19 - Angels - Holy and Unholy, Part 1

Well, welcome back to the Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Systematic Theology. Now, have you ever had those times where you just, you know you forgot something, and you have no idea what it is because you forgot?

Yeah, well, I'm going to spend the next hour trying to remember what it was that I should have done before now because there's something in my head that I'm supposed to have remembered and I don't have the foggiest idea what it is.

Hope it wasn't to be teaching class because here we are! All right, we are in Lesson 14, and we are going to be talking today about angels, both holy and unholy, or holy and evil, or angels and demons.

But are demons angels? Well, what do you think about that? We're going to get to that actually. I think I've kind of given it away, haven't I? I would say yes. Angels are in two categories, holy and unholy, and we're going to discuss both of them tonight, but there is no way, no way that we're getting through all of it.

Why? Well, if you look in your syllabus, which if you have a syllabus that is, the syllabus we are on Lesson 14. Syllabus is for those who are enrolled in the academy. You can enroll by going to the website somewhere down there, and you can actually go to that website and check out the new website.

It's up, looking cool, and it does look pretty neat. But we are going to be in Lesson 14 where we're going to talk about angels today, and we are going to see that there is no way I'm getting through the 40 some odd passages that we have for this lesson.

If you look at it, you would see that there's way more that we have than we're going to be available to do. So, let us take a look and see that we're going to be in Lesson 14, and that is the lesson on angels, both holy and evil, which means that not all of them are angels, meaning good.

So, what we have here is a case where many people get confused. Have you watched that TV show, what was it called? They called it Touched by an Angel, or you see some of those other TV shows. Angels were, there was a while where angels were like a popular thing to have TV shows about, and people would be talking about that, and they'd have all these angels.

There's a lot of confusion with angels. One of the most confusing things that people have about angels is they think that when people die, they become angels. By the time we're done, at least with tonight's class, you're going to quickly realize that angels are completely different than people.

Totally different group. Totally different creation from God, okay? So, we don't become angels. I know, when some of you were growing up, your mother told you you were a little demon. Okay, it wasn't you, it was me.

I'm sorry. I thought mom told everyone that, but I guess it was just me. But, we're not. We don't become holy or unholy angels, and we're going to see that when we look at tonight's lesson. And so, there's some confusion, and there's actually a thing where many people think that the Bible doesn't have much to say on angels.

Well, let's take a look at this little chart that we have, and you'll see that when we look at the Bible, we see that we have 17 Old Testament books and 17 New Testament books that we have that mention angels.

You'll also see there that we have 108 Old Testament verses and 165 New Testament verses that talk and discuss angels. That's a pretty good portion. That means that there's not a huge amount of passages, but enough that we can see that there is some clarity that we hope to have after these next couple of lessons.

We're going to look tonight at angels as a general category. We won't finish it, so we'll probably do it in two parts, and then next lesson, lesson 15, will actually be specifically on one specific angel.

We know him as Lucifer or Satan, and we're going to spend one class just on him. What we want to do, though, is look at angels as the category that they are of God's creation. We're going to look at, first, the creation of angels.

The Creation of Angels

What we see here, if you have your syllabus, is we're first going to look, when we look at them, let's first take a look at their creation in Psalm 148 and a couple verses in there. It says, praise him, all his angels, praise him, all his host, praise him, sun and moon, praise him, all you shining stars, praise him, your highest heaven, your waters above heaven, let them praise the Lord, for he commanded and they were created.

Also, in Colossians 1 .16, we see, for by him, this is speaking about Jesus Christ, all things were created in heaven and in earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers, all things were created by him, through him and for him.

So, what you see there, that's an interesting one, I want to leave this up for a split second just to point out that if you speak to somebody who is a Jehovah Witness, what you'll quickly hear them say is that, when speaking of Jesus Christ, is that he was the angel Michael.

But in that passage there, if you look at it again, you'll see it says he created, that this is Jesus, speaking of Jesus, that he created, and look what it says, thrones or dominions, the dominions are often referred to as angels.

So, Jesus Christ created the angels. Now, how could Jesus Christ create the angels if he was an angel? Good question. We see that in both Psalm 148 and in Colossians 1, angels had a beginning, they were created, they're created beings, but they're created beings separate from human beings.

