Revelation 22:12
“And behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to give to every one according to his work. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last.”
There were many assumptions made in the Unitarian argument to this passage, the foundation of which is the assumption of the unipersonality of God and a “functional- only” Christology. Those are assumptions imported
into this text, not derived
from this text (and in fact highly foreign to it). Of course, I admit that I am coming to the text with an established Trinitarian presumption. However, I don’t
have to make this passage testify to the Deity of Christ (although it does) for that is a concept very clearly taught in numerous other passages. However, the Unitarian
must do so, and thus the Unitarian assumption is very strongly motivating the explanation. The Unitarian presumption will allow only one outcome, even despite the text.
On one tangential side note, the comment was made
In Revelation, we find that it is Christ who is literally coming, as the representative of God. God is spoken of as "coming to earth", despite the fact that He never actually will, in the literal sense, leave heaven bodily and descend to earth.
Point of fact, Revelation
does not in fact teach that Christ is “literally” coming, if by “literally” the meaning is that He is leaving Heaven bodily and descending to earth. That is
not something taught at all by Revelation. It
is taught elsewhere in the Bible, but not here, and is speaking of an entirely different event than the bulk of Revelation. However, my argumentation presented here does not rely just on that fact, which is just icing on the cake.
The assumption is also made in this statement and elsewhere that Christ is
ONLY acting as the representative of the Father (and that such would necessarily exclude Him from the Identity of Deity which is a bald non sequiter to begin with). That is how the Unitarian explains the passages that seem to indicate a pluripersonality within God, by appealing to the concept of “agency.” If in fact, this is not a bodily coming to earth, and
it is not, but rather a judgment from Heaven the need for a representative “agent” in the person of Christ is not needed. The only “agents” of God in Revelation are the earthly participants and demonic hosts perpetrating the destruction. And the very concept that Christ is “coming in the clouds,” is yet again, another reference to His Deity. The judgment cloud-comings are always comings of YHWH Himself in the OT, through the agencies of His creation, very often pagan nations. The “clouds” symbolize His glory, terror, and unapproachable holiness, and they are claimed for Christ. This sort of “functional only” Christology ignores the fact that Christ
can function as Deity specifically because
He is Deity.
No creature can fully reveal Deity, and yet that is the claim made for Jesus.
The assumption that is also made that the Angel of the Lord is not Deity is a separate subject, but again is an assumption. If one removes the underlying presupposition of the unipersonality of God, there is no problem understanding it differently, and in fact there are various factors in the OT indicating such a different understanding rather than mere representative “agency.”
The statement is then made:
Taking the Revelation and Isaiah passages together, we find that there who are entitled 'first and last', and but for two entirely different reasons.
Not true, but rather a poor attempt to explain away the Revelation passages. If one were to just take the Revelation and the Isaiah passages together without importing Unitarian presuppositions into the text, the Deity of Christ is
obvious. Revelation is recognized as being an accumulation of hundreds of allusions to OT texts. There is no indication whatsoever that “First and Last” is being used for two entirely different reasons (and the exalted nature of that very term would make it
impossible in the first place). That is reading one’s preset theology into the text and is circular.
I agree that Yahweh is called the First and the Last in Isaiah because He is the Creator and the Completer. He is also called that to show that there is nothing outside of Him, He is the Totality. The fullness of that term is
protological and
eschatological. He began all things and will end all things. He is the Creator and the Consummator. This is clearly a strong title of Deity. It would be very, very misleading to just go and apply that title to Christ, without qualification (and this Unitarian explanation is doing
a lot of qualifying), when it is such a clear title of Deity. In fact its use in the exact same phraseology as used of God would be downright
inappropriate. Jews were notoriously careful in their writings to use certain characteristics and titles of God exclusively for God to unambiguously differentiate Him from all other reality, including exalted patriarchs and angels or other exalted personages. This is such a title and would have been understood in that manner.
