The Laborers' Podcast- Angelology

Welcome to the Laborers Podcast. Thank you for watching. This is our first episode of 2023. Stick around and we will discuss angels tonight.

Welcome to the Laborers Podcast, which is a part of the Truth in Love Network. Join us as together we strive to grow up together in all things into Christ. Subscribe and follow the Truth in Love Network on Facebook, YouTube, Rumble, Spotify, and iTunes.

Now, let's join our laborers for tonight's broadcast.

So, Tyler, it looks like it's just you and I tonight. How are you doing?

I'm doing well. Happy to be here.

Good. I can honestly say I'm a bit nervous. This is a subject that I'm not as familiar with that I would like to be, but I'm interested in the conversation that we're going to have as we talk about angels tonight, and I hope it's edifying for me and for everybody that watches or listens.

How do you feel about the topic tonight?

Well, to be honest, angels is not necessarily my forte either, and it is kind of an odd topic oftentimes these days. But I think we will puzzle through it together as two people that don't have all the answers but know where the answers are.

Well, we'll give it a shot. We'll give it a try. And if it doesn't last an hour, that's OK. We'll give it what we got. But before we get started on angels, I wanted to share with everybody, this will be most people.

You got to see a preview before we got started. But this will be the first time most people will be seeing either of these videos. And so I want to encourage folks with these videos and what the Lord is doing, what's going on.

The first one I want to show is if you've seen my Facebook post recently or if you've seen any of the. I think we put it on the Truth and Love Network Facebook page. Either way, we have been working on an idea to get the gospel message into one of the local theaters that's local to me.

Hopefully this will be an idea that will spread and will grow. We hope the Lord will use it. And the Carolina Theater in Hickory, North Carolina, has graciously is graciously allowing this video to be shown before.

And we're talking about, you know, real Hollywood movies that they show in this theater. The gospel presentation is going to be shown before each movie is shown. All right. All right. Yeah, we're so grateful for these folks who are doing this and partnering with us and getting the message out.

So if you are in the Piedmont Foothills, Western North Carolina area near Hickory, North Carolina, please support the Carolina Theater. Please support those guys. We love them and we appreciate them. And without any further ado now, this is this is raw.

I think this is a video taken from a phone, but they wanted to show me that they they have the gospel video up and running in the theater. So without any further ado, here is what that video looks like in theaters.

What's wrong with the world? That is a common question these days, isn't it?

We may not know each other, but we do have something in common.

God's word tells us that he is holy, he is righteous. We are fallen creatures, we are sinful creatures.

Scripture says this, that Christ died for our sins. That he was buried and that he arose again. And he spoke the gospel unto Christ today.

Tyler, I think that's amazing. Praise the Lord for that. And I know. Yeah. And I know we're all going to be praying that the Lord will use it and use this gospel message to reach folks who may not be hearing the gospel.

And prayerfully, we hope that he will save folks from this gospel message and reach out and we can talk to people. Oh, we've got a comment. Talk to folks who, hey, Matt, Matt said, sweet. We miss you, brother, Matt.

Jump on in if you can or whenever you can, if you're available tonight. But yeah, we're praying that the Lord will save souls and that they will reach out to us. And we can point them in the direction of a Bible believing preaching church where they can live with joy and grow in obedience to the Lord.

But, yeah, we're excited about that here. And before we move on, I don't know how I don't know how commercials work. This is not technically a I guess a true commercial because nobody's paying for the advertisement.

But these are support. These are supporters of the Truth and Love Network ministry. And we want to give them some airtime. If you are a Christian individual and you own a business and you want to say I support Truth and Love Network, reach out, get in contact with me.

And we would love to put you on our Web site, give you a shout out, promote your business. And as you pray for and support our ministry. So here's here's a little video montage of businesses or ministries that support the network.

And there it is. We hope to have a lot more on there. I guess we'll have to spit them out. We can't take 20 minutes to show it, show a video. But we would love to have 20 minutes worth of support. We would love to have it.

And thank you guys, your ministries and businesses that are supporting the network. And you can find that video on YouTube. Pause it. Write down the telephone number, Web site address. It's on it's on our Web site as well with a link to each of those ministries and businesses.

