The One Who Was and Is and Is to Come: Revelation 1
Short answer: In Revelation 1:4-8, John greets seven real churches in Asia with grace and peace from God described as the one who is and who was and who is to come. This three-part title places God outside the ordinary flow of time: he is present now, he has always been, and he is moving history toward his own arrival. It is not a vague poetic flourish. It echoes Exodus 3:14, where God names himself I AM, and Isaiah 44:6, where Yahweh declares, "This is what Yahweh, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, Yahweh of Armies, says: Hebrews 13:20 says, “Now may the God of peace, who brought again from the dead the great shepherd of the sheep with the blood of an eternal covenant, our Lord Jesus, "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. So the title is both comfort and claim. It steadies believers who suffer, and it confronts every rival to God's rule.
What John Actually Wrote to the Seven Assemblies
Revelation opens not with visions but with a letter, and letters in the first century began with a greeting. John writes, "Grace to you and peace from God, who is and who was and who is to come; and from the seven Spirits who are before his throne" (Revelation 1:4). Notice the order. Grace comes first, then peace. That is not accidental sequencing. Peace with God rests on grace from God, and both are traced to a person, not to a mood or an impersonal force. The greeting has a source, and the source is described by the way he relates to time.
The recipients were seven literal congregations in the Roman province of Asia, in cities such as Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. These were not comfortable congregations. Some faced pressure from the surrounding culture, some faced internal compromise, and one was about to face imprisonment and even death. Into that setting John speaks of a God who is not absent and not late. The description of God as the one who is and who was and who is to come is the first thing these churches hear about the God who addresses them.
Many readers rush past the greeting to reach the visions. That is a mistake, because the greeting sets the tone for everything that follows. The book of Revelation is often treated as a puzzle to be decoded, but it opens as pastoral care. Before a single seal is broken or a single trumpet blown, the churches are told where grace and peace come from. The God who will judge the world is the same God who greets frightened people with kindness. Doctrine and comfort are not rivals here; the doctrine of God's eternity is the ground of the comfort.
The mention of the seven Spirits before the throne has puzzled interpreters for centuries. Some read it as the Holy Spirit described in the fullness of his work, using seven as a number of completeness. Others see it as connected to the seven lamps or the seven angels mentioned later in the book. Faithful Christians differ on the precise identification, and it is honest to say so. What is clear is that the greeting comes from God and from the throne, and that the throne is occupied. The churches are not orphans in a random universe.
Why the Threefold Name Is Not Simply a Poem About Time
The phrase sounds musical, and it is easy to treat it as atmosphere. But it is a claim about existence. God says he is, he was, and he is to come, and each tense carries weight. He is present, so he is not a distant memory. He was, so he is not a recent invention of religious imagination. He is to come, so history is not a closed loop that ends in nothing. Every tense of human experience is held inside the life of the One who speaks these words.
Compare the wording to Exodus 3:14, where God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM," and he said, "You shall tell the children of Israel this: 'I AM has sent me to you.'" The name revealed at the burning bush is a name built on the verb to be. It is not a title like Baal or Molech, tied to a place or a function. It is a declaration that God simply is, without derivation and without dependence. When John picks up that language and stretches it across past, present, and future, he is not inventing a new deity. He is naming the God of Israel.
Isaiah 44:6 makes the same point in a courtroom setting: "I am the first, and I am the last; and besides me there is no God." The context is a challenge to idols and to the nations who trust them. Yahweh is not one option among many. He is the first and the last, which means nothing stands before him and nothing outlasts him. John's readers in Asia lived among temples, statues, and imperial cults. They needed to hear that the God who greets them is the only God there is.
So the threefold name is not decoration. It is a summary of who has the right to speak. The letter that follows, with its rebukes and promises, comes from the One whose existence is not bounded by the calendar. When he says he is to come, he is not guessing about the future. He is the future's owner. That is why the greeting can offer peace rather than mere wishful thinking.
The Present Tense Comes First, and That Matters
Of the three parts, the present tense is mentioned first: who is. That ordering is worth pausing over. We naturally think of God in the past, as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or in the future, as the judge who will come. Both are true. But John places the present at the front, and he does so for people who were living through the present with fear. The God who acted in the past and will act in the future is acting now, in the ordinary hours of the churches in Asia.
