Holy Angels, What We Believe, Part 14

Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report

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01:03

A seraphim has six wings, two of which serve for the purpose of flying.

01:08

Now you think of wings and you think, well, wings are there for flying. Well, the seraphim have two for flying, four for humility.

01:18

I just think that's really interesting to show when we think about this. Angels are, in this case, two thirds of their wings are being used for a purpose other than flying, but for worship.

01:37

Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application.

01:43

This is a ministry of striving for eternity and the Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

01:53

Well, welcome to another edition of the Wrap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rappaport, joined again with my friend

02:00

Jim Osmond of Kootenay Community Church. How are you doing, sir? Good. Good to be with you again. Looking forward to Bud getting back.

02:07

Yeah, I think he was saying end of March he's going to be able, but March is going to be a busy month, at least for me.

02:17

I know you're going to be joining me at Shepherd's Conference, so that'll be a little bit of fun getting to see you again.

02:23

When Bud comes back in, maybe we need to have Bud here. I can hand it off to him, show him all the improvements I've made to his job description while he's been gone, and sort of walk him through how to step into the shoes that I've created for him.

02:37

Yeah, you know, I keep telling Bud, you got to listen to all the kind of digs that you're giving to him. So yeah, he's going to have big shoes to fill.

02:46

And actually, I just got done listening to your sermon. You're one of the podcasters on the

02:52

Christian podcast community, which is where many can find this podcast as well. We have your

02:57

Sunday sermons that are out. You kind of decided to just jettison your going through of Hebrews to look at Genesis.

03:07

Amazing, amazing. I did find it funny. You know, your humor comes out. You were like, okay, well, my last sermon was really long, so I have to do this in 1 .5

03:15

speeds so we can get through it. And then you're going through Genesis, and I mean,

03:21

I do realize that you may have some amillennials that are listening to your podcast or to your sermons, and you kind of apologize to them or, you know, you just basically said, you know,

03:33

God made it really clear there's these land promises. And huh, what do you know? God usually is faithful to his word.

03:39

He doesn't change, like say, oh, I know I said it this way, but I really meant it that way. Yeah, that's right.

03:45

So it was nice that you kind of gave a, okay, if you're an amillennial, you can tune back in now next week.

04:00

What we're going to talk about on today's episode are angels. Now, we started this some episodes ago looking at angels and gave an overview of angels, and there's going to be a lot of repeat in this episode, so if you go back and listen to the previous one in the series, you'll be able to get that background.

04:19

Now, we're going to have some repeating of some of this stuff because there's going to be a lot here on holy angels that are true for all angels, so you'll get some repetitive, but that's good.

04:31

This week, we're going to look specifically, though, at holy angels. Now, these are separate from what we're going to call fallen angels.

04:39

We'll look at those later episodes. You may think of fallen angels as demons, but we're making this specific distinction because people sometimes think as if demons are not angels, as if there's some other character of beings, and so we want to make it really clear that under the higher category of angels, it's broken down into two separate groups—holy and unholy, or holy and fallen.

05:11

But they're all still angels. Now, someone ought to tell some of these

05:16

Word of Faith guys that, though, because I always love this—you know, when Justin Peters does his seminar, and he plays this clip of,

05:24

I think it's Sid Roth, who can't figure out—the reason he explains why we should speak in tongues is because that way demons can't understand it, and he says that's why we speak in angelic language, so demons can't understand it.

05:41

I love when Justin does that and goes, someone ought to tell them that demons are angels.

05:46

Like, you're going to confound an angel by speaking their language.

05:52

You don't know the language, but the angels do, but if you speak their language, they're not going to know it somehow.

06:01

So there are people that sometimes think that demons are not in the category of angels.

06:06

If there was some angelic language, which we don't know that there actually is, but if there was,

06:11

I think demons would understand the angelic language because they are angels. They're just fallen ones.

06:18

So with that, why don't we get into looking at the doctrinal statement, and what we've been doing in this series is, if you go to strivingforeternity .org,

06:28

under the About section, there is a What We Believe. We're going through that, open up the section on angels, and we're in the category heading

06:39

Holy Angels. So why don't you read the first two paragraphs for that for us,

06:44

Jim, and because in this we have a lot of scripture citation, so maybe what we could do is just read the white spaces there.

