The End Is Where the Beginning Is

Gospel of Thomas, Saying 18

The disciples said to Jesus, “Tell us about our end. How will it come?”
Jesus said, “Have you discovered the beginning so that you can look for the end? Because the end will be where the beginning is. Blessed is the one who will stand up in the beginning. They’ll know the end, and won’t taste death.”

Introduction: The Question We All Ask

The disciples ask the question every soul has whispered in the dark: How will it end?

We seek timelines, prophecies, closure. We look toward the horizon for signs, of the world’s unraveling, of our own.

But Jesus answers with a riddle.

Not about the end, but the beginning.

Not about destiny, but origin.

Not about what will happen, but about what was, and somehow, still is.

Reversing the Question: From End to Beginning

“Have you discovered the beginning so that you can look for the end?”

This question flips the entire human obsession with the future on its head.

In our linear minds, beginnings lead to ends. We are born, we grow, we die.
But Jesus speaks from a different vantage, outside of time, where the spiral turns inward.

In mystical tradition, especially within Gnostic thought:

• The soul does not march toward annihilation.

• It returns.

• It remembers.

• It awakens to what always was.

The end is not destruction, it is reunion.

The end is not death, it is homecoming.

Standing Up in the Beginning

“Blessed is the one who will stand up in the beginning.”

This line is layered with spiritual meaning:

• To stand up is resurrection language.
  It is not passive remembering, it is active reclaiming.

• The beginning may refer to:

  • The primordial light from which all souls are born.

  • The state before separation, before ego, trauma, time, or name.

  • The first truth of who we are: whole, luminous, divine.

To stand in the beginning is to awaken from the dream of exile.
To remember that we never left the garden, we just forgot it.

And in that memory, death loses its flavor.
It becomes not a wall, but a veil.

Parable: The Reverse Pilgrim

There was once a man named Javin, born under a sky without stars, where memory ran thin and names evaporated like dew. He was a pilgrim, though he did not know it.

One morning, a voice in the wind whispered: “Walk backwards.”

So Javin turned from the crowd and journeyed against the stream. Every step undid a footprint. Every mile unpeeled another layer of forgetting.

At first he mourned what he lost: progress, possessions, polished ideas. But the farther he walked, the lighter he became.

He came upon a desert where mirrors grew from the sand. Each mirror showed not his face, but the faces he had worn through time: lover, coward, father, fugitive.

He wept for the ones he betrayed. But where his tears fell, fire bloomed.

At last he reached the edge, a place of fog where fire and void held hands.

He stood. And the fog whispered: “You have arrived by unwinding.”

Then he understood: the end was not a cliff, but a memory. The light struck not from above, but from within. And he stood, not as a man, but as a name remembered.

He did not taste death. He swallowed it. And it vanished.

Mystical Resonance

This saying echoes the divine paradox of Revelation 22:13:

“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.”

And also Thomas, Saying 1:

“Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death.”

These are not riddles to decode, they are mirrors to stand in front of until recognition dawns.

Standing in the Beginning: The Real Invitation

The disciples asked “When is the end?”
Jesus responded, “Where is your beginning?”

This isn’t about dates or apocalypses.
It’s about orientation.

• Not Where am I going?

• But Who was I before I was named?

To stand in the beginning is not to return to a calendar moment.
It is to return to being itself, to the moment before masks, wounds, and forgetfulness.

It is to encounter what cannot die, because it was never born.

Reflections and Mirrors

Javin walked backward, and found mirrors.

What are the mirrors in your life?

• Old grief?

• Unspoken shame?

• Ghosts of former selves?

Don’t fear them.
They are sacred.

They are not reminders of failure, but portals to the hidden beginning.

Meditation Questions

1. What illusions have shaped my idea of “the end”?

2. Can I recall a moment when I felt closest to the source of who I am?

3. What parts of me must I walk backward through to remember the beginning?

4. What would it mean to “stand up” in that truth, today?

Closing Blessing

Father in Heaven,

Draw us backward through the fog.
Undo our forgetting.
Strip away every name not given by You.

Let us find the mirrors, and bless them.
Let us return, step by step,
Until we stand in the place before fear.

Not as strangers.
Not as orphans.

But as sparks of the First Word,
Unfading, undying, and utterly known.

Amen.