If you want to check them out and support them, we'd love to have you check them out. So here's. Here's what we know about angels.

Hmm. I love Renaissance art. Do what? I love Renaissance art. That's right. It's so beautiful.

That was actually do. But that was our little angel called Ramsey, right? It was. So obviously, obviously, that was a joke. And there's some. Would you call them mis misconceptions, misconceptions of what angels are and.

That that would be that would be one of them. And I think Brother Matt, he wanted us to address that tonight. A little chubby baby with wings. That's going to be a misconception, a misunderstanding of what angels are.

Well, just a little bit. Another misconception, I think. And this is a this is a sensitive subject. And this this type of misconception, I think. So you have to be careful. You have to be pastoral. And you have to be, in my opinion, you have to be pastoral and selective.

And when you bring you know, if you want to make a correction on this misconception, you will hear folks say that their their loved one that has recently passed on is now. An angel has earned their wings, you know, that type of that type of thing.

And that would be a misconception of angelology or the study of angels, what we know about angels. We we don't become angels. We don't earn wings. And we'll probably mention this tonight, too, that most angels or some people may say that that no angels actually have wings.

It just depends on how how you look at and how you how you label them. But we don't we don't become angels. We don't earn wings. Tyler, are there any other misconceptions that you ever heard when it comes to angels?

Well, there is the the the debate over the whether or not there are guardian angels. I've heard people for and against that as to whether or not there are appointed angels to specific people. So that's a that's a pretty, pretty common view as well.

Right. And then there's what's the Nephilim in the book of Genesis. There's one view that the the Nephilim like like I think Goliath was the descendant of angels intermarrying with mortal women. That's that's one I've heard quite a bit that that the the Nephilim or it says the heroes of old were their descendants.

And Goliath is allegedly descended from those unions. Those are probably the two that come to mind for me.

Right. Right. Just looking at some verses. I was thinking about the misconception of floating floating on clouds and sometimes that's referred to angels. Sometimes it's it's referred to us. You know, we're we pass away.

We're floating on clouds or angels are floating on clouds and we're playing a harp. You know, the harp. Yeah, playing the harp. That's that's one of the big pictures that we've we have of angels over the years.

It's a very spiritual instrument. Yeah, I would say so.

And I love the harp. It's a beautiful instrument. But I would say of all the misconceptions that we talked about. And I don't always take the opportunity, but just because I want to be sensitive and, you know, and I want to be careful, I want to be pastoral.

But I don't always that moment is not the time for correction. But it's like I never get an opportunity to or take the opportunity to go back after that. You know that maybe that grieving period or never have a chance to talk about that type of theology.

But, you know, it's probably a good thing that if we teach our congregation, you know, that during the normal seasons. Yeah. During the normal season, we don't become angels and we don't earn wings. You know, I guess that's one of the one of the things that's kind of looked over, you know, as we were talking about earlier.

You know, this isn't this subject isn't our forte. It's not something that we we study a whole lot or many people study. But as far as. You know, heaven, the afterlife, what happens when we die, being in the presence of God and other spirit beings.

I guess it is easy for people to get those concepts or get a misunderstanding because it's not talked about probably a lot.

So go ahead. I was just clearing my throat.

Sorry. OK, I thought you will say something there. So one of the first places and I was I was introduced to this gentleman not too long ago. And when I first listened to one of his talks, you know, I kind of tilt my head and my eyebrows went crazy and I had to listen real close.

But I went back and listened to more of what he had to say and listen to several of his talks. And I really I didn't see anything unbiblical. I appreciated his research. And you and I were talking about logos.

I think the videos were either done or sponsored by logos. So that's usually Michael Heiser. Yes. Yes.

Michael Heiser is actually part of the I think the commentary committee with logos. OK, OK, part of some of their content curation.

OK, so it's usually a trusted place to go is logos. And I think I think this stuff is OK. I appreciate the hard work that he's done. He's done, you know, as we've talked about how this is glossed over and not talked about much.

He has done I think he did his dissertation on this subject and has done extensive study on the subject. And so I just wanted to, I guess, look over some of what he was saying. And maybe we got another comment.

I need to leave the comments up. Heiser carry the crosses with us from YouTube. Michael Heiser. Yeah, I was not familiar with him, was introduced to him and some people are familiar with him. But, you know, I appreciate his work.

