- CHAPTER 5: Jesus, Lord of the Angels

OUR PROTESTANT CHURCHES have never been very enthusiastic about the Bible references to the many kind s of angels and angelic beings which make up the Lord’s heavenly host. Because we do not see them, we generally do not discuss them. There seem to be many Christians who are not sure what they should believe about God’s heavenly messengers.
In short, where the matter of Bible teaching about angels is concerned, we have come into a sad state of neglect and ignorance.
Personally, I despise the cynical references to angels and the comic jokes about them. The preacher who reported his guardian angel had had a hard time keeping up with him as he sped over the highway spoke in bad taste and probably in ignorance. If that is the best a preacher can say about the guardian angels or God’s angelic host, he needs to go back to his Bible.
The writer of the letter to the Hebrews gives his readers a vivid, vital portrait of Jesus, the eternal Son. He knows their familiarity, through the Old Testament, with the concept and ministry of angels. He trades on that knowledge to point out the overwhelming superiority of the victorious Jesus as He ministers in the heavenly world above:
Again, when God brings his first-born into the world, he says,
“Let all God’s angels worship him.”
In speaking of the angels he says,
“He makes his angels winds,
his servants flames of fire.”
But about the Son he says,
“Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever,
and righteousness will be the scepter of
your kingdom.” (Hebrews 1:6-8)
In this revealing comparison between angels and the Messiah-Savior, Jesus Christ, we need to bear in mind that the ministries of angels were very well known and highly respected among the Jews. It should be of great significance to us, then, that the writer would assure them that Jesus our Lord is infinitely above and superior to the brightest angels who inhabit the kingdom of God. Never has there been a created angelic being of whom it could be said, as it was said of Christ, He is “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being” (Hebrews 1:3).
The readers needed encouragement
This full- orbed vision of the glories and credentials of Jesus Christ was needed just then by the persecuted Hebrew Christians. And to us in this 20th century of the Christian church, the same revelation comes with God’s authority and meaning. The word that assured the Hebrews reveals to us that the eternal Son was preeminent above Abraham, above Moses, above Aaron and the priests of the Old Testament era.
Much of our Bible study tends to be one-sided. We choose to read what we like. We neglect those portions that seem to have less interest for us. Do you agree?
Among Protestant Christians for several years there has been a rather mystifying psychology. Our Roman Catholic neighbors in their hymnody and teaching have given considerable recognition to the holy angels. Protestants seem to have reacted in a reverse way. It is as though we have decided to say nothing at all about the angels.
In Old Testament times and in the early Christian church, there were churchmen and scholars who gave much attention to matters relating to angelic hosts and their appearance. When Paul spoke of the creation to the Colossians, he mentioned both the visible and the invisible world, naming thrones, powers, rulers, authorities (Colossians 1:16). Often these have been perceived of as ranks or degrees of angelic beings and their authority and power.
Paul mentioned the existence of archangels in the heavens when he wrote to the Thessalonians. “The Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel” (1 Thessalonians 4:16). No, we are not prepared to argue against the reality of either the visible or the invisible world. Because the religion of the Hebrews was divinely given, it reflected the two worlds accurately.
Science demands measurable evidence
Consider why we think like we do in today’s society. We are participants in a new age—a scientific age, an atomic age, a space age. We have been conditioned by our sciences. No longer have we any great sense of wonder or appreciation for what God continues to do in His creation. Amid our complex engineering and technological accomplishments, it is difficult for us to look out on God’s world as we should.
As believers in God and in His plan for mankind, we must not yield to the philosophies that surround us. We have a God-given message to proclaim to our generation: The world was made by Almighty God. It bears the stamp of deity upon it and within it.
An architect leaves his stamp upon the great buildings he has designed. A notable artist leaves his mark and personality on his paintings. The same principle applies to the visible and invisible worlds. We call them two worlds, although probably they are but one. God’s stamp as designer and creator is there, just as His own mark and personality can be found throughout the sacred Scriptures.
God has told us much about His invisible world and kingdom. In that telling He has revealed many things about the heavenly beings that do His will.
