ALPHA & OMEGA
“Alpha & Omega” was the focus of the ongoing series Above Every Name. Pastor Mark taught using the books of Genesis, John, and Revelation. He took us from the first line of Genesis to the last page of Revelation, A to Z, start to finish, explaining how God and Jesus are simultaneously the past, present, and future.
(Genesis 1:1) “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” We understand God as our creator but fail to comprehend God’s power of creation from the most infinitesimally perceivable quark to the largest known structure in the universe, the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall. Nothing has existed, is currently known, or will ever come to be except through the Almighty. Because we linearly experience time, we often struggle to fathom existence outside the constraints of our current consciousness and earthly bodies. Our daily lives don’t happen at the scale of a quark or a universe, making it difficult to absorb the immense capacity of God.
(John 1:1,3) “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He (Jesus) was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.” Jesus and the Holy Spirit have worked in concert with our Heavenly Father for all of time; neither the heavens nor the earth predates them as the Trinity. Another difficult concept to perceive is their eternality outside the curtailments of time. For us humans, time is the most precious finite resource we’re blessed with, and we cannot realize the infinity of eternity because it remains hidden from us.
(Revelation 22:13, 17b) “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End…Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes the free gift of the water of life.” Our physical presence on earth will end, but God has given us the path to eternal life that leads us to Jesus. (John 14:6) “Jesus said to him, I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”