Welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation. This is study #30 of Revelation, chapter 1, and we are reading from Revelation 1:8:

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.

This is one of those verses that is just awesome, and I dislike using that word because it is used for so many things that are not awesome, but God is awesome, and this verse describes just a little bit, and gives us a tiny taste, of the awesome nature of the God of the Bible, of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the "beginning and the ending," that "which is, and which was, and which is to come."

It does not matter how you look at Him, which way you hold God up, as you view him through the lens of the Scriptures, through the words of the Bible. Every way we look, every way we turn, and glance at this Almighty God, we can only stand in awe at His majestic majesty and His great glory.

He is a God that knows everything, for one thing. Can you imagine, how much do you know, and how much do I know? How much do people really know, if we were to measure our knowledge and our understanding? It would not really amount to very much. We know very little. We know some historical facts that we learned in school. We learned some mathematics. We learned some English and, maybe, some chemistry, and maybe a little bit of another language, and so on. We learn a little bit of this, and a little bit of that, and we just lack tremendous amounts of understanding concerning things that are right now, in our present day. We do not know just great amounts of information.

This is not the case with God. God knows everything. Now, we have this word, here in our verse in Revelation 1, verse 8, "the Almighty," and this word means "all might." We can look at God in various ways, as I was saying, in order to recognize the truth of this: that He possesses "all might," all power, all strength, and all dominion belong to Him. And one way we see this incredible might of God is the way that He knows everything. He knows everything that has ever been; He knows everything that presently is; and He knows everything that will be.

Just think of this enormous Being, the enormous and brilliant mind (and the word *brilliant* does not do it justice); and the power and the might of God to just simply contain all of this infinite knowledge of all things. He knows everything about you, and everything about me, and everything about the other seven billion people that are on the face of the Earth, and everything about all of the people that have already come and gone, or that will be born. He knows everything about every creature, every animal, every insect, every minute living organism that we cannot even see with our eyes, and He knows everything that is out there in space: in the galaxies, and in the universe that continues on and on and on, beyond the ability of our greatest telescopes to see. God made these things, and knows everything there is to know about these things, and about every working, every operation, every technical detail, of this creation. He knows everything about DNA, and so on, because He is the One who formed it and created it. He knows everything about chemistry, everything about mathematics, everything, not only about the English language, but the French, and the Russian, and the Spanish, and the German, and every language you can think of.

God created all these things, and if that does not cause us to recognize His almighty power, well, then, I do not know what will, and that is only a drop in the bucket, only a little glimmer of light of the brilliance of the sun, that we can know about, considering this Almighty God of the Bible, the God who has such unlimited power that He only spoke the word and said, "Let there be," and this universe came into being. Let us read that, in the Book of Genesis, it says in Genesis 1:1:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep...

There it is. He already did it: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." He brought it into existence by the power of His word, and we know it was His word because, as He goes on to create, it says in Genesis 1:3:

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

Instantaneously, there was an obedient response, an action, that occurred. I do not know how God does this. I do not know how it is possible, but it tells us about the greatness, the terrific greatness, of His word, that He only has to say, "Let there be," and He has the power, He has the force, He has the strength, to bring to pass whatever it is that He wants to be. "...Let there be light, and there was light."

In Genesis 1:4:

And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

How did He do that? Well, with His will, with His word. And in Genesis 1:5:

And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

How easy it is for One that possesses all might to accomplish these things. Now just to put us in our proper place, you think about projects that you want to do around your home, and I can think of plenty myself. Think of the effort, and the strength, and the time it would take us to do even some of those projects---and we are talking about painting, and nailing some wood, cleaning up, and fixing some things---and we put forth, maybe, a great deal of effort to do one thing: we might need to repair the fence, and we have to hammer these pieces, and patch things and correct things, and it could take us a whole day. And we get involved in something else, and it maybe takes a week to complete it. That just goes to demonstrate how little we are, how tiny, how very finite our strength is.

We have a great and severe limitation in our ability to do things. We cannot speak, for instance, and say, "Well, that fence is broken, now fix the fence," and, all of a sudden, the fence is repaired. We cannot do anything like that. We do not have that kind of power. We lack that force and might, but God does not.

God has infinite power and strength and might, to perform the things that He desires to be done. Of course, the only limitation is the limitation that God has established in His word, in which everything must be done in a good way. Everything is righteous and just and pure and holy. God will not do things outside of those boundaries that He Himself has set; that is the essence of His very nature: He will do everything well and good, just as He created the world by speaking, and then when He looked upon everything He had created, He said, "All is good."

We see this creation, and we see the wonders of it, the glories of it, and just the tremendous beauty of the things that God created, and He created them instantaneously, by speaking. Now does that not testify, all on its own, of the *might* of the God of the Bible? You know, the *might* of God has always been there; God was "almighty" in the days of Abram. It says in Genesis 17:1:

And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, JEHOVAH appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect.

And soon God will demonstrate, again, His mighty power in the life of Abram, by having his wife Sarai, who is barren, conceive a child, and then bear a child, and that is another glimpse, another look, another display, of the power of the Lord.

Well, in Revelation, chapter 1, verse 8, God does not make a show of things. He just says things very plainly, and this ia a true statement. He is speaking of His eternal nature in Revelation 1:8:

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.

