<p>1:10 <em>And immediately coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens open and the Spirit </em>- The contrast is with how as the Lord came <em>up</em>, so the Spirit came <em>down </em>upon Him. There was a meeting of Heaven and earth, of God and man, in the man Christ Jesus. This ascending and descending was associated with &ldquo;the heavens opened&rdquo;. These three concepts are to be found in Jn. 1:51: &ldquo;Hereafter you will see Heaven opened, and the Angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man&rdquo;. The context of Jn. 1:51 is that John has just spoken of how <em>he</em> had seen the Spirit descending upon Jesus and remaining upon Him at His baptism, proving that He was indeed the Messianic figure who would baptize with the Holy Spirit (Jn. 1:32,33). The Lord Jesus is surely alluding to this, teaching that &ldquo;hereafter&rdquo; the disciples would <em>also</em> see what John had just said he had seen. And they would not just see it once, but would perceive that Heaven was now permanently open, and the ascent and descent of God&rsquo;s Spirit in the Angels &ldquo;He makes His Angels spirits&rdquo;, Heb. 1:7) was not just a one-time incident at the Lord&rsquo;s baptism, but was ongoing in His life. The comment that they would &ldquo;see&rdquo; this must be understood in the context of how John&rsquo;s Gospel uses the idea of &lsquo;seeing&rsquo;. It refers to spiritual perception rather than literally seeing a specific incident. The only other time Mark uses the Greek word translated &ldquo;opened&rdquo; is in describing how the veil of the temple was &ldquo;rent&rdquo; at the Lord&rsquo;s death (Mk. 15:38), thus making the way into the most Holy &lsquo;Heaven&rsquo;, in the tabernacle symbology open to all (Heb. 9:8). The opening of the Heavens at the Lord&rsquo;s baptism therefore looked forward to what would happen at His death; for He understood His baptism as also having an ongoing dimension, culminating in His death (Lk. 12:50). At His death, the Spirit would freely ascend and descend on Him, through the ministry of the Angels (Jn. 1:51), and the book of Acts records how this happened in the history of the body of Christ, the church. And in this we see the sense of the obvious connection to the experience at Bethel, the house of God, which represents the church- the Angels ascended and descended upon that place.</p><p><em>As a dove descending upon him</em>- The Greek can equally refer to a pigeon. The hovering of the Spirit over the waters of creation can be read as an allusion to the hovering of a dove; in which case, seeing water is also present at the Lord's baptism, we can see the theme of a new creation being developed. What arose from the waters with a dove's presence was not a new planet, but the man Christ Jesus- the apex and quintessence of the new creation (2 Cor. 5:17). I consider it unlikely that John saw a literal dove fly down. Therefore the comparison with a dove is intentional; and surely to recall some earlier Biblical allusion. Noah's dove likewise was associated with water, and the flood water is also understood by Peter as representative of baptism; and again there is the theme of a new creation and God's loving goodwill toward men being developed. It's tempting to accept a variant manuscript reading of the Messianic prophecy of Is. 11:1,2: &quot;A shoot will come out of the stump of Jesse... like a dove the Spirit of the Lord will rest upon him&quot; (see George Johnston, <em>The Spirit-Paraclete in the Gospel of John</em> (Cambridge: C.U.P., 2005 p. 20)). In any case, the idea of the descent of the Spirit was predicted as being a sign of Messiah, and John therefore felt confirmed in saying that he had seen with his own eyes the confirmation that Jesus was Messiah (Jn. 1:32).</p>