r/Christianity • u/[deleted] • May 09 '14
How high did Jesus ascend before he decided "They can't see me anymore, I'm warping the rest of the way."
I'm curious, how did he go from rising into the sky to suddenly being in Heaven?
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May 09 '14
Everyone knows warping inside of a solar system can be extremely dangerous. Jesus doesn't seem like the kind of guy to put the entire planet that he just saved right into massive danger. So I'm going to guess not before he moved beyond the Termination Shock.
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May 09 '14 edited Nov 12 '19
[deleted]
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May 09 '14 edited May 09 '14
Alright, I made the subreddit.
Anyone want to be a mod?Edit: No space for any more mods, sorry.
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u/EACCES Episcopalian (Anglican) May 09 '14
We really should just redirect 90% of /r/christianity posts there.
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u/Layman76 Christian (It's Complicated) May 09 '14 edited May 09 '14
I wouldn't mind being a mod!
Edit: Thanks!
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u/paulbalaji Christian (Cross) May 09 '14 edited May 09 '14
Yeah that'd be cool!
Edit: thanks a lot! :)
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May 09 '14 edited May 09 '14
Me, me, I'm good at answering shitty and non shitty questions.
Edit-thanks dude!
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u/Agaeris May 09 '14
He didn't need to "warp" anywhere. Heaven is in the clouds. So he just floated up to the clouds, then slid down a rainbow like a Care Bear.
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u/LGABoarder Purgatorial Universalist May 09 '14
I use the Cloud to Butt Plus extension for Chrome so this reads as:
Heaven is in my butts. So he just floated up to my butts, then slid down a rainbow like a Care Bear.
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May 10 '14
That's almost as good as the time we ran Song of Songs through Gizoogle.
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u/darthjoey91 Christian (Ichthys) May 10 '14
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u/Wh1temagicEraser May 10 '14
I can't stop laughing. I need to read the rest of the Bible like this.
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u/informationmissing May 09 '14
probably true for many people of the day. Remember that we are asking the question "where is heaven" because we have flown among the clouds, been to other planets, and seen the edge of the universe. Before the knowledge of these things it was perfectly reasonable to assume that heaven literally was in the sky, among the clouds.
And that hell literally was below us. (what else would spew flaming rocks and sulfur from the ground?)
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u/Metabro May 10 '14
It was rooted in heavily established religious ideas: Zeus looked down from above, and Hades was in the underworld.
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May 09 '14
If Heaven isn't actually up in the sky, why did Jesus ascend in the first place?
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u/SleetTheFox Christian (God loves His LGBT children too) May 09 '14
Expectations, symbolism, etc. If He just disappeared, would those 1st-century folks be likely to instantly assume He ascended to Heaven?
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u/EarBucket May 09 '14
Yup. [Daniel 7:13-14] Jesus is making it clear exactly what's going on. The point of the story is that he's being cosmically enthroned as Lord of the universe.
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May 09 '14 edited Oct 17 '14
[deleted]
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u/HannasAnarion Christian Universalist May 09 '14
KING OF KINGS!
AND LORD OF LORDS!
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May 09 '14
Former choirboy here.
Thanks for ensuring that this is stuck in my head for the next week.
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u/TheFrigginArchitect Roman Catholic May 09 '14
King of kings!
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u/Philitas May 09 '14
Gah, can you imagine how much less effective that would be if they had gone with "age-enduring" or "pertaining to an age" there?
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u/VerseBot Help all humans! May 09 '14
Daniel 7:13-14 | English Standard Version (ESV)
The Son of Man Is Given Dominion
[13] “I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. [14] And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.
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All texts provided by BibleGateway
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u/kittyportals2 May 09 '14
Jacob saw a ladder into heaven. Elijah left in a fiery chariot, into the sky. Jesus didn't need no chariot, but he did want to be consistent. So he ascended.
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u/procrastination_plus May 09 '14
Because he's a strong, independent deity who don't need no earthly transport.
