Behold! A gathering of angels, to guide your hand to the message....
Home > Angels and archangels
Why angels? Lord knows. Many tasks have been assigned to them in Jewish and Christian tradition, in folklore and folk theology. People have been guessing at it for 4000 years, probably longer. One helpful view is the "Tess theory", named after Della Reese's TV angel: angels are sent by God to bring the truth, especially the big truths, to specific people in critical situations. The biggest truth (the one that Jesus Christ was living, dying proof of) is that God is with us and for us, and the angel is sent here as a part of that. God's message can be a warning, or be a comfort in times of danger and fear. There's more going on than the careless eye can see, so God's messenger points it out. Since God is way too much for us to take, the messenger is sent in God's stead, like a diplomatic envoy. What happens then is between humans and the Lord. God could deal with humans without using angels. But God chose this way (among other ways) to keep in touch with us and not be a far-off Deist god.
Angels are among the unseen in the "all that is, seen and unseen" that the Nicene Creed says the Father created. They exist to praise God and to bear the message and task for which God sends them, including to us humans. They can think and hold conversations, and they have their own identity. And they appear to people of all religions, even those of no religion at all, when God wants them to listen. Noone can prove angels exist; they are, after all, spiritual beings and don't fit into material-world rules. Not all religious folks believe in angels (for instance, the Jewish Sadducees, and many modernist Christians). But those who have a strong sense of spirituality tend to believe angels are real, and sometimes experience their presence. Thus there are many angel reports from India, Malaysia, and other Asian countries.
Angels are not there to be meddling fix-its, but our helpers in responding to the truth. Angels guide us in the way God wants us to go in a specific situation, sometimes calling us to take a specific action. We can just blow them off, but people usually find themselves responding instantly with some amount of trust, comfort, or awe. Angels can celebrate and have joy, and presumably have other emotions as well. They don't negotiate unless God tells them to. They don't decay or die, since they are spiritual beings. They even pray for us, as happened in Zechariah (1:12).
Scripture shows that angels have another fierce task: when God passes judgement on injustice, they're often the ones who carry out the sentence. The usual image shows them with flaming swords, but the Bible shows how they can execute judgement in other ways as well. When carrying out a sentence, angels are more like a strike force than envoys. You won't find them doing this on a Christmas card !
There are several Biblical references to the "Angel Of the Lord". This often means a particular archangel who acts as God's stunt double, to avoid the damage God's full presence does to created beings. But some ancient parts of the Jewish and Christian traditions report that in several instances the writers wrote 'angel' as a pious way to avoid using God's name. When they said "The Angel of the Lord", they sometimes meant "God". This substitution works fine for the book of Judges. But using "Angel Of the Lord" this way takes the edge off of one of the Bible's most powerful moments: Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac, where the "I" is clearly God and not an angel. Perhaps it's best to view such happenings the way the prophet Hosea saw Jacob's wrestling match: Jacob was both contending with God and wrestling with the unnamed 'man' Hosea calls an angel. How? God knows.
As Christians over the years have told it, angels have their counterparts on the 'dark side': demons. Most of what's said about angels can be flipped around and said of demons. (Keep this in mind whenever you read about either one. It helps us to understand the Plot.) Angels and demons are alike, but differ in very important ways. Demons have no message of their own to tell, they only have lies so they can undermine God's message. Since they no longer have their natural purpose, the demons' very existence is twisted up and broken. Satan is generally pictured as peer to the archangels such as Michael and Gabriel. It is written that Satan can even come disguised as an angel of light. Demons can come pretending to be angels, but unlike angels, they try to puff you up or divert you from Jesus or Scripture, sometimes even proclaiming a new doctrine or a new "move of God". Or, a demon will whip up your doubts until they blaze like a firestorm in your head. And they seize most any opportunity to rank themselves higher.
Angels are a very different thing from 'spirit guides'. Angels don't try to run your life, they just do what they're sent to do and then slip back into the background. You don't go looking for an angel; they'll come in God's good timing. 'Spirit guides' keep coming back whether you want them there or not, manipulating and steering, demanding attention, trying to change the person into their image. 'Spirit guides' want you to be dependent on them. It's best not to mess with such spiritual frauds, but if you have, please ask God to send them away, and find prayer partners to bear this struggle with you. Who knows, God may send a real angel to roust out the spirit guides.
angels, take wing to top!
People from many times and cultures (even those who are not Christian, Jewish, Mormon, or Moslem) insist that angels have another task: that of being a guardian for specific people. The philosopher Philo described their protective role. The Bible speaks of angels as protectors too, but doesn't say all that much about the role of these "guardian angels". Psalm 34:7 is one good biblical example; also the angels for each of the Asia Minor churches in Revelation. Jesus speaks of children as having their own angels. In Acts 12:15, the people at John Mark's mother's house thought their servant was seeing Peter's assigned angel at the doorway, when it was really Peter who had just escaped jail, thanks to help from an angel. Whether the jailbreaking angel really was 'assigned' to Peter (as they thought) or just to the task is not said, but they seemed to expect the angel to look like Peter. Thomas Aquinas insisted that God gave everyone their own guardian angel. In their guardian roles, angels are in no way dainty, Precious Moments-like creampuffs. In an emergency role, angels can be like a divinely-sent first responder. They can be the fiercest of warriors and the swiftest of rescuers, and angelic determination knows no bounds. After all, they're on a mission. From God.
