Spoiler Alert


Revelation 1:5b-8
5To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood
6and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
7Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him. Even so. Amen.
8“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”

The Prologue (verses 1-8) of Revelation ends with resounding words declaring how the story ends. “Behold, He is coming with the clouds” lets us know that Jesus will indeed return just as He promised upon His Ascension. It’s like turning to the end of the novel before you read the book to find out how it will end. John doesn’t make us wait. He lays out the ending before we are even 8 verses into the Revelation. It might be important for us to remember the ultimate ending while we are reading Revelation. Some of the images described are terrifying. With that being the case the believing reader needs to keep in mind that all is well in the hands of an Almighty God. With these verses we learn that even the unbeliever will see Jesus as the King and Ruler that He truly is before they are sent to their final judgment. Jesus describes this scene even as He spoke to the Pharisees while He suffered mock trials before His death.

Matthew 26:63b-64
63And the high priest said to him, “I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.”
64Jesus said to him, “You have said so. But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven.”

Everyone, believer and non-believer will experience the Second Coming. Philippians 2:9-11 and 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17 expound on the fact that every person will have to bow before Jesus and acknowledge, on bended knee, exactly who He is before they are sent to eternal reward or eternal punishment.

Philippians 2:9-11
9Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name,
10so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

1 Thessalonians 4:15-17
15For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep.
16For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.
17Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.

[Just on a side note – this Thessalonians passage is used as a proof text by those who would embrace a theology that the Church will be “raptured” off of the planet before the Tribulation. If you read it carefully, you will find that this is a huge stretch of the text to say the least. This is also an idea that is not substantiated anywhere else in Scripture.]

It behooves me to spend a moment in discussion of Who is speaking in verse 8. “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” In the NIV those words are in red so obviously the NIV translators determined that Jesus was the speaker. But there has been some controversy about that interpretation over the years. There are many who believe these are the words of the Father, not the Son. Now, here is where it can really mess with your head because they are one in the same, right? And so it is. But God has chosen to delineate between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit for us so we speak in that same language. There are a few clues as to why scholars believe this is the Father speaking, such as the title “the Almighty.” In Revelation, that only refers to the Father. “Lord God” is a direct reference to Yahweh, which is also a designation for the Father. “Alpha and Omega” is also a title used for the Father, but is also used for the Son, so that argument is not quite as compelling. You may land wherever you want on this debate and you will be on the side of a learned scholar.

The bottom line here is that Jesus will return just as He promised and that will be the end of the earth as we know it. Judgment Day will happen and everything will be created new by God Himself. Now we know the end of the story but God has chosen to give us so many more details here in Revelation and that is what the rest of the book is about.

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