06:53

Read the white letters, not the citations so much. That way we can—and so folks, what

06:59

I want to do, though, is encourage you to go to the doctrinal statement there so that you can look up each of the citations.

07:06

You want to check to make sure we're putting them out there that they're in context. You want to make sure that what we're saying there is what the scripture actually teaches.

07:15

Don't take our word for it. You want to compare it to scripture. I encourage you to go and check those out, and we're going to be looking at some of the scripture passages as we explain these.

07:24

So Jim, if you could read the first two paragraphs there. Yeah, under Holy Angels.

07:30

Holy Angels are those angels that are confirmed in holiness by a single act of obedience that occurred sometime between Genesis 131 and Genesis 3, verse 1.

07:39

Holy angels abide in heaven while still having access to earth. These holy angels minister to God and specifically to the incarnate

07:47

Christ. They also minister to believers, unbelievers, and nations. In relation to God, there are angels that worship, praise, serve, and punish his enemies.

07:57

While Christ dwelled physically on earth, angels made announcements strengthening Christ and were present throughout his ministry.

08:03

And so, right out of the gate, what we're saying here about holy angels, and we mentioned this in the last episode when we talked about angels, that angels are different than people.

08:14

They're a different being with angels who are in the presence of God. They had a one -time act, a single act of obedience or disobedience, and then they are confirmed in that state for eternity.

08:30

Unlike you and I that have our whole lifetime to come to repentance, but the moment we die, then the state of saved or unsaved is then confirmed for eternity.

08:41

So, this is something different. So, angels cannot change their state. The holy angels are confirmed in their holiness by this single act, and we don't have a lot of detail on what happened.

08:55

I know there's a lot of fiction writers that have written on what really happened there.

09:00

There's a lot of things that people will speculate there. When you look at some other religious systems, such as the

09:09

Mormons, you'll see that they put a lot in there of what supposedly happened there, and what they believe in this act was because they believe that all of the spirits that are going to populate earth were created already, they actually argue that all the spirits were there in heaven with Heavenly Father and His wife, because that's who creates all the spirits.

09:33

And the argument is that Jesus, the

09:39

Father decided Jesus would be the Savior, but Satan wanted to be the Savior, and so they had a fight, and basically those who sided with Satan were punished and cursed.

09:52

Now, it is interesting, because Satan is a spirit in Mormonism, but he doesn't come and become a human being.

10:01

He stays as a spirit. And it is kind of interesting, because in Mormonism you have all these spirits that somehow become like angels that become people.

10:11

We've already dealt with that. That's not in Scripture. But it is interesting, because here's something you'll see. They said there was this battle in heaven.

10:20

All of the angels or spirits that sided with Heavenly Father, and that's how they refer to it,

10:28

Heavenly Father, and for Jesus being the one to be the Savior, they actually say, well, they are going to come to earth as, quote, white and delightful, unquote, people.

10:42

So you say, okay, then what about those spirits that sided with Satan or Lucifer? Oh, they come back cursed.

10:49

Those are black people. Yes, this is actually in Mormonism. It's amazing, because, you know,

10:55

I guess the theology, you know, this supposedly happened in some time in the past, and yet nowadays the

11:01

Mormons have just changed all that, because it's clearly racist, right? And they wanted to reach out to black people and get their money, too.

11:08

So you have these things where people will add a whole lot into this.

11:14

We're just saying that whatever this act was, we don't have anything in Scripture that gives us enough detail of what happened.

11:21

But we are saying that it's somewhere between Genesis 1 .31 and 3 .1.

11:30

Now, why that? Because in Genesis 1 .31, it says, God saw all that he had made, and behold, it was very good.

11:39

And it was evening, and it was morning the sixth day. So at that moment, he is saying everything was very good.

11:48

And yet by Genesis 3 .1, it says, Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast in the field which the

11:57

Lord had made, and said to the woman, Indeed has God said to you, you shall not eat of any tree in the garden.

12:06

Now, this, we would say, is Satan deceiving Eve. By the way, side note,

12:13

Jim, this is, you know, host prerogative to do a side note here and just go completely off topic.

12:18

All inaudible. Yeah. So here's—I want you to notice something. Go read

12:23

Genesis 1, 2, and 3. Look at how Satan is trying to deceive

12:29

Eve. Now, think about the garden. How many trees are they allowed to eat in the garden?

12:35

All of them. All but one, right? There's just one. All of them. What does Satan make it about?

