The Alpha and The Omega

"I am the Alpha and the Omega, saith the Lord God, Which is and Which was and Which is to come, the Almighty" (Revelation 1:8)

"And He said unto me ... I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End" (Revelation 21:6)

"I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End" (Revelation 22:13)

One of the titles which the Lord takes to Himself in resurrection is: "The Alpha and the Omega". The Lord Jesus here presents Himself as "the Living One", Who was dead, and is alive again - alive for evermore (Revelation 1:18). Those two letters, Alpha and Omega, are, as we know, the first and the last letters of the Greek alphabet. The one is the same in form as the first letter in our own alphabet; the other is unlike any of our letters. Alpha and Omega - First and Last. In every alphabet there is something which corresponds to an "A" and a "Z", an Alpha and an Omega, a beginning and an end. It does not matter how complicated the alphabet may be, or if it only contains a poor twenty-six letters as in English: everything is bounded by the "A" and the "Z", the Alpha and the Omega. You cannot get anything outside of that; all is within that. The Alpha and the Omega comprehend all speech; there is no speech possible in any language outside of what comes between those two letters. All that can be said has to come between their compass; outside of their compass nothing can be said.

No Knowledge of God Outside of Christ

Now Jesus says that of Himself: "I am the Alpha and the Omega." The Word of God tells us that Christ is the fullness of God, and that God will sum up all things in Him. What is more, it shows us that God will never speak to anybody outside of His Son, Jesus Christ. He has bounded all His speech to man by His Son; He has made Christ the compass of all; He has nothing to say, and He will say nothing, outside of His Son. "No one cometh unto the Father, but by Me," said the Son (John 14:6). "And no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him" (Matthew 11:27). The Apostle who wrote the Letter to the Hebrews began by saying: "In old times, God spoke in fragments and in parts and in various manners, by different men and at different times; but at the last He summed up all that He had to say in His Son. In the end, He has spoken to us in His Son, Whom He has appointed Heir of all things." All that God will say, and all that God can say, to us, will be in Jesus Christ.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 2)