Jesus on trial was silent before all His accusers, until the high priest said to Him: “I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.” (Matthew 26:63)
The high priest commanded Jesus to declare clearly whether or not He was the Messiah. The time had come. Jesus’ entire ministry had already unmistakably revealed the truth. So Jesus answered him plainly, “You have said so.” (Matthew 26:64a). This means, essentially, “yes.” Or, “it is as you say.” If Jesus had only stopped there, the problem might have been less significant, but He continued: “I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven.” (Matthew 26:64b).
The high priest considered this blasphemy, but why he thought so is a subject of debate. In this essay, I do not intend to address that.
What I am interested in is Jesus’ prophecy that the Jewish leaders would “see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven.” What on earth — oops — what in heaven did Jesus mean? To begin with, the Jewish leaders would have been — at least some of them — well acquainted with the book of Daniel, to which Jesus was referring.
In Daniel 7:13, Daniel saw, in his vision, one like the Son of Man “Coming with the clouds of heaven He came to the Ancient of Days.” Note this is not, as is often taught in popular eschatology, a vision of Jesus returning to earth. This is a vision of Jesus ascending to the Father — a vision that is fulfilled and more elaborately revealed in the book of Revelation 4-5.
Jesus told the Jewish leaders that they would “see” Him ascending to God to sit at the right hand of the Father, but of course, He did not have in mind the evening news with a video report.
They would “see” in the sense of “understand.”
So, when and how did they “see”? This question was profoundly important to the apostles, for they constantly emphasize its fulfillment. It proved that Jesus was not only a prophet, but the Messiah and Son of God in a sense that the priests never imagined.
The fulfillment came in stages. I outline their “seeing” in four phases.
First, was the resurrection itself. The chief priests and pharisees remembered that Jesus had predicted He would rise again, so they took precautions and assigned a Roman guard to His grave (Matthew 27:62-66). Perhaps this was provoked by the fact that many rose from the dead at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion (Matthew 27:52-53) — as if there were many like Lazarus!
Then came the resurrection!
Some of the guard on that day brought the “bad news” to the chief priests. They had seen an angel and fell down like dead. When they were conscious again, the body of Jesus was gone. They were confronted with an empty tomb and they had no explanation. At this point, Jewish leaders “saw,” or should have seen, that the Son of Man was alive. He rose from the dead.
But they “found” an explanation. They paid the guards to say that Jesus’ disciples had stolen the body (Matthew 28:11-15).
And it worked!
For about 50 days no one spoke of Jesus. The fearful fishermen were silent. No one preached the resurrection. For the Jewish leaders, Jesus’ death on the cross was a success — judicial murder worked again! Just as they had been set free from John the baptizer, they were now rid of the Messiah he introduced. Life could go back to normal. Or so they hoped.
Phase two, the initial testimony and miracles wrought by Jesus’ apostles, probably all happened in 30AD (Acts 2:1-9:21).
On the day of Pentecost there was an unexpected Spiritual explosion! Jesus’ disciples suddenly reappeared and boldly claimed that Jesus had risen from the dead and was seated at the right hand of God (Acts 2:22-36)! It was not a private party. 3000 Jews were baptized that day to become Jesus’ disciples (Acts 2:41). This is not the kind of event that would escape the scrutiny of the Jewish authorities. Once again, and much more unmistakably, it was made clear to them that the Son of Man had indeed been exalted to the right hand of God.
To make bad worse, two of Jesus’ disciples, Peter and John, did a miracle in the temple in the name of Jesus, like the kind of miracles Jesus had done. Then, to the astonished assembly, Peter preached Jesus as the crucified and resurrected Lord. The number of believers in Jerusalem grew to 5000 men and the Jewish authorities were deeply disturbed (Acts 3-4). They could not deny the miracles that were done in Jesus’ name, which is to say that they saw — whether they would admit it or not — that Jesus had been exalted to the right hand of God.
But, of course, this was not the end, for “many signs and wonders were regularly done among the people by the hands of the apostles. And they were all together in Solomon’s Portico” (Acts 5:12). If Peter’s shadow even touched someone, they would be healed (Acts 5:15). Multitudes came to be healed and to hear Peter and John, so the jealous leaders put them in jail (Acts 5:18). But an angel of God released them and they went back to the temple to preach again (Acts 5:19-21), which greatly perplexed the Jewish leaders. Again, they saw the fulfillment of Jesus’ words: He had risen from the dead and was seated at the right hand of power.
When they found and arrested Peter and John, the Jewish leaders heard the same old sermon — you killed Jesus but God raised Him and exalted Him to His right hand (Acts 5:29-32). They were so filled with rage, they wanted to try the same old non-solution — kill the witnesses. But Gamaliel persuaded them to let the fishermen alone. If their work is from God, no one can stop it. If not, it will eventually die out by itself.
What followed, of course, was more testimony and more miracles. Stephen became the next target for investigation because he supposedly spoke against the law and the temple (Acts 6:13-14). In his trial, testimony and murder, the Jewish authorities saw again that Jesus had indeed risen from the dead and was seated at the right hand of God (Acts 7).
Since the Jesus movement had become too powerful to follow Gamaliel’s advice, severe persecution was the only and obvious answer. The Jewish leaders found a willing anti-Jesus disciple who would lead the suppression, Saul (Acts 8:1-3). However, the oppression of the Jerusalem church backfired, for the dispersed believers in Jesus testified everywhere they went that He had risen from the dead and was seated at the right hand of God.
The third phase might have been the worst for the Jewish leaders — Saul’s conversion. Almost everything had been going badly for them, but it was about to become truly awful. Saul, was the representative they commissioned and sent to Damascus to arrest anyone belonging to the “Way.” But a funny thing happened on the way to suppress the Way. Jesus appeared to Saul and brought him into the movement. The man who had breathed threats and murder against Jesus’ disciples was now breathing in the Spirit and proclaiming Jesus as Lord (Acts 9).
Once again, the Jewish leaders “saw” that Jesus had indeed risen from the dead and was seated at the right hand of God. Jesus’ prophetic words found multiple fulfillment. Indeed, even many priests had believed in Jesus (Acts 6:7).
The third phase, beginning with Saul’s conversion, resulted in a growth of the number of believers that made it ever more clear that the Jesus movement was not going to disappear by itself. The Jewish leaders were being confronted with the testimony of the apostles in the light of Gamaliel’s word — if this is from God, you cannot stop it. Jesus really did rise from the dead and He really was seated at the right hand of God!
Then, the fourth and final phase came when the Romans surrounded Jerusalem, as Jesus had prophesied. This was the last and final opportunity for the Jewish leaders to repent and believe. Concerning the 144,000 of the tribes of Israel in Revelation 7, Peter Leithart wrote: “Literally, John is predicting that sometime in the late 60s, an ‘all Israel’ of Jews will turn to Jesus and add their blood to the blood of the martyrs, fulfilling the hope of Paul that ‘all Israel’ will be saved. Some of these Jews no doubt perished in the destruction of Jerusalem.”1
The New Testament gives us the record of Jesus’ prophecy and its fulfillment. It is one of the most important and emphasized prophecies Jesus made. We see through “many infallible proofs” that Jesus did indeed rise from the dead and is now seated at the right hand of God. Of course, that does not answer all of our questions. Why does the King of kings lead the way He does? We cannot discern the mystery of God’s ways. But we know that Jesus is on the throne and that He is guiding history to the glorious end the Father has planned.
Ralph Smith is pastor of Mitaka Evangelical Church.
- Peter J. Leithart, Revelation 1-11 (London: T&T Clark, 2018), p. 325. ↩︎