Angels are an order of transcendent beings. They are shown to be holy and they are shown to be sexless. Jesus in His earthly ministry, speaking of the resurrection and the coming kingdom, said that we will be without sexual identification in that heavenly abode—”`like the angels’“ (Mark 12:25). But we will not become angels in the life to come, contrary to what some have believed since childhood. God makes it clear that we do not change from one species to another. We are redeemed human beings, and we look forward in faith to the day of our resurrection and glorification as redeemed human beings. Angels are one order of created being; humans are another (Hebrews 2:16).
Angels and Christians
We are probably most familiar with angels as a result of the Christmas story. They heralded Jesus’ birth. “Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God …“ (Luke 2:13). Jesus Himself spoke of “legions” of angels. “`Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?’“(Matthew 26:53). The writer to the Hebrews refers to their number as “thousands upon thousands” (Hebrews 12:22). And David the psalmist refers to “the chariots of God” as numbering “tens of thousands and thousands of thousands” (Psalms 68:17). No one is able to answer conclusively why God made the heavenly host so numerous.
Going back into the Old Testament, we note that angels apparently had some function at the creation. In His conversation with Job, God spoke of laying earth’s “cornerstone” and remarked that “all the angels shouted for joy” (Job 38:7). Angels figured in the giving of the Law at Sinai. “The law,” wrote the apostle Paul, “was put into effect through angels by a mediator”(Galatians 3:19).
An angel—Gabriel by name—appeared to the virgin Mary with the announcement that she would give birth to a Son whom she was to name Jesus (Luke 1:26-31). In telling the story of Lazarus, the destitute beggar, Jesus declared that “angels carried him to Abraham’s side” (Luke 16:22). It is a picture almost reminiscent of the “ticker tape” parades welcoming our nation’s heroes. That righteous beggar was escorted into the precincts of heaven with the angels leading the procession. I am convinced that the angels of God have a large role in preserving the righteous. Although most of us do not talk about it, Jesus said of the children, “Their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven” (Matthew 18:10).
In all that Jesus said about angels, no words are more significant for us members of a fallen race than His statement that “there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents” (Luke 15:10).
We read with tender feeling of Jesus’ agony and stress as He prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. When He had prayed to the point of exhaustion as He faced betrayal and the coming crucifixion, “an angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him” (Luke 22:43).
At Jesus’ resurrection, angels were much in evidence. An angel rolled the stone from the tomb’s entrance. Angels announced to Jesus’ distraught followers the joyful tidings of His resurrection.
Anyone who wants to can put a film of unbelief over his or her eyes and thus deny the existence and activity of angels. But in doing so, he or she is denying clear biblical teaching.
Some protest the discussion of angels, saying, “Let’s be practical!” By which they mean, “Let’s limit our considerations to three-dimensional, sense-perceived objects.” There is a day coming when the answers to our questions will be plain. On that day we will discover that the ministries of the angelic beings are indeed practical and very real.
I have never seen an angel
Now, you probably are wondering how much personal experience I have had with angelic beings. “Have I ever seen an angel?”
I have never seen an angel. Nor have I ever claimed to be a visionary person. My calling has been to pray and study and to try to find from the Scriptures what God is doing and what He has promised to do. I proclaim the teaching of the Scriptures that the angels of God are busy in their special ministries. I base that observation on the Word of God, not upon any facet of my own human experience.
The Bible does not tell any of us to spend our time trying to get in touch with angels. It does tell us that angels exist and that they are busy. Their activity is frequently mentioned in the Scriptures. I am not going to skip over those references, ignoring them, as some do.
At times we talk about the providential care of God without really knowing what we say and what we mean. Some Christians testify to “coincidences” in their lives—perhaps two very important things occurring at just the right time and place. Hundreds of years ago Thomas Aquinas wrote to the Christian church, saying, “The function of God’s angels is to execute the plan of divine providence, even in earthly things.” Then John Calvin followed with his teaching that “angels are the dispensers and administrators of the divine beneficence toward us.”
