Angels
- The conflict of ages; Rev. 5:11
Revelation
Angels were to function as servants and messengers for God. They are
clearly established as existing in the Scriptures. Jesus Christ referred to angels
frequently in His ministry. He understood them to be real creatures. He wasn’t
just accommodating Himself to the superstitions and the mythology of the people
of His day, which is what liberal theologians will tell you. He described the
role of angels in the final judgment, that they would gather the elect from the
four corners of the earth. He talked of the relationship of angels to children
in Matthew 18:10 NASB “See that you do not despise one of these
little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven continually see the
face of My Father who is in heaven.” This is one of the verses used to
substantiate the doctrine of guardian angels. Jesus frequently referred to
angels as real creatures and they were involved in different aspects of His ministry,
including His resurrection. In Matthew 28:2-6 we are told that the resurrection
was first announced by an angel. NASB “And behold, a severe
earthquake had occurred, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and
came and rolled away the stone and sat upon it.
Just as Jesus Christ referred to angels as real and existing creatures,
we must believe that they exist and that they are real. To deny the existence
of angels implies that Jesus Christ was ignorant or superstitious, and that the
Bible is wrong and perhaps mythological. So for the believer the only source of
truth about angels, about demons, about Satan is the Word of God.
What does the Bible tells us about the origin of angels, their purpose
and their destiny? First of all, we know that angels are creatures, they are
not divine, they are not to be worshipped as divine. They are finite, they live
on into eternity as human beings do but they had an origination point. Psalm
148:5 NASB “Let them praise the name of the LORD, For He commanded and they
[angels] were created.” They are not self-existing or eternal, they are
creatures. Angels we are told in Scripture were created individually by God.
For this reason they are called in the Old Testament, “sons of God.” Angels do
not marry, they do not procreate. This means there is not a unifying factor
among the angels, they are all different. Each angels is its own species, as it
were. All angels are called sons of God and all human beings are called sons of
men, according to Ecclesiastes 1:13; 2:3, 8; Daniel 5:21. Another thing we know
about angels is that they are immaterial spirit creatures. They are referred to
sometimes by the word pneuma [pneuma] or spirit, and
this indicates the immaterial aspect of their makeup. They do not, therefore,
have to conform to the physical laws of the universe as we do. This has some
important implications in terms of their ability to travel, their ability to
appear, their ability to manifest their appearance in different ways and forms.
When Paul writes in Ephesians 6:12 when dealing with spiritual warfare he says:
NASB “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against
the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness,
against the spiritual {forces} of wickedness in the heavenly {places.}” One of
the applications of this is that when we recognize that we are at war against
radical Islam and against terrorists the ultimate enemy, the enemy behind the
enemy, are these spiritual forces of darkness. This is what lies behind the
conflict. Human history, that which happens in the material realm, is indeed
impacted by a broader conflict, that which happens in the spiritual realm. What
the apostle Paul is getting at is that ultimately our enemy—that is not
diminishing the fact that there is a physical enemy but that is but a secondary
reality—is the greater reality of the spiritual conflict.
Angels, being immaterial, appear to have the ability to take on physical
form. In Genesis chapter nineteen there were three men who came to visit
Abraham when he was living on the plains of Mamre. One of these we learn later
in the narrative is the second person of the Trinity. He is addressed as Lord,
He is the pre-incarnate Lord Jesus Christ. When the two other men later go to
We also learn from Scripture that angels have incredible power and
ability, far beyond the powers and ability that human beings have. Psalm 103:20
NASB “Bless the LORD, you His angels, Mighty in strength, who perform His
word, Obeying the voice of His word!” Angels are associated in Scripture with
meteorology, with the wind, with earthquakes, with a number of different
physical phenomena that are far beyond the ability of human beings. The caused
men to become blind in Genesis 19:10. They shut the mouths of the lions in
Daniel chapter six. They caused Zecharias the soon-to-be father of John the
Baptist to be unable to speak until the birth of John the Baptist. They caused
the chains to fall off the apostles in Acts chapter five and the prison doors
to open without using physical force. They caused Herod Agrippa I to die when
he claimed to be God in Acts 12, and in the book of Revelation they will
inflict numerous punishments upon mankind.
Angels are numerous, the Scripture says: Revelation 5:11. Daniel 7:9 NASB
“I kept looking Until thrones were set up, And the Ancient of Days took {His}
seat; His vesture {was} like white snow And the hair of His head like pure
wool. His throne {was} ablaze with flames, Its wheels {were} a burning fire.
The next question is when were angels created? This is a crucial
question to understand. Job 38:4-7 gives us an understanding of this. What that
tells us is that when God initially laid the foundation of the earth, i.e. the
starting point, the initial part of the building process, at the very beginning
when it says in Genesis 1 that God created the heavens and the earth, at that
starting point all of the angels shouted for joy. So this tells us that when
God initially created the universe He created all of the sons of God, the
angels, without division (there was no fall yet among the angels), shouted for
joy. They were in unison. Then when we come to Genesis 1:2 we find that there
is darkness on the face of the deep. The earth is in a state of chaos—tohu waw bohu—and that initial state of
creation is now marred as a result of angelic rebellion. Then God begins to
restore the earth. The best explanation is that Satan fell long before man did
and there is the implication in Scripture that human history has something to
do with this angelic fall, and we derive that from a lot of different things in
the Scripture. Part of it is that when God finally resolves the issues of sin
in human history He resolves the issue of evil in the angelic realm at the same
time. It all comes together and it all resolves in the period of the
Tribulation.