Angelology
By Jerry Batson, Th.D.
Special to The Alabama Baptist
With the Bible as our sourcebook of truth, we look to it to give us understanding about the nature of angels. Our starting point is to note that angels are created beings. They have not always existed from eternity in the sense that God is eternal. There was a point of beginning for angels.
A poetic passage in Psalm 148 calls for the whole created universe to join in praising God. Included in that universal call to praise are “all His angels” (v. 2). After naming various components of this gigantic praise choir, the exhortation is, “Let them praise the name of the Lord, for He commanded and they were created” (v. 5).
In a similar way, Nehemiah 9:6 refers to heaven and all its hosts, which includes angels, saying, “You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens with all their host.” The intent of the Bible is clear — God created angels. However, the Bible does not say they were created in the image and likeness of God, as is the case with humans.
‘Ministering spirits’
As created beings, angels also are spiritual in nature, not possessing earthly bodies of flesh and bone. Hebrews 1:4–14, in exalting Christ above the angels, refers to angels as “ministering spirits sent forth to minister for those who will inherit salvation” (v. 14).
However, while by nature angels are nonphysical, the Bible tells of multiple occasions when God allowed an angel to take human form in order to appear to selected human beings and speak to them in human language. Something of this same idea is expressed in the admonition of Hebrews 13:2: “Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some have unwittingly entertained angels.”
However, we are not to conclude that angels continued to have physical form in the sense that Christ took upon Himself both a human nature and a human body, then returned to heaven in that body’s resurrected and glorified form. Bodily form for some angels apparently was a temporary matter for a specific purpose on earth.
Being spiritual in nature, angels have their abode primarily in heaven, where they engage in heavenly activities such as voicing praise to God and ministering at His throne. With heaven as their home base, angels are associated with “the heavenly Jerusalem” as “an innumerable company” (Heb. 12:22).
Invisible beings
As created spiritual and heavenly beings, angels also are invisible, except on those specific occasions when they appeared in human form. Such was the notable occasion when an angel “descended from heaven … and said to the women, ‘Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for He is risen’” (Matt. 28:4–5). In his book about angels several years ago, Billy Graham captured the idea of angels as invisible spiritual beings in a book title, “Angels: God’s Secret Agents.”
Opinions may vary about whether angels are active today in invisible ministries or even on occasion taking human form to assist a human being. That being so, we can properly glean from the Bible’s witness to the reality of angels’ existence in an unseen realm. In short, what we can perceive by our physical senses is not the totality of what is real. Hebrews 11:1 makes reference to faith being “the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.” Biblical faith embraces the reality of an unseen realm in which unseen angels operate. More about this next week.
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