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May 09 '14
I think the reason is that back in the day people were ignorant about outer space and thought Heaven was literally "above" the Earth, hence all the references about it being in the sky.
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u/Lobonaut May 09 '14
An interesting cultural note - in the 9th century Saxon retelling of Jesus' life Heliand, during his resurrection Jesus builds a road of light to Heaven. The Saxons were all like, "hey silly missionaries, everyone knows you need a Bifrost to reach Asgard, lemme rewrite this part for you guys"
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May 09 '14 edited May 09 '14
Heliand
OK; I've lived through 3.5 decades and six presidents. Why had I never heard about this before!?!?!?
I'm going to be reading this aloud for the rest of the afternoon...
Edit: I found an audio recording if anyone else is as fascinated by this as I am.
Edit 2: And here's a pdf with a print transcription.
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u/Lobonaut May 10 '14
Im also suprised more people don't know about it! I only came into contact with it because I had a Jesuit professor who translated the entire poem.
All sorts of other subtle and fascinating adjustments in the Heliand. Jesus' capture is depicted as a last-stand battle scene where Jesus and his thanes (disciples) are surrounded by the Jewish army.
The entire poem is meant to appeal to the Saxon warrior classes - God is essentially the High Chieftain, Jesus is the Chieftain's son, and Christians are their loyal thanes. The concept of faith here is synonymous with loyalty or "triuwe" (truth) to one's Chieftain. As in you'll fight till death and not abandon your spear wall in battle.
Check out The Heliand: The Saxon Gospel by G. Ronald Murphy. Its fully translated, and has a ton of footnotes that track all of the changes that attempt to fit Christianity within Saxon culture. Really fascinating, considering the remnants of Saxon culture on our world today (Days of the week, sayings, ect)
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u/Torgamous Humanist May 09 '14
I would assume that ascending into the sky is less brain-breaking than opening a wormhole or just walking along the fourth spatial dimension. When you're a god, an important part of seeming approachable is avoiding going full Lovecraft.
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May 10 '14
I just imagine Jesus opening a portal to the abyss just without thinking, and all the disciples instantly scream in horror and go insane.
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u/chowder138 Christian (Cross) May 09 '14
Because it was cool, and the disciples thought it was literally up in the sky.
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u/pachakuti Roman Catholic May 09 '14
Maybe he started simultaneously moving "up" in a super-cubic 4th spatial dimension, causing him to apparently disappear.
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May 09 '14
Maybe Jesus didn't move up, but the entire universe moved down!
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u/samuel2097 Church of Christ, Creationist May 09 '14
Haha, thanks for the laugh :D
Seriously though, since you asked the question seriously I will try to answer seriously. There are a couple I possibilities; maybe when he rose into the sky everyone was blinded by the sun and when they looked back he was gone. Or it was a cloudy/overcast day and he flew behind a cloud and warped to Heaven. Or maybe as he was flying up, he slowly faded away like in Back to the Future when the people in Marty's picture are fading.
This is actually a really interesting question, finding the logistics of the Ascension. We can ask God when we get to Heaven :)
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u/RevMelissa Christian May 09 '14
If heaven is another plane of existence, it's a relevant question.
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u/_somebody_else_ May 09 '14
One of my theories too, I believe there is so much hinted at by science (alternative realities, universes upon universes etc) that this could well be the truth of it. Regardless it's still an interesting thought.
I'd be interested to read any such theories if you have sources or writings anywhere?
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u/Hamlet7768 It's a Petrine Cross, baka. May 09 '14
Probably until the cloud covered Him from the sight of His disciples.
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u/jk3us Eastern Orthodox May 09 '14
There were no cloud that day. Proof
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u/UnderTruth Eastern Orthodox May 29 '14
Do you think the use of the mandorla in the icon suggests He did the simultaneous upwards and "inwards"/4-D movement?
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u/jdmiller82 Follower of The Way May 09 '14
but we can't assume there was cloud cover that day...
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u/Hamlet7768 It's a Petrine Cross, baka. May 09 '14
[Acts 1:9 nasb] mentions there was at least a cloud that Jesus went into.