Where big things are happening, angels are there. The ginormous event of God's coming to us started off with a peasant girl from Galilee talking with the archangel Gabriel. Angel choirs abound and will be singing strongly when the Kingdom arrives in full. When Mary Magdalene peered into Jesus' tomb on that first Easter, she saw two angels, one sitting at each end where Jesus' body was laid. Just as an archangel set up the first coming of Christ, so an archangel will mark the final return of Christ.
Humans tend to get freaky when an angel shows up. We often quiver in fear or fall down in awe. But angels themselves are not really that big a deal.
We're more important than they are. Angels are servants, acting on Someone Else's authority, while we humans make our own decisions, and are responsible to discern God's ways by what the Lord has given us. God made us, not angels, in the image
of God. Jesus makes His followers, not angels or even archangels, into God's heirs. Angels go by what they know: they personally
live in God's great presence and receive God's command. We are made to walk not by sight, but by faith. We're told not to worship angels in
Colossians
2:18. (Indeed, any real angel will urge you
not to worship them, but to worship God.) Nor are we to pray to angels, though, like the others in the divine realm, they are praying with us. The Almighty is approachable, even in heavenly glory, for the angels do it. How much more will it be so for creatures like us who bear God's image, once the Kingdom comes in full! What's much more important than us or the angel is the One for
whom angels are acting. The author of the letter to the Hebrews (in
chapter
1) takes pains to point out that however awesome you may think angels
are, Jesus is far more important.
rise back to the heavenlies above
"Angel" in Biblical Hebrew is mal'ak . Its main meaning is "messenger". It's the same name given to the prophetic book of the last of the Prophets. The book's author has no name, just the title of Messenger. He could've been the editor who gathered the Prophetic books together so his people could remember and prepare for what was to come. Some angeliphiles think Malachi is an angel, but the book's content and its presence among the Prophets make it certain that Malachi is a human messenger, a prophet. In Islam, Mohammed is called "the prophet" and "messenger of God", but is clearly not in any way an angel. In Greek, the root aggelos is found in euaggelos, the gospel or 'good message'.
But this raises a question: can we always tell this difference, even when we find 'messenger' in the Bible or the traditions? Angels are definitely not humans, especially not dead humans who 'earn wings'. (This idea was not invented by Frank Capra for Clarence in "It's A Wonderful Life". Its roots go back at least as far as *The Martyrdom of Polycarp*, 1:39, early 2nd century AD.) As spirit-beings, angels don't even have food or sex in the same manner humans do, though they are pictured as having earth-type gender and earth-type body forms. This is mainly so we can relate to them better, but such forms may also reflect something of their personhood in the heavenlies. The ancients couldn't picture anything in the 'pure' world of heaven as being female or neuter, so they called them mostly what they felt was greatest - male. Maybe we're getting over such a narrow vision. Angels are often pictured as having feathered wings. The ancients believed the angels flew, so they portrayed it through the only means of flying they knew of: the feathered wings of a bird. I suspect this image comes in handy for angels. They don't need wings to fly (they're supernatural beings), but wings of what would be the necessary size inspire awe in us ground-bound material-types.
It's a fine line between the main task of an angel and the main task of a prophet, an evangelist, or a poet or storyteller, or anyone else who brings us a divine truth that's hard for us to take. The Christmas "herald angels" of Jesus' birth and resurrection were certainly supernatural. But sometimes it's not as clear. Their main task is to tell a truth which communicates God's will to some person(s), leaving the results to the people who hear it and the Holy Spirit at work among them. Since Christians are all given the charge of spreading the good report on Jesus Christ to others who don't know or understand, then in a way every Christian and every Christian church is a 'messenger', a mal'ak. Not an angel in the sense of a divine being, nor a substitute for angels, but as the human bearer of good news from God. Paul picks up this theme when He calls the Corinthian Christians "our letter" and "a letter of Christ". One drawback: when their plans are ruined by the news, people tend to take it out on the messenger, and a divine messenger can make a better getaway than a human one.
It's said that ancient scholars would debate how many angels could fit on the head of a pin. The correct theoretical answer is 'all of them', but it's an imaginary question because angels aren't on the head of any pin - except perhaps as their idea of fun, like college kids cramming into a Volkswagen Beetle. They're usually too busy doing God's work to be pinned down.
return to the angel depot
There are some writers (like Walter Wink, in his *Powers* books on institutional and societal evil; or Peter Wagner in his writings about territorial demons) who have done a lot of hard thinking about the way the Bible itself sometimes acts as if there are angels and demons working on societies, institutions, and neighborhoods. Humans do not usually act alone or in a vacuum or from the outside; they work with other humans and act upon others collectively. Touch on it lightly, and it's "team spirit". With a stronger focus, it becomes a group ethos, character or identity. Cast the net larger and move it deeper, and it becomes a sense of neighborhood, or an ethnic heritage, or a national or religious identity. Each such group can be said to have its own 'spirit', one which is unlike any other group or any one person in it. There might be more to this than meets the eye, and the use of the term 'spirit' may be more than an accident. And there may be an angel standing guard of that group and its 'spirit'.