We're going to see that in a moment because they were actually created before human beings. So, how could someone create themselves? Well, yeah, they can't. And that's the point. Angels are not humans.

They have a creation. So, let's look first at the time of their creation, the time of their creation. And when we look at this, we see that while we do not have a specific revelation about the creation of angels, we see that angels were created sometime before the creation for two main reasons.

So, if you have your syllabus, the blank there is before. Angels were created before what we call the creation, the universe, humans, before the six days of creation. And we see that first because in Job 36, we see that they were singing while observing creation.

They were singing, that's your blank there. It says here that, Now, this is speaking in the context of creation, but what I want to point out, because we're not going to get to this maybe right away, but when we look at the names of angels, you see that Morning Stars?

That's a reference to angels. Also look at it, it says Sons of God. Notice it doesn't say Son of God. Okay? That's important. The reason that's important is because Son of God is a specific person identifying as God.

The Sons of God is a description of angels. Okay? So, two different ways we see the angels. But what we see that's important there is that when God was laying down the foundation of the earth, angels were singing.

They were watching. Okay? Another thing that we see would be in Genesis 3, that's actually your blank there, 3. Satan, who was an angel, must have been created at least prior to Genesis chapter 3. Okay?

Genesis chapter 3. Why? Because Satan was present in the garden at the time of Genesis 3. Okay? So, these are the only things we have as far as the time of creation. We know they were around to witness the earth being formed, according to Job.

And we know that they were around at least before Genesis chapter 3. Okay? Because Satan had to have been around to tempt Eve. Now, what also do we see? And we'll look at this in more detail later, but Satan had to have fallen sometime before Genesis chapter 3.

So, how long were Adam and Eve in the garden? I don't know. I mean, that's the thing. Have you ever thought about that? They could have been in the garden for a day. We often think of like, you know, the seven days of creation, you know, and by the eighth day, Adam and Eve sinned, or maybe it was on the seventh day.

God was busy resting, and Adam and Eve were busy eating of the fruit. Some people try to argue things like that, but there's nothing in Scripture that tells us how long it was between the time that Adam and Eve were created until the time of Genesis 3 when Satan fell at some point and then brought in the, you know, tempted Eve to fall.

It could have been, as you see in Paradise Lost, in that book, which isn't maybe completely, adds a lot of extra biblical stuff in there, but you see in there that it would be several days because the demons were supposedly causing dreams and doing different things to cause them to fall.

But it could have been several days. It could have been several weeks. It could have been several months or even years. We don't know how long they were in the garden before the fall, and we don't know exactly when the fall took place.

All we know is it had to have happened before Genesis chapter 3, okay? So, we have the, when we look at the creation of angels, we see first their time of their creation. Next, let's look at the nature, letter B, the nature of their creation.

The Nature of Angels as Ministering Spirits

And the first thing we see here when we look at this is they were ministering spirits, ministering spirits. That's your blank there. They were ministering spirits. That kind of tells you a little bit about what their function was.

Let's look at a passage of Scripture, and that would be Hebrews chapter 1 and verse 14. 1 .14 says, ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who inherit salvation. Okay, so you see here that they were ministering spirits sent out, okay, to serve.

This tells us a little bit about their function. This is about their nature. Their nature is to serve. Their nature was to minister. Well, minister to who? Hold that thought. We'll get there. Something else that we see is that angels were, that each angel was individually created by God.

Individually created by God. Let's look at Matthew chapter 22. Matthew 22 verse 28 to 30. In the resurrection, therefore, of the seven, whose wife will she be? Now, let me give the context actually. I should have maybe given some more verses.

But in this passage you see they're trying to test Jesus, and they give this story to try to trap Jesus. And this is an ancient argument between the Pharisees and Sadducees that a woman would die. She had several husbands.

That means whose wife would she be when she's raised from the dead, okay? That's the context. But not important to this, but that's the context. Let's look at it now. In the resurrection, therefore, of the seven, whose wife will she be?

