Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, while serving as a dean at Brigham Young University, explained the meaning of Alpha and Omega as name-titles of the Savior: “Nothing is so pervasive in our lives, nothing so encompassing and enfolding and upholding, as the Savior of this world and the Redeemer of all men. Alpha, the first letter of the Greek alphabet, suggests commencement and inception. ‘… I was in the beginning with the Father, …’ he reveals (D&C 93:21), and, as the Firstborn, he stood at the right hand of the Father in the councils of heaven and in the work of creation. It was by our unity with him (as he was one with the Father) that we survived a great conflict between good and evil before this world was created. By the ‘blood of the Lamb, and by the word of [our] testimony,’ we overcame the opposition of Satan, ‘that old serpent, called the Devil’ (see Rev. 12:7–11). … “As he was in the beginning, so will he be when this world ends. As Omega, a name taken from the last letter of the Greek alphabet, Christ is the terminus, the end cause as well as the end result of mortal experience. …“These letters from the Greek suggest the universal role of Jesus from the beginning of the world to its end. But he ought to be Alpha and Omega in the particular as well—our personal beginning and our individual end” (“Whom Say Ye That I Am?” Ensign, Sept. 1974, 6–7).

Jeffrey R. Holland