12:40

He says, You shall not eat from any tree in the garden. This is something you end up seeing with Satan, that if God says everything is good, but one thing should be avoided,

12:52

Satan makes it all about the one thing. We see this in our day and age. What roles can women do in church?

13:00

All of them except for one, basically. All except for one. And so many people will say, Well, if you don't let a woman preach and have authority over a man, then you're not letting her do anything.

13:10

Yeah, you don't believe that women should be able to serve the Lord? Yeah. It becomes all about the one thing that God says they shouldn't do.

13:19

They can do everything else. There's no limitation on all the other—but it's just that one. But somehow, if you don't let them do that one, you're against women.

13:28

Really? You're ignoring all the other things they could do. And that's the way

13:34

Satan ends up working. So just side note that you see that, because you'll see that in a lot of different areas, when people will be tempted in that way, like Satan, to just reshift the focus onto one thing they shouldn't be doing, and then make that everything.

13:50

But this act had to have occurred between Genesis 1 -31, where everything was declared good, and Genesis 3 -1, where you have the temptation.

14:00

So somewhere between there, the angels must have fallen. Yeah, and we talked last time about when the angels were created, and we said it was sometime during the creation week, or that first day of creation, or right before the creation week, you know, at the beginning.

14:15

So again, we need to make sure that we understand that the angels are there for most, if not all, of creation.

14:21

They're witnesses to this, and they fall. Satan and his rebellion comes sometime after that.

14:35

I think, can't be dogmatic, that angels were created somewhere within the first three days.

14:40

They had to have been created prior to, well, day six, they see the creation of man.

14:46

That's, we looked at, we mentioned that. So day five at the latest, unless God created angels and man on the same time, but I think that God wanted them to see that.

14:57

And so he created them probably early in the process. How soon? I have no idea.

15:03

I mean, it's amazing to think about that the angels, this act, had to have been pretty early on, because we don't know how long

15:09

Adam and Eve were in the garden, but was it days? Was it years? But at some point the angels rebelled.

15:18

It couldn't have been too long, because we do know how Adam and Eve were, how old they were before they started having children.

15:24

So it's not like it was centuries before the fall. What you end up seeing is that it's probably early on that the angels rebelled against God.

15:34

And when I get to heaven, I'm going to have a lot of questions about that rebellion. I think it's somewhere in Ezekiel where God is describing

15:41

Lucifer and he says, you were in your majesty in the garden of God, walked in the garden of God.

15:47

So there seems to be this, I've speculated in the past, that I think what caused

15:52

Satan to say, I will be like the most high, I will set myself up, I will take this throne, was him witnessing creation and saying, as the anointed cherub, yeah,

16:03

I could do that and then have a collection of people worship him. I could have them worship me.

16:09

And that was the pride of it, that it was seeing God create everything and then seeing him create man who were meant to have a relationship with him and worship him.

16:18

And Satan longed for that worship. And so I think that there's a walking in the garden of God there after creation that somehow caused that pride to find its way into the heart of Satan.

16:28

And that's when he fell. And I think that's why he fell. I think it's connected to that creation because it seems to be that he was part of that creation and a witness to it.

16:38

Yeah, and that's Ezekiel 28, 11 to 17 you're referring. And when you look at that, the other passage that's attributed to Satan, we'll look at that in a future episode, is

16:47

Isaiah 14. And there you actually see kind of what the fall was about because he says,

16:53

I think it's seven times, he says, I will, I will, I will. He wanted what

16:58

God had, and he wanted the honor and the glory that God rightfully deserves.

17:03

He wanted that for himself. And so this is something to note, folks. People talk about the fall as if the fall, the initial fall of sin was with Adam and Eve.

17:16

That's not true. The first time there was sin in the universe, it was actually with the angels.

17:23

That happened prior to Genesis 3, 1. Because once they fell, they went to deceive human beings.

17:30

So that was the first sin that was initiated was with the angels.

17:35

Now the holy angels, they didn't rebel against God. So they're confirmed in holiness.

17:42

In the statement we say, holy angels abode in heaven while having access to earth.

17:48

And this is something just to recognize that you can see this in Daniel, Daniel chapter nine, the angel comes from heaven to Daniel to give an interpretation of the dream to be able to answer his prayer.

