ALPHA AND OMEGA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21360, 13 June 1931, Page 21

ALPHA AND OMEGA

Written for the Otago Daily Times. By the Rev. D. Gardner Miller.

Whatever men may say about the Christian religion—to its detriment especially—they cannot dismiss Jesus Christ. One great sceptic who patronised Christ by writing a biography of Him admitted tnat Christ had become so truly the corner-stone of humanity that to tear His name from this world were to shake it to its foundations.

Not ..only does Christ persist, but men involuntarily line themselves up either on His sido or against Him. He has become an incarnate conscience. From ,Plato philosophy has rested and worked upon the maxim that the unexamined life is unlivable. That is true. If it were not true, man would not be' better than a sheep.' And when life is examined you find the persistent Christ claiming your allegiance. He cannot be hidden, and the verdict of history proves it. To Christ many names have been given, from imposter to Lord. Men find that they must put Him in some category, and after He’has been neatly labelled, they find that He is bigger than their definition. It has been left, however, to one writer possessing the seer’s gift to sum up Christ in terms that are unique. The writer is he who gave ‘a greatly distorted society a little pamphlet called ‘ The Revelation.” A “ tract for the times ” we would call it when we remember the purpose for which it was written and the conditions that called it into being. A " timeless message ” we should call it when we recall its piercing insight and its unshackled hope. In his little " tract ” the writer, whose main—indeed, only—concern is the place of Christ in Heaven and on earth, aptly and with prophetic daring puts Christ in a 'category as wide and as boundless as the universe. He says Christ_ is the "Alpha and Omega,” the beginning and the ending. Of course, it is at onbe evi-, dent that the terms he uses are those that 1 begin and close tile Greek alphabet, Alpha being the first letter and Omega the final. On three occasions he' uses this category, and nowhere else in the Bible do you .find it. * ' - The beginning and ending, the start and the finish—what does it mean? Simply this, that all life is summed up in Christ, th,at the purposes of God for both man and the universe find their explanation in the Man whom men cannot get rid of. It is a daring thought, but it is also the basic fact of Christianity* and without it Christianity would be a bundle of powerless platitudes.

Christ the Alpha! The moment you think of Christ as the "beginning,” without whom nothing was made that was made, that moment you must dismiss any idea that may have crept into your mind that Christ was a kind of fortunate chance that simply happened within the pages of history. Listen to T. R. Glover: "God must have' thought about Jesus ahead of the time. What is the alternative? Can we really picture God in the style of a celestial Mr Micawber, ‘waiting for something to turti up,* till unexfectedly, through the unforeseen action, suppose, of natural laws, Jeaus is thrown up on the surface of things, a happy chance, that enables some of God's ideas to be fulfilled'! —a great piece of luck for God? The thought is impossible; it negates the very idea of Goa.” Christ, the most wonderful character in history, the supreme transformer of human life, is no accident, no chance,, no blunder., God does not speak in riddles. He speaks in the plain accents of the Man whom He fore-knew, whose life and death and resurrection were not accidents but came within the scope of the Divine Purpose—the Man who still dominates the world. These is no possible answer to the riddle of the universe apart from Christ.

I do not assert that the universe becomes like a child’s copy book simply because Christ appeared in the fulness of time, but I do assert that the universe becomes intelligible because of the light thrown by Christ upon the mighty screen on which is depicted the life of all who live and more and have their bring within the universe., I find a deep-seated joy in my heart and a satisfying affirmation in my mind when I realipe that the redeeming death of Christ was not an after-thought, that His victorious life in those who love and trust Him is not a delusion, but that in the very beginning—in the Alpha of the world—the Lamb of God was One with the Father. "I am the first,” says Jesus, and all creatitm says “Amen.” 1 ;.¥ ¥ ¥

Christ the Omega! The last as well as the beginning! All things will find'their consummation in, Him. That is what the New Testament teaches, and it is what Christian experience feels must bo and, therefore, te true. Jesus did not come to reduce life to \vacuity, but to fill it with God. The most daring statements He uttered were about God. He saw more clearly than any other what the purposes of God were and how eager human nature was to “close” with God. He stated that He was the "pledge” of God to the human race, that through Himself men could not only realise their highest and best, but that also they could see God in action. “ Between Christ and God men can no longer distinguish.” Not only so, ■ but, because men see God in Him, Christ is the pledge of human immortality. It is an amazing and an astounding claim for.the writer of “Revelation” to make that Jesus is the “Alpha and the Omega.” He makes life intelligible, tranfornis death and, on His revelation _of God, pledges to men the reality of immortality. This Jesus belongs to no sect, or creed, or party. "Jesus Christ was no mere private object of devotion for a little clique here or an individual soul there: He was diving the nations and sifting out the world. Christ became not one to be languidly accepted or curiously selected among objects of man’s worship, but the final challenge to conscience and intelligence.” He is the “ Alpha and Omega ” because He is of cosmic significance, i “ I am the Inst,” says Jesus. The final word rests with Him, not us. His love outlasts everything but itself. To Him shall all men bow. ' \