Wednesday, July 10, 2013

The Alpha and The Omega


“And behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to give to every one according to his work. 
“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last.” 
Blessed are those who do His commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter through the gates into the city. 
But outside are dogs and sorcerers and sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and whoever loves and practices a lie. “And behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to give to every one according to his work. 
“I, Jesus, have sent My angel to testify to you these things in the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, the Bright and Morning Star.” 22:12-16


Set The Priorities


I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last.  To change the Greek to simple English, Christ is saying, I am the "A" and the "Z" in the alphabet.

He may also have meant, I am the one who started The Church and I will be with it when the Church moves to heaven; or maybe He meant, of all the things that matter to you I am the first requisite and you will find nothing beyond me that matters more.

Behold, I am coming quickly! In the previous post I said, By reading it carefully, we notice that here it is not Christ that was speaking. It is the angel who said these words.
  • However, here in 22:12, Christ starts speaking again, as is clarified by 22:16, I, Jesus, have sent My angel to testify these things to you in the churches. 
  • and from the description, He gives of himself; I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last. 22:13.  
  • also, that it is not the angel that is speaking these words, My reward is with Me, to give to every one according to his work, 22:12, is obvious from the fact that it is Christ, and not the angel, who will reward his servants.
   My reward is with me to give to every one according to his work.  To reiterate a thought made concerning 20:14, Christ will reward even non-Christians according to their work.  In this case, the word work means lifestyle.  Not only Christians will be rewarded but all those who have lived good lives and done good deeds.  At the great Judgment Seat "justice will prevail".


  Blessed are those who do his commandments has been changed by the newer translations to blessed are they that wash their robes, with variations in the wording.  One difference is that The Living Bible has it as a continuing operation; are washing their robes.  With clean robes, they have a right to partake of the tree of life and they may enter in through the gates into the city.

  Outside the city are dogs, sorcerers, those who are sexually immoral, murderers, idolaters, and whoever loves and practices a lie. The Jews used the word "dogs" to refer to Gentiles because, according to them, Gentiles, like dogs, are ceremonially unclean.


The Epilogue



  We need to remember that we are now in the epilogue of The Apocalypse and not in one of the “videos” which the writers saw.  Therefore, when Christ is speaking in the present tense, it is to be understood as referring to The Church age.  That is, the period of time when The Church is living on the earth, and that is why this reference to murderers, sorcerers, etc. is still applicable.

   In 21:8 we learned that those groups of people are being eternally punished.  So that in reference to time, 22:15 is actually in effect before 21:8 transpires.



   I, Jesus, have sent My angel.  This is the same angel introduced to us in 1:1; He sent and signified it by His angel to His servant John.  Perhaps, it is the same angel, which we met throughout the book, the one who was the writers' host. 

   I am the Root and the Offspring of David.  not the root out of which David springs, as if He would say that He is David’s Lord as well as David’s Son, but the "shoot that comes out of the stock of Jesse and the branch out of his roots that bears fruit" EBC  Or, in other words, Christ's origin and genealogy spring from king David.

No comments:

Post a Comment