18:07

We see things like that. Okay, so they have some way of being able to travel between heaven and earth.

18:16

You can see this in Job. Job starts out and God asked Satan, where have you been?

18:23

He's been, he's roaming the earth. He said, have you considered my servant Job? And so Satan and the other angels have some way of being able to travel back and forth between heaven and earth.

18:36

How do they do that? Well, I don't think they take a cable car like some of the word of faith guys claim they go to heaven in.

18:44

You know, actually we should do this. This could be really fun, Jim. We should actually just get a list of all of the people that claim, all these word of faith folks that claim they go to heaven.

18:55

We should get a list of all the different ways they've gotten there. I mean, cable cars, some of them are just transported.

19:05

I think there was one that said they were a hot air balloon or something. You know, it's like, I mean, it might be an interesting list of see how creative they are with how they get there.

19:13

But angels can go back and forth. We don't know how. There's no scripture that explains that, but we know that they can.

19:21

We do know that in Daniel, an angel was held up by another angel from coming to Daniel, so they could have resistance there.

19:29

But these angels, these holy angels, all angels were designed to be ministers.

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So these holy angels, because they're holy, they still maintain that responsibility, that privilege, that job of being a minister to God.

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They were, and specifically, they were ministering to Christ when he was on earth.

19:54

We see that in scripture. And so that's what angels do.

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Their job is to minister to God, to minister to Christ while he was on earth.

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But they also act as messengers of God. And part of that is they minister to believers.

20:14

And oh, by the way, they also minister to unbelievers and nations, right? We see that in scripture, that you'll have it with Daniel, you have it with Jeremiah, that they actually are working within nations.

20:29

And so this gets into the question though, Jim, that a lot of people sometimes think of, and this, we said in the last episode, when we talked about angels, that there's a lot of confusion with angels.

20:41

Have you been asked, put your pastoral hat on, see if you've been asked this before.

20:47

Pastor Jim, do we have guardian angels? Yeah, that's a good question.

20:52

I don't think the scripture says that we have guardian angels specifically assigned to us.

20:58

I do think that from time to time, angels are assigned to minister to believers, but I don't believe that there's anything in scripture that says that there's one particular angel that is assigned to me at the moment of my birth, who's supposed to watch over me all the way through my life.

21:12

And interestingly enough, there are people who believe that that is, that even unbelievers have guardian angels.

21:18

Unbelievers describe that. They talk about having guardian angels. And yet scripture is not silent about angels ministering to us and serving us, but it is silent as to whether or not we are assigned an angel.

21:32

I think when we get to heaven, I think we're going to find that a lot of angels were assigned to us at various points in our lives.

21:39

Yes, and there's one passage that I think people use where it mentions his angel.

21:47

Speaking of someone, I can't remember where it is. I wanted to say it was in James, but I don't think it is.

21:53

But there is a passage where people use it to say that this is speaking of guardian angels. And yet I remember looking at that passage and it doesn't say that.

22:04

People are implying that there are angels that will minister to believers, but they can be ministering to unbelievers.

22:11

They can be ministering to nations. We don't know enough about how they do their ministry and how they organize that.

22:20

Scripture just doesn't give us that information. In this case, that less information is better for us because with the little information that we are given, people abuse that and make too much out of it and go beyond what's written.

22:31

If God gave us any more information, they would just, man would have a tendency to compound false doctrine after false doctrine after tradition on top of all of that and come up with all kinds of bizarre things.

22:42

No, you're saying that people would corrupt what God has said?

22:48

No, I can't believe that. I could see it happen. In a rare case, right?

22:54

Yeah, yeah. This is exactly why we end up seeing so much division in so many groups, because people are trying to make the

23:05

Word of God say what they wish it said. A great example of that would be recently, we had a

23:11

Church of Christ minister that joined our Apologetics Live show, and in there, he was pushing for the belief that baptism saves you.

23:22

I think he did a horrible job because every time we came to scripture, we wanted to stick to one scripture passage and just examine what the scripture actually said.

23:30

He always wanted to jump all over the Bible. Instead of looking at the context of what... he wants to understand the context of one passage by jumping to another passage and not look at that context either, just slam those verses together.

23:43

Yeah, as if the context of one is just a citation of another passage. Yeah, and that's the thing you have to be careful with, and you're right,

23:50

Jim, this is what people do. And if we had more information about angels, it doesn't mean that we would have these things clarified.

