Christ the Alpha and Omega.
I. Christ is the Alpha and Omega in relation to Christianity and providence. Christianity is at this day the great upholder of Theism in the world. It has unspeakably distanced Judaism, whose testimony against idolatry it has taken up, and also Mahometanism, whose witness for the unity of God is nowhere going forth with visible conquering power. But Christianity is more than simple Theism. There is a Trinity in its unity, and this gives it a richness, a grandeur, an adaptability to the fallen state of man, of which mere Theism is incapable. Hence the Son shines in the Christian firmament as the true God along with the Father and the Holy Ghost, and thus the Divine works of creation and providence are connected with His name. Over the wide universe everything shall at last be found to be under Christ's feet, not necessarily in the way of loyal subjection, but in the way of bearing witness to one ascendant will, which orders all things, even evil, for the best.
II. Christ is the Alpha and Omega in relation to redemption. He is the Alpha and Omega in regard to redemption (1) as a Divine saving plan. We cannot ascend to the origin of this plan, for it is from eternity. But, as far as we can rise, Christ is seen to be its fountain-head, and with His purpose of devotement it is bound up. (2) As a personal Christian experience. When is it that any One of us becomes a Christian? Is it not when Christ draws near and talks to us, as to the disciples on their way? We have no experimental Christianity apart from Him. (3) As a collective spiritual history. Christianity was never intended to be a solitary experience or a multitude of single experiences. It was to be a society, a Church. And He who bears up the Church so long in such a world must be nothing less than Divine. It was the saying of Voltaire that Christianity would not survive the nineteenth century; but what has the nineteenth century not done for Christianity? It has sent the Gospel anew into all the world. It has gathered in the islands of the South, and shaken the mighty pagan faiths of India, China, and Japan. It has stirred up its missionaries from the far West to preach the old faith in Egypt and in Palestine, and where the disciples first received the Christian name. It has devoted its noblest children to face death for Christ in depths of Africa which Voltaire never heard of; and it has even employed the press at Ferney that printed his own works, and, it may be, this very prophecy against the Gospel, to publish in new tongues the true oracles of God. (4) Considered as an endless development. When we speak of eternity, we feel that we are dealing with a quantity which, whether as applied to man's natural endowments or destiny in Christ, overtasks all our powers alike of conception and description. Christ "openeth, and no man shutteth," holding in His hands "the golden key that opes the palace of eternity."
J. Cairns, Christ the Morning Star, and Other Sermons,p. 18.
Reference: Revelation 22:13. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. ix., No. 546.