For all seven had her. So she married seven brothers, and they all died. But Jesus answered them, you are wrong because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor were given in marriage but are like the angels in heaven.

So the angels are individual beings, okay? Now, they are also, the third thing there is that they are distinct from both man and God. Okay? And they will be for all of eternity. In other words, angels are not people.

People are not angels, okay? So let's look at that. In Hebrews 2, this is a little bit of a longer passage here. Hope you can read that okay. If not, if you can't read that okay, that's okay. Because I know that you brought your Bible to class, right?

Who am I fooling? Let's go back. All right. We'll put it up there for you because you were not paying attention or bringing your Bible. So, what we have here is it was, it has been testified somewhere.

What is man? That you are mindful of him. Or the son of man. That you care for him. This is out of Psalm 2. But you made him a little lower than the angels. You have crowned him with glory and honor. Putting everything in subjection under his feet.

Now, in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not see everything that's in subjection to him. So you notice in this passage that angels are made a little bit lower.

Or man is made a little bit lower than angels. Okay? That means that they're distinct. In Hebrews chapter 12, we see here, but you have come to Mount Zion. And to the city of the living God. The heavenly Jerusalem.

And the innumerable angels in festival gathering. Festal gathering. And to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven. And to God. Now, do you see that distinction there? They're enrolled in heaven and to God.

The judge of all. And to the spirits. See, there's distinction there. Okay? So we see that there's a distinction. This is important, again, as you go through and you start thinking this through. This helps us to understand that angels are not men in a former life.

Okay? So if you're a good boy, you don't become an angel. And if you're a bad boy, you don't become a devil. You know, you don't have one angel on one shoulder and one on the other that fight either. That are both your personalities trying to fight to create you to be a good angel.

So this is a thing where people get confused. Okay? This is also a thing where we don't see. These movies like Ghost, if you've seen that one, and some of the others where people become an angel. Or become a wandering spirit.

They become a ghost. And that's what angels are. Totally different. We have a spiritual being. And we're going to look at this more as we look into the next section. When we get into the study of man.

And we look at the nature of man. And we'll see angels are different than men. Okay? They're distinct. Alright? But there are some similarities. For example, part of their nature is that they have personality.

They have personality. That's your blank there. Okay? They have personality. Some of the things when we looked at the attributes of personality within God. That we said all persons have. Some of them are things like intellect.

Intellect. Alright? Let's take a look at in 1 Peter. We see that they have intellect. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you. In the things that have been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit.

Which the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Things that angels long look. Now, let me give you the background to this. Because this is just an amazing text. I love this thought. Even though we're going to get into it more probably next class.

But I want to deal with it now because the text came up. So let's deal with it. It shows their intellect that they looked longingly at men. What were they looking at? They were looking at grace. Did you ever think about this?

Angels never can experience redemption. That's something unique to the human race. This is amazing. This is one of the distinctions that we see between angels and humans. An angel was in the presence of God.

They saw God. They were in His presence. But when they fell, they fell once and were confirmed forever in that state. So those that fell, they were forever fallen. They had one chance and then it was forever.

And those that didn't fall were forever holy. We're going to look at this more in this lesson and next lesson. But when we look at men, they have a lifetime to hear the gospel and repent. And it is only upon their death that then they're either heaven or hell.

Holy or forever tormented. Or punished really, not tormented. Bad choice of words, sorry. So what we have there is that angels have that distinction from us. That they had one time to choose where we have time and time again.

For many people who believe in Christ, they heard the gospel more than once. I'm a weird bird. That didn't surprise any of you did that. No, I am weird. Yes, you knew that. But I actually got saved the very first time I heard the gospel.

I repented the very first night that I heard the gospel. But not many people have that. Many people hear the gospel over and over and over again. And then they at some point receive that grace. And so what we see is that angels are different in that sense.

But because they never fell and could be redeemed, angels actually look on to something that humans are the only beings of God's creation that can experience this. And that is redemption. I mean, have you ever thought about that?

Angels sit in heaven and cannot understand what redemption feels like. Because they never fell. Well, some fell, but they can't be redeemed. And those that didn't fall are the ones that look on upon us that are redeemed with wonder.