23:59

We would, but you'd still have people that would abuse it. They abuse the information they currently have. Mm -hmm.

24:05

This is the problem with people that don't want to submit to scripture, but want scripture to submit to them. That's really what it comes down to.

24:12

They want God to submit to them. That's dangerous. They put themselves in a position of judge over the

24:19

Word of God. James, I think it's four or five, mentions that. When we judge our brother, not by God's standard, but by our own, we're actually saying that our standard, we're putting ourselves above the

24:31

Word of God. People do this all the time because they want to, in their pride, they want to be seen, heard, and have that, whatever that is, that belief system, they want the

24:49

Word of God to say that. They're going to try to find a way to make that happen. People do this all the time.

24:55

Before we get into angels, the relationship between angels, God, because we gave a little bit of the overview of the purpose of to minister.

25:06

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26:54

Now, Jim, as we were talking in relation to God, there are angels that are designed for the specific role of worship.

27:04

We see that in Isaiah 6, 2, and 3. There's a group of angels called

27:11

Seraphim. They're there to worship. And it is kind of interesting because I don't know that all angels have wings.

27:19

Some people think that they have wings, that all angels have wings. We know that Seraphim do, and it's interesting because it's described in Isaiah 6, 2, that they have three sets or three pairs of wings, okay?

27:34

So they have six wings. Now, it's interesting because Isaiah says two of them, with two of the wings, the angel covers their face.

27:43

With two, they cover their feet, and with two, they flew. And what are they saying?

27:49

Well, they're saying, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. So they're worshiping God. It's interesting because two covering their face and two covering their feet is the acts of showing holiness of worship.

28:03

That they shouldn't be with God there like they shouldn't be looking at God and that they're unclean to be in the presence of God.

28:10

They cover their feet. So it's interesting that Seraphim has six wings, two of which serve for the purpose of flying.

28:18

Now, you think of wings and you think, well, wings are there for flying. Well, the Seraphim have two for flying, four for humility.

28:27

I just think that's really interesting to show when we think about this, angels are, in this case, being two thirds of their wings are being used for a purpose other than flying, but for worship.

28:43

So we see that angels worship. They worship God specifically. We see in Job 38, 7, that they praise

28:52

God. They sang to God. We see that they serve God.

28:58

You could see that Genesis 19, 12 to 13, that this is with Lot where the angels go out to carry out what

29:07

God has set for them to do. So they act in service of God and they do one other thing that we see and that is they punish

29:16

God's enemies. Now, this doesn't mean that they do that every time that someone acts as an enemy of God because we all start out as God's enemies, but that's the beauty of the fact that while we were enemies of God, God saved us.

29:35

But you see in 2 Kings 19, 35, it says, then it happened that night that the angel of the

29:44

Lord went out and struck 185 ,000 in the camp of the

29:51

Assyrians. And when the men rose early in the morning, behold, all of them were dead.

29:57

So what you see here is that the angel, God used an angel in that case to carry out an act of warfare and slaughter 185 ,000 people.

30:11

Now, I have heard this before, Jim. Maybe you have too. But people will look at a passage like that and this is one of the ones

30:19

I get asked sometimes when I'm on the street doing open -air evangelism and they say, well, see? See, God killed people.

30:25

He's a murderer. He used the angels to act on his behalf to kill 185 ,000 people.

30:33

Is this an act of murder, Jim? No. No, murder is the unjustified taking of human life and God needs nothing more than his own will to justify taking human life.

30:44

So it's not the same thing as murder. It is an act of killing, but God is completely free to kill because he is the one who gives life.

30:49

He can take life for whatever purposes he deems appropriate at the time. So we have to distinguish between murder and killing.

30:55

Is it an act of killing? Yes, it is. Angels kill people at God's demand, at his command.

31:01

But that's not murder. Murder is the unjustified taking of an innocent human life that's different than the act of killing.

31:07

And so this is something people try to use, though, Jim, to say that somehow God is wrong.

31:14

At the very first time we sinned, God would have been absolutely just in taking our life.

31:20

In fact, he could have just taken Adam and Eve just immediately. He could have taken

31:25

Eve's life when she took that fruit and taken her life immediately and create a new woman, and he would be absolutely just in doing it.

31:35

The reason people ask questions like that is because they think they're a good person, right?