So. So let's just look at some of what he had to say from his studies and what I learned. So what he did. And Tyler, you just you give me your thoughts, you know, as as we go through this and let me know what you think.

He made three sections when he saw another subject of angels. He came up with with three different columns, three different sections. Excuse me. I guess to describe or talk about angels. The first one is.

Nature. So when you're talking about the the Hebrew word or when it when scripture talks about the angel, the spirit being, it's either talking about one of three things, their nature, and the second one is their rank.

And then the third one is their function or role. And so. If you're studying angelology or angels on your own, carry the crosses, the angel theory versus the set by theory. Now, I'm unfamiliar with that.

I will have to look it up and give that some study.

Have you ever heard of that, Tyler? Vaguely. OK, in regards to the descendants of Seth. OK, that's about all I know. It makes sense. It's just a passing mention. Yeah. Yeah. And I wish.

Let's see. Do they say it's not said it's. It's one of Noah's sons that. They say or maybe it's Jewish tradition. That is the is McKill's a deck. Have you heard that? Yes. Yeah. I wish there and I'm sure there is.

I would like to. That intrigues me that that tradition or that that study that one of Noah's sons is McKill's a deck. But that's. That's fascinating as well. Sorry to start to go on a rabbit trail, but when you might come up later.

When you're when he he says when you're studying angels, I guess to help you understand angels. You can divide them up into these three columns. That way you're not blurring the lines. You're not. You're not misunderstanding.

You are not attributing one attribute to another spirit being that, you know, doesn't hold that attribute. So, you know, we use the term angel and that's kind of like a umbrella or blanket term that we use for all spirit beings.

But there's there's a little bit more going on in Scripture than just just angels.

So looking at the first column and the word angel, we actually get that largely from the New Testament. It comes from the word evangel, which means a herald in Greek. It's also where we get where we get the word evangelism from.

And so typically when you see the word angel, both in the Old and New Testaments, that is, like you said, a blanket term. Usually is like a stand in for messenger or herald or something like that. And so absolutely, we should I give time to defining terms.

What do we what do we mean by angel? Because I would personally take the stance that a good portion of the angels in the Old Testament would actually be a an appearance of the pre-incarnate Christ. And sometimes when we read about the angel of the Lord, that that is Christ in the Old Testament.

And so sometimes that word angel doesn't necessarily have the connotation that we should put on it. Sometimes we we have a tendency to just blur the lines. But, yeah, just define terms. Yeah. You know, we have words like seraphim and cherubim and some of those.

And so I think that's a great breakdown from Dr. Heiser right there. Just that systematic. What do we mean by these words?

Yeah. And context, you know, the the translators and other languages, they're not inspired. They're they're not the inspired authors. And so, you know, when they when they translate angel or the Greek word for angel, you have to look at the context to understand and to do the translation to know which one they're talking about.

Because it could be, you know, and this is we'll talk about the word angel and you know what you just mentioned in a few minutes. But it could be a messenger in scripture, could be referring to a man, a human being, or it could be referring to a spirit being.

And the context will define which one it's talking about. And so, you know, this study and where I want to take this study from me personally is I'm not there yet. But I know that this the subject probably of angels or our tendency as human beings as we approach scripture is to find out what is it for me?

What is there for me? You know, what is the subject for angels? What is it going to do for me? So when I learn all this stuff about angels, how is it going to affect my life? How is it going to apply to my life?

And then that kind of leads into the guardian angel topic that you were talking about. And we kind of take that and run with it because we want we want scripture and everything in scripture to be about us.

And I don't want to go there. But what I want to do is take this subject with just like with any other subject in scripture and say, OK, what is what is God doing? You know, angels are part of God's creation is created order.

They they've been active. They were active, active all throughout scripture. I'm sure they're continuing to be active. You know, what is their role? What is their function? What are they doing? And how is how is that God?

How is that telling me more about God? How is it telling me what is it telling me about how God is working?

You know, and all the all those sorts of things. Luke 24 tells us that Christ began with the law and the prophets. And he explained it to the disciples, all things concerning himself from all scriptures.

