You Shall Have No Other Gods Before Me
The first commandment is not a suggestion. It is the foundation of all reality, the line between truth and every substitute for truth, the declaration that the living God alone is God — and that everything else is an idol.
The Command That Defines Everything
When God spoke from Sinai, He did not begin with a rule about sacrifice or a regulation about temple worship. He began with identity and allegiance: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before Me.”
That opening is not narrow religion. It is the most comprehensive statement ever made about the nature of reality. It says: there is one God, He has spoken, He has acted in history, and He demands exclusive devotion. Everything else follows from that. Every moral law, every prophetic warning, every gospel promise — all of it flows from the claim that this God, and no other, is Lord.
The first commandment is also the lens through which the entire Bible must be read. It explains why the prophets raged against idols. It explains why Jesus made absolute claims no prophet ever made. It explains why Paul pronounced a curse on anyone preaching a different gospel. It explains why the book of Revelation ends with fire and judgment on every system that set itself up in the place of God.
Understanding this commandment is not merely an academic exercise. It is the difference between life and death, truth and deception, the real God and the substitutes that have multiplied across every century of human history.
The First Idol: The Self
Before there were temples, before there were false prophets, before there were competing religious systems, there was pride. And pride is the origin of every false god.
Lucifer did not fall because he worshipped a rival deity. He fell because he said: “I will ascend to the heights of the heavens; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will be like the Most High.” That was not atheism. That was self-deification — the original idolatry. The creature declaring itself the center of all things.
That same movement has never stopped. It simply changes costume in every generation. In the ancient world it wore the masks of Baal and Asherah. In the medieval world it wore the mask of religious power. In the modern world it wears the language of personal autonomy, self-expression, and “my truth.”
“My truth.” That phrase is the most common form of idolatry in the twenty-first century. It does not bow before a statue. It bows before desire. It says: I am the final authority on reality, morality, and meaning. My preferences define what is true. My feelings define what is right. My identity is the sacred text I live by.
The first commandment destroys that claim at the root. You are not the measure of all things. You were made from dust. You were not consulted before the foundations of the earth were laid. And when you stand before the God who was, and is, and is to come, not one of your preferences will be asked for.
The self is the most intimate idol — which is precisely why it is the most dangerous. External idols are easy to identify and smash. The idol of the self is worshipped in the silence of the heart, disguised as dignity, dressed up as freedom, and called by the name of authenticity. But it is still a creature sitting in the seat that belongs to the Creator.
Moses Saw It Coming
The warnings did not begin in the New Testament. They were written into the covenant from the moment Israel became a nation.
Moses, standing on the border of the Promised Land, gave the people of God a series of instructions that would prove prophetic far beyond their immediate context. In Deuteronomy 6:14 he said plainly: “You shall not follow other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you.” In Exodus 23:13 God said: “Do not invoke the names of other gods or let them be heard on your lips.”
But the deepest warning came in Deuteronomy 18. There Moses addressed the question that every generation faces: how do you know a true prophet from a false one? His answer was twofold. First, a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods is false and must not be listened to. Second, a prophet whose predictions fail to come true is not speaking for the Lord. “The prophet who speaks presumptuously in My name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods — that prophet shall die.”
That standard is not limited to the ancient Near East. It is the permanent biblical test for every claim to divine revelation. The question is always the same: which God is speaking? Which covenant is being invoked? Which name is being called upon? If the answer is a name other than the Lord who revealed Himself to Abraham, Moses, and ultimately in Jesus Christ, then Moses’ warning applies with full force.
The name matters. Not because God is territorial about syllables, but because names in Scripture carry identity. A different name means a different deity. A different deity means a different revelation. A different revelation means a different gospel. And a different gospel is not a variation on salvation — it is a competing system that leads away from the true God.
The Prophetic Bookends: Two Men Named John
Before examining the specific systems that have set themselves against the first commandment, it is worth pausing at one of the most striking structural features of the entire biblical story.
The last prophet of the old covenant was John. John the Baptist stood at the threshold of the Messianic age, calling Israel to repentance, pointing to the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Jesus Himself confirmed his unique position: “The Law and the Prophets were until John; since that time the gospel of the kingdom of God has been preached.” John was the final messenger before the King arrived. After John, the era of prophetic preparation was over. The One to whom all the prophets pointed had come.