31:41

They think that God should give me everything. I'm so wonderful.

31:47

The problem is that they have a high and inflated view of themselves, not a high and inflated view of God.

31:55

The question is not, why does God kill 185 ,000 people in that day?

32:02

The question is, why did he let them live so long? Yeah, why does he let us live even right now? Yeah, it shows his long suffering with us.

32:11

And so when people try to use passages like this to try to say somehow God is unjust, one of the things

32:18

I'll do when anyone tells me, makes an argument that somehow God is unjust, I just ask them point blank, are you saying that God is unjust?

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And they go, yes. Where do you get your standard of justice from? Because the only way we can have an absolute universal standard of justice is if it comes from the creator who is just.

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It comes from God. We know what justice is because it comes from the nature of God.

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So if God's nature is just, how could he be unjust? Because that would be against his nature.

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In fact, what makes something unjust, what makes it wrong to not be doing what is just is because it is going against the nature of God.

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And so that's the whole thing we have to realize is we have to keep with the nature of God.

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An act of unjustness is the opposite of his attributes.

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That's what makes it wrong. He can never be unjust because we get justice from him.

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He's the source of it. And so he did kill 185 ,000

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Assyrians on that day, but he was just in doing it because he had been long suffering with them for all those years.

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He used an angel to do that. He doesn't always do this. I mean, many times we see in warfare that God would act and give a victory, but he gave that victory without the angels being involved in it.

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On this occasion, he did that. Why? Well, ultimately, we don't know.

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He has lots of reasons for what he does, but he did it in this case. But I would argue that the result of this was that the

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Israelites marveled, and that's what he wanted them to do, to marvel at what he could do.

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And we should be amazed at the ability of one angel to wreak such damage and havoc upon a population.

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If one angel can slaughter 185 ,000, imagine what a legion of angels could do. I mean, the angels are far mightier in power than we can even possibly imagine, which just makes you realize how foolish it is for anybody thinking that they have the authority to bind, rebuke, reprove, or slander evil spirits.

34:35

We will definitely touch on that in more detail when we get into specifically

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Satan, because when we talk about that whole aspect, you have a lot of people, when it comes to angels, think they could speak to the angels, command angels, even.

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And we don't see that in Scripture the way that many will practice that, telling

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Satan what to do, binding him up. They're going to be stronger than him and tie him up. And I always love when

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Justin Peters in his Clouds Without Water has the comment where he says, whosoever the guy that keeps releasing

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Satan, they should just bind him up, because everyone around the world is always binding Satan.

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Somehow someone keeps letting him go, letting him free. Bind that person so that he's just bound.

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But we'll address that in a future episode when we look into Satan. Another thing we mention here is that while Christ dwelled physically on earth, the angels, they were involved in several aspects.

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The first is his announcement. And these are the passages, I think, that seem to be reserved only for one time a year.

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And then everyone reads Luke chapter 1, Luke chapter 2, Matthew, right?

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You end up seeing that there's those passages that are just at Christmastime, right? We have the announcements of Christ.

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And so we do have in Luke, though, we have the announcements that we have there where Gabriel ends up being sent by God.

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This is Luke 1 .26. So Gabriel is one of the few angels that we have by name.

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There's only three angels that we have by name. It's Gabriel, Michael, and Lucifer.

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Those are the three angels that we have by name. And so Gabriel was sent by God to Galilee, okay, to the city of Nazareth to go to Mary and proclaim to Mary that she is going to give birth to the

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Savior. So we also have that some other angels, they aren't named in Luke chapter 2, starting in verse 8, that the shepherds are out in a field.

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They're there at night watching the flock and an angel of the Lord suddenly stood before them.

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And what does he do? He announces to them that Christ had come. So we see that angels on the behest of God, in their service to God, came to earth to make an announcement.

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Now, with this note, and we said this in the last, in the series on, when we started looking at angels, we talked about the fact that angels somehow can be invisible and be visible.

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They can make themselves somehow visible to human beings. That's very uncommon.

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It's not normal, but it can happen. And here are some cases where it did. Mary saw

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Gabriel. Daniel had seen Gabriel. The shepherds see these angels. They can see them.

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How can an angel go from visible to invisible to visible? I have no idea, but all

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I know is that scripture makes it clear that they did, and so we know that they can. So not only were they in the life of Christ, did they make announcements of his coming, but we also see in Matthew 4, after his temptation, that they strengthened

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Christ. How did they do that? It's just says they strengthened him. Not enough detail.

