Aleph Tav, Alpha & Omega, Beginning and the End

ALEPH AND TAV Who Said "I Am the Alpha and Omega"? A Re-Examination of "The First and the Last" in the Book of Revelation A Doctrinal Treatise from the Desk of JOHN SHANE VAUGHN Founder and Apostolic Overseer The Apostolic Assemblies of the House of Israel (FHMI) First Harvest Ministries International — Bay St. Louis, Mississippi PREFACE: THE LYING PEN OF THE SCRIBES "How do ye say, We are wise, and the law of YAHWEH is with us? Lo, certainly in vain made he it; the pen of the scribes is in vain." — Jeremiah 8:8 Jeremiah did not accuse the scribes of forgetting the Word. He accused them of handling it — and in the handling, of falsifying it. The pen that was supposed to preserve became the pen that revised. The Book of Revelation closes with the most severe warning in all of Scripture against exactly this crime: "If any man shall add unto these things, YAHWEH shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book." — Revelation 22:18 Now hear this carefully. The phrase "I am Alpha and Omega" appears four times in the King James Version of Revelation. It should appear twice. One occurrence was inserted by a later hand, and one has been mis-assigned to the wrong speaker by a tradition determined to read the Trinity into a book that never taught it. When the two genuine occurrences are examined in their own context, both belong to one Speaker and one Speaker only: YAHWEH Elohim, the Almighty, the Father of YAHSHUA the Messiah. This treatise will prove that claim from the text, from the manuscripts, and from the Hebrew letters that the Greek translators buried. Let me say one thing before we begin, to the reader who fears that exposing the scribes will shake his confidence in the Word. It will do the opposite. "Study to shew thyself approved unto YAHWEH, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth" (2 Timothy 2:15). The command is to rightly divide — and you cannot rightly divide what you refuse to examine. Seeing where a later hand touched the text does not weaken the Word; it drives you deeper into it. Doubt is for the lazy. Diligence is for the approved. PART ONE: WHAT ALEPH AND TAV ACTUALLY MEAN The apostle John was a Hebrew. He thought in Hebrew, he prayed in Hebrew, and when he heard the voice from the throne declare a title of the Eternal One, that title was not spoken in Greek. We have Scripture's own witness on this point. When the glorified YAHSHUA spoke from heaven to Paul on the Damascus road — a man fluent in Greek, trained in Greek rhetoric, writing his letters in Greek — the voice spoke "in the Hebrew tongue" (Acts 26:14). Heaven does not address a Hebrew in Greek. If the voice to Paul came in Hebrew, the voice to John came in Hebrew, and the letters that voice named were not Alpha and Omega. "Alpha and Omega" is a translation — and a lossy one. Behind it stands Aleph and Tav, the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The Anchor Bible commentary on Revelation (Volume 38, page 379) says plainly what most pulpits will not: the Hebrew behind "the Alpha and the Omega" would be aleph and taw, and the commentator connects the pair to the Urim and Thummim — the sacred lots of the high priest by which the will of Elohim was determined — carrying the sense of all-encompassing. Adam Clarke, in Volume 6 of his Commentary (page 971), likewise recognized that Alpha and Omega are simply Aleph and Tav rendered into Greek. Clarke's own gloss on "the beginning and the ending" is worth quoting: as Aleph is the beginning of the alphabet, "so am I the author and cause of all things; as Tav is the end or last letter, so am I the end of all things, the destroyer as well as the establisher of all things." But the Hebrew letters carry more than sequence. Fabre d'Olivet, in The Hebraic Tongue Restored, demonstrated that every Hebrew letter is itself a declaration, and that this is a key to reading Scripture (see his pages 95, 98, 287, and 465). By his analysis: •ALEPH stands for UNITY — the undivided One. This is the letter that opens echad in the Shema: "Hear, O Israel: YAHWEH our Elohim, YAHWEH is one" (Deuteronomy 6:4). •TAV stands for PERFECTION — completion, the finished mark. It is the letter Ezekiel saw set upon the foreheads of the faithful (Ezekiel 9:4), the sign of a thing brought to its end. So the title is not merely "the beginning and the ending" as though the Speaker were describing His position on a timeline. The title is "I am Unity and Perfection." The undivided One in whom all things begin, and the finished Perfection in whom all things are completed. That is a description of the Eternal, self-existent YAHWEH — the One who is the period at the end of every sentence. It is not a description of a Son who was begotten in the womb of Miriam, who died, and who was raised. When the Hellenizers reduced Aleph-Tav to Alpha- Omega and then paraphrased it as "beginning and end, first and last," they created a verbal bridge by which the title of the Eternal could be quietly walked across to the Son. We are going to tear that bridge down. PART TWO: WHO IS SPEAKING IN THE BOOK OF REVELATION? The most fundamental error in the reading of