Do you value the redemption that God has given you? I mean, the angels do. They look at it with wonder. They're looking on and going, what is that like? What is it like? They saw their angel friends that fell and can't be redeemed.

And they look at us and they see redemption. It's like, wow, what is that like? You and I know that experience. We know the awe and the joy that we can experience in redemption. But angels don't know that.

Angels can't experience that. We can. Do we rejoice in that? I sure hope that your salvation is not like a, oh, yeah, I got used to it feeling. It should be something that gives you joy every day. Wake up and preach the gospel to yourself if you need to so you'll remember from where you came.

Because the angels look on in wonder of that. Do you have great joy in the fact that God redeemed you? Now, I don't know about you. I know about me. And I just am amazed. I mean, like, okay, I sit there like, why would God save me?

Okay. Yeah, I know Si is in the chat room, or at least he was. And he's probably saying, yeah, I can ask that same question. Why did God save you? I wonder why God saved Si. But that's okay. But all of us should be at that wondering state, shouldn't we?

I mean, shouldn't we be saying, wow, it's amazing that God would redeem me. He would regenerate me. He would give me new life. I mean, as we saw in the last couple of lessons with the Holy Spirit, God wasn't surprised by our sin.

He saved us knowing everything we would do. That's amazing. It should be. At least it should give you a great joy. What would cause us to go through this life when trials come, when temptation comes? What's going to give us the fortitude to withstand those things?

Well, it's going to be the Holy Spirit, as we looked at last class, or last couple of classes. It's going to be God's Word. But it is also going to be that one thing that the angels look upon. It's going to be the joy we can have knowing that nothing we do, nothing we've done, nothing we will do surprised God, and He saved us anyway.

Now, if you're one of those people who think, yeah, God should have saved me, you're probably not saved. Okay? If you think God should have saved you, you do not understand your sinfulness. I often think that if God gave me just like 30 seconds, no, maybe 15 seconds, actually probably 5 seconds in His presence here in this fleshly body, it would probably stop my heart because I, like Isaiah, would see the holiness of God and be like, oh, how wicked am I?

If we don't see how wicked we are, we don't really understand our salvation. The angels have been watching mankind for 6 ,000 years. They understand the wickedness of man. And they look on and say, and God redeems him.

Wow. That's amazing. That's what angels get to do. But it also shows something about their intellect. Okay? They can look on with wonder. Next, we see that they have emotions. They have emotions. And let's look at this in Job 36, verse 7.

Oh, what were its bases shrunk, or who laid the cornerstone? We already looked at this passage. When the morning stars, I said that refers to angels, sang together, and all of the sons of God, again I said refers to angels, shouted for what?

What's that word? For joy. They had joy. You can also look at Luke 15 .10. Just so I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner that repents. Now, that's in a passage that talks about hypocrites.

Okay? That's talking about these hypocrites that think they're believers and are not. They think they're righteous. The Pharisees who have a self-righteousness. But do you see that the angels have great joy over one sinner that repents?

The Pharisees put themselves like they were righteous and the other, like the tax collectors and prostitutes, they were sinners. If you were a Pharisee, you were righteous. But the angels don't rejoice over the Pharisees.

They don't rejoice over those self-righteous people. They rejoice when a sinner like you and I repents. There is great rejoicing in heaven. That gives a little bit showing of their emotion. It shows their emotion.

Emotions are a good thing. That may surprise some of you guys. Okay? When your wife is emotional, you know, and you're going, I just don't understand this. You know, we tend to be like problem solvers.

You know, it's like, okay, there's a problem here. Here's the solution. Just get the emotions out of it. Let's just solve this problem. Fortunately, I married an engineer, so she's a problem solver. You know, we don't have to deal with that.

She likes to solve problems. And what we do have is, though, that we have a case where we have angels that rejoice because they have emotions. As a person, you and I are people, we have emotions. We have the ability to have emotions because that's part of personhood that comes from God.

And so the passage talks about, that we saw in Job, talks about them singing and having emotion. Now, there is a question that's up in the chat room, and it is, well, there's two questions, I guess. Will we be able to talk to them?

