This study will be devoted to the study of angels, called in Systematic Theology “Angelology.” We will go through the Bible verses that deal with the existence of angels, the nature of angels, the number of angels, the fall of the angels, the work of the angels, and, in particular, the superiority of angels over men; and then, in some ways, the superiority of men over angels in regard to salvation.
First of all, the matter of the existence of angels. The Bible always takes this for granted. The word “angel” first occurs in Genesis 16:7, where the Angel of the Lord ministered to Hagar after Sarai had mistreated her. The angels were created by God, but the time of their creation is not revealed. We know angels are spirit beings. Hebrews 1:14 says angels are “ministering spirits.” Psalm 104:4 says, “Who maketh his angels spirits.” As spirits, angels are not bound by human laws. Angels can enter locked prisons (Acts 12:7), open prison doors (Acts 5:19), and ascend in a flame (Judg. 13:19–20). Angels are evidently able to travel great distances very quickly. For example, in Daniel 10:12–13, the angel apologized for being twenty-one days late due to wrestling with principalities and powers in heavenly places. Angels are wiser than men, and angels are strong. One angel killed 185,000 Assyrian soldiers in one night (2 Kings 19:35). One angel slew 70,000 Israelites following David’s sin (2 Sam. 24:15–16). One angel overthrew the power of Rome, broke the seal, and rolled away the stone from the tomb in Matthew 28:2–4. And one day an angel will bind the devil and imprison him for a thousand years. In Psalm 103:20 we read, “Bless the LORD, ye his angels, that excel in strength.” In 2 Samuel 14:20, the lady speaking to David said, “My lord is wise, according to the wisdom of an angel of God, to know all things that are in the earth.” So, angels are real. They are there, and they are spirit beings.
Angels are spirit beings, but every angel in the Bible that appears as a young man: a thirty-three year old male.
If you will check very carefully the references in Genesis chapters 19–20; Judges chapters 13–15; Luke chapter 24; and Revelation chapters 21–22, you will find there is no sexless angel anywhere in the Bible, nor is there an angel anywhere in the Bible that has wings. Every angel in the Bible is spoken of as a young MAN. If you study your Bible carefully, you will find that Jesus Christ is called “the angel of God” (Acts 27:23; Gal. 4:14). You will find that at the resurrection, Christ said the children of the resurrection will be “as the angels of God” (Matt. 22:30).
Jesus Christ, when He died, went back to glory as a thirty-three year old male. He is called “the angel of the Lord” before and after His resurrection (Matt. 1; Acts 27). He is a thirty-three year old male because when Adam fell he was thirty-three years old. This is why Christ is called the “last Adam.”
We get thirty-three years by the fact that Jesus Christ was about thirty years old when he was baptized by John the Baptist (Luke 3). The first passover occurred after his entrance into the ministry in John chapter 3. There are four Passovers mentioned in the Gospel of John, which makes Jesus’ ministry an exact three and one-half years thus making Him crucified at thirty-three or, at the most, thirty-three and one-half years old. If He was about thirty, then He is thirty three when He is crucified. This fixes the age of Adam’s fall, the age of Christ’s death, the age of a “young man,” the eternal state for the believer conformed to Christ’s image, and confirms the eternal destiny of the born-again child of God (a son of God, AS A SINLESS, PERFECT THIRTY-THREE YEAR OLD MALE (Rom.
8:29)
Angels came to minister to Jesus at the great temptation (Matt. 4:11) . When the Lord Jesus Christ was in the garden of Gethsemane sweating blood and praying, an angel appeared and ministered to Him. In Matthew 18:10 Jesus said, “Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven.” Jesus accepts angels as true beings.
An angel is an appearance; not a “messenger,” as you find it wrongly translated in any of the new, corrupt versions. There are many angels who bring no message at all. Every angel in the Bible, however, is an appearance. You will notice the children’s angels in heaven are not messengers. They are appearances of the children. You will notice the famous angels (or powers) that represent Greece and Persia, with whom Michael and Gabriel fought in the Book of Daniel, are not messengers. They are appearances. The peculiar thinking along these lines, by taking the word Malachi (malak, malaki) and making it “my messenger” for Malachi. Every angel in the Bible is an appearance of something, although not necessarily a messenger.
Angels seem to be innumberable. Angels are immortal (Luke 20:35–36). There are various ranks and orders of angels. Michael is called an “archangel” (Jude 9). The Bible speaks of an archangel, angels, principalities and powers, dominions, and thrones. You might check Colossians 1:16; Daniel 10:13; 1 Thessalonians 4:16; and 1 Peter 3:22.
The teaching that angels are sexless is pagan speculation and has nothing to do with the word of God, and if you find it in any modern Fundamental literature, you may ignore it. In Revelation 5:11 we read, “And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne...the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands. “ There is said to be “an innumerable company of angels” (Heb. 12:22). Jesus spoke of being able to call “twelve legions of angels.” There would be three to six thousand in each legion. Any one of these angels could kill 185,000 men. In 2 Kings 6:17 the servant of Elisha saw the mountain full of chariots of fire round about Elisha, and these, doubtless, were angels.
The present abode of the angels is in heaven. “In the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.” A third of these angels will fall in the next twenty years, according to Revelation chapter 12, which you might read. And you will notice that the present rash of books on angels is to prepare the people to accept a positive view of fallen angels when they return to this earth.