In addition to all of the above, it cannot be said that the reason that this phrase is used is because Christ is elsewhere called Firstborn, since that also simply begs the point in that that Title (Firstborn) indicates His preeminence over everything, and points to His Deity, and an appeal cannot be made to a “last Adam” comment in an entirely different context, as the “last Adam” there (
1 Cor. 15) is juxtaposed with the “first Adam” which would be the natural referent of “first” in the “first and last,” if the “last” indeed refers to the title of “last Adam.” And in the next sentence Paul equates “last Adam” as “second man,” showing that last means the same in that context as “second.” Christ did not say that He was the “First and the Second.”
You cannot take a unified (and already established) concept of “First and Last” and then pull in two other concepts that have not been Biblically related to each other in sequential manner, as “First and Last” is intended to be taken. It does complete violence to the text, and especially so in Revelation where it is obvious that the allusions are almost always directly to the OT
firstly, not the NT. And of course, the phrase is an “exact” title from the OT, which would then be the natural referent for all three of its usages in Revelation (chapters 1, 2, and 22 – and in 22 the Unitarian argument does argue that it IS referring to the Father) [it’s usage earlier in
Revelation 1, at verse 11, is the subject of a textual variant and will not be extensively brought into the discussion for that reason alone].
Not only that, but that title had already become an exchange term for God Himself. That is exactly who the first century Jew would think of when someone was identified as the “First and the Last.” To try to use that term as indicating anything other than complete Sovereignty is to make nonsense of the term. God uses it of Himself almost polemically. He is not
just claiming to be the First and the Last, as if whatever exists between “first” and “last” has nothing to do with Him, but is claiming to be the First and the Last and
everything that is between. To use that exact same phrase to mean something else is to reduce it to nonsense and to not take into consideration the “everything in between” aspect of its meaning and its polemical placements in Isaiah.
Further, this Unitarian explanation ignores and totally wrests the connection between
Revelation 1 and 22. The Unitarian wants us to go through places in the NT to find our referent for “First and Last” which I have already shown to be not in fact correct methodology and highly superficial. Good hermeneutics just do not work that way. There is no indication in the passage that it is alluding to NT titles, and in fact, the
first place to start looking for the meaning of the phrase is within the same Book itself, and the very same exact phrase, in a tititular context, is used three times (at a minimum and with one disputed usage in 1:11) in Revelation, and with the third usage the Unitarian is arguing that it
is used of the Father!
Now, I would argue that all three times in Revelation it is clearly used of Christ, but
just for the sake of discussion, we will assume for a moment in this part of the conversation that in
Revelation 22:13, it is speaking of the Father, and He claims to be the First and the Last. In
Revelation 1:17 Christ claims that title for Himself. The connection is obviously meant to be made to the declaration in
Revelation 22:13 (both uses have very near proximities to threats/warnings/promises of “coming quickly”) in which it is given as an unequivocal declaration of Deity and explained by its repetition (in case we were thick – which it appears that we are) of the synonymous terms of Alpha and Omega and Beginning and End. “First and Last” does not mean anything different from “Alpha and Omega,” it is simply sequentially alphabetically expressing the same thing that was expressed sequentially numerically. It also does not mean anything different that “Beginning and End.” They are synonymous and yet Jesus claims that title for Himself. The enormous burden of proof is on the one who wants to claim two entirely different meanings for the same title within the same Book in similar contexts (and even possibly if the textual variant in verse 1:11 is correct within 7 verses of each other), especially in light of its importance as a title of Deity in Isaiah, and synonymous pairing in 22:13 with undisputed titles of Deity.
As alluded to already, where that term appears in Isaiah is also very, very important as those chapters have been called and recognized by many scholars as the pinnacle of the OT expression of who God is and Judaistic monotheism. It would be blasphemous for a creature to take from those passages (
especially those passages!!) a title of Deity and apply it to Himself. If all that was meant to be expressed was “firstborn” and “last Adam,” there were much less dangerous ways to express it (such as Firstborn and Last Adam). Creatures don’t take for themselves titles of Deity. Isaiah Chapters 40-55 contain the strongest and great divine assertions of God’s unique identity as Creator and sovereign of the universe. You cannot divorce “First and Last” from that “baggage” that it carries along with it which is repeated
three times in those chapters.