The Spiritual Realm is Real and Active - Angels


 

 I guess the next step in the examination of the spiritual realm is to study angels. This will not be a very long article. I would rather offer less information on angels than offer potentially incorrect or misleading information on angels. One significant reason for this is because when one tries to research angels, one finds a lot of information that is not Biblically based. Angels hold a certain interest to people, even if they do not proclaim a faith, or even a belief in God. The duplicity of believing in angels while at the same time denying the existence of God seems to slip by these people unnoticed, but I find that hypocrisy and duplicity in beliefs is common among those who do not have a solid foundation of truth for their ideologies..

Due to the human interest in angels outside of the realm of Biblical theology, there is a lot of misinformation out there. I spent some time a while ago looking into the different types of angels and their responsibilities, but quite frankly, I was overwhelmed by the amount of apparently contrary information out there. It proved quite difficult in the time that I was looking, to determine what was Biblically sound and what was not, and while the Bible should be the main source of this information for someone who is studying it, there is not a lot of explanation about angels, their ranks and what their roles are; but I will see what I can do with what is there.

There is one very important aspect about angels that I have to point out first of all, and that is that angels are not to be worshipped. Angels are created beings; they are not gods themselves. God created the angels to do His bidding. We see in Scripture where an angel appears to someone, that person is awed by the appearance of the angel, and they begin to honour and worship that angel, only to have the angel tell them not to worship him, but to worship God. We see this in Revelation 22:8-9 where John recounts how he responded when he was visited by the angel that delivered to him the revelation; "I, John, am the one who heard and saw these things. And when I heard and saw, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who showed me these things. 9 But he said to me, “Do not do that. I am a fellow servant of yours and of your brethren the prophets and of those who heed the words of this book. Worship God.”" We also read in Paul's letter to the church in Colosse how one can lessen the impact and value of one's faith by engaging in the worship of angels; Colossians 2:18a "Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the worship of the angels,".

Angels are created for specific purposes and I believe that their titles indicate their jobs. For example we read of cherubs and of seraphs and archangels. They have different appearances from each other and appear to serve different purposes. There is also some evidence that there is a hierarchy to the ranks of the angels, at least if one considers their direct access to the presence of God on His throne as a way to rank them. I will not go into detail here about the different types of angels and their purposes, but I only want to point out that they exist. I also want to point out that there is no place in the Bible that depicts angels appearing as anything other than as adult males. Culture will sometimes present us with images of female or childlike angels, but any angel that we read of in the Bible is a male and appears to be an adult.

Some angels minister to God, as we see in the vision of Isaiah in chapter 6 verses 2 and 3, "Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one called out to another and said, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts, The whole earth is full of His glory.”" 

Some angels minister to man, as we see Elijah experience when he is on the run from Jezebel; "He lay down and slept under a juniper tree; and behold, there was an angel touching him, and he said to him, “Arise, eat.” 6 Then he looked and behold, there was at his head a bread cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. So he ate and drank and lay down again. 7 The angel of the Lord came again a second time and touched him and said, “Arise, eat, because the journey is too great for you.”" (1 Kings 19:5-7). 

Some angels act as His messengers for which we have several examples throughout Scripture. We read of Cornelius having a vision of an angel who delivers a message in Acts 10, and later in Acts 27 Paul receives a message from an angel assuring him of the lives of all who were on the boat with him in the midst of the storm that wrecked their ship. And of course there are the two visitations that Joseph, who was betrothed to Mary, experienced. The first to assure him that the child that Mary was carrying was of God and was not conceived through adultery, and the second was to urge Joseph to take his little family to Egypt to escape from Herod's murderous wrath.

Some angels are warriors such as we see in 2 Kings 6:17, "Then Elisha prayed and said, “O Lord, I pray, open his eyes that he may see.” And the Lord opened the servant’s eyes and he saw; and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha"; and I think that there are yet others who are guardians, but not necessarily in the sense of each person having a specific guardian angel to protect them throughout their life. I suspect that they come for a short time or a season as they are needed.

It appears in Scripture that there is little if any overlap in the responsibilities of angels. In general, a warrior will not act as a messenger, a messenger will not act as a guardian and a guardian will not act as a warrior, but this is a generalization. I would never want to be quoted as saying that God always acts in the same way. He likes to switch things up, even if just to keep us guessing and on our toes.

That is all that I want to grab and point out from the Scriptures. I do, at some time, want to offer what I and some others have gleaned about angels and how God uses them; information that has been gleaned from observation and experiences rather than from the Bible, but I think that is best revealed in another article from another direction. I only want to share Biblically factual things in this article, to the best of my ability. So I guess I will end this article here. I have been working on this one article off and on for about a week and a half as I have tried to present enough information without elevating angels above their proper position. I want to take the same care as I tackle the counter forces to God's angels which will likely be my next article in this series, but it may not be my next article that gets posted. As always, I would appreciate your prayers as I delve into these topics, because they can open myself and my readers to things that are best not to be taken lightly, hence the time and care that I am trying to put into these articles.

And as usual, the comments section is available below if you have any questions or comments that you would like to share. Also visit my home page to see if there are any other articles that might interest you.

You can find the next article in this series by clicking here.

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