THE BEGINNING AND THE ENDING
[Please be blessed as you read these scriptures.] “THE REVELATION OF JESUS CHRIST, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things WHICH MUST SHORTLY COME TO PASS; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John: Who bare record of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw. Blessed IS HE THAT READETH, and THEY THAT HEAR THE WORDS OF THIS PROPHECY, AND KEEP THOSE THINGS WHICH ARE WRITTEN THEREIN: for the time is at hand.” (Rev. 1:1-3) [Revelation begins with John, the last surviving apostle and an old man, in exile on the small, barren island of Patmos, located in the Aegean Sea southwest of Ephesus. The Roman authorities had banished him there because of his faithful preaching of the gospel. While on Patmos, John received a series of visions that laid out the future history of the world. Revelation is first and foremost a revelation about Jesus Christ (1:1). The book depicts Him as the risen, glorified Son of God ministering among the churches (1:10), as “the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler over the kings of the earth” (1:5), as “the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End” (1:8), as the one “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty” (1:8), as the First and the Last (1:11), as the Son of Man (1:13), as the one who was dead, but now is alive forevermore (1:18), as the Son of God (2:18), as the one who is holy and true (3:7), as “the Amen, the Faithful and True Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God” (3:14), as the Lion of the tribe of Judah (5:5), as the Lamb in heaven, with authority to open the title deed to the earth (6:1), as the Lamb on the throne (7:17), as the Messiah who will reign forever (11:15), AS THE WORD OF GOD (19:13), as the majestic KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS, returning in glorious splendor to conquer His foes (19:11), and as “the Root and the Offspring of David, THE BRIGHT AND MORNING STAR” (22:16).] “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which IS, and which WAS, and which IS TO COME, THE ALMIGHTY.” (Rev. 1:8) [This mode of speech is borrowed from the Jews, who express the whole scope of things by aleph and tau, the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet; but as John was writing in Greek, he accommodates the whole to the Greek alphabet, of which Α alpha and Ω omega are the first and last letters. It is not sufficient to our blessedness that we read and hear the scriptures, but WE MUST KEEP THE THINGS THAT ARE WRITTEN; we must keep them in our MEMORIES, in our MINDS, in our AFFECTIONS, and in PRACTICE, and we shall be blessed in the doing!]
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