Welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation. This will be study #28 of Revelation, chapter 1, and we are concluding our study of verse 7, and we have come to the last phrase of Revelation 1, verse 7, after the Lord indicated that He cometh with clouds and every eye shall see him, they also which pierced him, and the kindreds of the earth shall wail or mourn because of Him, the concluding statement then is made, "Even so, Amen."

You know, every word in the Bible is the word of God, and every thing is of equal value and weight, and, so, we do not want to skip over anything when we study the Bible. Sometimes we do not know the answer to something, but still we know that God has not said anything in vain, that everything is worthwhile and worth our time to look at.

Well, here, the final phrase, "Even so, Amen." The words "even so" is a translation of a Greek word that normally means, *yes* or *yea*. For instance, there is a verse that says to let your "yea be yea" and "nay, nay." The word *yea* is this particular Greek word, and what we really have here is a statement by the Lord confirming the things that have been spoken. It is an affirmation of these things, and *amen* goes along with that, as that means *truly*, or *verily*, or *let it be*. This is something that is truth, and that is going to happen, and so, "yes, truly, or verily, amen, let it be."

Well, let us just look at a few verses where we find this Greek word translated as "even so," and sometimes "yea" or "yes," in Revelation 14:13:

And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit...

Now we could translate that "Even so, saith the Spirit."

...that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them.

Again, an affirmation of what is being spoken. In Revelation 16:7:

And I heard another out of the altar say, Even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous *are* thy judgments.

Another positive affirmation of the word of God. And then we will look at just one more verse in Revelation 22:20, and this is near the end of the Bible:

He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

And this is expressing the desire of all the people of God - we want, we hope for, and it is our expectation - that the Lord Jesus fulfill all the promises of the Bible, and come to conclude His plan for this world, and to begin the plan for eternity future, as far as the elect of God are concerned, the ones still living in this life.

And, so, the Lord testifies, "I come quickly." This is the witness of God. This is His promise, His declaration. He will come quickly, in the proper period, the proper time. He does everything speedily, in its proper order, and now we are at that point where we are in the day of judgment, and God must fulfill His plan for judgment day for this world; He must punish man according to His perfect Law, and He must test those that profess to be His people during this period of time to purge away the dross from the silver, and to purify the true gold and silver, the ones that are without guile, and truly God's people, born again.

And when these things are finished, He will come, and our response is, "Yes, Lord, and 'even so' come Lord Jesus." We confirm this. We recognize this is true, this is the truth of the Bible.

Okay, now we are going to move into verse 8 of Revelation 1, and it says 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.

This is one of those verses in the Bible that is just incredible that it teaches us so much about the eternal character of God, that He is this awesome, infinite Being that has always, been and always will be, and always is. He is the great I AM, and that is how the verse starts, "I am." This, in the Greek, is *ego eimi*; "I AM" is a name of God, and we remember back in the Book of Exodus when Moses had his encounter with JEHOVAH, when he saw the burning bush, and he spoke with the Lord in Exodus 3:13:

And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?

That is a good question: What is your name? What is the name of God? And, of course, the Bible reveals many names for God. He reveals Himself to have many names, and each one teaches something, some particular facet of His nature, some attribute of His, and each one is revealing of His Person. But, here, God answers Moses Exodus 3:14:

And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

And this name of God reveals that He is the Ever-Existent One. He is the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, and remember what Jesus said to the Jews when they were questioning Him, and He spoke of Abraham rejoicing to see His day, in John 8:56:

Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad. Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am. Then took they up stones to cast at him: but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by.

Why did they pick up stones? Well, because they knew full well what Christ was saying. Obviously, they were aware of the name that God spoke to Moses when Moses asked Him: "Tell them I AM has sent" you. And when Jesus said, "Before Abraham was, I am," He was declaring in matter-of-fact terms, in which no Jew could mistake, that He was the God of the burning bush, that He was JEHOVAH.

