It is an extraordinary thing that before His human life in Palestine could fade from the memory of those who walked and ate and slept with him, they had claimed for him the timeless, cosmic status which can belong only to God. Those who believed this had known him as a man, as a flesh and blood human being like themselves; yet in the space of a decade they had set this Man of Nazareth, who stirred earth's dust under his sandals, on the very Throne of God ... and worshipped Him. By His power, they believed, all things had come to be; from Him, as its source, all life had sprung; He it is Who will bring all history to its climax, drawing the torn threads of our disordered universe into a redeemed and enduring harmony. It is simply fantastic that sane men could be so persuaded. But so it was.
No plainer statement of that conviction can be found than the saying attributed to the risen Christ whom John saw in vision as recorded in Rev. 1:8 and 17: "I am the first and the last, and the living One. I am alpha and omega."
Alpha and omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, as A and Z are of ours.
Let us try to envisage the setting in which John heard this. Imagine this ageing man, John, exiled and alone on the sea-girt island of Patmos.
It is the Lord's Day, the day on which his brothers and sisters in the faith are gathering for worship on the mainland in his beloved Ephesus, across the waters of the Mediterranean Sea to the east. He stands on a low point of land in the growing light before the dawn, sandy inlets sweeping away behind him on either side, gazing out across the sea that separates him from them. A longing to be with them swells in his heart. (No wonder he hated the sea - the sea that cut him off from the blessedness of fellowship with his brothers as they gathered in the presence of their risen Lord to worship and adore: in his heaven, "there was no more sea.") But on this morning the separating sea becomes a vehicle, so to speak, on which the Lord comes strangely to him, and draws him into mystic union both with Himself and with his brethren as they behold His face. "I was in the Spirit," he says, "on the Lord's Day."
The dawn is beginning to break as he stands looking out to sea. Above him the stars flash like gems in the dark velvet of the sky. And then the splendid pageant draws slowly on. Colour begins to steal into the sky: a luminous grey turning to daffodil with wispy gleams of green, then a faint pink deepening swiftly to crimson and gold.
A great wave crashes down on the beach behind him and draws the shingle after it in a sound like the sound of a long-drawn sigh, as of a Great Presence ... and then another, and another ... until it seems to him that in the ceaseless surging of the surf a mighty voice is speaking, a voice "like the sound of many waters." A strange excitement stirs in his breast. As he faces eastward across the sea, the golden lip of the rising sun flashes a path across it that sparkles and dances to his very feet; and it seems to him - filled as his mind was with the imagery of his people's ancient scriptures - like the "Sun of Righteousness arising with healing in his wings".
The ascended Lord is
strangely near, marvellous in His risen splendour. The spectacle
takes on a dream-like quality; a vision of the Son of Man seems to be
shaping itself against the sky, a vision awesome and majestic. The
paling stars seem at his very finger-tips, as though a host from
distant heaven bearing torches were moving forward behind Him. The
fleecy clouds at the sky's zenith, white now in the sun's light and
flowing in long silken skeins down the sky, seem like a crowning
glory of silver hair.
The eyes flash beneath the noble forehead.
As His feet catch the yellow glory of the sunrise, they seem to shine
like burnished brass.
His face is as the sun in its full splendour now above the long,
white gold-edged garment whose train sweeps the wide sea; and His
mighty voice mingles with the breaking waves upon the
seashore.
The Lord is come - the risen Lord in awesome glory; and John tells us that he fell at His feet as though dead.
The first stirring of the dawn breeze seemed like the touch of a hand on his shoulder, and through the thunder of the surf, the voice spoke to him: "I am alpha and omega. Be not afraid. I am the first and the last, the living One." For John that day Jesus had indeed become the "Christ Whose glory fills the skies."
By the words He spoke, He was claiming as His own the entire universe of space, the whole range of time, the complete world of human experience, and even the world beyond the grave.
• The alpha of it is lost in the mystery of that eternal glory which the Son enjoyed with the Father before the worlds were made ...
• The beta of it was shrouded in swirling mists that lifted from the face of a new-born planet to reveal the first pair standing in a garden ...
• The gamma of it was the drawing out from the stream of humanity's life a man, Abraham, and after him a long line of patriarchs and prophets, all with their eyes fixed on a distant horizon, their hands outstretched toward it, to whom it was given that they should spell out, syllable upon syllable, the recovering of the lost knowledge of the world's Creator and the promise of the redemption He will bring ...
• The delta of it was the moment when this God touched nature with an ungloved hand, and there was conceived in the womb of a virgin Him Who was born to be the Saviour of the world ...
