“If we will consider what the prophets wrote of the Messiah, in connection with the evangelical history, we shall be satisfied that none like Him, either before or since, ever entered our world, or departed from it. Both God and man—at once the Father of eternity and the Son of time, He filled the universe, while He was embodied upon earth, and ruled the celestial principalities and powers, while He wandered, a persecuted stranger, in Judea. ‘No man,’ saith He, ‘hath ascended up to heaven, but He that came down from heaven, even the Son of man who is in heaven.’
“Heaven was no strange place to Jesus. He talks of the mansions in His Father’s house as familiarly as one of the royal family would talk of Windsor Castle where he was born; and saith to His disciples, ‘I go to prepare a place for you; that where I am there ye may be also.’ The glory into which He entered was His own glory—the glory which He had with the Father before the world was. He had an original and supreme right to the celestial mansions; and He acquired a new and additional claim by His office as Mediator. Having suffered for our sins, He ‘ought to enter into His glory.’ He ought, because He is ‘God, blessed for ever;’ He ought, because He is the representative of His redeemed people. He has taken possession of the kingdom in our behalf, and left on record for our encouragement this cheering promise, ‘To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne; even as I also have overcome, and am set down with my Father in His throne.’
“The departure of God from Eden, and the departure of Christ from the earth, were two of the sublimest events that ever occurred, and fraught with immense consequences to our race. When Jehovah went out from Eden, He left a curse upon the place for man’s sake, and drove out man before him into an accursed earth. But when Jesus descended from Olivet, He lifted the curse with Him, and left a blessing behind Him—sowed the world with the seed of eternal blessings; ‘and instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree; and instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle-tree; and it shall be to the Lord for a name, and an everlasting sign, that shall not be cut off.’ He ascended to intercede for sinners, and reopen Paradise to His people; and when He shall come the second time, according to the promise, with all His holy angels, then shall we be ‘caught up to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord.’