You know, if ever you hear someone say, "Well, Jesus never claimed to be God," they really do not know what they are talking about. When Christ would say, "ego eimi," "I AM," in a few different places, and clearly He was declaring His eternal nature: "Before Abraham was, I am," is a statement indicating the Almighty, God Himself, and Christ was declaring He was that God that lived, that existed, before Abraham. And how long was it since Abraham had lived? Over two thousand years before Christ was born, and there He was, in the flesh, dwelling among them, and telling them, "Before Abraham was, I am."

And they did not recognize Him as God. They did not admit that He was God. They thought He was a man, like themselves, and that was their foolishness, due to their sinful nature. Yet, whether a man recognizes Christ as God, or not, does not change the fact that He is, and that He plainly declared it. And here in Revelation 1, verse 8, that is how that verse begins: "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."

What a tremendous statement of deity. What an incredible declaration by the Lord Jesus Christ, that He is these things.

Now let us look at this phrase "Alpha and Omega," and you might be interested to know, in case you do not have a Greek text (if you do not, it would be good to try to find one and get a hold of an interlinear Bible that would also give you the English translation above each word; or maybe you could look online; there are many free places you could go, even free software you could find that would give you the Greek text), but if you cannot find it for some reason, let me tell you that the word, here, *alpha* and we have it spelled out in our King James Bible, "I am Alpha," and the word *Omega* is also spelled out. Actually in the Greek it is just the letter *A* (or alpha) and the letter for *omega*. They are not words in the Greek text. You would find "I AM," and then you would see 'alpha' written exactly like our letter 'A' and then the letter 'omega,' and we do not have a letter that really matches how the *omega* is written - it is sort of like an upside-down *u* with hooks on the ends. But you just find the letters in the Greek text, and that is amazing that Christ is saying, "I AM," (we would say) "the letter 'A'" and "I AM (the letter for) 'omega'").

And we wonder, "Why does He say this?" It becomes obvious when we realize that *alpha* is the first letter of the Greek alphabet, and *omega* is the last letter of the Greek alphabet. The Greek alphabet has 24 letters in it. The Hebrew alphabet (we can know this) has 22 letters in it.

If you want to know the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, read Psalm 119. Many Bibles present the letter before each one of the stanzas, as that Psalm, in an interesting way, God wrote it to begin with the particular letter, in alphabetical order, through Psalm 119. The first Hebrew letter is *aleph*. It is similar sounding to *alpha*, but it is written differently, but the Hebrew has 22 letters and the twenty second letter, the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet is *tau*, and it does not look anything like the *omega*. Now that is the Hebrew; there are 22 letters. The Greek has 24, and has two additional letters.

Our English alphabet, of course you know, has 26 letters; our first letter is *A* and our last letter is *Z*. And if God were using the English alphabet to write the Bible, He would have said, "I am the A and the Z, the first and the last," or as it says here, "the beginning and the ending." This statement, "alpha and omega" is found four different times in four different verses, here in verse 8 of Revelation 1, and also in Revelation 1:11:

Saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last: and, What thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches...

And then it goes on to list the seven churches. It is also found in Revelation 21:6:

And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.

And, finally, the fourth place, in Revelation 22:13:

I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.

Four times, all in the Book of Revelation, God makes this statement, and in each case it is just the letters. And we wonder, "Besides teaching *first* and *last* (and clearly each one of these verses is letting us know that the Lord Jesus is the *beginning*, and the following statements confirm that, "the beginning and the ending," "the first and the last." It lets us know very well what God had in mind by telling us that Christ is the "Alpha and Omega", is there anything else we can learn from this language?

Well, I think there is. I think there is one other thing. Of course, with the Bible, there could always be more riches, more truth, but one thing that I can see is the positioning of the letters in the Greek alphabet. *Alpha* is number one, the first letter, and *Omega* is number twenty four, the last letter. And what is telling, a little bit, is that after *alpha*, after the first, you count twenty three (23) letters, and then comes *Omega*. *Omega* is the twenty third letter after *Alpha*, and why is that significant?

Well, that is significant because we know that God relates the number twenty three with the end, with judgment day. He began the great tribulation period with twenty three hundred evening mornings, wherein virtually no one was being saved in the world. Some were being saved, it would appear, a relative handful, but none in the church; any being saved would have been saved outside of the churches and congregations.

