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Ascending through the clouds

Acts 1.6-14 (https://www.biblegateway.com NRSVA)
Jesus ascends to God on the Cross in John’s Gospel, but he ascends through a cloud in Luke. And he isn’t the first person to do this in the Bible. 
Enoch also has a mysterious ending. The New Revised Standard Version says that ‘he was no more, because God took him,’ (Gen 5.24) which could sound like a circumlocution for ‘he died’. But the Greek Old Testament, which Luke would have been using, says ‘he was not found, because God transferred him,’ implying a more mysterious promotion to glory.
And the Prophet Elijah has an ending that is explicitly like the ascension of Jesus. ‘2 Kings 2.11 says that ‘Elijah ascended in a whirlwind into heaven,’ and it’s even possible that he was seated ‘in a chariot of fire’ drawn by ‘horses of fire’. If anything, Jesus’ ascension is far less spectacular, as befits his more understated style.
Luke has a very clear idea that history divides neatly into three stages. First, there is the period before Jesus; then the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus himself, which is all one episode in salvation history as far as Luke is concerned; and finally the age of the Holy Spirit, which began at Pentecost and will continue until Jesus comes back in the same way that his disciples saw him go, (Acts 1.11). For Luke, then, the Holy Spirit is not the Spirit of Jesus, as it sometimes seems to be in John’s Gospel, although - of course - the God of the Old Testament, the God revealed in Jesus and the God who is with us in the Spirit are all one and the same God, make known to us in three distinct ‘persons’.
Again, there is another person in the Bible whose return prefigures Jesus’ second coming. In Daniel 7.13 the writer sees ‘one like a son of man coming with the clouds’ to whom was given dominion and glory and kingship.’ Almost certainly the writer means, ‘one like a human being’ but Jesus adopted this mysterious title, ‘one like a son of man’, to describe himself. 
For John, Jesus’ divine glory was revealed as he hung and suffered on the cross, but for Luke it will become most apparent as he’s lifted up not on a cross but through the clouds, from whence he will return to claim dominion over the whole earth.

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