Listen:
“I am he that is”—that is to say, the self-existing one; for the statement is the cognate of that, “I am that I am,” which is the pre-eminent appelative of deity.
“I am he which was”—and this extends being into the past; that past he himself defines. He does not say I am in the beginning, but I am the beginning—beginning itself—the origin of things and, therefore, himself unbegun, eternal, from everlasting. It is the echo of that far-flung phrase of old: Even “from everlasting to everlasting thou art God.”
“I am he which is to come”—this includes eternity future—the unendingness which stretches without a horizon beyond the present.
Here is fulness—and the fulness of the Godhead bodily.
In saying these words upon Patmos, then, our Lord Jesus Christ says:
“I am God—I am Almighty God.”
Nor is this a mere conclusion from the premise here!
He says it directly, plainly and squarely himself.
He says not only that he is, and was, and is to come—but he says—