Angels are described by our Lord as being holy, sinless, and pure in Mark 8:38. It says, “When he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” But these holy angels (called also the “elect angels,” 1 Tim. 5:21) are those who have been conformed to the image of Jesus Christ, being “the children of the resurrection.” They, therefore, refer to the people in the first resurrection who have been born again and conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Angels, as created beings, were created holy (Luke 9:26), but angels back there, before the time of Christ, were also placed on probation, and some are on probation now. Some evidently defected. Second Peter 2:4 speaks of the fallen angels as “the angels that sinned.” This is directly connected with Genesis 1:2 and Genesis chapters 4–6. Evidently they rebelled when Satan tried to become like God (Isa. 14; Ezek. 28). It was the sin of pride and disobedience, and it was the sin of cohabitation with women on earth (Gen. 6:4). The Bible speaks of “the devil and his angels” (Matt. 25:41). As a result of their fall they are awaiting judgment. Jude 6 says, “And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.”
Now, what about the work of angels? Well, in heaven their job is to honor and worship and serve the Lord God, carry messages, and represent God. In heaven their job is to actually portray or represent things down here. The Lord evidently has a sort of interplanetary, universal television system where He can pick up the corporate image of anything on this earth, including NATIONS and LOCAL ASSEMBLIES (Rev. 2–3). On earth, the angels run errands for the Lord. For example, they showed Hagar a fountain; they appeared before Joshua with a drawn sword; they released the chains from Peter; they opened prison doors; they fed, strengthened, and defended God’s children; they exercised God’s judgments, like that one that blocked Balaam’s pathway in Numbers 22:22. One of them killed Herod in Acts 12:23. And they are in charge of gathering the tares (Matt. 13:41) before they are burned at Armageddon.
Angels are also here to guide believers. An angel guided Philip to meet the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:26). They are here to assist, protect, and strengthen saints like they helped Elijah in 1 Kings 19, like they helped Daniel in Daniel 6:22, like they ministered to Jesus in the temptation in Matthew 4:11, and they ministered to Him in the Garden of Gethsemane, Luke 22:43. They will accompany our Lord when He returns (Matt. 25:31; 2 Thess. 1:7–8), and they are said to take the saints to heaven at death (Luke 16:22). The angels had a part also in giving the Law by “appearances,” God Himself appearing as the angel of the Lord (notice specifically Gal. 3:19 and Acts 7:53).
Now, the superiority of angels over men lies in the fact that angels (and our first parents) were both created perfect; angels as spirit beings and Adam and Eve as fleshy beings. However, in some ways man is superior to angels.
First of all, angels are not allowed to preach the gospel in this dispensation. This ministry has been given to us. Now, it is true in the great Tribulation that an angel shows up preaching the “everlasting gospel,” but in this age if an angel shows up preaching an “everlasting gospel,” he would be cursed of God. Paul says in Galatians 1:8, “But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.”
One day man will judge angels. In 1 Corinthians 6:3, Paul said (about the saved people in this age, who some day will be like the angel of the Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ, and conformed to His image), “Know ye not that we shall judge angels?” This undoubtedly will be a reference to judging the fallen angels referred to in Jude 6 and the one-third that have yet to fall during the Tribulation, mentioned in Revelation chapter 12. Now, this great honor is indeed a glorious, yet humbling, thought for the redeemed. Though we fell into sin, one day God is going to raise us up higher than angels in Christ. We will be blood-bought, redeemed beings, conformed to the image of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ; the exact replica of a thirty-three year old, sinless, perfect, holy male. We won’t be able to fall again, so we will sit in judgment on angels, spirit beings who were rebellious and turned against God. “Know ye not that ye shall judge angels?” This judgment is mentioned in Revelation chapter 20.
Now, when the angels sinned, the Lord did not provide a Saviour for them. Why was that? Because they were not “flesh and blood.” As spirit beings, they may have had “flesh and bones,” but no BLOOD. When Christ came down to this earth as Saviour, He came down as a bloody Saviour with blood in Him, to shed blood for bloody people whose life was in their blood, and their blood was wrong and that is why they died.
The problem came up, of course, when the fallen angels came down (Gen. 6) and obtained blood (probably orally) and begat children. Then the children they begat evidently had blood in them and yet were not responsible for their own fall. This brings up some interesting speculation in regards to 1 Peter chapter 4 where “the gospel was preached to those that were dead” that they might “be judged according to men in the flesh but live “according to God in the spirit,” as though the people to whom that thing was preached were not ordinary people. Now, that’s a thought, isn’t it? As a matter of fact, they are called “the spirits in prison.”
In Matthew 18:10 we find an inference that there are angels assigned to children. “That in heaven their [the little ones] angels do always behold the face of my Father,” which means that far from having the guardian angel walking beside the child on the earth, the guardian angel is a representative of the child in heaven.
Now, if you will give your careful attention, I’ll give you the references to this passage in Matthew 18:10. Note that angels represent nations on this earth (Dan. 9–11). Then notice that local churches on this earth are represented by angels (Rev. 2–3). Then notice that when Peter was supposed to have been decapitated, they thought his angel was at the door (Acts 12), and that angels are the theophany, the appearance of the Lord in the Old Testament (I said “appearance”—Judg. 13; Gen. 15–18). You will eventually come to the conclusion that God has available, without bending down through the universe, access to any information He needs at any time (simultaneously or otherwise), to anything happening on this earth by spiritual form or shape in the heavens.
Well, wonderful as angels are, we must never worship them (Rev. 22:8–9). Angels can become visible and eat human food (Luke 2:9; Gen. 32:1–2; Gen. 18:5). Of course, before the Second Coming of Christ, angels will become visible on this earth as thirty-three year old men or “humanoids” from outer space. They will cohabitate with women under equal rights, free sex, free love, and premarital sex (that is what the government is setting up for you right now) and produce a mongrelized race of people who are called a “generation of vipers” and who are “pure in their own eyes, and yet...not washed from their filthiness.” You will find a record of these things given in Proverbs chapters 29–30.
Source: Theological Studies Vol II - Angelology - Peter Ruckman
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