Were the disciples told to go to Galilee or to stay in Jerusalem?

The two commands belong to different points in the forty days between the resurrection and the ascension (Acts 1:3). On Easter morning the angel, and then Jesus himself, sent word that the disciples should go to Galilee to meet him, as he had promised before his death (Matthew 26:32; Mark 14:28). They did go: John tells of Jesus meeting seven of them by the Sea of Tiberias (John 21:1–14), and Matthew of the meeting on the mountain (Matthew 28:16–20). But they did not set off at once: they were still in Jerusalem that evening and a week later (John 20:19, 26), perhaps because the feast of unleavened bread lasted seven days.

The order to stay in Jerusalem came at the end of the forty days. Acts, by the same author as Luke’s Gospel, places it at a last meeting shortly before the ascension, when the disciples were back in Jerusalem, and gives its purpose: they were to wait there for the Holy Spirit, who came about ten days later at Pentecost (Acts 1:4–5; 2:1). Luke 24:49 gives the same command in his Gospel’s brief closing summary of those weeks. So Jesus first sent the disciples to Galilee, and later, when they had returned to Jerusalem, told them not to leave it until the Spirit came.