This is the same logic Jesus uses in John 8:58, where the text reads, Jesus said to them, "Most certainly, I tell you, before Abraham came into existence, I AM." The statement is grammatically strange on purpose. He does not say he was before Abraham. He says he is, using the covenant name, while speaking about a time before Abraham. The present tense of God's being is not trapped in any moment of history, and yet it is available in every moment. That is the mystery John's greeting assumes.
For a believer facing a hard diagnosis, a hostile employer, or a divided family, the present tense is the one that matters most. The past can be grieved and the future can be feared, but the present is where we actually live. Grace and peace are not offered only as memories or as promises far off. They are offered now, from the One who is now. The letter to the seven churches is not addressed to a generation long dead and gone. It is addressed to people who needed help that day.
This also corrects a common devotional habit of treating God as mostly absent until something dramatic happens. The title says otherwise. God is not waiting to become present at the end of the story. He is present throughout it, which is why the churches can be told to repent, to hold fast, and to endure. Commands like those only make sense if the One giving them is near enough to be heard and strong enough to help.
The One Who Is to Come and the Shape of Christian Hope
The third part of the title, who is to come, points forward. Biblical hope is not optimism about trends or confidence in human progress. It is the expectation that God himself will arrive, settle accounts, and make all things new. The book of Revelation ends with exactly that expectation, and it begins with the same note. The God who greets the churches is already on his way. His coming is not a possibility to be weighed; it is a certainty to be awaited.
Revelation 1:7 immediately follows the greeting with a proclamation about Jesus coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him. The greeting and the coming are held together. Grace and peace come from the One who is to come, which means the future is not a threat hanging over the church but a promise held out to her. The same God who comforts now will also appear. His arrival is good news for those who belong to him, even though it is sobering news for a world that has rejected him.
This is where the title separates Christian hope from every form of fatalism. If God were only the one who was, history would be a story already finished and irrelevant. If he were only the one who is, we might have comfort in the moment but no direction. Because he is also the one who is to come, the present has a destination. Suffering is not the final word. Injustice is not the final word. Death is not the final word. The One who is to come will speak the last word, and his character is already known from the way he has dealt with his people.
Hebrews 13:8 applies this permanence directly to Jesus: "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever." The One who is to come is not a stranger. He is the same Lord the churches already know. That is what makes waiting bearable. We are not waiting for an unknown outcome or an unpredictable judge. We are waiting for the One whose mercy has already been shown, whose promises have already been kept, and whose character does not shift with the centuries.
What This Title Says About Jesus in the Same Passage
Something remarkable happens in the middle of these verses. The greeting names God as the one who is and who was and who is to come, and then the passage turns immediately to Jesus Christ, described as the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. The titles ascribed to God are quickly connected to him. This is one of the ways the New Testament identifies Jesus with the God of Israel without using later technical vocabulary.
If Jesus is the faithful witness who was raised and now rules over earthly kings, then the eternity of God is not an abstraction sitting far off in the sky. It has a face. The One who was and is and is to come has made himself known in a man who walked roads in Galilee, died under Roman authority, and rose again. The churches in Asia were being pressed to call Caesar lord. John answers by locating the true rule elsewhere, in the hands of the one who has already conquered death.
This is also why the doxology that follows makes sense. Glory and dominion are given to Jesus because he loves us, freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us a kingdom of priests. The eternal God is not merely powerful and distant. He is the God who acts in love at cost to himself. The doctrine of God's eternity, rightly understood, is not cold. It is the guarantee that the love shown at the cross is not a temporary policy that might change.
Christians have differed over how to express the relation between the Father and the Son, and the church has historically confessed that they are one God in three persons. What is not in dispute in this passage is that John places Jesus inside the divine identity without embarrassment. He is not merely a messenger sent by the eternal God. He is the eternal God arriving to rescue his people, and he is the one who is to come.
Living Before the One Who Spans Every Tense
The practical shape of this doctrine is trust expressed in ordinary faithfulness. If God is the one who is, then prayer is not shouting into emptiness. If he was, then the stories of his past dealings are not irrelevant nostalgia. If he is to come, then present obedience is not wasted. The threefold title gives the believer a reason to keep going on days when nothing seems to be changing, because the One who greets the churches has not stopped speaking or stopped working.
It also produces humility about our own plans. We do not control the future, and we do not own the past. We live in a present that we did not create and cannot extend. The One whose name spans the tenses is the only one who can say I AM without qualification. Our own existence is borrowed and dependent. Acknowledging that is not demeaning; it is freeing. We are not responsible for holding the universe together, and we are not required to secure our own eternity.
