This Is the Way... The Alpha and the Omega and Eternity
Why do seemingly civilized people seethe with unreasonable hatred? America wastes its time and
energy to try to understand why it is hated. What does the truth mean to you?
by Robin Webber
The Bible is a book framed in dynamic contrasts between what mankind has sown and reaped upon itself
since the beginning of time and what a loving Creator desires to offer His creation forever.
In the hustle and bustle of our everyday lives, we can mistakenly confuse the identities of these two
very different worlds if we fail to maintain a clear focus as to what is temporary versus that which is
truly permanent.
Getting sidetracked through mistaken identity is nothing new. In fact, it's been around a long time.
In the last century, an American tourist paid a visit to a renowned Polish rabbi, Hofetz Chaim. He was
astonished to see that the rabbi's lodging was only a simple room filled with books, plus a cot and table.
The tourist asked, "Rabbi, where is your furniture? Rabbi Chaim responded, "Where is yours?" The puzzled
American asked, "Mine? But I'm only a visitor here. I'm only passing through." The rabbi responded, "So
am I."
The humble rabbi in his unique manner clearly had an eye towards the future beyond this world of man's
cluttered past and mired present. There is no mistake about it—there is such a wonderful future ahead, so
awesome in revealed content, that it should become so real to us that everything else, when said and done,
is baggage—just stuff—not the destination.
The bookends of God's revelation
God designed startling contrasts in the Scriptures to anchor our spiritual moorings that are just as
blunt as the rabbi's reply to the tourist. This contrast is fully developed in the history of man as
recorded from its origins in Genesis through the prophecies of God in the book of Revelation.
Genesis literally means "beginnings" and Revelation or "the Apocalypse," as it is in the Greek,
signifies an unfolding or revealing. These two pivotal books might be called the bookends of God's
revelation to man as to what He is creating at both physical and spiritual levels, in the present as
well as the future. We might call them the alpha and the omega of what the Creator wants His human
creation to grasp.
