Revelation Chapter One, The Beginning & The End

Revelation 1:8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End,” says the Lord, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”

Verses 5 through 7 have John focusing his readership on Jesus Christ. From being the faithful witness, to the tribes of earth mourning because of Him at His triumphant return. Skipping ahead briefly to verse 9, we also find John speaking about the kingdom of Christ and his subsequent exile because of his witness regarding Jesus.

The reason I pursue this line of thought and to clarify context is to comfortably demonstrate that the speaker here is the Lord Jesus Christ, not God the Father. The New World Translation, the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ dubious and anonymous “translation” of the Bible, renders the verse as Jehovah God for no other reason than to refute the Biblical truth that Christ is God incarnate: a doctrine the Watchtower claims is false. Granted, the Nestle-Aland and the Majority Text likewise render the verse as belonging to God the Father. The NKJV and NASB both attribute the words as belonging to the Lord Jesus, which taken with the passage surrounding verse 8, make more sense contextually. Also, Revelation 22:13, which mimics our current verse, is attributed more universally to Christ the Lord. Why is the effort to identify the speaker and clarify His person so important? Because we must recognize Jesus’ intrinsic deity to have life in His name. The cults that do not permit the Lord His native deity preach another gospel, which does not save and will lead those who espouse it to remain eternally separated from the Lord they never personally knew, Galatians 1:6-9, 1 John 2:22, 23, 4:2, 3, 5:9-13, Matthew 7:21-23.

Our Lord intones that He is the beginning and the end of all things. He is the genesis of creation and He embodies its conclusion; where material space/time/matter ends, there He is. The first and last letters of the Greek alphabet are Alpha and Omega, another indicator that Jesus encapsulates everything language may express from the first to the last. He is the originator and finalizer of created history and existence. Furthermore, He is the Almighty.

The Greek term for Almighty is, “pantokrator,” and means the all-ruling as absolute and universal sovereign. It is derived from “krateo” which means to hold or have strength, and is used to only describe God. It is found once in 2 Corinthians 6:18, and then entirely in Revelation. It is in fact a revelation of God’s character and nature, attributed here to Jesus Christ.

Herein we may find a very plausible reason why cults attempt to whitewash such passages. John records the clearest confession of deity one could make. It is a companion piece to John 8:58, in which our Lord tells His Jewish audience, “Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.” This was a direct reference to Exodus 3:14 where God told Moses that He is the self-existing One. The Jews of Jesus’ day understood the implication and tried to kill Him for blasphemy. Now our Lord lays claim to an eternal nature. He exists in the present “who is,” the past, “who was,” and the future, “who is to come,” all at once. To Jesus our Lord time is irrelevant. Time was created for the benefit of mankind, to mark the passage of seasons and age. God, being time’s Creator, stands outside of time and is unaffected by its passage. Furthermore, He exists in each period of time, seeing it from a present perspective that humanity (certainly myself included) cannot fathom.