The Bishop Who Knew the Alpha and Omega

In 155 AD, the Roman proconsul in Smyrna — one of the very churches John addressed in Revelation — dragged an elderly bishop named Polycarp into the arena. The crowd roared for blood. The proconsul offered a simple bargain: curse Christ, and walk free.

Polycarp had been a disciple of the Apostle John himself. He had likely heard Revelation read aloud in that very city, heard those words about the One "who is, and who was, and who is to come." Now, at eighty-six years old, with fire being prepared and a stadium full of spectators demanding his death, Polycarp gave his answer: "Eighty-six years I have served Him, and He has done me no wrong. How can I blaspheme my King who saved me?"

The proconsul held the power of Rome. But Polycarp knew something the proconsul did not — that every earthly ruler answers to the One John called "the ruler of the kings of the earth." The Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the Almighty who holds all of history in His hands.

Polycarp died that day in the flames. But he died free — freed, as John wrote, by the blood of the Faithful Witness. The empire that killed him crumbled. The Christ he refused to deny still reigns.

When John proclaimed that Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega, he was not offering theology in the abstract. He was handing every believer — from Smyrna to your sanctuary — an unshakable reason to stand.