Nevertheless, the prophecy was given that the Holy Spirit would come like a "thief in the night" and would not be detected by those not awake (Mt 24,43; Lk 12,39; Rev 3,3). It would not be sufficient merely to speak of Jesus as "Lord, Lord" (Mt 7,22-23) nor to darken the doors of the church or temple (Jer 7,4) on every occasion, for the "temple" of the Lord is not, nor has it ever been, either a structure or an organization other than the higher components of the human being developed by its Ego out of the lower (cf. 2 Sam 7,4-17; Zech 6,12-15; Mal 3,1; Mt 26,61; Mk 14,58; 15,29; Jn 2,19; Acts 6,14; Rev 11,1). The particular task during Earth evolution is the transformation (perfection or purification; Mt 5,48; Mal 3,2) of the astral body into manas (manna) or Spirit Self (see I-9).

Let us consider the claim of the Lord to be the "Alpha and Omega." The phrase appears only in the works of two great biblical seers, he who is called Second Isaiah and he who calls himself John (Lazarus/John as shown in The Burning Bush, and more completely in The Disciple Whom Jesus Loved). They are as follows:⁹

Is 41,4: Who has performed and done this, calling the generations from the beginning? I, the Lord, the first, and with the last; I am He.

Is 44,6: Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts: "I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god."

Is 48,12: Hearken to me, O Jacob, and Israel, whom I called! I am He, I am the first, and I am the last.

Rev 1,8: "I am the Alpha and the Omega," says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.

Rev 21,6: And he said to me, "It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the fountain of the water of life without payment."

Rev 22,13: "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end."

The Bible story is itself fractal, part of the larger Alpha and Omega, subsumed under but not coextensive with it, for as we shall see, the Prologue of John's Gospel (Jn 1,1-18) excepted, the creation account (Gen 1-3) does not start at the real beginning, nor does the Revelation account take us to the ultimate end, of humanity's spiritual evolution. To some extent this is reflected by the Bible's own indications that as a "writing" it will cease to be of further use at a certain point in that evolution (Jer 31,31-34; Heb 10,16-17; 2 Cor 3).

Among the initiates of ancient Greece, the guiding spiritual powers prepared the Western soil upon which the seeds of Christianity were later to be sown. In a sense, this ancient wisdom culminated in Plato. Through his student Aristotle and Aristotle's student Alexander, Greek influence flowered in Alexandria. Providentially, it was reborn in Philo of Alexandria (ca. 20 B.C.-A.D. 50), and, through him, influenced the writers of the New Testament.¹⁰ Lazarus/John began his Gospel with the heart of this wisdom, the Logos, equating it to the creative Word of God, to the Christ. It was this Word, which long preceded the events in Gen 1, that was truly "In the beginning." It was this Word, the Christ, that was meant when the human being much later, experiencing its own breath, uttered the primeval sound expressed by the Greek letter "Alpha" (see Alphabet [ALPH]) and that the same Lazarus/John expressed in his Apocalypse. In The Influence of Spiritual Beings Upon Man (ISBM), Lect. 5, p. 86, Steiner says, ". . . what is active last was always there first; for that which pressed into matter as 'Word' was there the first of all."

The very name of our own "alphabet" is taken from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, "alpha-beta." But one can hardly appreciate the meaning of "Alpha and Omega" by simply identifying them as the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, thus symbolizing "the beginning and the end," anymore than if our own A and Z were substituted. Their meaning goes back to the time suggested by Gen 11,1 when "the whole earth had one language and few words."¹¹

Together, Alpha and Omega imply something quite important to humanity, as shown in The Principle of Spiritual Economy (SE), Lect. 10, "The God of the Alpha and the God of the Omega," (pp. 137-138):

Regardless of whether you regress or progress, whether you seek God in the Alpha or in the Omega, you will be able to find Him. What is important is that you find Him with your own heightened human power. Those forces necessary to find the God of the Alpha are the primal forces of a human being. However, the forces necessary to find the God of the Omega must be acquired here on earth by striving human beings themselves. It makes a difference whether one goes back to Alpha or forward to Omega. He who is content with finding God and just wants to get into the spiritual world has the choice of going forward or backward. However, the individual who is concerned that humanity leave the earth in a heightened state must point the way to Omega-as did Zarathustra.¹²

Omega implies the fully completed journey of the Prodigal Son, humanity, to the pigpen and back (Lk 15,11-32). It means the parabola has returned to the higher spirit world whence creation entered its first primeval state in preparation for the commencement of Ancient Saturn.¹³ At Omega the human being takes its place in the heavenly pantheon. That the journey is then complete and that all is in oneness is suggested by the fact that only the first and last creatures, the Word (Christ) who emerged first (Jn 1,1), and Spirit Man (see I-9 and Mt 13,33) who will come last, will have dwelt in the depths of the mineral-physical state, there tasted Death, and returned to the highest spiritual sphere. There the last sheep will have returned to the fold (Lk 15,3-7; Mt 18,10-14). Steiner often spoke of the human being as the work, the fulfillment, of the hierarchies. Then, in the highest sense, is the first last and the last first, the Alpha and Omega, the full joinder of the higher and lower "I Am," the fulfillment through the unity of all things in heaven and Earth (Eph 1,3-10). Then the question "What is man?" will have its full answer.

How is it that the Christ identifies himself as the Alpha and the Omega, and yet this is the symbol of humanity's journey out and back? This relates to the identification of the beginning and the end to the "I AM."¹⁴ According to The Festivals and their Meaning (FM), Lect. 2, pp. 38-39, it was said in a legend, referring to the human entelechy, "I am He who is and who was and who is to come."¹⁵ Steiner identifies this as that (in the burning "Bush"¹⁶) "which passes through all incarnations, the power of ever-evolving man who descends out of the light into the darkness and out of the darkness ascends into the light."

While similar, the statement is not identical to Rev 1,8, "I am the Alpha and the Omega," for the Word existed before the commencement of the human being's creation on Ancient Saturn, even before the hierarchies, and the human Ego did not come into being until Earth evolution (see I-35). As indicated above, the Christ, as the Word, has always been in all creation. This mystery would seem to lie at the base of Paul's statement in Gal 1,16 that the Christ was revealed not to but in him. In any event, I made it clear in Vol. 1 (The Burning Bush) that the Christ must be voluntarily taken in as the governing force of one's existence if one is to attain to the ascent. Doing that serves to conditionally join one's own Ego or "I AM" to that of the Christ so that in effect, ab initio, one's own existence becomes eternal, having no beginning nor end, in oneness with the Word, the Christ.

Save only that he reverses Steiner's usage of Individuality and Personality, Teilhard de Chardin leads us to see essentially the same thing as Steiner—that the human Ego, without loss of its own eternal Individuality, merges in love into the greater All, which is essentially the Christ.¹⁷