Right. And so when we look at angels, ultimately, our end game is what does this tell us about Christ? Because all scripture reveals to us who the person work of Christ, who he is, what he's done and how we become recipients of that work.

That's right. So ultimately, the angels point is back to Christ.

Yes. So so here's the first column. If we're looking at angels, here's the first column, which is what Michael Heiser labeled as their nature. So if you see this word or if you see this, this in in your passage that you're studying, it's speaking of their nature or what it is.

So the first one is is Ruach, which means spirits.

And that's that's what it is. The second one, Genesis one to the spirit of God was hovering over the deep waters.

Yeah. And that's that's just saying that's that's its nature. That word is describing its nature, not its function, not its rank, just just its nature, what it is. The second one was and I'm going to probably butcher most most of these words.

But Shamaya, S-H-A-M-A-Y-A, heaven, sky, heavenly ones. And so when he he talked about when you when you look in Scripture and, you know, this kind of. Related to me as you know, we've been studying eschatology and how to understand eschatology from Scripture, how to understand passages in the context of the whole of Scripture.

You know, like go go to Matthew 24, for example, and you have the. You know, all these natural disasters, you have the sky going dark, the stars falling, you know, and we understand what those things are, those concepts mean based on how the original reader would have understood it.

And how how the author, the writer, the reason he wrote it. And it comes from, you know, alluding to the Old Testament passages where they use those that type of language to describe certain things. They use that language figuratively to describe certain things or events.

So we're not looking for those things to literally happen, but we want to interpret them in light of how Scripture uses them. And so the direction that Michael Heiser went was when you see words like stars or stars falling, of course, in the context, it could be referring to spirit beings.

So, you know, you hear about or you read about Satan falling from the sky or falling or in Revelation, the heavens open, an angel comes down. Well, in other places you'll hear or read about star falling, and that could be in the context referring to an angel falling or the fallen angel.

And that comes up a couple times in the book of Revelation even. Mm hmm. Right, because you've got the seven stars of the seven churches and then what chapter it is. But later on, it talks about a third of the stars falling out of the sky.

Right, right. So so they use that language because that's you know, they didn't have telescopes. They didn't have astronomy like we have. They didn't have Google. They didn't have those. They didn't have those things that we have and understand science exactly the way the way we do now.

So what they did have was they had a sky without air pollution. They had a clear sky. It was probably way more visible then than it is now. And so it was probably a much more appropriate, I guess, object lesson to point to the night sky.

I would think. Yeah. Yeah. The next one, Kido Sheen, K-A-D-O-S-H-I-M, Holy Ones or Heavenly Beings, Holy or Dedicated for God's Use. And then the other one. And this is interesting. And this is where this is the one that raises a lot of eyebrows, because this kind of when I first was introduced to him and was first listening and listening to what he had to say, I was like.

Are we going in a Mormon direction, you know, with this, but he talked about the word Elohim. And we're most familiar with that word from Genesis, and it's used in a plural sense in Genesis where God says, let's let's make man in our image.

And that word is Elohim used in a plural and traditionally that is a Trinitarian use of the word Elohim. Where God is making man in his image, the father, the son, the Holy Spirit, and Michael Heiser said that he didn't disagree with that.

He is a Trinitarian and that in this instance, in the context, that would be a Trinitarian verse where Elohim is referring to the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, where they are creating or making man in their image.

But in a general sense, Elohim, according to his study of the whole of scripture, Elohim simply means or could mean God, deity or a member of the heavenly host. So it speaks of their nature or he even said their location.

So if if you're Elohim, you live in the spirit world and. Even saying that gives me the twitches because I'm always I've always. Understood Elohim to be a name of God. But he is saying.

But it's.

Go ahead.

It's a bit more of a generic term. It also says in the Psalms that Yahweh, the Lord, is exalted above the gods and that's Elohim. That sometimes Elohim or even the singular El is being used just in a generic term for the gods, say the gods of Babylon or Egypt, that the Pharaoh was in that sense an El.

He was not the El, however. So it's a bit more elusive a word than being a strictly a name of God.

Right.

That is more of a title than possibly than his name name, because he is Yahweh.

Well, that is.

It gets used a couple of different ways in scripture, I think.

