Day 6- Almighty

"I am the alpha and omega," said the Lord God, "who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty." [Revelation 1:8]

Today is our last day looking at this verse and we end with Jesus calling Himself the Almighty. This is an incredible claim and it is only made in the book of Revelation. Why only in this book, we might ask? Well, quite frankly, we have no other book in Scripture that talks of Jesus from a post-resurrection perspective. During His life on earth, His glory was veiled. Once He had triumphed over the grave, we see a different side to Jesus. Almighty.

According to the dictionary, almighty means "all powerful", "extreme" or "having unlimited power." In the majority of the Bible, we see this term only applied to God the Father, Jehovah. However, in this verse of Revelation, we observe Jesus doing exactly what the Pharisees were angry about in John 5: 18, making himself equal with God.

If we look at the rest of the book of Revelation, we find that Jesus is in charge of a whole lot of things. He is doling out rewards and punishments, giving commands, and making promises and a whole lot of claims. For instance, in Revelation 3: 7 we see that Jesus shuts doors no one can open and opens doors no one can shut. Sounds pretty "all powerful" to me! In Revelation 3: 21, Jesus tells us that he sat down with his Father "on HIS throne." In fact, in Revelation 5: 6, Jesus Himself is found standing in the center of the throne surrounded by worshipping elders and living creatures. Co-equal perhaps?

Though Revelation is the only book in Scripture where we get a heavenly look at the glory of Christ after the resurrection, we can observe hints that He is almighty throughout the gospel accounts as well. He has authority over wind and waves. Before Him, demons tremble and flee. He heals diseases. He walks on water and turns water into wine. He raises the dead. He makes the lame walk and the blind see. He prophesies the future. He extends forgiveness of sins. He tells His disciples that He has the authority to take up His life or to lay it down. And finally, He dies and three days later, breaks out of the tomb alive. So, let's recap. Even with His glory veiled, He clearly has power over nature, sickness, sin, spiritual beings, and death not to mention His uncanny insight into the future.

Jesus is Almighty, and, as we find in Revelation 7, that makes Him more than worthy- with the Father- of worship, most specifically for His act as the Lamb in which He had the power to stop what transpired, but instead, chose to lay down His life and allowed man to temporarily live under the false pretense that He was under their power and authority. There is no adequate comparison to what this must have demanded from Christ, but allow me an imperfect analogy: It would be like becoming a slug and letting a fellow slug kill me off while gloating about how mighty he is, all the while being well aware that I could have squashed him in an instant if I had chosen to do so. If I were in this type of position, I would not be able to remain silent and I probably would call down lightning from heaven to turn the slug into a pile of ash. Goes to show how unlike Christ I actually am.

Today, I praise Christ for veiling His glory and coming to earth as one of us so that He might save us. I also praise Him that His glory is no longer veiled and when He comes again (as we learned yesterday that He will!), the slugs will know where they stand before the Almighty.