Revelation is the assumption that one voice — "Jesus" — speaks the whole book. The very first verse forbids that assumption. "The Revelation of YAHSHUA the Messiah, which YAHWEH gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John." — Revelation 1:1 Read the chain of custody. YAHWEH gives the revelation to YAHSHUA. YAHSHUA sends it by His angel. The angel delivers it to John. Four links, in descending order of authority. The one who speaks to John is a messenger, and a messenger speaks the words of the one who sent him. This is not a new mechanism invented for the Apocalypse. It is the oldest mechanism in the Bible. I have set out the full case in my booklet Who Was the Angel of the Lord in the Old Testament?, and I will only summarize it here. YAHWEH told Moses, "Behold, I send an Angel before thee... beware of him, and obey his voice... for my name is in him" (Exodus 23:20-21). That Angel spoke from the bush in the first person — "I am the Elohim of thy father" (Exodus 3:6) — and Stephen, under the Spirit, confirms it was "an angel of YAHWEH" who appeared and spoke there (Acts 7:30-35, 38). Isaiah calls him "the Angel of His Presence" who saved Israel (Isaiah 63:9). He is Israel's appointed regent — for when the Most High divided the nations by the number of the sons of Elohim, He kept Jacob as His own portion (Deuteronomy 32:8-9) and governed that portion through one heavenly prince, the one Daniel names: "Michael... the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people" (Daniel 12:1). A messenger with YAHWEH's name in him speaks as YAHWEH without being YAHWEH. That is agency, not identity — and it is the single key that unlocks every "I" in the Book of Revelation. So when Revelation opens with "his angel" sent to John, the Hebrew reader does not ask which angel. He knows. The same Messenger who carried the Name before Israel under the first covenant carries the words of the Father and the Son to the assemblies under the renewed one. And exactly as at the bush, his first-person "I" belongs to the One who sent him. Throughout the book this messenger carries words from YAHWEH and words from YAHSHUA, and the faithful reader must do what the Hebrew mind always did: identify the speaker by the content and the signature, not by the punctuation, because there was no punctuation. John himself sets the pattern in his greeting: "Grace be unto you, and peace, from him which is, and which was, and which is to come; and from the seven Spirits which are before his throne; and from YAHSHUA the Messiah, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead." — Revelation 1:4-5 Two distinct sources of grace. First, Him which is, and which was, and which is to come. Second, YAHSHUA the Messiah, the faithful witness, the first begotten of the dead. John does not blur them. He lists them. And then, so no one can miss it, John tells us the relationship between the two: "Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto his Elohim and Father; to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever." — Revelation 1:5-6 YAHSHUA has an Elohim. YAHSHUA has a Father. The One who "is, and was, and is to come" is the Elohim and Father of YAHSHUA. Hold that phrase. It is the key that unlocks every "Alpha and Omega" in the book. PART THREE: REVELATION 1:8 — THE FATHER SPEAKS Verse 7 is the messenger directing John's eyes to the Son: "Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him." — Revelation 1:7 The one who "cometh with clouds" and was "pierced" is YAHSHUA. No one disputes it. Then verse 8 sets the Father's seal upon that promise: "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith YAHWEH Elohim, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty." — Revelation 1:8 Notice three things. First, the oldest Greek manuscripts do not read merely "saith the Lord." They read kyrios ho theos — "the Lord God," which in the mouth of a Hebrew prophet is nothing other than YAHWEH Elohim. This is the LORD GOD of Genesis 2, of Exodus, of the prophets. Second, the Speaker identifies Himself as "which is, and which was, and which is to come." That is precisely the title John assigned in verse 4 to the first source of grace — the One distinguished from YAHSHUA, the One who is YAHSHUA's Elohim and Father. Third, the Speaker calls Himself the Almighty — ho pantokrator. Search the Book of Revelation from the first chapter to the last. This title is used nine times. It is applied to the One on the throne, to "the Lord God Almighty," to Him "which was, and is, and is to come" — and never once to the Lamb. The Lamb stands before the throne of the Almighty (Revelation 5:6-7). The Lamb takes the book out of the right hand of the Almighty. The Almighty does not hand a scroll to Himself. Revelation 1:8 is YAHWEH speaking of Himself. This cannot be made any plainer than the text has already made it. PART FOUR: REVELATION 1:11 — THE INTERPOLATION Now watch the pen of the scribes go to work. Here is the King James Version: "I John, who also am your brother, and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of YAHSHUA the Messiah, was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of YAHWEH, and for