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“Watchman, what of the night?” "The hour has come, the hour is
striking and striking at you, אֵל [Excerpt from XXXVI
- 11 (03)] Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God (El). (Ps. 90:1-2) This prayer
of Moses the man of God is addressed to a single Deity - EL. Yet in the preface
of Psalm 90, Moses is declared to be a man of the Gods הָאֱלֹהִים - plural with
article, the same designation for God that he used in Genesis 1:1 without the
article. To whom then is he praying? The One he knew on a personal basis -
"face to face" (Deut. 34:10); the I AM of
the burning bush. This One has been and is from "everlasting to
everlasting" (from eternity to eternity), the Logos who "was (hn) with God" (John 1:1-2). "He is before all things, and by Him all things consist" (Col. 1:17). "All things were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that was made" (John 1:3). At some point back in the billions of light years of the past, the Word began creation. At that point, He was (hn). The human mind cannot perceive it, yet there are those who propose to define what took place in the silence of that eternity. These would do well to remove their shoes from off their feet, recognizing that they are walking on holy ground, for only the Holy Ones existed. I am
the first and the last, (I am) he that liveth; and
was dead; and, behold, I am alive forever more and have the keys of hell and of
death" (Rev.
1:17-18). In this
divine testimony of Himself, the I AM is telling us
something if we have a mind that can perceive it. The last part of verse 17,
and verse 18 as quoted above constitute a single sentence in the Greek text.
John is quoting the exact words of the risen Lord. In Revelation a contrast,
but also a parallel, is given between Him who is "alive for evermore"
and the Almighty. Of the Almighty it is written: I am
Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and
which was, and which is to come, the Almighty. (Rev. 1:8). Yet we find, that the I AM claims the same self designation - Alpha and Omega - and combines the concepts of "the first and the last" and "the beginning and the end" as one in Himself. (Rev. 22:13). The only differentiation between the two revelations of the Gods is that One, the I AM, was "dead" but now is alive forevermore and has "the keys of hell and of death." It is also interesting to observe that when John describes the Almighty stating that He "was," he uses the same verb form as he uses to define the existence of the Word in John 1 - hn - the Greek imperfect tense of "to be" which denotes continuous action in past time. We may speculate on "the first and the last," the "Alpha and Omega" but the simple self-declaration of the One who was dead is that He is the Living One - 'oVwn (a present participle) - defining I AM. In this revelation we stand before the mysterious love which He who was equal with God manifested in emptying Himself so as to die that He might open the grave to the fearful sons and daughters of Adam. (Phil. 2:6-8; Heb. 2:14-15). Yet today,
in the community of Adventism we are faced with the blasphemous denial of the
eternal Deity of the Lord Jesus Christ under the guise of rejecting the Roman
doctrine of the Trinity. One may be perfectly
right in denying the teachings of Thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the
high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to
revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones. Isaiah 57:15 |