The letter to the seven churches also warns against presuming on this grace. God is eternal, but that does not mean he is indifferent to how his people live. Several of those churches were called to repent, and the same Lord who greets with grace also threatens discipline. Eternity is not a license for carelessness. It is a reason for seriousness, because the One who is to come will assess what his people have done with what they were given.
Finally, this title teaches patience. God's timetable is not ours. He is not slow in the way we count slowness, because he is not inside time the way we are. What feels like delay to us may be mercy to someone else. The right response is not to calculate dates, which Jesus explicitly refused to encourage, but to live ready. The One who is to come has not told us when, only who. Knowing who is enough to keep working, worshiping, and waiting.
What Revelation 4:8 Adds to the Picture
The same threefold phrase appears again in Revelation 4:8, in the throne room vision: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come!" Notice the order shifts slightly here compared with Revelation 1:4. Both orders are used in Scripture, and the shift reminds us that we are dealing with a living description rather than a fixed liturgical formula. The point is not the sequence but the sweep. Past, present, and future all belong to this God.
The context of Revelation 4 is worship, not argument. The four living creatures have no rest day and night, and their song never stops. This is what the eternal God is worth: unending praise, not because the creatures are forced to repeat themselves, but because the subject of the song never runs out. An eternal God deserves eternal worship. A God whose being spans every tense cannot be exhausted by a single generation's songs.
This also gives the churches in Asia a window into what is really happening while they suffer. Down on the ground, it looks as though Rome is in charge and the churches are small and vulnerable. Up in the throne room, the Almighty is being worshiped without pause, and the One who is to come is already enthroned. The two scenes are happening at the same time. That is the perspective the rest of Revelation will unfold, and it begins with the same title John used in his greeting.
Worship, then, is not an escape from reality. It is a truer view of reality. When believers gather and sing to the One who was and is and is to come, they are not distracting themselves from their problems. They are joining the song that was already being sung before the throne and will continue after every earthly empire has fallen. The title gives worship its subject and its staying power.
Biblical fidelity check
These texts establish that God's existence is not confined to a single moment of time, that he identifies himself as I AM, that he is first and last with no rival, and that this same description is applied to Jesus. They do not tell us the date of Christ's return, the precise mechanics of how eternity relates to created time, or the exact identity of the seven Spirits. Christians have held different views on those questions for centuries, and honesty requires saying so rather than manufacturing certainty the text does not give.
A common misreading treats the phrase as if it means God changes with the ages, adapting to whatever each era needs. That is wrong, because the whole point of the title is that he does not shift. Hebrews 13:8 makes this explicit: "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever." Another misreading turns the coming of God into a private inner experience rather than a real future arrival. The passage itself speaks of every eye seeing him, which is public, historical, and unmistakable.
Other passages that speak to Revelation 1:4-8
The themes in this greeting echo across Scripture. The opening of John's first letter handles the same claim that the eternal Word was heard, seen, and touched. Questions about honesty before this God are addressed in the discussion of What Does 1 John 1:8 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application. The remedy for sin before a holy God is taken up in 1 John 1:9 Meaning: Confession, Forgiveness, and Cleansing. The call to love the eternal God above the passing world appears in What Does 1 John 2:15 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application. And the eyewitness foundation of the whole message is explored in What Does 1 John 1:1 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application.
Frequently asked questions
What does it mean that God is the one who is and who was and who is to come?
It means God's existence is not limited to any single point in time. He is present now, he has always existed, and he is moving history toward his own arrival. The phrase echoes the name I AM revealed to Moses and the declaration in Isaiah that Yahweh is first and last. It is a claim about who God is, not merely a poetic way of saying he has been around a long time.
Is Jesus included in this title, or does it refer only to the Father?
Revelation 1:4 names God in the greeting, and the passage immediately turns to Jesus Christ as the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. Elsewhere Jesus applies the divine name to himself in John 8:58. The New Testament consistently places Jesus within the identity of the one eternal God, which is why the church confesses one God in three persons.
Does this title predict when Jesus will return?
No. The title tells us who is coming, not when. Jesus himself refused to supply dates, and the New Testament consistently calls believers to readiness rather than calculation. The phrase who is to come assures us that the arrival is certain and that the One arriving is the same gracious Lord his people already know, which is meant to produce patient faithfulness, not date-setting.
