THE ALPHA AND OMEGA (REVELATION 1:8; 21:6)

No, I am not referring to two variants of COVID-19. This is actually the phrase that appears twice in the Book of Revelation.

    “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty” (Revelation 1:8)

    “Then he said to me, 'It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.'” (Revelation 21:6a)

Above you can see two examples of a type of figurative speech called a merism, in which two contrasting parts of a whole are used to refer to the whole. Other examples would be: “That is the long and short of it,” “I searched far and near,” “for better or for worse,” and “flesh and bone.” The main point of such figurative language is to indicate that whatever is being described includes both extremes as well as everything in between.

This is an important point to grasp. If we, for example, take the expression “the beginning and the end” literally, then it means that indeed God was present in the beginning and will be present at the end, but perhaps excuses Himself in the here and now. In fact, that is the basic view of the Deists who picture a sort of divine clock maker who fabricated and wound up the clock of creation but is not really involved in human history in the meantime. But we can't take that easy way out once we realize that a common figure of speech is being used.

The other type of figurative speech, present in both quotations from Revelation, is a little more obvious to grasp as being non-literal. It is obvious that God is not saying that He is the first and last letter of the Greek alphabet. It is just another way of stating that He is the beginning and the end, the first and the last. But since these are merisms, He is also all the in-between letters. This figure of speech also appears in the Old Testament in the alphabetic acrostics, the most famous of which is Psalm 119, an extended praise of God's laws. There, each line of the first sub-section begins with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet going right on through to the last letter of the alphabet. The basic underlying meaning is that the totality of the subject has now been covered. We use the letters of the alphabet in the exact way today when we say “everything from A to Z.”

In Revelation 1:8, for example, the phrase “Alpha and Omega” is part of God's self-description, and so it is an especially powerful statement that figures into the formulation of one of the standard doctrines in orthodox Christianity; namely, that God is omnipresent. “He is in no way limited by the universe nor by the time-space boundaries.” (Ryrie) This attribute of God is closely related to the fact that He exists endlessly, being “elevated above all temporal limits and all succession of moments, and possesses the whole of His existence in one indivisible present.” (Berkhof)

Turning to the almost identical formulation in Revelation 21:6, we run into an amazing phenomenon. For this time it is the risen Christ who describes Himself in the exact same terms as did God the Father. This, along with John 1:1, is probably the most direct statement of Christ's complete divinity found in the New Testament. And Beale states that the two statements in Revelation “were among those that gave rise to later trinitarian formulas.”

At this point, a short review of the various times that equivalent statements are made concerning God in the Old Testament is in order:

    “I am He; I am the first, and I am the last.” (Isaiah 41:4b)  Whybray says, “The Babylonian and other new Eastern religious could not match such a claim, which was inconceivable in a polytheistic religion. Even in Israelite belief this had never before been so clearly understood and expressed.”

    “I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god.” (Isaiah 44:6b) Here is an indication that this attribute of God puts Him in a unique category compared to all other so-called gods.

    “Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Amen and Amen. (Psalm 41:13) The phrase “everlasting to everlasting” clearly includes all time stretching infinitely backward and forward, and it appears in three additional psalms. Psalm 106:48 reads almost identically to this one, and Psalm 90:2 states, “From everlasting to everlasting, you are God.”

    “Are you not from old, O LORD my God, my Holy one? You shall not die.” (Habakkuk 1:12 NRSV) “He speaks of his God as the one who will not die (in contrast to the other gods who are already dead).” (Oswalt) Parenthetically, other translations say, “We will not die.”

    “The love of God is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him.” (Psalm 103:17) In this case, the key phrase does not cover all eternity, but instead zeroes in on God's care for each of us who believe. In that respect, it is a close equivalent to what the author of Hebrews talks about in 12:2 concerning “Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith...”

Considering just God's beginnings, Genesis 1 describes the origin of everything and everyone in the created universe but does not explain how God Himself came into being. The simple answer to that phenomenon is that God has no temporal beginning. That is very hard for us to grasp, but the complicated relation of God to the whole concept of time is hinted at in both the OT and NT.

    Psalm 90:4: “For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past, or a watch in the night.” And this perspective may be shared by believers in the afterlife: “For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere.” (Psalm 84:10)

    II Peter 3:8: “But do not ignore one thing, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day.”

Finally, returning to the relation between God the Father and Jesus Christ, we have the evidence of John 1:1-2 regarding Christ's presence at the Creation: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” The echoes of Genesis 1:1 are unmistakable. In John 8:58, Jesus tells the hostile Jews, “Before Abraham was, I am.” In saying this, he is clearly identifying himself with the great I AM who appeared to Moses in Exodus 3:14, a designation closely related to His personal name YHWH, given in vv. 6,15 and usually rendered as LORD in English translations. But H.R. Jones notes that “the verb could equally mean 'I was' or 'I will be...the name is deliberately mysterious.” Another explanation, in light of the other passages in this short essay, is that the name was purposely chosen to describe God's eternal nature and unique relationship with the whole concept of time.

Of course, there is a clearer description of Jesus' pre-existence in Philippians 2, describing a time before he came to earth, when he had full equality with God.

And finally, in Psalm 93:2, the Psalmist says to God, “Your throne is established from of old; you are from everlasting.” But in a similar vein, The messianic prophecy in Micah 5:2 speaks of “one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from old, from ancient days.” This kingdom theme is completed in the last chapter of the Bible when we see the eternal throne “of God and of the Lamb.” (Revelation 22:3)

As Beale says, “That both are sitting on only one throne and together form one temple (21:22) enhances their perceived unity.”