Will we be able to talk to angels, I guess, is the question. And a follow-up question that I see posted is, what about King Saul asking the spirit of Samuel? So let me deal with those. And I know this is kind of in the middle, but we do want to answer the questions that come up.

Can we talk to angels? I would say yes, we can. All right? Angels are spirits that we will see. There are times where we see angels that, you know, if you ever played with a Ouija board, I believe that's demonic activity.

We're going to look more specifically into some things with demons later when we look at unholy angels. But when we look at, we do see that angels can speak. When they possess a human being, Jesus spoke to angels.

He speaks to legion, and they can speak back. We see it many times angels spoke to him. More puzzling is this scenario with King Saul when he goes to someone, to a sorcerer or medium, and tries to conjure up the spirit of Samuel.

From the Scriptures, it seems that this actually was Samuel. Now, did God allow Samuel somehow to speak through this woman? Well, one thing for sure. We know that the woman was basically a fraud. Why?

Because when Samuel did come, she got scared. I mean, she was nervous, and she then realized that this is now Samuel. Therefore, this is the king, and the king is going to kill me. It's like, no, no, no, it's okay, right?

So, we see this case. So, we do see that we can speak. I do believe that that probably was Samuel, and in some way, God allowed Samuel to come. Is that normative? In other words, is that normal behavior?

No, it's not. But in special circumstances, God allowed that. So, we see that they have personality. We saw that they have intellect. They have emotions. Third, we see that they have will. They have a will.

Let's take a look at a passage here, and that is Jude 6. That's not Jude chapter 6, by the way. Jude is one chapter, so it's Jude verse 6. And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, as he kept in eternal chains, under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day.

Now, you see here that they had a will to disobey God. They had a will to disobey God, okay? And they rebelled against God. Now, what is this talking about more specifically? Hmm, do we want to get into this can of worms?

Well, hey, why not? I open all the other can of worms. Alright, there's two main views of what happened in Noah's time and before with these angels. There are some angels that seem to be in bondage now, and some that seem to roam free, okay?

And so, what we have here, I believe, is some angels that were bound up, that he's talking about, ones that disobeyed, and some disobeyed. And what we have is a case where there was some disobedience that occurred, and in that disobedience, I believe, Genesis chapter 6, 5 and 6, and what we should see is that there is a case that the angels could have gotten involved with humans in some way and somehow created an offspring.

Now, there's two different views. Some people think that in Genesis 6, Philemon were just giant men, and what we see is that what were they about? Some think it's Greek mythology, that demons could somehow cohabitate with men, but whatever it is, it seems to be the case that they were something that caused God to wipe out the human race.

So, many think that there's a mixture of demonic human creation, that the demons are trying to ruin the human race so that there could not be a Messiah, could not be a Savior, okay? With that said, some people view the passage in Jude 6 talking about that there was some that were, that indwelled humans or cohabitated with humans that were in prison now, okay?

And some think that that's what Jude 6 refers to those that were there in that time, in the time of Noah. There's also a reference in 1 Peter, I believe, that talks about this as well, where people think that this is the angels in the time of Noah that disobeyed.

So, what we have there though, the main point of that though, is that we do see they had a will, they had a will to disobey, alright? So, we also see that their powers and abilities are limited, that's your next blank there, they are limited, alright?

The Limitations and Abode of Angels

Let's look at some passages here. We see here that in Ephesians chapter 1, we see that it says, that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead, seated them at the right hand in the heavenly places, far above the rule and power and dominion, above every age, every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come.

And so, what we have here, when we look at this, we see that they were limited by God. They were limited by God. If you see in this passage, it is God who seats them, alright? Second, we see that in 2 Peter 2 .11, we see that they were more powerful than men, but their power, knowledge, and presence are limited.

Look at this passage. Whereas angels, though greater in might and power, do not pronounce a blasphemous judgment against them before the Lord. So, you see that they are limited, but they are stronger than us, and this is a point to notice, they are stronger than us, and they have more power, their power is limited, they are more powerful than us, but in some ways will be greater than them, because we are going to be redeemed and glorified.

So, there is a time coming where that might change. We also see that their abode is in heaven. Sorry, I read further. Angels are not to be worshipped. This is in Colossians. We see here that they are limited in their worship.

