The First and
the Last
The title is used by Christ in the
book of Revelation when he says, “I am Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last:
and, what thou seest, write in a book, and send [it] to the seven churches
which are in Asia; to Ephesus, and to Smyrna, and to Pergamos, and to Thyatira,
and to Sardis, and to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea” (Rev 1:11; cf. 1:17; 2:8).
The basis of the title is to be found in Isaiah and in prophecies where the Lord
says,
Who hath wrought and done [it],
calling the generations from the beginning? I the Lord, the First, and with
the last ones; I [am] he. (KJV revised); cf. 44:6; 48:12
The theme behind the title is
twofold: Yahweh’s foreknowledge of the future and his control of the future. He
challenges the gods of the nations (Isa 41:23) to show the things that would be
thereafter so that they may be known to be true gods. But, in fact, they cannot
declare the end from the beginning; only Yahweh can do this (Isa 41:26),
because he is in control. Hence, he is ‘the First and with the last ones.’ The
sense of the title is the same as saying God is the one who knows the end from
the beginning, and he is the one who controls the future’ (A contrasting
analogy can be made with our idiomatic saying, ‘he is the be all and end all
of the . . . ‘, because we use this saying in many situations where one person
thinks he is the main individual).
The background to this response of
God is the challenge of Babylonian religious beliefs and the associated idols.
With this background, we can understand Christ’s use of the title, ‘the First
and the Last’. Christ had said to his disciples, ‘of that day and hour no one
knoweth, no [man], no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only’ (Matt
24:36). He had also said to them, ‘It is not for you to know the times or the seasons,
which the Father hath put in his own power’ (Acts 1:7). Such statements as
these are consistent with the testimony of Yahweh through Isaiah, ‘And who, as
I shall declare it, and set it in order for me . . . ?’ (Isa 44:6). But these statements
raise the question of Christ’s own knowledge of the future.
The question is resolved in
Revelation, where we read, ‘The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which Gid gave
unto him, to show unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass’
(Rev 1:1). This is a book of prophecy given by the Father to his son.
This makes the Son like his father in one respect: he can declare the end from
the beginning. Besides this, all power and authority has been given to the Son
(Matt 28:18), and therefore he can declare not only the end from the beginning,
but also direct and control affairs to that end. This makes the Son like the Father
in a second respect. Because Christ has been given the revelation of the end,
and because he is in control of affairs, he also carries the title ‘the First
and the Last’. (Andrew Perry, Before He Was Born: Combating Arguments for
the Pre-existence of Christ [7th ed. [4th revision]; Staffordshire, U.K.:
Willow Publications, 2022], 58-59, italics in original)