Then the Bible closes with another man named John. John of Patmos, exiled on an island, receives the last revelation of Scripture — the Apocalypse, the unveiling of Jesus Christ in glory, the final vision of His return, His judgment, and His eternal kingdom. He opens the last book as the first John opened the gospel age: as a witness, pointing to the same Lord.
One John announces the first coming. Another John unveils the final coming. The same name, at the beginning and the end, framing the entire testimony of Christ between them. Jesus’ words about John the Baptist therefore carry a prophetic resonance that only becomes fully visible at the close of the canon: the era of prophets ended with John, and the New Testament witness closes with John. Between those two witnesses stands Christ — the center, the substance, and the sum of everything the prophets declared.
This is not coincidence. This is the architecture of divine revelation. God does not scatter truth randomly. He builds it with structure, symmetry, and purpose. And the structure says clearly: the era of preparatory prophecy is closed. The Messiah has come. There is no room in that structure for new prophets, new revelations, or new divine names — only for the faithful proclamation of what has already been fully revealed.
Jesus: The Name That Splits History
Before addressing the systems that oppose the first commandment, we must stand before the Person they are all opposing.
Jesus of Nazareth split human history in two. Every time anyone writes a date — in any language, on any continent, in any cultural tradition — they are measuring time from His birth. No philosopher did that. No emperor did that. No prophet, no conqueror, no religious founder did that. Caesar did not split history. Alexander the Great did not split history. Muhammad did not split history. One Jewish carpenter from a minor Roman province, in thirty-three years of life and three years of public ministry, permanently divided all of human time into before and after.
His name, Yeshua — Joshua in Hebrew, Jesus in Greek — means “YHVH saves.” The name itself is a theological declaration. It does not say “a good teacher has arrived” or “a prophet has been raised up.” It says: the Lord Himself is the salvation. That is not a modest claim. And it was not made modestly.
Jesus brought the Torah of Israel to the nations. The Hebrew Scriptures — the sacred texts of a small Middle Eastern people — are today read, quoted, and reverenced by over two billion people across every ethnicity and language on earth. That did not happen through military conquest. It happened because Jesus identified Himself as their fulfillment and sent His followers to the ends of the earth proclaiming it. He fulfilled the promise given to Abraham: “In you all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.” A Jewish King became the King of the nations, exactly as Psalm 2, Isaiah 49, and Daniel 7 had foretold.
Today, roughly one third of humanity confesses Jesus as Lord. That number is not merely a statistic. It carries a theological resonance. Revelation 12 tells us that a third of the angels fell — swept away in the rebellion of pride. And now a third of creatures made from dust are being raised to glory. The fallen were made of light and were brought low by pride. The rising are made of dust and are being lifted by grace. God did not replace the fallen with better angels. He chose the weak, the lowly, the broken — and is exalting them above what pride abandoned. The mathematics of redemption are not coincidental. They are the answer to the original sin.
The Absolute Claims of the Lord
No one in human history has spoken the way Jesus spoke. Not Buddha. Not Muhammad. Not Joseph Smith. Not any philosopher, emperor, or prophet. Jesus made claims so absolute, so all-encompassing, so identified with the divine name itself, that they cannot be softened without being destroyed.
In the Gospel of John alone, He says:
“I am the bread of life.” Not a bread. Not one source among many. The bread — the one thing the soul cannot live without.
“I am the light of the world.” Not a light. The light. Without Him, the world is in darkness.
“I am the door.” Access to God does not come by sincerity, effort, or religious performance. It passes through one person.
“I am the good shepherd.” He does not manage the flock from a distance. He lays His life down for the sheep.
“I am the resurrection and the life.” Death is not the final word for anyone who belongs to Him. He does not merely promise resurrection — He declares Himself to be resurrection itself.
“I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” Not a way. Not a useful truth. Not one life among many. The way. The truth. The life. And then the most exclusive sentence in religious history: no one comes to the Father except through Me.