Well, and before people before people turn this concept off, you do have to wrestle with with other passages. And my apologies, because I can't remember the reference. But you have in the New Testament where he's referring to to David in the passage.

I think it's in Psalms where he says, my Lord said to the Lord or something, something to that effect.

Psalm 110.

And then the other passage where he says, are you not called gods? And so you have to wrestle with, you know, with those two passages, those that terminology that they that they use, that they would have been familiar with and they would have understood it from the Old Testament and how the Old Testament used it.

And so that's that's what we're doing here.

That bit with the Lord said to my Lord in Psalm 110, that is Yahweh said to Adonai. Right. So there are there are different even different words used there. And so it does get there is somewhat of a complexity to the the word choice.

Right. Right. So if if you're looking for a passage that makes you feel a bit easier about even listening to this conversation about Elohim, you can go to Psalm 82. And let me just read the English to you.

It says, God, God takes his stand in his own congregation. Now, listen, listen to that carefully. God takes his stand in his own congregation. What is his own congregation? He judges in the midst of the rulers.

Now, here's the here's the interlinear. The first term for God is Elohim. And then there of the of the mighty, there's the word El. And then the second God is plural. The gods is Elohim. And, you know, we're not us monotheistic.

We you know, we believe that there's only one true God. And so we're a little uncomfortable sometimes saying that the Bible uses the word gods and uses the word Elohim to refer to those gods. But but you have Psalm 82 here.

And Michael Heiser is is just simply saying it's stating the nature of those beings and their location, that if you are a spirit being in the spirit realm, you are Elohim. And the Trinity, God, the Father, God, the Son and God, the Holy Spirit, they they are Elohim.

They are just the highest of ranking. There's none like him. There's no other Elohim, no other spirit being like him. And I guess that would be another that would be another good way to put it. That we're more familiar with, we're not as familiar with saying Elohim, but we are familiar with saying that God is spirit.

And we also use that term spirit to describe other beings. So we do use that term concept, that mindset. But we we rarely use the word Elohim. And that's all he's saying. It's similar, similar concept, similar mindset there as spirit or Elohim.

Um, let's see. Verse six. Let me see what it says real quick. Um, they do not know, nor do they understand. They walk and about in darkness. All the foundations of the earth are shaking. No, that was verse five.

Verse six. I said, you are gods and all of you are sons of the most high. So there, you know, there's another other example of using that word.

Psalm 86 says there is no one like you among the gods. You see that nestled in there quite a bit in the Psalms, actually.

Mm hmm.

And and the way I would have understood that before, when it says there's no one like you among the gods, you know, in my mind, I'm thinking there's not other gods. Um, you know, true living. There's only one true living God, and that's, you know, Yahweh.

That's the Trinity, the father, son, the Holy Spirit. So I would have understood that, I guess, as God saying there's there's no other among the gods as in your false gods that you're worshiping. But with this concept of Elohim, you you can understand it in light of there's no one like you among the Elohim in the spirit world.

Well, Mr. I carry the cross such as throughout the Job one six through seven.

You got that one.

I do. It says one day the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord. And the Satan is literally what the Hebrew says. We know that Satan, the the the accuser, the adversary, et cetera. And the Satan also came with them.

And the Lord asked the Satan, where have you come from? From roaming through the earth, he answered him and walking around on it.

Yeah.

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And it's interesting that they're the they're described as the sons of God.

Speaking of sons of God, if you want to stay right there. The the second column that Michael Hauser brings up is is their rank or position. And he brings up one of the terms that's used to describe. If you read this term, then it's speaking of their their rank.

So one of those terms will be sons of God. And so go ahead.

In my copy of the scriptures here, the sons is lowercase.

Okay.

Which is different from, say, the New Testament that would capitalize son of man in reference to Christ.

That's right.

But here it is lowercase. So we're probably just describing not necessarily the son, but a son. In line with what Robert was just saying about rank and where they necessarily stand in that order on the sons of God.

Yeah.

And if God has always been God is eternal and he has created all things, that relationship makes sense.

And if anybody's listening or watching and you are an actual Michael Hauser scholar, if you study listening to him more than I have or because I'm new to this and if I'm misrepresenting him or anything that he's saying, which is highly, highly possible, let us know and I'll be glad to correct myself.