In Revelation chap.s 1-6, each of the churches of Asia Minor are said
to have an angel. Jesus is speaking to those angels, and through them is
addressing those churches. Could each church's angel be the guardian angel of
that church's 'spirit', its collective ('as-a-group') identity,
since it is their collective character God is talking about? The book of Daniel mentions angels for nations. It's not
wise to make a habit of reducing such angels down to a collective human
function. The Bible refuses to do that, instead stressing that the group
is changed by God's work - sometimes with the help of angels - through persons
who are working for the group's sake. (Besides, I wouldn't want to get a
group's real angel angry at me. They don't like being abstracted any more
than you do.) Yet sometimes, such abstraction helps us to better understand what they're doing.
Cloud 9: angels, robes, flight lessons, top of page
Not all spiritual beings are envoys for dealing with humans. The Bible speaks of an array of supernatural beings in heaven with God, such as cherubim and seraphim. In the Middle-Ages angelologies, they were categorized as angels, even though in the Bible they do not act as God's envoys (mal'akim). In Isaiah's vision of the heavenly royal hall, the Seraphim are the court guards serving God. They interact with Isaiah because he is in the court, not on earth, and because God wants to forgive Isaiah's sin right there and then. Cherubim are anything but 'cherubic' chubby toddlers. They were portrayed in the Temple days as having features of an eagle, a bull, a lion, and a human. We're told nothing much about them and since they have no dealings with us and do not protect us like guardian angels, they're likely some different kind of thing. There may be many other heavenly beings.
The other supernatural beings probably live just for the sake of praising God. Some say they watch over different created worlds. But we don't really know. Speculation has run rampant for thousands of years. The main Roman Catholic angel tradition goes back to Pseudo-Dionysius's book *The Celestial Hierarchy* in the fifth century. He describes a nine-fold order for supernatural beings, from highest to lowest: Seraphs, Cherubs, Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Archangels, and Angels. The order was designed mostly for reasons of philosophy; it matched neither the Bible nor the reports of angel experiences by the faithful. (The apostle Paul writes about some of these, not as ranks of supernatural beings, but as groupings which may or may not include living humans and institutions, and which may or may not be good.) Thomas Aquinas put his spin on Pseudo-Dionysius' order in his *Summa Theologica*, spelling out who was in these orders and what each order did. Other medieval Catholic writers spun off even further into incredible detail. Reading those medieval angelologies is a form of mental torture, yet in those days students were often required to know them thoroughly. But you don't have to believe in angels to trust and follow Jesus Christ. In the days of Maimonides, Jewish thinkers also developed angelologies, though belief in angels was not (and is not) seen as being important to the Jewish faith. Even today, the Internet is full of talk about supposed angels with names that are made up to sound biblical. (This was done in ancient times, too.) The truth is, the realm of angels is simply beyond us. Several key things hold true from this maze of angel studies:
Oh, about Satan: he's a whole 'nother bag, for another discussion.
An angel will lead you..... to the subject reference index, or word definitions.
(1) Have you ever met a supernatural messenger or envoy?
(2) When you heard someone speak about meeting angels, did you think they were weird? What else may have come to mind?
(3) When have you been the bearer of God's message to someone? (If you're studying this with a group, share this with the group.)
(4) What do you think an angel goes through when humans
reject its message ?
And what might this tell us about God's burden for us ?
(5) If you believe that angels exist and act in our world, what does that mean for how you look at your life? Or how you live your life?
(6a) What image do you think of when you see angels portrayed at Christmas? What are your reactions to them?
(6b) Read the pre-Christmas account of Zacharias' encounter with Gabriel, Luke 1:5-25. How was that different from Mary's encounter, Luke 1:26-38?
An 'angelic' Dare: Maybe you know
someone in your ordinary course of life who claims to have met an actual
angel. What did they say it was like? (When really meeting one, the
mind is often reaching for some way to describe it -- or is so busy with
an extreme situation that it doesn't have the time to reach for descriptions.)
What did the angel say or do? What did the person learn from the angel or
the meeting?
A stray thought : If we may at any time be entertaining angels, I wonder -- how entertaining do the angels find us to be?
take wing to the start
For more, try these angel-related links:
Some other interesting spiritual pages :
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| ver.: 29 August 2009. Angels. Copyright © 1997-2009 Robert Longman Jr. Go here to read the copyright rules. These also apply to use by angels, archangels, and cherubs. Fees for seraphs are on a case-by-case basis. The Godhead is, of course, exempt. |