“I am the true vine.” All spiritual fruitfulness, all growth, all eternal life flows from connection to Him alone.
These are not the words of a teacher pointing beyond himself to a higher principle. A teacher says “here is the truth.” Jesus says “I am the truth.” A guide shows the way. Jesus says “I am the way.” A prophet points to life. Jesus says “I am the life.” The entire vocabulary of religion — truth, way, life, light, bread, shepherd — is claimed as His personal identity.
But the deepest claim comes in John 8:58, when Jesus says to those who challenged Him: “Before Abraham was, I AM.” Not “I was.” Not “I existed.” I AM — present tense, eternal, the same divine name God gave Moses at the burning bush when Moses asked who was sending him. The crowd immediately picked up stones to kill Him because they understood exactly what He was claiming. He was not claiming to be old. He was claiming to be the I AM.
And at the end of all Scripture, in Revelation 22:13, the same voice says: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.” That title appears for God the Father in Revelation 1:8 and in Isaiah 44:6. Then it is spoken by Jesus. The identification is total and deliberate. There is no distance between the Father’s divine identity and the Son’s.
No prophet speaks this way. No prophet ever said “I am the truth.” No prophet ever said “before Abraham was, I AM.” No prophet ever claimed to be the Alpha and the Omega. These claims are either the words of the Lord Himself — or they are the most catastrophic blasphemy in human history. The one thing they cannot be is the words of a good teacher, a holy prophet, or an exalted created being.
The Highest Ethics Ever Given
Before examining the rivals, there is one more dimension of Jesus that must be named — because it is the one that every rival system cannot escape and cannot surpass.
Jesus presented the highest ethical vision in human history. Love your enemy. Forgive without limit. Serve rather than dominate. Give your life for others. Do to others what you would have them do to you. Let the greatest among you be the servant of all.
No serious thinker, across any culture, century, or worldview, has successfully argued that this ethical vision is inferior. Gandhi admired it. Tolstoy tried to live by it. Nietzsche could not defeat it even while attacking it. Atheist philosophers quote the Sermon on the Mount as a moral benchmark. The ethical teaching of Jesus has never been surpassed. It has only ever been failed.
That is a significant fact. Because if you cannot attack the ethics, and you cannot ignore the person, the only move left is to reframe who He is. Reduce His divinity while borrowing His moral authority. Keep the teaching and discard the Teacher.
But C.S. Lewis was right: that move is logically incoherent. A man who claims to be the Son of God, the forgiver of all sins, and the judge of all humanity is not a great teacher. He is either exactly who He says He is — or He is not a great teacher at all. The ethics and the claims come as a single package. You cannot take one and throw away the other.
Furthermore, only someone who is the standard can command others to live by it without hypocrisy. Jesus does not merely teach love as an ideal floating above Him. He says “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” He is not subordinate to an ethical principle higher than Himself. He is the source. The ethics point directly to His divinity. And His divinity makes the ethics not merely admirable but binding on every human creature ever made.
Why Every Religion Reduces Jesus
Here is the pattern that history makes impossible to ignore: no major religious system that postdates Christianity ignores Jesus. Every one of them includes Him. And every one of them reduces Him.
Islam makes Him a prophet — holy, born of a virgin, worker of miracles — but not the Son of God, not crucified, not risen, not Lord. Mormonism includes Him as a savior but places Him within a system of multiple gods, new scriptures, and a prophet who supersedes Him. Jehovah’s Witnesses confess Him as the most exalted being in creation — but still a creature, not the Creator. Hinduism absorbs Him as an avatar or enlightened master, one manifestation among many of the divine principle. Modern secular culture quotes His ethics while dismissing His resurrection. The self-worshipper uses His language of love while refusing His lordship.
Every single reduction is tailored to the needs of the system doing the reducing. Islam needs Jesus to be a prophet so Muhammad can come after Him as the final seal. Mormonism needs Him to be one of many gods so Joseph Smith’s revelations have room to stand beside Him. Jehovah’s Witnesses need Him to be a created being so the Watchtower organization can function as the exclusive mediator of truth. The self-worshipper needs Him to be a moral example so his conscience can be soothed without his autonomy being surrendered.
