ‘up’, just outside the atmosphere, as if we could get there in a spaceship. We should not imagine that the cloud that hid him from their sight was an ordinary cloud in the sky either. This is the same sort of cloud that we find at the transfiguration (Lk. 9:34–35; cf. Ex. 16:10; Ps. 104:3), the cloud that is the revelation of the divine glory.

Acts tells us there was a visible event, however, and looking up was a natural reaction to this event since they were looking intently up into the sky as he was going (10). Presumably, if Jesus had simply vanished, the disciples would have been left ‘looking around’ rather than up. The two men dressed in white are without a doubt angels (see the similar description in Lk. 24:4, 23). Their message is in line with that of Jesus in vs 7–8: discipleship is not about looking … into the sky. The return of Jesus, just like the restoration of the kingdom, is certain, as the repeated same is probably meant to emphasize. The return was not theirs to worry about. They had other things to do, as Jesus had already outlined. John Stott writes: ‘There was something fundamentally anomalous about their gazing up into the sky when they had been commissioned to go to the ends of the earth … Their calling was to be witnesses not stargazers’ (The Message of Acts [IVP, 1990], p. 51).

Bible scholar Stanley Toussaint, writing in The Bible Knowledge Commentary, said of this critical event:

These verses describe the Lord’s Ascension but they also anticipate his return. He will come back in a cloud, bodily, in view of people (Rev. 1:7), and to the Mount of Olives (Zech. 14:4)—the same way the apostles saw him go.

The Ascension of Christ marked the conclusion of his ministry on earth in his bodily presence. It also exalted him to the right hand of the Father (Acts 2:33–36; 5:30–31; Heb. 1:3; 8:1; 12:2). At the same time the Ascension meant that the continuing work of Christ on earth was now placed in the hands of his disciples (Acts 1:1–2, 8).

It was imperative that the Ascension occur so that the promised Comforter could come (cf. John 14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7; Acts 2:33–36). The Holy Spirit would empower the disciples as they ministered the gospel and waited for the kingdom.

Toussaint’s insights are helpful—describing from the angelic message the nature of Jesus’s return (bodily, in the clouds) and the location of that return (the Mount of Olives). But there is nothing in that angelic statement that hints at the timing of our Lord’s return. However, the angels make it abundantly clear that this return is just as certain as his departure and will be a reflection of that departure.

His returned presence, accomplished in the Parousia, restores his physical presence—something we currently experience in part through the presence of the Holy Spirit.

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The Greek term most often used for Christ’s return in the New Testament is Parousia, which means “arrival” or “presence.” The Gospel Coalition website says it is found in Matthew 24:3; 1 Thessalonians 2:19; 3:13; 4:15; 5:23; 2 Thessalonians 2:1, 8; James 5:7–8; 2 Peter 3:4, 12; 1 John 2:28. This makes the return of Christ a similar promise to the angel’s words to Joseph in Matthew 1:23 that Jesus would be “God with us.” His returned presence, accomplished in the Parousia, restores his physical presence—something we currently experience in part through the presence of the Holy Spirit.