"I AM," the great I AM, *ego eimi*. "I am the Almighty." And, you know, this is comforting. This is very comforting to the child of God. Why? Well, because we are weak. We are limited. We are unable to do a great many things. We are troubled, and cannot help ourselves, oftentimes, in our trouble. We are afflicted, and we could be afflicted by the flesh, we could be afflicted by others; and there is spiritual affliction, and a spiritual battle that rages while we are in this world and in this body, and it often shows us our own weakness.

We are troubled. We are afflicted. We are in tribulation. We desire things for our family. We desire salvation. We desire a blessing, and we cannot perform any of it; we are so weak and ineffective, and unable to do the things that we would.

We would also like to live a strong, godly life, a Christian life---to live uprightly in a God-glorying life, a life that is pleasing to Him---and, again, we fail. Again, our sins bring us down, and we are not able to do the things we would.

And, so, how comforting it is, and how encouraging it is, when we read that God is "Almighty," and that He possesses the strength that we lack, and God tells us this many times, in many places, in the Bible. He encourages us to go to Him, to tap that strength, to draw from that awesome power of God.

For instance, it says in the Book of Ephesians 3:15:

Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.

Let me also read Ephesians 3:20:

Now unto him that is able...

And why is God able? Because He has the power to do it. In Ephesians 3:20:

Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.

God has the power, and the might, and the ability, and He is able to strengthen us. And, of course, if we are a child of God, we have His spirit within us, and it is that spirit that Ephesians, chapter 3, verse 16, was saying that if God grants us that "...according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man," He can strengthen us in our souls to have the courage and the ability to keep His statutes, to do His will, to obey the commandments, and to keep His commandments, more and more, in our lives.

Now in Ephesians 6, remember the "armour of God?" And the more we read this passage, the more we see how it applies to our present time, of the day of judgment, where it says in Ephesians 6:10:

Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might.

See, we do not attempt to be strong in ourselves, and in the power of our little might. Like I was saying, what can we do? What kind of strength do we have to fight the spiritual battle, to perform the things that God would have us to do? If we tried in our own strength, we are bound to fail, and fail quickly. But, Ephesians 6:10-13, says:

...be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness;

It is in the power of God, the power of the Lord, that we able to live, really, as a Christian, to live in the way that God would have us to live. Now let us just look at one other verse in Philippians, and we are familar with this verse, I am sure. It says in Philippians 4:13:

I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.

And what are those "all things?" It is "all things" that the Bible commands, the things of obedience, the things that the Lord would have us to do in living our lives, in living uprightly in a righteous way, because the Lord Jesus Christ has granted us His righteousness, has granted us His spirit within; and now that spirit, and the power of that might of the Lord Jesus Christ, is able to help us to perform the doing of things, and to do things God's way, and no longer our own way.

This is just the might of God, and God has such power and might that if all the elect that are alive upon the face of the earth right now (and who knows how many there are? There could be 170, 180 or 190 million elect people; a great multitude that came out of great tribulation), and if we all turned to God with one accord, in an instant, in a moment, and if we sought the Lord and asked for His help, He has the power and ability to grant each of us the necessary strength to do the things, according to His will, that He would have us to do.

This is the glorious nature of our God. Yes, we are weak and, yes, we are troubled, and there may be ten thousand that have set themselves against us round about, but the Bible says, "Greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world."

We have a source, we have someone to turn to, greater than any earthly king or earthly power or earthly strength. As a matter of fact, you could have all of the kings and presidents and dictators, and all of the leaders of the world, and all of their armies, and put together all of their might---all the might of man and all the powerful things of this world, as one---and it would not be anything at all against the power of God.

God is greater. God is stronger. God is "almighty." He is the Almighty God of the Scripture and He delights, the Bible tells us, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose hearts are perfect before Him, and that would be each one of the elect who have received the new resurrected, born again hearts that are perfect.

God delights to show Himself strong, so why should we not turn to Him with our problems, turn to Him about the ones who are burdening us, with the things that are troubling us? Turn to Him with all these things, and lay them out before Him, as Hezekiah laid out the note from the king of Assyria, that dared to blaspheme God and dared to come against Jerusalem and king Hezekiah. Let us just lay these things out, that God may show Himself strong, as He did for Hezekiah and Jerusalem. Remember, when the army of the enemy woke up, they were all dead men?

God has shown Himself strong though out the Bible. He is the God who brought the greatest power on earth, Egypt, to its knees, in order that His people be let go. He is the God that brought Goliath, the giant, to death by the hands of a young lad with a sling and a stone. He is the God that turned the word of king Nebuchadnezzar, and did not burn Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, and He is the God that protected Daniel in the lion's den. God has often shown His strength and power, and it is there for us to turn to, and to seek the Lord, that He would help us in our weakness.

Well, the Greek word here that is translated as "almighty," is a compound word: one word means *all*, and the other word means *might*. It is normally translated as "almighty," almost always, as it says in Revelation 19:15:

And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.

There is that word. Then earlier in the same chapter, it is translated as "omnipotent," in Revelation 19:6:

And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.

That is, the Lord God "almighty." He possesses all might, all strength, all dominion, all power, and He reigns over all things in the Kingdom of Heaven. This is the Lord our God, and we are very thankful, and we are greatly blessed, to have such a helper: "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble." He is a God who has the power, and He is a God who wants to help His people. The Lord God searches the whole earth to find those whose hearts are perfect towards Him, in order to show forth His strength on their behalf. And we have a God who has demonstrated this all through Biblical history.

And this is the God "which was," yes. This is the God "which will be," yes, and this is the God "which is," right now, right at this day, at this time, in this evil generation. God possesses all might, and He is "the same yesterday, to day and for ever."