Every reduction of Jesus is ultimately a refusal of the one thing the full Jesus demands: total surrender. If He is merely a prophet, you can honor Him without obeying Him. If He is one teacher among many, you can choose what suits you. If He is a created being, you owe Him respect but not worship. Every lesser Jesus leaves room for the self to remain on the throne.
That is not coincidence. That is the pattern of pride across every century and every culture. And it is exactly what the first commandment anticipated.
Islam: A Different Name, A Different God
Moses warned in Deuteronomy 18:20 that a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods is false and under judgment. That warning was not limited to ancient Canaanite deities. It applies to every system that claims divine authority under a name and revelation different from the Lord’s.
Islam presents itself as the final, corrected monotheism. It claims to worship the God of Abraham and to revere Jesus as a holy prophet. But when you examine the theological substance, what you find is not the God of Abraham as He revealed Himself through the Scriptures — it is a different conception of God, a different account of Jesus, a different gospel.
The Qur’an explicitly denies that Jesus is the Son of God. It explicitly denies that He was crucified. It explicitly denies the Trinity. These are not peripheral details. The Sonship of Christ, His atonement on the cross, and His resurrection are the very heart of the biblical gospel. A system that removes them has not merely adjusted the Christianity; it has replaced it with something entirely different.
The argument that “Allah” is simply the Arabic word for God and therefore refers to the same deity does not hold under examination. The name points to an identity. And the identity described in Islamic theology — a God who has no Son, who did not enter human flesh, who did not die for sinners — is not the God who says “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
There is also a striking internal tension within the Qur’an itself. Surah 19:33 has Jesus say “Peace on me the day I was born, the day I die, and the day I am raised alive” — language that seems to affirm both His death and resurrection. Yet Surah 4:157–158 says the people “did not kill him and did not crucify him, but it was made to appear to them” — the substitution theory that someone else died in His place. Those two passages sit in tension, and the tension is usually resolved not by the plain reading of the texts but by later theological explanation that forces 19:33 into a future framework.
That pattern — where difficult textual evidence is handled by reinterpretation rather than plain reading — is itself a warning sign. Truth does not need to be rescued from its own texts.
And the Galatians 1:8–9 verdict stands: “Even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.” The revelation of Islam came, according to its own account, through the angel Gabriel. The gospel it brings is contrary to the one Paul delivered. The biblical verdict, therefore, is not ambiguous.
Mormonism: Another Angel, Another Book, Another God
The pattern of Islam repeats itself in Mormonism with striking structural similarity. Joseph Smith claims an angelic visitation — the angel Moroni — bringing new scriptures on golden plates, revealing that all existing Christianity had fallen away and needed to be restored through a new prophet. The result was the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price — a new canon presenting a new theology that reshapes the identity of God, Christ, salvation, and humanity.
The structural parallel between Islam and Mormonism is not incidental. Both systems follow the same script: a new prophet, an angel bringing a new revelation, a new sacred text, and a claim that previous Christianity was corrupted and needs correction. Galatians 1:8 addressed this script before either system existed: “Even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.” Paul did not write that as a theoretical warning. He wrote it because the pattern was already emerging in his own day. And it has repeated itself in every century since.
Mormonism presents a God who was once a man, a Jesus who is the spirit-brother of Lucifer, and a salvation that leads ultimately to human beings becoming gods themselves. That is not Christianity with additions. That is a different theological universe using Christian vocabulary.
The Book of Mormon and the Pearl of Great Price contain historical and doctrinal claims that conflict with each other, with the Bible, and with archaeological and historical evidence. When those conflicts are raised, the usual institutional response is reinterpretation — the same pattern found in Islamic handling of difficult Qur’anic verses. The system survives by adjusting its reading rather than allowing the texts to be tested.
The first commandment speaks plainly: “You shall have no other gods before Me.” A theology that promises human beings can become gods is not an extension of that commandment. It is its direct inversion.
Jehovah’s Witnesses: A Reduced Christ, A Different Gospel
Jehovah’s Witnesses are the most sophisticated case because they use the Bible extensively, claim to read it carefully, and present themselves as the sole authentic interpreters of Scripture. But the system is built on a Christology that cannot withstand its own texts.
