The Almighty

Revelation 1:8:  “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.”

            The Greek word for ‘Almighty’ is pantokrator.  This term is found also in 4:8; 11:17; 15:3; 16:7; 21:22.  According to Malina the term literally means “‘Controller of Everyone and Everything'” (Malina, 261).

            The like term polokrator was used in the Hellenistic cultures to designate the ‘god’ who exercised control over the pole of the universe, upon which the whole heavens and earth apparently turned.  The word ‘pole’ meant “that central pivot plus all the sky connected with it that rotated around the earth due to the power applied at the pole” (ibid., 73).  Malina says:

These stars are known variously as simply the ‘Seven Stars’; or as ‘Septem Triones,’ the seven oxen that plow or thresh around the pole (in Latin, a common word for northern is ‘seven-oxen-ward’ septemtrionalis); or ‘the Turner’ (ibid., 92).

The polokrator held the pivotal stars in his right hand (ibid., 262).  He is, therefore, a universal figure, not merely the Messiah of the small nation of Israel.

            It is this idea of the pole as the pivot point upon which the whole universe turns that we find an analogy with the Garner also as a place where the good grain is gathered, ( see Matthew 13:41; 24:31; Mark 13:27; John 11:52; Ephesians 1:10), for the oxen tread out the grain around just such a pole.

            Malina says that this polokrator is also identified with the zodiacal constellation of the Lamb/Ram, believed to be the first of the zodiacal “signs” (ibid.).  The ancients popularly believed that when the sky revolved to the position where the Lamb/Ram was again the first of the “signs” of the year, then the whole universe would be transformed.  By using the symbol of the polokrator, the Revelation is declaring that Jesus now occupies this position of power.  As the Lamb/Ram, it is the time for the transformation of the universe.