Justified not Petrified:
Regarding the Divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ, He says of Himself in
Revelation 1:8:
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.
This is quite clear.
And for the hearing impaired, He repeats
this in the 13th verse of the 22nd chapter.
Genesis 3:1 "Did God really
say?"
Indeed He did.
“The 5-volume
Expositor's Greek New Testament ranks among the most important commentaries on the Greek text of the New Testament since the turn of the century [or since 1901 in other words].” - Vol. 5, p. 340,
The Expositor Greek Testament, edited by Rev. W. Robertson Nicoll, 2002 printing tells us that
pantokrator (‘almighty/all-powerful’) is
always used for God, but
not Christ, in Revelation [as it is in the
entire NT and the Greek OT Septuagint, in fact] and that includes Rev. 1:8, of course.
And, in fact, the best NT texts say at 1:8 -
(NASB) Revelation 1:8 "I am the Alpha and the Omega," says the Lord
God, "who is and who was and who is to come, the
Almighty."
“Lord God” also always refers to the Father (YHWH) in the NT and the OT Septuagint.
Rev. 22:8-16.
John is identified as the speaker in 22:8. The angel speaks in (:9). The angel apparently continues speaking in (:10). The angel
may be still speaking in (:11) --- or it could be John or even someone else (as implied in verse 10 in the
NAB, 1970 ed.).
Now is the
angel still speaking in (:12) or is it
God, or is it
Jesus, or even
John? There is simply no way of telling who the speaker is from any of the early Bible manuscripts. It’s entirely a matter of translator’s choice. Some translators have decided it is the angel who continues to speak, and they punctuate it accordingly. So the Trinitarian-translated
NASB,
JB, and
NJB use quotation marks to show that these are all words spoken by the
angel.
However, the equally trinitarian
NKJV, NEB, REB, RSV, and
NRSV show by their use of quotation marks that someone else is now speaking in verse 12. Most Bibles indicate that the person who spoke verse 12 (whether God, angel, Jesus, or John) also spoke verse 13 (“I am Alpha and Omega”).
Now the big question is: Is it clear that the speaker of verses 12 and 13
continues to speak? Some Bibles indicate this. But other highly respected trinitarian translations do not!
The
RSV, NRSV, NASB, NEB, REB, NKJV, and
NAB (1991 ed.) show (by quotation marks and indenting) that Rev. 22:14 and 15 are not the words of the speaker of verses 12 and 13 but are
John’s words. (
The Jerusalem Bible and the
NJB show us that the angel spoke all the words from verse 10 through verse 15.) Then they show Jesus as a
new speaker beginning to speak in verse 16.
So, if you must insist that the person speaking just before verse 16 is the same person who is speaking
in verse 16, then, according to the trinitarian
RSV, NRSV, NASB, NEB, REB, NKJV, and
NAB (1991 ed.) Bibles, you are saying
John is
Jesus!!! (According to the
JB and
NJB you would be insisting that the
angel is
Jesus!)
Even the
KJV translators have shown by their use of the word “his” in verse 14 that they didn’t mean that Jesus was the same speaker as the Alpha and Omega. The speaker of verse 13 is Almighty God (the Father alone). The comment in verse 14 of these Bibles (as literally translated from the Received Text) explains the importance of doing “
His Commandments” (not “
My Commandments”)! Therefore the speaker of verse 14 is obviously
not God as clearly stated by those Bibles which were translated from the Received Text, e.g.,
KJV; NKJV; KJIIV; MKJV; Young’s Literal Translation; Webster Bible(by Noah Webster);
Revised Webster Bible; and Lamsa’s translation (
Holy Bible From the Ancient Eastern Text).
So we can easily see that there is no reason to say
Jesus spoke the words recorded at Rev. 22:13 (or the above-named
trinitarian Bibles would surely have so translated it!) and, in fact, the context really identifies the speaker as being the same person who spoke at Rev. 1:8, God Almighty, Jehovah, the
Father.
...................
The above contains portions from
my original research later posted on-line at several places.
And it's mostly wrong anyway.
It's simple to
say something is wrong (as in post #61 above) -
show me what's wrong! If it
really is wrong, I really want to fix it!