God has His own ways and means of working out His plans on behalf of His believing children. We ought not to ask the Lord for a printed list of rules about His providences and guidance. As we trust in the Spirit, live in the Spirit and walk in the Spirit, we will realize that God is always on our side.
Angels in disguise
This was true in my own experience. After I had found the Lord as a youth, I was attending a church that seemed to be of very little spiritual help to me. Actually, it was the kind of church in which it would be easy to backslide. One Sunday morning I awoke in a bad mood. “I am not going to church today!” I decided. So I went for a walk in the country. I did not have any golf clubs to use as an excuse. Neither did I tell the Lord I was going to worship amid the beauties of nature. I knew within myself that I really was backsliding—going in the wrong direction that Sunday morning.
I turned aside to walk through a grassy field. In the middle of the field my foot suddenly kicked something hidden in the grass—something red. I stooped and picked up an old red-bound book. It looked as if it had been in the rain, had dried out, had been rained on again and dried out again. The book was not some old literary classic. It was not a discarded book of cheap fiction. It was a Christian handbook: a thousand questions and answers for anyone interested in Bible study.
I opened it. And after I had scanned a few pages of biblical teaching, I became impressed by the fact that I should have been in church with other believers that morning. I threw the book back on the ground and started for home, wondering who had put such a message directly in the way of a discouraged Christian boy who was too gloomy to go to church.
I am not saying that the book was placed there by an angel or some other heavenly visitor in just the right spot. In all likelihood it was dropped in that place by someone who had chanced to pass through the field. But in the providence of God it was that day the reminder I needed of the goodness and faithfulness of God in my life.
I recall still another personal experience during my early Christian life as an unsettled young man. Actually, I was doing some “bumming around,” as we used to say. I was away from home, away from the church and away from everything that was right. I would spend weekends “riding the rods.” I had little money, and I would hitch free rides on the freight trains, riding the rods under the boxcars.
The Lord chose a particular Sunday to teach me the lesson I had to learn. I do not remember now which town was involved, but I was involved and so was the Lord. The freight train slowed down, then braked to a stop. The car that I was riding halted directly alongside a church yard. The train had hardly stopped when the church bells began to ring. They rang more loudly and more insistently than any bells I have heard before or since!
I have sat under strong preaching, but never has a preacher laid conviction on my soul like those church bells did that Sunday morning. I do not know if they were Methodist or Presbyterian or Anglican church bells. But they reminded me that I should not be riding freight trains. Rather, I should be back where I belonged. And, believe me, very soon I was back where I belonged—and straightened out spiritually, too!
How was all of that arranged? The right day, the right hour, the right place. If I had walked up to the engineer to inquire if he was an angel, he probably would have smiled, spit some tobacco juice over the cab window sill and replied, “Not that I know of!” But this I am sure of: when that engineer put on those brakes, it was by the providence of God that I would be halted practically in a church yard, with the bells pleading, “Go back, young man! Go back, young man.”
God knows us well
My point is that God knows us so well that He does a number of little providential things at the very moment of our need. We think we have planned and executed everything all by ourselves. We are not aware that it has been God’s plan and that He has been out there ahead of us the whole time.
It was some years later, as I read Psalm 71 in the familiar King James Version, that I noticed for the first time the words, “Thou hast given commandment to save me” (Psalms 71:2). My heart has been warm ever since with that thought. God has sent His Word throughout all of the earth to save me. You may be critical if you wish. Do with that text as you will. You may even have some theological problem with it. But God has “given commandment,” and these words are for me!
God saw me, a lonely, lost boy in rural western Pennsylvania and His commandment went throughout His creation. I am convinced every angel in heaven heard it. And I believed on the Son of God and turned myself over to Him for salvation!
Nothing can compare with this knowledge. God and His Word are on my side. The living Word of God has charged Himself with the responsibility to forgive me, to cleanse me, to perfect that which concerns me and to keep me in the way everlasting.
We are living in a world full of God’s created beings—many of them not seen by us or those around us. We ought to thank God for the angels and for God’s providential circumstances everyday. As one of the old saints long ago remarked, “If you will thank God for your providences, you will never lack a providence to thank God for!”