T. Austin-Sparks · 1 of 5

Jesus Christ, the First and the Last

"I am the Alpha and the Omega, saith the Lord God, which is and which was and which is to come, the Almighty... And when I saw Him, I fell at his feet as one dead. And He laid His right hand upon me, saying, Fear not; I am the first and the last, and the Living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive unto the ages of the ages" (Rev. 1:8,17-18).

"These things saith the first and the last, which became dead, and is alive" (Rev. 2:8).

"I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end" (Rev. 22:13).

"And He showed me a river of water of life, bright as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb, in the midst of the street thereof. And on this side of the river and on that was the tree of life, bearing twelve manner of fruits, yielding its fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. And there shall be no curse any more: and the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be therein: and His servants shall serve Him; and they shall see His face and His name shall be on their foreheads. And there shall be night no more; and they need no light of lamp, neither light of sun; for the Lord God shall give them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever" (Rev. 22:1-5).

That phrase and designation, "The first and the last, the beginning and the end", is the thing that will govern our meditation for a little while. We shall seek to see something, maybe but little, of what it means. "I am the first and the last, the beginning and the end." The end of this passage at the commencement of chapter 22 is a great help in this particular connection, for here, as we near the end of this wonderful, remarkable book, we are coming to a summary of everything in it. As you notice, after this point things become fairly general by way of application, warning, exhortation, but in these verses, Revelation 22:1-5, we have the explanation and the consummation of all things. They take us back to the beginning and they carry us right on to the end. They set before us what was the Divine thought from the beginning and they show us that Divine thought realised at the end. It is a wonderfully comprehensive passage.

In a few sentences we have all the ages explained. We are allowed to enter into what God has had in His mind from the beginning, and to see that God will achieve what He has had in His mind from the beginning and have it as a glorious realisation at the end. When you come to think about it in the light of the whole book, you find that it is all gathered up in the Lord Jesus, and in that way He is the beginning and the end, the first and the last. All that took its rise in the thought of God at the beginning is centred in and realised through His Son, and all at the end is gathered up into that Son. One Person dominates the book of the Revelation, and the book of the Revelation is the whole history from Genesis 1:1 to the end of the ages of time, the beginning of the ages of the ages. I wonder if you have realised that the book of the Revelation compasses all history from Genesis onwards. We may see by hints as we go along how that is so.

The Throne of God as Creator

Here you have some statements, some clear-cut phrases: "The throne of God and of the Lamb". That is, in a word, God's full and final place of honour in His universe. Well, that is an eternal thought. It is not that God is God supreme, almighty; He has ever been that. Nothing can make any difference to that; history has no effect upon that, but it is now as it was intended to be in the beginning - God in the place of full and final honour in the heart of His universe, in the acknowledgment, in the delight and ascription of honour from His universe. The whole universe agrees to that, accepts that, delights in that, glories in that. You find, as you move through the book, again and again that comes up: worship, universal worship, to God. It is not just His isolated Being of eternal and almighty sovereignty, but He is now the centre of the worship of His universe. The throne of God - that comes out at the end; that was from the beginning.

But the completion of the sentence is "and of the Lamb", and that carries you back to chapters 4 and 5. As you remember, in those passages you have two great ascriptions of praise. "And when the living creatures shall give glory and honour and thanks to Him that sitteth on the throne, to Him that liveth for ever and ever, the four and twenty elders" (you remember the four and twenty elders are representative of the whole in all dispensations) "shall fall down before Him that sitteth on the throne, and shall worship Him that liveth for ever and ever, and shall cast their crowns before the throne, saying, Worthy art Thou, our Lord and our God, to receive the glory and the honour and the power: for Thou didst create all things, and because of Thy will they were, and were created" (Rev. 4:9-11).

Here you have the throne of God as Creator, creating all things according to the good pleasure of His will, now at length the centre of that creation and of that creation's worship, extolling His honour.