• The epsilon of it was the deeds of mercy and the words of truth of this Son of Man Who was the Son of God ...
• The zeta of it was the cross upraised on a green hill where the sin of man and the love of God were locked in mortal combat ...
• The eta of it was the victory that was won when the Christ arose in triumph from the dead and ascended into heaven, where the reigns of government have, since then, been given into His pierced hands ...
• The theta of it was the release of God's own Spirit into the hearts of believing men, and their streaming in - a multitude none can number - through the gates of the City of God that is a-building ...
• The iota of it will be the return to earth in unimaginable power and glory of this same Jesus, when the world as we know it will be transfigured into something marvellously new ...
But even all this, wonderful as it is, is but the 'ABC' of all that Christ Jesus is and will accomplish. The full splendour, as John was to perceive in his vision, went on and up through ever mounting levels until the glory of it passed beyond the range of human eyes to see, beyond any singing of it, until exalted over all there reigned in uncreated Light the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
Here is the most breathtaking vision ever to capture the imagination and win the heart's consent. The half has not even yet been told of the full story of "the redemption of the world through our Lord Jesus Christ." There lies before us a store of wonders we cannot yet conceive.
But of this we are confident: our Lord Jesus Christ, at present the world's hidden king, will one day soon show Himself openly by stepping on to the stage of this world.
The prospect should fill us with both fear and great joy.
With fear - because it will be a time of endings. Those who ask with curt disdain why God, if He exists, does not intervene directly in the tragic tangle of human affairs, have forgotten that when the author steps on to the stage the play is over; the curtain has been rung down. It will be a time of lamentation for the loss of all those false gods to which men have given their hearts. Many will go down into final perdition with them, for there is an end of all those things that despoil the life of mankind. Do any of us have the least idea what it will be really like when God in Christ breaks in upon our world, His Presence unshielded by the protective barrier we call nature and the physical world?
But the prospect should fill us also with great joy - for the endings will usher in new beginnings; out of their grave the new will be born. "Behold," saith He Who sits upon the Throne, "I make all things new." People ask what the new heavens and the new earth will be like. We none of us know. The Bible offers us symbols, metaphors, pictures - all of them drawn from the old world we know, which then will be utterly swept away, rolled up like a scroll whose tale is finished telling, and none of these pictures can be adequate, therefore, to describe the blinding reality. As well try to describe to an unborn child what this world is like by reference only to his experience of the womb where he awaits his birth.
But of one thing we are assured: the reigns of government throughout the entire created order will be firmly in the hands of Him Who so loved us as willingly to have them fixed to a wooden cross, where He suffered to win for us eternal life and glory. He alone will rule. From first to last it is a "Lamb, as it had been slain" Who occupies the throne of ultimate power and authority. The Christ Whose glory fills the skies ... He Who was the alpha of it all, is also the Omega to which, if we trust Him, He will bring us all.
Jesus shall reign
wher'ere the sun doth his successive journeys run.
His kingdom stretch from shore to shore till suns shall rise and set
no more.
His hands of love that were pierced for us will hold the reigns at last. In the meantime, the Christian sees this world (to quote C. S. Lewis) as enemy-occupied territory whose rightful king has already landed - in disguise, you might say - and is calling us to share in a great campaign of sabotage against the dark power that has usurped His throne.
When we go to church, it is as though we are listening in to the secret wireless that directs the underground resistance movement. Fanciful nonsense? Why then do we make such thin, weak excuses not to go?
When we study the Bible, we are reading our standing battle orders. Nonsense too? Why then do we avoid attending to it?
If all turns out in the end as Christians believe it will, how intensely many will wish they had enlisted sooner. In the hour of its triumph no cause lacks supporters. But it will hardly avail then to say to God, "I hadn't the time; I had more important things to occupy me ... but I sent my children to Sunday School." Said Henry IV, King of France, to the cowardly Crillon who had not ventured into the battle of Arques, "Hang yourself, Crillon. We fought at Arques, and you were not there."
Christ the King of Kings will one day soon show Himself openly to the world in triumph as its rightful King. Then will be no time to choose whose side you are on. It is idle to say you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. The time to choose is now.
All eyes shall behold Him; and either we shall look upon Him who was pierced for us and rejoice, or we shall look on Him whom we have pierced and wail with a wail that will have never an ending.
If we are already serving in His ranks, then let John have the last word to us: "Beloved, we are - here and now - God's children; and whilst it does not yet appear what we shall be, we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. Everyone who has this hope before him purifies himself, as Christ is pure."
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