Welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation. This is study #45 of Revelation, chapter 1, and we going to be looking at Revelation 1:18:

I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.

Here, once again, is a description of the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ is speaking, and He is the one in the previous verse that was assuring the Apostle John, telling him, "Fear not, I am the first and the last," and this is the continuing statement, "I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore."

Now we know that Jesus is Eternal God, and we also know from the Bible that Eternal God is eternal in nature. He has "always been." He is the ever living One. The Bible mentions this often. God reminds us of His eternal nature in many places, and we will just go to a couple of them, one in the Old Testament, and then one in the New Testament. It says in Jeremiah 10:10:

But JEHOVAH is the true God, he is the living God, and an everlasting king: at his wrath the earth shall tremble, and the nations shall not be able to abide his indignation.

And also in the New Testament (God has not changed), we read in Acts 14:15:

And saying, Sirs, why do ye these things? We also are men of like passions with you, and preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God, which made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are therein:

There are many statements like this in the Bible that identify God as the "living God," and these statements are made thousands of years ago and thousands of years apart. They are made in various periods of history, and they are all describing the one and the same God, the God of the Bible, the God who "is the same yesterday, today, and for ever." This is the nature of God, so we are not surprised that the "one like unto the Son of man," the Lord Jesus Christ, declares that, "I am he that liveth." We expect that of God. He is the Great I AM, the ever existent One. He has always been and, therefore, He has always lived.

But what is surprising is that this verse goes on to say, "I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore." So, here, we know that God is speaking, and that Christ is God and, yet, even though we know the Gospel accounts, and we are familiar with the fact that Jesus entered into the human race, and that He died when He went to the cross, and He gave up His life on earth (and we are aware of that), yet it is still shocking to read in this kind of setting where the language is so glorious as it refers to the Almighty God and the statement that "He lives," but the shocking part is that He "was dead." And this was true of God, because it is true of Christ, and Christ is God. There is no difference; that is, we cannot separate the Persons of the Godhead. We know there are three Persons and One God, but they are one, and when Christ died, God died, and we cannot say it any other way. We know that Christ died in history, in 33 A.D., but, actually He died long before then for (our) sin. We read in Revelation 13:8:

And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

That is when the Lord Jesus Christ died, because when He was slain, He was killed. When you are killed, you die, and this is what happened to the Lord before the foundation of the world---it is an incredible thing for us to think about, but Jesus, who is the Creator, and before He created this world, He took upon Himself the sins of His elect, and in bearing those sins He then endured the wrath of God, and that wrath slew Him. God the Father smote the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and He died before the world began. That is why it says in Romans 1:4:

And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead:

This language can only fit the time before this world was created. That is when the Lord Jesus was "declared to be the Son of God," and that was when He was the "first begotten of the dead." If you remember, we read that earlier in Revelation 1:5:

And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead...

That is when He became the "firstborn Son of God," when He arose from the dead and He was "declared to be the Son," and as the Son, He created the world, so that teaches us that He already had to die, and He already had to be resurrected, in order to be that "firstbegotten Son of God;" and then, as the Son, He created the world. Then, much later, after the world was created, after 11,000 years of history, He entered into the world, born of the virgin Mary, conceived by the Holy Spirit, and He entered into the human race, and lived among His people Israel, and He lived out the tableau in order to demonstrate what He had already done regarding His salvation plan. This is why it says in Hebrews 4:3:

...if they shall enter into my rest: although the works were finished from the foundation of the world.

Ultimately, that is what our verse in Revelation 1:18 is referring to, that Jesus is the one "that liveth and was dead." It is telling us that Jesus died for sin before the world began, but it also has application to His death in time in the first century A.D. We read in the Gospel of Luke, in Luke 24:

Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others with them. And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre. And they entered in, and found not the body of the Lord Jesus. And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in shining garments: And as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said unto them, Why seek ye the living among the dead?

And, here, is really the perfect statement to fit our verse in Revelation 1:18, "I am he that liveth, and was dead," and, therefore, that question can be asked, "Why seek ye the living among the dead?" Christ is not dead. He is not in the tomb. He is not in the ground anywhere. He has risen from the dead, and He has ascended into the Heavens, and is seated at the right hand of God. He is the "living God" of the Bible.

You know, this is an extremely important Biblical truth. God spends a lot of time testifying and witnessing to the fact that Christ is alive---that He is not dead. For instance, it says in 1Corinthians 15:3-8:

For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles. And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.

So, here, God is testifying, and He is making sure that this point is very clear to all: that Jesus was dead; yes, He did die and was buried and, yet, He rose again, and there are witnesses to the resurrection of Christ---many witnesses----and some of these witnesses God moved to write of the events we have in the New Testament, as we find witnesses that saw Him and handled Him, and so on. They, as it were, have put their hand to the truth of this, and they have sworn that they are not lying.

