WORSHIP THE ALPHA AND THE OMEGA

“And He said to me, “It is done! I am the ALPHA and the OMEGA, the Beginning and the End”– Revelation 21:6

Drawing the curtain on an old Year and ascending the threshold of a New Year, let’s WORSHIP the ALPHA and the OMEGA: “And He said to me, “It is done! I am the ALPHA and the OMEGA, the Beginning and the End. I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts” (Rev.21:6). This is one Self-designation of God – of the Resurrected Christ: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End,” says the Lord, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty” (Rev.1:8); “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last” (Rev.22:13). Alpha and Omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. But God isn’t speaking about alphabets. He is speaking of Reality – Living by His Word!

"The Alpha and the Omega” depicts the Comprehensiveness of God; the idea of completion, covering all things from beginning to end. It infers that Jesus is the Beginning and the End of all things, the First and the Last. Nothings precedes or succeeds Him! Everything there is originates ultimately in Him. And everything will somehow end with Him: “Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts: ‘I am the First and I am the Last; Besides Me there is no God” (Isa.44:6). That is, since everything comes from God and nothing will outlast Him, God has no final competitors! God has the First Word and the Final Word in history and in all things. The pottery has no beginning apart from the Potter, and in the end, it will all serve the purposes of the Potter.

God is the absolute Alpha – the FIRST. There was no “before Him.” God never had a beginning. He is the Beginning. Psalm 90:2 says, “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever You had formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.” There never was a time when God was not. WE might marvel that God is eternal, infinite, and unchanging in His Goodness, Justice, Wisdom, Power, and Truth. But He never chose to be this way, and no one chose to make Him so. These attributes are eternal reality. God did not emerge out of many possibilities. Everything emerged out of Him. He determines all possibilities. He is the All-encompassing Reality: “In Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).

God is the absolute Omega. The statement, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the End,” comes in a passage dealing with the end of history. So, the special focus in Revelation 21 is on God as the Omega – the End – of all things. Here, God is the End in two different senses. First, for the thirsty, he will be the Source of their life forever. He will be their God and they will be His children enjoying His inheritance forever (vv.6-7). He was the Fountain of their life in creation, and shall be the fountain of their life in consummation. Second, for those not thirsty for Him, God is the Omega – their End, in the sense that they will finally meet Him as Judge (v.8). They had their beginning in God’s Oasis of Life, but end up in Judgement in a lake that burns with fire!

God has the Last Word even for those who reject Him – eternal damnation: “But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death” (v8). Revelation 14:9-11 and 20:10 affirm the same truth about eternal punishment in hell!

God in the Person of His Son, Jesus Christ, is the Omega for every creature: either as a Fountain of eternal Life or as a winepress of wrath in a lake of fire! At the end, God will be utterly real to all – gloriously real to the thirsty; terrifyingly real to the self-satisfied!