the testimony of YAHSHUA the Messiah. I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet, saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last: and, What thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches which are in Asia." — Revelation 1:9-11 Notice first that John changes the speaker in verse 9. Verse 8 ended with the Almighty speaking. Verse 9 begins "I John." That is the ancient signature — the only way, in a manuscript without quotation marks, to tell the reader that a new voice has taken up the narrative. Remember this device. We will see it again in chapter 22. Notice second that John once more separates "the word of YAHWEH" from "the testimony of YAHSHUA." Two witnesses. Two testimonies. One messenger carrying both. Now to the words in bold: "I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last." These words are not in the Book of Revelation. They were not written by John. •They are absent from Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Alexandrinus, the oldest complete Greek witnesses to the Apocalypse. •John Gill, no enemy of orthodoxy, recorded in his Exposition that the clause is "not in the Alexandrian copy, the Complutensian edition, the Vulgate Latin, Syriac, and Ethiopic versions." •The United Bible Societies' Greek New Testament and the Nestle-Aland critical text omit the phrase without even listing it as a rejected variant. It is not a disputed reading. It is a non-reading. It exists only in a handful of late medieval manuscripts and in the Textus Receptus that was assembled from them. Ask yourself why a scribe would insert those particular words in that particular place. Look at what immediately follows. In verses 12 through 18, John turns to see the voice, and he beholds "one like unto the Son of man" — the glorified YAHSHUA — who says, "I am the first and the last: I am he that liveth, and was dead" (Revelation 1:17-18). By planting "I am Alpha and Omega" into the mouth of the trumpet-voice at verse 11, the scribe built a seamless bridge from the Almighty's declaration in verse 8 straight into the vision of the Son in verse 17. The reader would now hear the Almighty's title and the Son's title in one breath, and conclude that the Almighty and the Son are one and the same. That was the purpose of the addition. It was not clarification. It was doctrine, smuggled in by the pen. And it is an abomination, because the book itself pronounces the plagues upon whoever adds to it. PART FIVE: REVELATION 21:6-7 — THE ONE UPON THE THRONE The second genuine occurrence of the title comes in the vision of the New Jerusalem: "And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new... And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely. He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his Elohim, and he shall be my son." — Revelation 21:5-7 The Speaker is explicitly identified: he that sat upon the throne. In the Apocalypse, the One who sits upon the throne is always distinguished from the Lamb, who is in the midst of the throne, before the throne, and who receives from the throne (Revelation 4:2-3, 5:1, 5:7, 5:13, 7:10). Two chapters later John will describe "the throne of Elohim and of the Lamb" — one throne, two occupants, the Father and the Son He has raised to sit with Him (Revelation 3:21). And listen to the promise the Speaker makes: "I will be his Elohim, and he shall be my son." This is the covenant language of 2 Samuel 7:14, spoken by YAHWEH concerning the seed of David: "I will be his father, and he shall be my son." It is the language of a Father adopting sons. YAHSHUA Himself, when He speaks to the overcomer in this same book, does not say "I will be your Elohim." He says, four times in a single verse, "my Elohim": "Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my Elohim... and I will write upon him the name of my Elohim, and the name of the city of my Elohim, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my Elohim." — Revelation 3:12 The Speaker in Revelation 21:6 has no Elohim above Him. He is the Elohim of the overcomer. The Speaker in Revelation 3:12 has an Elohim above Him and names Him four times. These are not the same person, and only a mind that has been trained to ignore the text could confuse them. Revelation 21:6 is YAHWEH the Father speaking. He alone is Aleph and Tav, Unity and Perfection. Through His firstborn Son He gives the water of life freely, and through His firstborn Son He gives the inheritance — but the inheritance is His, the sonship is His to confer, and the title is His alone. PART SIX: REVELATION 22:13 — THE MIS-ASSIGNED SPEAKER Here I will part company with some who have written on this subject before me, because I will not defend a true doctrine with a false claim. It has been circulated that Revelation 22:13 is a textual addition like 1:11. It is not. The phrase "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last" is present in Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Alexandrinus. (Codex Vaticanus cannot be cited either way — it does not contain the Book of Revelation at all.) Any footnote claiming the verse is "omitted" in the ancient texts refers to variations in the