But God uses that number twenty three in multiples of ten - twenty three hundred evening mornings - and the entire great tribulation itself was twenty three years, from May 21, 1988 until May 21, 2011.

And what happened after that great tribulation, after that twenty three year period? Then came judgment day, and judgment day is the end. It is a prolonged day of judgment and, therefore, a prolonged end, but it is the end. Following the thirteen thousand years of history, God tacked on an additional twenty three year great tribulation period, and then brought judgment day to the point of completion by shutting the door to heaven, and pouring out His wrath on all of the unsaved people of the earth, and bringing the ending.

Jesus is the *Alpha* and the *Omega*. After we go twenty three letters, we come to the end, and there are many other figures that God uses in the Bible with the number twenty three, and we will not turn to them all. You may remember there were twenty three kings of Israel, and then God brought judgment; and there were twenty three kings of Judah, and then God brought judgment. (After the first three kings were kings of both, the unified people of Israel, and then there were twenty kings of Israel, which would total twenty three, and then the judgment; and then twenty kings of Judah and, finally, the destruction of Judah by the Babylonians.) And there are other types and figures like that, that God uses.

So, that is one interesting aspect to this statement, "I am Alpha and Omega," and then the Lord goes on to say, "the beginning and the end." We know that Christ is in view, even though we have not seen the name Jesus Christ since verse 5, but there is none other that is the beginning. It says in the first few verses of John, in John 1:1-3:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

Jesus is in the beginning with the Father. He is the Word. He is the one who created the world. We read in Colossians, chapter 1, beginning in verse 15, and I will read a few verses here, in Colossians 1:15-18:

Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence.

And, here again, God is identifying the Lord Jesus Christ as the *beginning* to the creation. Jesus Himself has no beginning, just to comment on that: it says here he is the beginning and the ending, and we should not mistake that statement for indicating that Christ had a beginning. God makes a point of spelling that out, and making sure we understand that is not so, in Hebrews 7, verse 3, where He is using the name of Melchisadec to describe Jesus in Hebrews 7:3:

Without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God; abideth a priest continually.

There, Jesus has no *beginning* or *end*. We have to be careful of that. But concerning this creation, He is the *beginning*. He is the one who spoke and created the world. Remember He is the Word, and He is also the "beginning, the firstborn from the dead," when He died for the sins of His people before the world began, before the foundation of the world, and was resurrected when He rose from the dead, and He was declared to be the Son of God, the firstborn, "the beginning of the creation of God," it says in one place, only because it is referring to those that will come, who will be created in His image, the elect of God, the people of God.

And, so, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself has no beginning, but He is the *beginning*. That is another name for Christ. His essence is the *beginning* of life: all life stems from Him. There is no life apart from the Lord Jesus, so He is the beginning point of all existence and everything that has any life in it at all.

Now we also want to go over to Hebrews 3, and here God makes an interesting statement in Hebrews 3:6:

But Christ as a son over his own house; whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.

And then the Lord speaks of the day of temptation in the wilderness, and that was a time of severe trial and testing for the Israelites when they came out of Egypt, and He concludes that idea in Hebrews 3:12-14:

Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God. But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end;

And the word *beginning* and *end* here are the same as our verse in Revelation 1. And we can see what God is saying when we get to the final phase of existence in this world, and we enter into the day of judgment, the time of severe testing of the elect that will be put through a fiery trial to see if they will endure unto the end, and that word *end* in Matthew 24 is also the same Greek word, *telos*.

And, here, God says that if we "hold the beginning," and who is the *beginning*? Christ is the *beginning*. If we hold onto the Lord Jesus Christ, and we can only do that, of course, if He is holding onto us, just as Jacob (when he wrested with God), it was God's allowance to permit Jacob to endure the wrestling match, to hold on until he received the blessing.

But, if we are able, by the grace of God, as He continues to draw us and hold us fast, and not allow us to depart from Him, if we hold the *beginning* of our confidence steadfast unto the *end*(and He is the end), we will receive that great and glorious and abundant blessing of God that is in store for each one of His people.