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This gets back to where we say there'd be some speculation when you try to say what it means when it says, this is

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Matthew 4, 11, then the devil left him and behold, angels came and began to minister to him.

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What did that look like? Well, I think what Jim had said earlier is we shouldn't go beyond what scripture says, right?

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This is where we get in trouble. And if there was more, more information on angels, it doesn't mean that we would be clarified in some of this.

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No, it just means that we would have more things to corrupt, unfortunately. And so looking at this, what we end up seeing is that they came and strengthened him and ministered to him in some way, but I don't have anything more of clarity on that other than to say that they ministered, because that's what scripture says.

39:13

Yeah. So one last thing dealing specifically with Christ that we see is it says, and the angels were present throughout his ministry.

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Now we see a couple times where the angels were involved. Luke 22, 43 says, now an angel from heaven appeared to him, strengthening him.

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So again, the angels, while he was on earth, they were ministering to Christ, strengthening him.

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Don't know what that looked like. Now there is going to be one difference here when it comes to Christ.

39:47

Jim, though you and I may have angels right around us, we can't see. Yeah. Christ knew what those angels were doing when he was on earth because he's omniscient.

39:55

Yeah. He could see, even if he can't see him with his physical eyes as a human, in his deity, he knows what they're doing.

40:03

He can see them that way. Yeah. So it is kind of interesting that the angels would be ministering to him, even though no one else, he'd have his 12 disciples, could be at the feeding of the 5 ,000 with 5 ,000 men, and yet the angels would be there.

40:22

No one sees those angels, but Christ would know what they're doing. He sees them. Yeah. So Acts 1, verse 10 says, and they were gazing intently into the sky, while he was going, behold, two men in white clothes stood beside them.

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And now this is the idea I picture, like Christ is ascending into heaven, and they're just watching that, right?

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They see Christ physically rising and ascending, and then all of a sudden, two angels just, boop, right?

40:55

They just went from invisible to visible. All of a sudden, just everyone would be startled, you know, and see that.

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And I think that that would happen, it would get people's attention, but we ended up seeing they were there already, even though the disciples watching

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Jesus ascend didn't see them until they suddenly made themselves visible. Christ saw them.

41:16

He knew they were there. Yeah. I think that one of the things that is important to think about angels is the realization that we're not, when we talk about an angel coming from heaven, we're not talking about an angel transversing space like we think of space, as if they had to come from the other side of Alpha Centauri or some distant galaxy.

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But when angels come from heaven to earth, we're more talking about them changing, not locations so much as dimensions.

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Angels are creatures of a spiritual dimension, a place, a realm that we cannot see with the naked eye.

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We cannot perceive it with these fallen bodies. We don't have access to that here because we are in the flesh, we're under the curse, we can't see, flesh and blood cannot see the kingdom of heaven or the glory of God.

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But an angel, when they just suddenly appear with the disciples, it's much like Jesus appearing in a locked room with the disciples.

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Jesus didn't come into that locked room because he transversed from point A to point B and walked through a wall.

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That's a mischaracterization. Rather, Jesus simply appeared amongst them because he simply wills to change locations in terms of changing dimensions or changing realms.

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He goes from the heavenly realm into the physical realm. And it's just a matter of changing really how people perceive him from being imperceptible to being perceptible.

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That's what angels do. It's not like it took them a while to get from heaven to earth. They didn't have to travel. The disciples didn't see the angels coming through the clouds and making the trip down to earth in order to give the message.

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They just simply appeared in the presence of the people to whom they were speaking. We are bound by matter, by time, by space.

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We don't know angels, what limitations they have or don't. This is something that when we look at angels, we have to realize they travel different than you and I, because we're in a physical body.

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They're not. They're a spirit. How does their spirit travel? I don't know. I suspect it's not a matter of traversing distance, though.

43:21

That's the key. And yet, at the same time, you end up seeing that in Daniel. Here, Gabriel's going to come to Daniel, but he was held up.

43:30

Yeah. And so he could be held up by a demon. So there was some battle that was going on.

43:38

He's held up, I think it said three days. And so however they do travel, there's something there that they could limit one another from being able to get from point

43:49

A to point B. Yeah. It doesn't seem like they just immediately appear somewhere.

