Divine Agency and Angelic Mediation
in the Book of Revelation
The
notion of divine agency is illustrated perfectly by the last chapter of Revelation.
The visionary tells us that the angel of the Lord came to him. However, the
angel speaks in the first person as if he is Christ: “Behold, I am coming soon”
(Rev. 22:7). John fell at the angel’s feet to worship him, apparently because
he did not know that his companion was “only” an angel and thought that it was
the Lord himself who was addressing him. However, the angel warns him: “Don’t! I
am a fellow servant of yours and of your brothers the prophets. . . . Worship God!”
(Rev. 22:9) Worship is appropriate only to God and the Lamb in Revelation 4 and
5. However, when the angel begins to speak again, he picks up right where he
left off, addressing John in first-person as if he were in fact the resurrected
Lord: “Behold, I am coming soon. I bring with me the recompense. I will give to
each according to his deeds. I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the
beginning and the end” (Rev. 22:12-13). It is clear that the angels speaks in
the first person exactly as if he were the Christ. It is equally noteworthy that
the resurrected Christ adopts the same titles as God, “the one who sits upon
the throne. . . I [am] Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end . . . I will
be his God, and he will be my son” (Rev. 21:5-7). The angel thus speaks in the
first person as the messenger of Christ, saying the very words that Christ would
say. In turn, Christ uses the very words by which the Father refers to himself
because Christ is God’s messenger and agent who has been exalted to the same
status as God himself by overcoming death and the devil and by delving the
kingdom to the Father.
The
same paradox of divine agency arises in the first chapter of Revelation where
Christ appears in vision as “one like the son of man” and in the glory of the
Ancient of Days of Daniel 7. Revelation opens by stating that Jesus Christ “made
it known by sending his angel to his servant John” (Rev. 1:1; emphasis
mine). However, the voice declaring the revelation proclaims: “’I am Alpha and
Omega’, says the Lord God, ‘the one who is and who was and who is to come, the
almighty’” (Rev. 1:8). It is the angel who speaks as if he were God. Just a few
verses later, however, it is Jesus Christ who speaks, although the text gives
no notice of a change of character: “I am the first and the last, the one who
lives. Once I was dead, but now I am alive forever and ever” (Rev. 1:18). The
statement that Christ is the first and last recalls Yahweh’s own claim in
Isaiah 41:4 as well as God’s declaration that he is Alpha and Omega, the first and
last letters of the Greek alphabet. All of these declarations should probably
be understood as being made by an angel who delivers the revelation as an agent
who speaks first as if he were God and then as if he were Christ. In the same
way, the Gospel of John presents Christ as the one who appeared and who spoke
in the first person as if he were Yahweh.
Blake T. Ostler, Exploring Mormon Thought: Of Gods and
Gods (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2008), 183-84
