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Echoes of Revelation
Revelation never quotes the Old Testament outright, yet no New Testament book refers to it more. See both texts side by side, why they don’t match, and what John does with them.
Revelation 1:18, the living one, alive forever
Living forever and ever was a way the Old Testament spoke of God; the risen Jesus says it of himself.
Revelation 1:18, in every translation this tool compares.
Some phrases are kept for one person, like a family motto. In Daniel, God is the one who lives forever. Moses' song has God swear as one who lives forever. Jesus says he is the living one, dead once and now alive forever and ever. He takes a phrase kept for God, and adds that he died.
Living forever, said of the one who speaks. In Daniel 12:7 the man in linen swears by him who lives forever.
In the Old Testament the phrase belongs to God, who never dies. Jesus says I died, and look, I am alive. The forever life comes after a death, which no Old Testament text says of God.
Beale reads the phrase as another claim to deity, joined to the resurrection. The ever-living one died to free his people. Churches facing death are told that the one who holds their lives has been through death and come out.
Not a single quoted verse. The phrase recurs in several places, so the echo is possible, not clear.
Beale counts this as one more claim to deity, because living forever is a phrase the Old Testament keeps using of God: Deuteronomy 32:40, Daniel 4:34 in Theodotion, Daniel 12:7, and Sirach 18:1. He reads the threefold living, dead, living of 1:18 as modeled on the threefold name of 1:4 and 1:8. The NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible notes that the risen Christ lives forever like God, citing Daniel 4:34. The grade is possible: the phrase is general, and two sources name it.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 1:18
- NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, note on Revelation 1:18