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They just think, okay, I got to be in Paris. So boom, I'm there. Because the other angel was able to prevent him from getting to Daniel.

44:04

Yeah. Assuming that that angel is coming from heaven and it's entirely possible,

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I think, and this is just sanctified speculation, that an angel may take time or have to transverse from Kootenai to New Jersey, from Idaho to New Jersey, is a matter of going from A to B.

44:25

But going from the spiritual realm to being physically visible is not a matter of transversing space.

44:31

Yeah. I mean, that could be. And you're right. This is a sanctified speculation.

44:37

Yeah. Right? We can't be sure about this. There's something that's not mentioned in your doctrinal statement.

44:42

It's not intended to be a complete list of everything angels do. But in some way, the angels were involved in mediating the old covenant.

44:50

And we need to remember that. Galatians 3 .19 says, Paul says, why the law then? It was added because of transgressions, having been ordained through angels by the agency of a mediator until the seed would come to whom the promise had been made.

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So there is some sense in which Galatians 3 .19, Paul says, there's some sense in which angels were involved in mediating and ordaining the law, the giving of the law.

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They were there with Moses, and that law was in some way communicated through angels. So there we see angels being involved in a good way, holy angels being involved in a good way with the giving of the law, indicating its holiness, its purity,

45:25

God's purposes, and obviously the angels' establishment of that covenant and being mediators with that covenant makes them a witness to that covenant, as well as those who were involved in the mediating of it.

45:37

And one other thing, Andrew, that I just, it dawned on me going back to the beginning of our discussion here today about holy angels being confirmed in holiness by a single act.

45:47

It's important to remember that when we talk about demons, we're not talking about, we're not talking about something other than an angelic being.

45:54

Demons were once holy angels. We have to remember that. They were at one time holy, their fall makes them unholy, but it does not change their nature from being angels.

46:03

They're still angels. They're just in a fallen state in the same way that we are still humans, though we are in a fallen state.

46:09

Their one -time act of being confirmed either in holiness or in their rebellion is different than Adam's fall in that Adam was a federal head.

46:17

He acted on behalf of others. Angels acted on behalf of only themselves, and that's a distinction between angelic beings and created beings.

46:24

They have no federal headship, and therefore there is no salvation available to them. If you and I were damned for Adam's sin, or if we were damned in our lostness because of what

46:34

Adam did without any redemption made available to us, that would be somewhat unjust in the sense that we would be damned for Adam's act of federal headship on our behalf, and yet the federal headship that was enacted by Adam is also played out in what

46:51

Christ has done for us in that Christ functions as our federal head in saving us. So angels had no representative who fell on their behalf, so it's not like Lucifer acted on behalf of the third of the angels and fell.

47:03

Each one of those angels made that choice of rebellion, and so each one of them made the choice to enter into that fallen state or that rebellion themselves individually, which is why probably there is no salvation, one of many reasons why there's no salvation available to them.

47:18

And that's a very important point, and we're going to look at that, I'm sure we're going to talk about this with the fallen angels, because they went from one state to another.

47:29

Those that we're speaking of today, the holy angels, they're confirmed in holiness. They've only known holiness.

47:37

Those that had fallen, they knew holiness. Now they'll never know it again.

47:43

They're permanently in a state of being unholy, and they can't change that, and that's why it says in 1

47:49

Peter that the angels look at salvation with wonder, because they can't understand that. They can't experience that.

47:56

They never will be able to. Here we are as humans, we are born only knowing sin, and until we are saved, we know nothing of any kind of holiness, and yet we are taken out of an unholy position, and we are redeemed and made holy.

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That's part of the marvelous nature of our salvation that makes angels long to look into those things.

48:24

We're going to continue this in another episode to finish up the doctrinal statement dealing with holy angels, and what we're going to look at is the relationship, then, that they have to believers and unbelievers and nations.

48:37

Now we said in the first paragraph that what they do is they minister to God, they minister to Christ, and they minister to believers, unbelievers, and nations.

48:49

So far we've looked at their ministry to God and to Christ. What we're going to do in the next episode is look at their ministry to believers, unbelievers, and the nations.

49:00

So I hope you'll tune in for that. If you're listening to this, maybe you're not following it, please, in whatever podcast app that you have, go and follow this podcast,

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50:11

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50:19

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