order of the phrases, not to the absence of the title. The verse is genuine. Our argument must rest, and does rest, on something stronger than a manuscript variant: the identity of the speaker. Read the passage as John wrote it — one continuous flow with no quotation marks: (6) "And he said unto me, These sayings are faithful and true: and YAHWEH Elohim of the holy prophets sent his angel to shew unto his servants the things which must shortly be done. (7) Behold, I come quickly: blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this book. (8) And I John saw these things, and heard them. And when I had heard and seen, I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel which shewed me these things. (9) Then saith he unto me, See thou do it not: for I am thy fellowservant... worship Elohim. (10) And he saith unto me, Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book... (12) And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be. (13) I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. (14) Blessed are they that do his commandments... (16) I YAHSHUA have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star." Who is the "he" who "said unto me" in verse 6? The angel — the same angel John tries to worship in verse 8, who refuses in verse 9. That angel, in verse 7, says "Behold, I come quickly." The angel is not coming quickly. He is delivering the words of the One who is. This is exactly how a messenger of YAHWEH has always spoken: in the first person of the Sender. The Angel of YAHWEH said to Moses from the bush, "I am the Elohim of thy father" (Exodus 3:2, 6). Nobody concludes the angel was Elohim. Everybody understands that a messenger carries the "I" of the one who sent him. So when the same messenger says in verses 12 and 13, "Behold, I come quickly... I am Alpha and Omega," the question is not what did the angel say but whose words was he carrying. And the text answers in verse 14: "Blessed are they that do his commandments." Not "my" commandments — his. The messenger has just delivered a first-person declaration and immediately reverts to speaking of the Sender in the third person. The "I am Alpha and Omega" of verse 13 is the same "I am Alpha and Omega" of 1:8 and 21:6 — the Almighty's own title, restated at the close of the book exactly as it was stated at the opening, so that the beginning and the end of the Apocalypse are sealed with the same divine signature. Then verse 16: "I YAHSHUA." This is the signature device. It is the identical construction to "I John" in Revelation 1:9, which every reader recognizes as a change of speaker immediately after the Almighty's declaration in 1:8. No one on earth believes John was claiming to be the Alpha and Omega because "I John" follows verse 8. Yet the same reader, arriving at chapter 22, is told that "I YAHSHUA" in verse 16 proves YAHSHUA spoke verse 13. That is not exegesis. That is a conclusion looking for a verse. "I YAHSHUA" is where YAHSHUA's own voice enters, and what does He say of Himself? Not "I am Aleph and Tav." Not "I am the Almighty." He says: "I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star." The Son of David. The Seed promised to the fathers. The one who rises. That is YAHSHUA's confession of Himself, and it is a confession of sonship, not of eternity. PART SEVEN: "THE FIRST AND THE LAST" — THE SON'S TITLE, AND WHAT IT MEANS Someone will object: "But YAHSHUA does call Himself 'the first and the last' in Revelation 1:17 and 2:8. And YAHWEH says in Isaiah 44:6, 'I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no Elohim.' So the titles overlap." I welcome the objection, because the answer settles the matter. Every time YAHSHUA is called "the first and the last" in Revelation, the title is immediately defined by death and resurrection: "I am the first and the last: I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore." — Revelation 1:17-18 "These things saith the first and the last, which was dead, and is alive." — Revelation 2:8 YAHSHUA is "the first" because He is "the first begotten of the dead" (Revelation 1:5), "the firstborn among many brethren" (Romans 8:29), "the firstfruits of them that slept" (1 Corinthians 15:20). He is "the last" because He is "the last Adam" (1 Corinthians 15:45) — the final and finished Man in whom the plan of salvation is brought to its goal. His "first and last" is bounded by a grave on one side and a resurrection on the other. It is a title of accomplishment. It was earned in the Jordan, at the altar, and in the tomb. YAHWEH's "first and last" in Isaiah 44:6 and 48:12 is bounded by nothing. It is followed by "beside me there is no Elohim." It is the title of the Uncaused, the One who never was dead and never can be. When YAHSHUA says "I was dead," He has, in that very sentence, told you He is not the Speaker of Isaiah 44. And here is the doctrine that ties it all together. Everything YAHSHUA possesses, He was given. "The glory which thou gavest me I have given them" (John 17:22). "All power is given unto me" (Matthew 28:18). "Him hath Elohim exalted with his right hand" (Acts 5:31). "I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne" (Revelation 3:21). The