But, you know, feeding off what you were just talking about, Tyler, talking about rank. From his study, what he's saying in scripture is that just like here on earth, you know, we have different positions, we have different ranks, and it's kind of a mirror of his created beings there in the spirit world.

They have different positions. They have different ranks. And there's councils. He has his heavenly council. And the sons of God being a rank, they're going to be ranking higher. If you are termed sons of God, then you are holding a higher rank than other Elohim, other spirit beings in the heavenly realm.

Daniel is a good place to look. So, if you look at Daniel, Daniel chapter 7.

We're just going to break open the scriptures and see what comes out. Is it chapter 7?

Yeah, Daniel chapter 7, verse 10. So this is one of the passages that Michael, or Dr. Heiser, I guess he's a doctor, Dr. Heiser, he points out Daniel chapter 7, verse 10. This is where he gets the concept of the council.

A river of fire was flowing and coming out from before him. Thousands upon thousands were attending him, and myriads upon myriads were standing before him. The court, and there's that court or council, sat, and the books were opened.

So, there's this concept of in the spirit world, among the Elohim, the spirit beings, there's this, you can hold this, or they hold, some hold this position of being in the court. And then if you go back to Daniel chapter 4, let's see.

I did not write down any of those passages, but let's see. Sorry for the quietness. Surely, I know I wrote down those verses.

Carry the Cross says, you were doing good, brothers. I'm a Calvinist, and a lot of this stuff is not accepted. Calvin and Augustine frown on this subject, but I find it fascinating.

Absolutely.

I do as well. I think Dr. Heisler has a lot of good things to say on this.

Are you talking about the dream Nebuchadnezzar had when they cut down the tree?

Yes, where the angel comes down and speaks to Nebuchadnezzar, and says that you're going to go crazy.

Verse 13 says, as I was lying in my bed, I also saw in the visions of my mind a watcher, a holy one, coming down from heaven. And he called out loudly, cut down the tree and chop off its branches, strip it of its leaves and scatter its fruit.

And then there's another passage in here, and my apologies. I apologize that I don't have this verse ready. Maybe Tyler can find it for us really quickly. But if I'm not mistaken, in this same chapter or vicinity, the angel tells Nebuchadnezzar that this has been decreed.

And this is a decree that's coming down. I'm giving you this message that this has been decreed by the council, by the court.

Verse 24, Daniel is interpreting this to Nebuchadnezzar. And says, this is the interpretation, your majesty. This is the decree of the Most High that has been issued against my lord the king. You will be driven away from people to live with the wild animals.

You will feed on grass like cattle and be drenched with dew from the sky for seven periods of time until you acknowledge that the Most High is ruler over human kingdoms and gives them to anyone he wants.

And then in verse 31, it says that a voice came down from heaven and said, King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is declared that the kingdom has departed from you.

And that's where it gives credit to the Most High. So they are not free, this council. And I'm looking for that passage that says that the decree comes from the council. Or something to that effect. And again, my apologies.

It should be right in here, somewhere in chapter four.

Well Daniel's one of Robert's big books, so that's a book he spends a lot of time in.

Yeah, but hey, that goes to show you my age. And it doesn't take much time to pass before you begin to forget things. Hopefully we'll find it soon. But it speaks of, and this is coming from Dr. Heiser as well, that the decree comes from the council, the court, and then later on, as Tyler read, the decree ultimately comes from the Most High.

And so they don't act outside or autonomously from God. They work, you know, as we do, within His will. And they work within His will. So the decree ultimately came from the Most High. I feel like somewhere I had wrote down all those passages.

But I guess I did not. Oh well, sorry Tyler, my apologies. Let's see, how about Daniel 21 and 24?

21? Chapter four.

Chapter four. And whose foliage was beautiful, and whose frugal minute in which was fruitful, and under which the peace of it. Now that's not it either. But that's the reverse that I did actually write down.

Well, regardless, that's what I was learning from Dr. Heiser, and I did see that passage at some point.

Now you did see the phrase, a holy one, in verse 23 there.

Yeah, let's see if I can look that up.

It might be what you had noticed before. It says that the king saw a watcher, a holy one, coming down from heaven and saying, cut down the tree and destroy it.

What verse did you say that was?

Verse 23.