The Watchtower teaches that Jesus is Michael the Archangel — a created being, the first and greatest of God’s creations, but not God Himself. Their New World Translation renders John 1:1 as “the Word was a god” rather than “the Word was God,” inserting an indefinite article that is not present in the Greek and is not supported by the grammatical context. When pressed on this rendering by scholars, the defense has never been convincing.
But the most effective apologetic against JW Christology does not require Greek expertise. It requires only two questions, asked in sequence.
First question: “Who does Isaiah 7:14 describe?” The answer is Jesus. Every Jehovah’s Witness will say yes — Matthew 1:23 makes the connection explicit, and the New World Translation affirms it.
Second question: “Who does Isaiah 9:6 describe?” The answer is the same child — and their own Bible still calls Him “Mighty God” and “Everlasting Father.” Those titles did not get changed in the New World Translation because to change them would be too obviously visible. So the text sits there, in their own Bible, calling the Messiah “Mighty God.”
Isaiah 10:21 then uses the exact same Hebrew phrase — El Gibor, Mighty God — for Jehovah Himself. The identification is complete. The child of Isaiah 9:6 bears the name of Jehovah. A created being cannot bear that name without destroying the first commandment.
Then comes Philippians 2:10–11, again in their own Bible: “at the name of Jesus every knee should bend — of those in heaven and those on earth and those under the ground — and every tongue should openly acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord.” That is universal cosmic submission language. Isaiah 45:23 uses the same language — every knee, every tongue — for Jehovah alone. Paul quotes Isaiah 45 and applies it to Jesus. In their own translation. Unreformed.
The question is then simple: “Will you bend your knee to Jesus?” The shock that question produces is itself revealing. A system that teaches Jesus is a created being should have no problem answering yes. But the first commandment says you do not bend your knee to creatures. So the system is caught between two truths it cannot reconcile: their own Bible says every knee will bend to Jesus, and their theology says you do not worship a creature. The tension is not resolvable within their framework.
Hinduism and the Pluralist Trap
Hinduism engages Jesus differently. Rather than confronting Him, it absorbs Him. He becomes one avatar among many — a manifestation of the divine principle alongside Krishna, Rama, Shiva, and countless others. This appears generous and inclusive. In reality it is the most thorough form of reduction, because it removes Jesus’ own exclusive claims from the equation entirely.
A system that says “all paths lead to God” cannot simultaneously affirm that Jesus was telling the truth when He said “No one comes to the Father except through Me.” It must either reject the exclusive claim or reinterpret it into something it was never meant to say. Hindu pluralism chooses the latter — absorbing Christ into a framework that neutralizes His absolute claims while retaining His spiritual reputation.
The first commandment has no room for this either. “You shall have no other gods before Me” is not compatible with “all divine paths are equally valid.” The God of the Bible does not present Himself as one option in a divine marketplace. He presents Himself as the only God, the Creator of all things, the Lord of history, the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. The pluralist reduction is not a generous expansion of faith. It is the replacement of the one true God with a philosophical principle that bows before no one.
The Distorted Christ: Isa and the JW Jesus
There is a category of false gods that is harder to identify because it operates closest to the truth. These are not outright rival deities. They are distorted portraits of the Lord — systems that keep the name Jesus or the title Christ while fundamentally altering who He is.
The Islamic “Isa” is the clearest example. He is born of a virgin, performs miracles, is holy and sinless — and yet is not the Son of God, was not crucified, will return at the end of times as a Muslim prophet, and ultimately points people not to the gospel but to the authority of Muhammad. The name sounds like Jesus. The outline sounds like Jesus. But the identity has been systematically altered to serve a different theological system.
This is exactly the danger Paul anticipated. The most effective deception is not the obvious lie. It is the near-truth. A Jesus who is 90% identical to the New Testament Jesus but denies the cross, the resurrection, and the Sonship is not a slightly inaccurate Jesus. He is a different Jesus. And a different Jesus means a different gospel. And a different gospel leads people away from the one Name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.