Son shares the Father's throne, the Father's glory, the Father's name, the Father's authority — as a gift, as an inheritance, as the reward of an overcomer. His brethren are promised the very same seat on the very same terms (Revelation 3:21, Romans 8:17). A given glory is glorious beyond words. But it is not the native glory of the Giver, and the one thing the Giver never hands off is His own identity as the Uncaused One. YAHSHUA is first and last among the redeemed. YAHWEH is Aleph and Tav, period. PART EIGHT: WHY IT MATTERS Some will say this is a quarrel over letters. It is not. The apostle Paul told us exactly where the plan of the ages ends: "Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to Elohim, even the Father... And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that Elohim may be all in all." — 1 Corinthians 15:24, 28 The Son delivers the kingdom up. The Son is subject to Him. Elohim — the Father — is the One who ends up "all in all." That is Tav. That is Perfection. That is the end of the sentence. If YAHSHUA were Himself the Aleph and Tav, there would be no one for Him to hand the kingdom up to, no one for Him to be subject to, and Paul's entire description of the end would be nonsense. And YAHWEH has told us, in advance, what He thinks of the transfer: "I am YAHWEH: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images" (Isaiah 42:8). Aleph and Tav is His glory — the confession that He alone is the Uncaused Unity in whom all things begin and the Perfection in whom all things end. To lift that title off the Father and lay it on the Son is not a harmless overstatement of the Son's honor. It is theft. It takes from the Father the one thing He said He would never give away, and it does so in the name of the Son who spent His whole ministry giving glory back to the Father (John 17:4). The scribes who added to Revelation 1:11, and the teachers who re-assigned Revelation 22:13, did not merely alter a title. They erased the Father from His own throne and seated the Son in His place — and in doing so they took from the Son the very thing that makes His victory glorious: that He is a Man, the Last Adam, who was dead and lives, who overcame, and who was given a seat beside His Elohim and Father. A Son who was always Aleph and Tav overcame nothing. A Son who was raised from the dead and exalted to the throne overcame everything, and He holds the door open for His brethren to follow. SUMMARY OF FINDINGS 1."Alpha and Omega" is the Hellenized shadow of "Aleph and Tav," whose Hebrew meaning is Unity and Perfection — the title of the Eternal, Uncaused One. 2.Revelation 1:8 — Spoken by "YAHWEH Elohim... the Almighty." Genuine. The Father. 3.Revelation 1:11 — "I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last" is a late interpolation, absent from the oldest Greek manuscripts and ancient versions, and excluded from every critical Greek text. It was inserted to fuse the Almighty's title with the Son's vision that follows. 4.Revelation 21:6 — Spoken by "he that sat upon the throne," who promises "I will be his Elohim." Genuine. The Father. 5.Revelation 22:13 — Genuine text, but spoken by the messenger carrying the Father's words, as verse 14 ("his commandments") shows; the change to YAHSHUA's own voice is signaled by "I YAHSHUA" in verse 16, exactly as "I John" in 1:9 signals the change after 1:8. When YAHSHUA speaks for Himself, He says "root and offspring of David." 6."The first and the last" is a title YAHSHUA holds in a defined and derivative sense — first begotten of the dead, last Adam — always tied in the text to His death and resurrection, and never to the Almighty's unbounded self- existence of Isaiah 44:6. 7.The voice that carries the "I" in Revelation is YAHWEH's messenger — the same Angel in whom His Name dwells (Exodus 23:21), identified in Scripture as Michael, the prince of Israel (Daniel 12:1). His first-person speech is agency, not identity, exactly as at the burning bush (Exodus 3; Acts 7:30-35). 8.The Book of Revelation never once calls the Lamb "the Almighty," and always distinguishes the Lamb from the One upon the throne, from whom the Lamb receives the scroll, the kingdom, and the seat. THE CHARGE Brethren of the FHaMIly, and every son and daughter of the House of Israel who reads this: return to the text. Do not read Revelation with a Nicene filter over your eyes. Track the speaker. Honor the signatures. Give to YAHWEH what is YAHWEH's — He alone is Aleph and Tav, Unity and Perfection, the Almighty, which is, and which was, and which is to come. And give to YAHSHUA what is YAHSHUA's — the Faithful Witness, the First Begotten of the Dead, the Last Adam, the Root and Offspring of David, the Bright and Morning Star, the Son who overcame and now sits with His Father in His Father's throne. The Father is not diminished by having a Son. The Son is not diminished by having a Father. Only the lying pen is diminished — and its plagues are already written. "Worship Elohim." — Revelation 22:9 Rev. John Shane Vaughn Founder and Apostolic Overseer The Apostolic Assemblies of the House of Israel (FHMI) P.O. Box 2757, Bay St. Louis, MS 39521 HisComingKingdom.com · TheTruthTv.tv