They are not to be worshipped. Take a look at this passage. It says, Let no one disqualify you insisting on asceticism and worship of angels going on in detail about visions, puffed up about the reason of their seditious mind.

So, what you see here is that they were discussing the angel worship, and actually a better passage would be in Revelation. In Revelation, we see that John bows down, we are going to see this later, bows down to worship one of the angels, and he raises him up and says, Hey, I'm a servant like you, you don't worship me.

Angels are not something to be worshipped. So, they are limited by God, they are limited in the sense that even though they are more powerful than us, their power is limited, and they are not to be worshipped.

So, we also see, your next thing there is that they are immortal beings, but they are not eternal beings. Let's look at a passage of Scripture and then I'll explain this in Luke 20. For they cannot die anymore because they are equal to angels, and are sons of God, see the plural there, being sons of the resurrection.

So, you see that this is speaking of that they cannot die anymore, but they are equal to angels. Well, what does it mean? Angels cannot die. Angels cannot die. Angels are immortal, but not eternal. Now, there are some passages in English, translations that speak of men and angels being immortal.

But I'm using this in a precise language. So, people have the idea of immortality, and they use this speaking in a different way. So, if you use this in a passage that talks about God being immortal, God is eternal.

Now, the difference is this, eternal I'm defining as being without beginning and without end. Where immortal is a being that had a creation and does not end. So, immortality is angels, humans that were created and live forever.

Okay? So, angels live forever, humans live forever. God is eternal. In other words, He had no beginning and no end. He lives forever because He never was created. That's the distinction. The distinction between them is creation.

So, angels, just like men, had a creation date. However, angels, unlike men, were all created at one time, and then lived forever. Humans have been created over time, but then lived forever. Okay? So, that is some distinctions about angels.

So, I'm going to not go on to the distinction of holy angels, and then fallen angels, which is where we pick up. We're going to pick that up next time. Let's at least read Daniel 9, though. This is a little bit of a longer passage, but this talks about their last thing here, is that their abode is in heaven while having access to earth.

Okay? So, angels, one other thing about angels is that they can go between heaven and earth. Let's look at this passage, Daniel 9. While I was speaking and praying, confessing my sin, this is Daniel speaking, and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my plea before the Lord my God for the holy hill of my God, while I was speaking in prayer, then the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the first, came to me in swift flight at the time of the evening sacrifice.

He made me understand, speaking with me and saying, Oh Daniel, I have now come out to give you insight into understanding. So, I think this answers a question that was asked in the chat room. Can angels speak to men?

Yeah, here we have one. Gabriel speaking to Daniel. Notice he even has a name. Verse 23. At the beginning of your pleas for mercy, a word went out, and I have come to tell you, for you are greatly loved.

Therefore, consider the word and the understanding of the vision. The interesting thing that we have with this is that we see from the text is that it actually says it took three days for Gabriel to get to Daniel.

So, the interesting thing about that is it also shows about some limitation there. That there is a limitation of them within time, within mass. It took them time to get from heaven to earth. Now, we do know that Gabriel is being held up by some demons.

So, there was a battle going on. But again, it talks about some of the limitations that they have. Therefore, angels are not God. Oh, so someone is correcting it. Sorry. They meant after we're in heaven in an alternative, can we speak to angels?

I think so. But I don't think they have their own language if you took a look at last week's class. So, what we see is that angels have an ability to go between heaven and earth. So, that becomes the thing is that we do see that distinction.

That there does seem to be a distinction there. So, let's take a look again. We looked at the creation of angels. Now, when I speak of this, all of this that I've done is true for both holy and unholy angels.

And so, this is the case where we see both holy and unholy angels. The time of their creation was once at a specific point in time. We don't know the exact time. But it is a time that would have been before Genesis 3 at least.

And would have been a time where they saw creation. They saw the forming at least of the earth. Okay? And so, we would have seen at least they were around before the first day of creation, we guess. The first or second.

So, they probably would have been formed on the first day before the rest of the things. Is my guess. My theory. So, what we have is a case where they have their time. They're all created at one point in time.