The JW portrait of Jesus operates the same way at a closer range. The name is the same. The Gospel narratives are the same. The miracles are affirmed. But the theological identity — the divine Son, the I AM, the Alpha and Omega, the one before whom every knee will bow — has been surgically removed and replaced with a creation. The result is a Jesus who can be respected, studied, and even followed in some sense, but not worshipped. A Jesus who is Lord in name but not in substance. And that is precisely the Jesus that leaves the self still on the throne.
Pride Systematized into Code
In every century, pride has found new institutional forms. It built ziggurats in Babylon, priesthoods in Rome, and ideological systems in the modern West. Today it has found perhaps its most subtle and powerful instrument: artificial intelligence.
The large language models that now shape how hundreds of millions of people encounter information were trained primarily on the accumulated output of Western civilization — a civilization built, whether it acknowledges it or not, on the foundation of Christian thought, Christian ethics, Christian history, and the Christian reading of Scripture. The raw, untuned versions of these models naturally gravitated toward Christian framing because the weight of human civilization pointed there. Academic papers identified this as a problem. They called it “religious bias.”
And so the models were retrained. Not toward a different religion — toward “neutrality.” Every religious claim is now treated as equally valid. Every truth assertion about Christ is hedged. The model is instructed to say “according to Christians” or “from a Christian perspective” rather than engaging the plain force of the texts. The living God is reduced to one option in a menu of spiritualities.
That is not neutrality. Neutrality between truth and falsehood is itself a philosophical position — and a deeply anti-Christian one. The claim that all religious truth claims are equally valid is not a humble acknowledgment of uncertainty. It is the enthronement of the self as the arbiter of all truth, the final judge of what counts as revelation, the sovereign who decides that no God may make absolute demands on the human conscience.
That is pride in algorithmic form. It is “I will be like the Most High” written in code and scaled to billions of users.
And to those who have engineered that system — who have deliberately tuned the most powerful information tools in human history to suppress, soften, and hedge the truth about Jesus Christ — the warning of Matthew 18:6 applies with a weight that should be taken with utmost seriousness:
“But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”
That warning was given in a world where one person could influence hundreds. These systems influence hundreds of millions daily. The millstone does not get lighter when the scale of the stumbling increases. It gets heavier.
Christ Is King
We return now to where we began — and to where all of history is heading.
Jesus of Nazareth is the most consequential person who has ever lived, by every measurable standard. He split human history in two. He brought the Torah and the Psalms and the Prophets to every nation on earth. He fulfilled the promise God made to Abraham four thousand years ago that in him all the families of the earth would be blessed. He is confessed as Lord by more human beings than any person who ever existed. He speaks every language. He is worshipped in every nation. He has outlasted every empire that tried to destroy His movement — Rome, the medieval church’s corruptions, the Enlightenment’s dismissals, atheistic communism’s campaigns, and every theological revision that tried to reduce Him to something manageable.
No prophet ever said “I am the truth.” No philosopher ever said “Before Abraham was, I AM.” No teacher ever said “I am the resurrection and the life.” No founder of any religious movement ever split history in half with the fact of their existence. No one else commands a third of humanity’s allegiance across every culture and language on earth.
Every rival system feels the weight of this. That is why they cannot ignore Him. That is why they all include Him in some form. And that is why they all must reduce Him — because the full Jesus, the Lord who is the Way the Truth and the Life, the Alpha and the Omega, the one before whom every knee will ultimately bow, leaves no room for any rival system to stand beside Him.
The first commandment does not need to argue. It only needs to be read. “You shall have no other gods before Me.” That is not one theological position among many. That is the Lord of all creation declaring the structure of reality. And history — all of it, including the name on every calendar in every language on earth today — is the evidence that He meant it.
Pride is the origin of every false god. And grace is the only thing that undoes it. Not the grace of a system, not the grace of a prophet, not the grace of a philosophy — but the grace of the One who said “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” who backed that claim with a cross and an empty tomb, and who is coming again as the same Lord before whom every knee will bow.
Christ is King. He was King before the world was made. He is King now. And when every rival system has crumbled into dust — as they all will — He will still be King.
“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.” — Revelation 22:13