The “one like a son of man” whom John sees in the midst of the seven lampstands in the opening vision announces himself as “the first and the last, and the living one”. The narrative distinction is preserved between the God of all history and the martyr Jesus Christ, who was faithful unto death but who has been rewarded. But it is the Lord God who asserts at this juncture, “I am the Alpha and the Omega…, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty” (Rev. He is the one who comes “with the clouds” to receive vindication and a kingdom, and the tribes of Israel will regret what they did to him. What John gives us is a political eschatology, much the same as we have in Philippians 2:6-11: the one who has suffered has been exalted and will be confessed as Lord by the nations, he will be the “ruler of kings on earth”.īy his death Jesus has brought into being a people who will serve “his God and Father” as priests. This is not a statement of divine ontology. We could perhaps think of this as a quasi-trinitarian construction, but Jesus is described only as the royal Son who was raised from the dead and has received the nations as his heritage, to rule them with a rod of iron (Rev. John greets the seven churches with grace and peace from God, “who is and who was and who is to come”, from the “seven spirits”, and from Jesus Christ, who was the first martyr ( ho martus) to be raised from the dead and who is now “ruler of kings on earth” (Rev. John is making a more subtle and more urgent point about the role of Jesus.
Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation, 1993, 56-57).īauckham is right to draw attention to the parallel, but I think that the narrative structure of Revelation-and indeed of New Testament eschatology generally-works against the idea of a direct identification of Jesus with the “eternal God”. Richard Bauckham, for example, has said: “As a way of stating unambiguously that Jesus Christ belongs to the fullness of the eternal God, this surpasses anything in the NT” (R. 22:16) and since God says nearly the same thing about himself in Revelation 21:6, it is inferred that John means to establish some sort of identity between Jesus and God. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (Rev. Towards the end of the book of Revelation John hears somebody say: “Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me, to repay each one for what he has done.