But then the other half of the sentence in Revelation 22 has to come in, and you have that in chapter 5, as you notice. "And I saw, and I heard a voice of many angels round about the throne and the living creatures and the elders; and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands; saying with a great voice, Worthy is the Lamb that hath been slain to receive the power, and riches, and wisdom, and might, and honour, and glory, and blessing. And every created thing which is in the heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and on the sea, and all things that are in them, heard I saying, Unto Him that sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb, be the blessing, and the honour, and the glory, and the dominion, for ever and ever. And the four living creatures said, Amen. And the elders fell down and worshipped" (Rev. 5:11-14).

The Throne of the Lamb as Redeemer

Now you want to know what the particular significance is. Well, it is here, in the earlier part of the chapter, "Thou art worthy." Why? "Thou wast slain, Thou hast overcome, Thou hast redeemed by Thy blood." The throne of God and of the Lamb! God created, the Lamb redeemed. God gets His place and rights by reason of the blood of the Lamb. That is the whole story in a few words. The throne of God and of the Lamb! So that it is the triumph of God's thought from eternity by way of the blood of the Lamb, and the Lamb is there alongside of the Almighty as one with Him in the securing of that great end upon which His heart was set from all eternity. That is inclusive and comprehensive. In that sense, He is the first and the last. The throne is first and the throne is last, and He is with the throne at the first because by His blood He has secured all that that throne of honour means. We come into the application of this presently to ourselves; it is not just objective contemplation. Let us look at one or two other things here as we go on.

A River of Water of Life Proceeding out of the Throne

"He showed me a river of water of life, bright as crystal". In that symbolism we are plainly, clearly told that the prevailing feature when God reaches His end and when God has things as He ever intended to have them, will be incorruptible Life. Throughout His universe the characteristic will be Life, crystal clear, incorruptible Life, and again, that is an eternal thought. That was what God had in mind for His universe in creation, and was lost or missed by man, but, "As by a man came death, so by a Man came the resurrection of the dead, so by a Man came life". "I am the beginning", God's thought from the beginning; "and the end" - here is the thing realised. It is through the Lord Jesus, through His blood, that this incorruptible Life, bright as crystal, will fill God's universe at the end. The symbolism is very close to the truth you notice: "Proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb". The incorruptible Life of God now released for the universe because of the Lamb and the blood of the Lamb; the incorruptible Life of God's Son. "I am the beginning and the end, the first and the last!"

It is a mighty victory. This throne is no mere passive thing. This throne throughout this book is a mighty thing; the symbol of a mighty conquest, a governing thing. When all other antagonisms in God's universe have been put down, that throne stands as a symbol of a mighty triumph, and the triumph is through the blood of the Lamb. That is what runs through the book of the Revelation. "They overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb." It is Life released, incorruptible Life, and I am quite sure our hearts today go out in a new way to the Lord to hasten that day when this universe will be flooded with incorruptible Life, for never was God's universe more nauseated by the corruption of this fallen creation than today. Oh, the corruption! Every day brings us fresh revelations of the corruption, and even ungodly men revolt in the presence of the manifestation, the dragging out, the pouring forth of the corruption, the corrupt life, of this creation. Blessed be God, the Lamb has overcome! "I am He that liveth; I was dead but I am alive unto the ages of the ages." "I am the beginning and the end." Our hearts go up in prayer, 'Lord, hasten the day when incorruptible Life shall fill this creation!' The Lamb's victory shall be universally displayed in that river of the water of Life.

The Tree of Life

"And on this side of the river and on that was the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations." The only thing we need say about that is that it stands, as you notice, over against the curse. "And there shall be no curse any more" - literally, "there shall be no more cursed thing". We have only got to look back and see we are starting at Genesis with the whole history of creation. The Tree of Life from which the leaves and fruit were never taken, which man had never enjoyed until Christ came. The curse came in, and what is its mark? Well, we know through the Bible by illustrations of it, as well as by the whole manifestation of it, that the curse always speaks of barrenness, loss, disappointment through death. Everything is blighted by death; everything is cut short by death; all hopes are disappointed by death. Death is that cold hand which comes upon the fruit before it is ripe, before it has reached perfection, and snatches it away. Death as the curse causes the fruit to fall from the trees before it is ripe, nothing reaching the full purpose of its being, of its creation.