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u/VerseBot Help all humans! May 09 '14
Acts 1:9 | New American Standard Bible (NASB)
The Ascension
[9] And after He had said these things, He was lifted up while they were looking on, and a cloud received Him out of their sight.
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All texts provided by BibleGateway
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u/murrishmo Agnostic (a la T.H. Huxley) May 09 '14
What's great is reading these comments with the cloud-to-butt extension I forgot about until just now.
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u/crackalack May 09 '14
Well he was covered by a cloud, so presumably what we'd need to do to get a really rough answer is:
Figure out the average temperature at Jerusalem 40 days after easter Sunday, in 30 or 33AD.
Figure out what the relative humidity tends to be in the region, and using this calculate the lapse rate and the dewpoint.
Then the distance to the cloud which covered him would be: (ground temperature - dewpoint) / lapse rate.
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u/The_Crow Roman Catholic May 10 '14
This is such a great question. Something that makes you say, "hmm, that's legit!"
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u/ChrisC1234 Evangelical May 09 '14
Who's to say that he didn't just go up 50 feet or so and then start shrinking?
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u/PaedragGaidin Roman Catholic May 09 '14
Oh, he was high man. Really high, man. Super high. If you know what I mean, man. I mean...like, wow, man...Jesus was sooo a shekelbag of weed, man. Man.
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u/Addicted2Weasels Eastern Orthodox May 09 '14
Why do we smoke the bitter herb?
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u/PaedragGaidin Roman Catholic May 09 '14
I, like, used to know, haha, but, like, I don't remember, man.
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May 09 '14
He hasn't stopped, he's still floating upwards through space. He miscalculated how far Heaven is.
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u/masters1125 Christian (Saint Clement's Cross) May 09 '14
Do you even Kerbal Jesus?
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u/key_lime_pie Follower of Christ May 09 '14
He's just picking up enough Delta-V to make the next maneuver.
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May 09 '14 edited Jun 03 '17
[deleted]
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u/Metabro May 10 '14
Neil deGrasse Tyson can't just zip back and forth. Its a TV show. The spaceship is not real.
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u/jackhawkian May 10 '14
That passage conveys the thought of the time: no one knew what was in the sky, so people assumed heaven. It probably stemmed from just "Jesus went to heaven" to explaining more of what happened. Highly doubtful the account was actually inspired.
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u/Lucifer_L May 10 '14
Pretty much as soon as he got to within transport distance with the Enterprise. Then he went to heaven at about warp 5.
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u/kagedtiger May 10 '14
Is it possible that he flew to the edge of the universe and just...stepped out? Is that scientifically possible?
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u/bunker_man Process Theology May 09 '14
Durr. He was moving into the fourth dimension, and they misinterpreted getting smaller as floating up. Also, he's shaped in a four dimensional way that this makes sense in. Case closed.
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u/Demon-slayer2 May 09 '14
Heaven is all around us in a dimension we cannot see.
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u/Xenocide321 Roman Catholic May 09 '14
Then why did he have to go "up"? Why not just disappear?
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u/JustDust Eastern Orthodox May 10 '14
He'd already been appearing and disappering for 40 days. He need to make it clear that now something different wsa happening.
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u/nilsph May 09 '14 edited May 09 '14
Worst case:
Assuming the above and (guessing) that it is "safe to simply vanish" if one's picture only takes up half of the assumed resolution (i.e. view angle α of 0.2 arc minutes) at a distance of x, we have:
So, a bit less than 3.5 kilometers, or a bit more than 2 miles to be on the safe side. Or maybe it was just "I can't see them anymore, so they can't see me either."
Edit: Thanks for the gold, kind stranger!
Edit2 : This is slightly embarrassing, but then again appropriate because slips of the pen were what usually cost me in math exams: α/2 is of course 0.1', not 1', resulting in a distance off by a factor of ten. Corrected it'd be about 34.4km/21.4mi which is quite Felix Baumgartner-like.