After Jesus arose from the dead and comforted and encouraged the disciples and people who were willing to take the message of the availability of salvation and redemption; He after around a month returned to heaven. The disciples could not keep from proclaiming the facts around Jesus, and the hope inherent in the scriptures they now understood. This enraged the traditional Israelite leaders, who endeavoured to silence their voices, through the Roman legal system. Paul gives his own defense in such a case; a portion from Acts 24: 14 – 16 “But this I confess to you, that according to the Way which they call a sect, so I worship the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the Law and in the Prophets. I have hope in God, which they themselves also accept, that there will be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and the unjust. This being so, I myself always strive to have a conscience without offense toward God and men.” To read often from the scriptures, ‘believing all things which are written in the Law and in the Prophets’ is apparently very important in preparing us to live with a clear conscience ‘toward God and men’. Along with Paul we then will have an expectation of the return of Jesus and the resurrection of the wicked and righteous, with the true and righteous to be taken by Jesus to live in heaven.
Now as in Bible times there are those who do not believe and scoff about God and there being any type of judgement or eternal, everlasting consequence for good or wrong doing. Malachi 3: 14, 15 “You have said, ‘It is useless to serve God; what profit is it that we have kept His ordinance, and that we have walked as mourners before the Lord of hosts? So now we call the proud blessed, for those who do wickedness are raised up; they even tempt God and go free.” Previously there were many times when wickedness seemed to go unchecked by God, and His predictions of judgements upon the wicked and deliverance of the righteous seemed delayed in being delivered; yet the judgements always came as predicted after His time of mercy ended. Malachi 3: 16 – 18 “Then those who feared the Lord spoke to one another, and the Lord listened and heard them; so a book of remembrance was written before Him for those who fear the Lord and who meditate on His name. …………… And I will spare them as a man spares his own son who serves him. Then you shall again discern between the righteous and the wicked, between the one who serves God and the one who does not serve Him.’”
The disciples after the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus, finally got what the prophets of the Old Testament had really meant when they had written about the Messiah to come. It did not mean the local affairs surrounding their nation or to be set free from Roman rule. It instead meant light and joy because of Jesus, even in the hard times in life on a still sinful earth. It meant salvation from sin and death, and the hope of seeing their beloved Lord again. No wonder they could not keep silent, when every heart and mind was bursting with the good news and the import for everyone else who accepted Jesus as their Saviour.
I wonder why I and so many on earth have not more to say about what the love of God and salvation through Jesus His Son means to us personally. There is a blessing from God promised when we do. Isaiah 52 : 7 “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who proclaim peace, who brings glad tidings of good things, who proclaims salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!’” Verse 10 “The Lord has made bare His holy arm in the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.”