Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/320

 161. The ascension of Jesus Christ into heaven, and the opening of the kingdom of heaven to all who believe in him.

“Before the descent upon earth of the Son of God, heaven was, so to speak, shut against all earth-born men and, though in the house of the Father there are many mansions (John xiv. 2, 3), there were no places in them for the sinful posterity of Adam; the just men of the Old Testament, after their death, themselves descended with their souls to hell (Gen. xxxvii. 35). But, after our Lord appeared in the flesh and reconciled God with men, heaven with earth; after he had freed the just men of the Old Testament from hell, by his descent into it, and had risen from the dead, he, at last, solemnly ascended heaven with the human essence which he had assumed and in this manner opened for all people a free access to the kingdom of God.”

A proof of this is the expression of the symbol, which is to be taken in the direct sense: Having ascended heaven (in the body), and sitting (in the body) on the right hand of his Father.

162. Will the royal ministration of Jesus Christ come to an end? The kingdom of Christ will end when there will be the judgment. All will be resurrected. Then Christ will transfer the kingdom to the Father, say some, “but the Evangelist Luke (i. 33) and Solomon (Wis. iii. 4-8) understood the original power, in which, having an uninterrupted dominion from eternity to eternity, the Son never received his dominion from the Father and never will turn it over to the Father.” (p. 178.)

Thus there appears an explanation of the royal dignity of Christ. The words about the kingdom of heaven give the church an idea about the royal dignity of Christ. The royal dignity is considered by the church as something very good and it attaches it to Christ, to him who proclaimed the blessedness of the poor, who preached to