You know, what more can God do? In one period of history He demonstrated the resurrection of Christ, and He proved it, and He had many witnesses that testified to it, and He recorded it, and He has sent these facts into all the world. And, of course, man being man, a century later, or maybe even only a few years later, they begin to doubt. They begin to disbelieve, just like Thomas, who was a true believer, so you can imagine what unbelievers think when they hear these things about he resurrection of Christ.

Remember when the Apostle Paul was witnessing on Mars Hill in Athens, Greece? They mocked the idea of the resurrection of the dead. Or when Paul witnessed (when he was held bound and waiting to be sent to Rome) to some of the Roman authorities that were ruling in the land at that time, and he testified that Jesus was living, and others testified that He was dead.

It is a central point of the Gospel message itself, that true believers testify and witness to this fact, and even believers today witness that this is a fact, that these things are true and faithful, and are recorded accurately. They are true history, and they did take place. God has simply given us the faith to believe, and to trust Him and His word, and we know that these things are absolute. They are guarantees of God---that Christ died and rose again, and He now lives.

Do you want to see why this is so important? Let us go to John, chapter 14, to see why it is important to you and me why Jesus is no longer dead, but that He lives. It says in John 14:19:

Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also.

Well, there it is! This has to do with our very salvation, with the promise of God (to us) of eternal life. Christ lives and, since He lives, we His people will live also. Remember what the Lord says in Romans 8:9:

But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.

That is what God did with the Lord Jesus---what God did in raising Him from the dead, where He was resurrected and death could not hold Him. He made the payment in full for His people. What God did in bringing Jesus to life one again (so that "He liveth"), He is is planning on doing for His people, all the elect people whose names are recorded in the Lamb's Book of Life.

So it is of the utmost importance that we understand that Jesus lives---that He was dead, but now lives---because the same working and operation of God will be done upon us, and that same Spirit will give us a resurrected body, and give us eternal life, so that we also will live with Him in the new heavens and the new earth.

Let us go back to our verse in Revelation 1:18:

I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore...

This is just a glorious declaration. It is a glorious truth that Jesus is telling us, and He is really revealing a very important thing to us. He is saying that "He liveth," and He is the Almighty that ever liveth, even though He was dead as He paid for the sins of His people, and He has risen from the dead and lives, and He will live for ever: "I am alive for evermore." That is, He is alive into the far reaches of eternity future.

You know, as men we are very limited in our ability to understand eternity future, just as we are limited in understanding eternity past. All we can think of is "time," because we are creatures of time; we think of "days that are without end," like the song "Amazing Grace", where "when we've been there ten thousand years, we have only just begun," and that is how our minds work; we can think of ten thousand years passing, and then we think, "Okay, ten thousand years, but that is not the end, and eternity is even longer." So we tend to think of eternity future that way, even though time will be no longer when this world is destroyed, and God will usher us into this new creation, into an eternity where He dwells (He inhabits eternity), and He will dwell with us, and we will live for ever. And if it helps, we can think of that eternal future as ten thousand years, times ten thousand years, times ten thousand years, and when you get to that number, just keep going. It is for evermore, and for as far and as long as our finite little minds can take us into eternity future, Christ lives. He is the ever-present, ever living God.

What this reveals to us is that Jesus will never die again, and that teaches us that God will never take upon Himself the sins of any creature in eternity future, and pay the penalty for them. But we can know this, because Christ is alive for evermore and will never die again, there will never come a time when God will develop another salvation plan and, again, take the sins of creatures made in His image, and He will never again die for sin.

We know from other verses that there will never be any more sin at all that would make that necessary, but, here, we are also given assurance that the Lord Jesus Christ has done this once---He has died once for sin from the foundation of the world---and never again will God go through the process that He has allowed to play out in this world as human history has unfolded, where He has allowed sinful creatures to dwell in a corrupt world in order to work out His salvation plan to save a people for Himself. That will never happen again, once God completes His plan for this world. Once He has finalized the judgment of unsaved man, and finally tested all of the elect to the degree that He desires for them to be tested, then He will destroy this world and universe and all the unsaved with it.

Then we will turn to the business of "living," and there will be no more death. There will just be a beautiful life---life for evermore, eternal life, and living without death, and no more sin that would bring death, and no more tears that accompany death, and no more sorrow that goes hand-in-hand with sin and death. All of the ugly, awful negatives that have followed man's fall into sin, and the resulting death, will be removed and gone for ever, and there will just be "life," with goodness, and righteousness, and purity, and holiness, and all the things that God tells us to think on in Philippians 4:8---kind things, and gentle things, and good things---all the things that God is, that His word is, and these will be found in the eternal future for each of us.

All of these evil things that we are so used to---these dark things, these sorrowful things---that are entrenched in our minds and our bodies in this world will be gone for ever. We just have the greatest future imaginable, and even beyond imagination, when we think of what awaits each and every one of God's children, when we go to be with Him of whom it is said, in Revelation 1:18:

I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.

Now this is a very interesting statement that the Lord is making, that He possesses "the keys of hell and of death." We will take a closer look at this idea that Jesus has "the keys of hell and of death," when we get together for our next Bible study.