#49 UNDERSTANDING ANGELS (PROTESTANT VIEW) + Dr. Josh Waltman

Welcome to Biblically Speaking. My name is Cassian Bellino, and I'm your host. In this podcast, we talk about the

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Bible make sense so we can get to know God, our creator, better. Hello, hello, and welcome back to Biblically Speaking.

I'm your host, Cassian Bellino, and today I am so excited to have a return guest, Dr. Josh Waltman. Dr.

Josh Waltman, we know you. We love you. You've been on for so many exciting topics like The Unseen Realm.

You are Professor of Theology and Apologetics at Liberty Theological Seminary in Virginia, and you also have a

PhD in Theological Studies. If you've listened to the other episodes, you know all of this, but today you're back to talk about a very exciting topic of angels, which we have discussed, well,

I've discussed in the past with Dr. Carr from the Catholic perspective. You and I, we're both Protestants, or I guess

I would characterize myself as Protestant, and I'm really curious to know how our side of the fence, not that there is a fence, but what do we know and not know about angels?

How they work, guardian angels, what's their role, what's the enemy side of that? I'm really excited for this conversation, but how does one study angels?

Well, how does one study angels? How do we know what we know? Yeah, well, let me jump in and just say

I'm thankful to be here as always. I really appreciate being on the podcast. Love your podcast.

Love your listeners. You guys out there are awesome. Make sure you keep following Cassie, and she does a great job, as you all know.

Thanks. Yeah, so with this topic, I'm excited to talk about it.

I do think we're way, in some areas anyway, we're often into speculation land because the

Bible only gives us but so much. We get little windows. We get little peeks into that realm, but there might be more than what a lot of Protestants would say that we could know.

I think we can say some things based on what Scripture is giving us and inferences in Scripture.

At least for me, the way that I'd want to tackle the subject would be first and foremost from a biblical theological perspective.

There are lots of ways to do theology, and we can talk a little bit about this. You mentioned that you had had conversations with scholars on the

Catholic end, and I have nothing but respect for those folks. I really appreciate their contributions to the discussion.

I by no means want to pit my view against theirs or anything like that, but I do think the way that we're going to approach the question is going to be different on a methodological standpoint.

I'd be more inclined to say, hey, look, questions about philosophical issues or spiritual issues are derived foundationally from my understanding of the narrative of Scripture and then the particulars in Scripture.

I'd be much less inclined to give any sort of overarching authority to some of the traditional interpreters of Scripture throughout church history.

I'd be more inclined to deal with things more at an expositional level in the text and allow the text to give me my lines of what

I can say definitively and what I can't. And so how we parse that out, maybe it comes out in our conversation, but as far as studying the issue,

I think it's a good and godly thing to go to Scripture and try to understand what

Scripture is teaching us about any given subject. And it is a good and godly thing to keep trying to work that out in a systematic way.

I think we'll spend eternity trying to understand God and all of the ins and outs. That's a beautiful thing about worship.

Thank God, right? Thank God. I would hate to worship a God that I fully got my mind around and I was bored because I understood him completely.

In fact, that wouldn't be God at that point. Truly. It's an inexhaustible practice.

I mean, what is this? The most secure job ever because it never runs out. It's renewed each time we open it.

Right. Exactly. Are you seeing the foundational differences then between the Catholic and the

Protestant perspective is maybe Catholic takes more out of the text and is more interpretive in things beyond Scripture, whereas the

Protestant view is what does the Bible say? And let's only take from that. Am I reading that correctly? Well, OK, let me maybe paint a little bit more complexity.

I think when we say there's a Protestant view and a Catholic view, that might be a little misleading because I don't know that there is one view represented in both camps.

Got it. There are many Protestant views and I would imagine there would be some diversity in Catholicism about how theologians are interpreting certain elements of this area anyway.

And so I don't want to say that I represent all Protestants, but generally speaking,

I think Protestants are a little bit more reticent to pull from a singular thinker in church history or from a tradition in church history, though I think those elements are very, very important.

You know, I'm not willing to hold fast to interpreters so much as me going back to the text and trying to nail that down from a biblical theological perspective first.

And so that's sort of my matrix. I want to understand what did the biblical authors teach? And then

I'm going to draw the lines of certainty with them before I go off and do speculation and act like that speculation is more authoritative.

Does that make sense? That makes a lot of sense. So where do you like to start in the Bible? Because I feel like there's many instances that we see angels.

I mean, from the show notes that I sent you, I mean, we'll be pulling from this, but like right there in Hebrews 1 .14, are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?

To me, I mean, again, just like I'm going to come with the Sunday school mentality of like,

I thought they were just like angels, like there's God and then like all the homies singing, worshiping and doing whatever needs to be done.

And that's going to greet us when we get to heaven. And it really just seems like God, angels.

But when I spoke with and I'm just going to compare this to what I've known with Dr. Carr and you to kind of clarify the differences.

But he made it very clear that there's a hierarchy. There's nine choirs of angels. Is that where you would start or am

I jumping ahead? Well, OK, let's we got to start somewhere. So let's start there. OK.

And, you know, that Hebrews passage, for instance, this is maybe a good illustration of kind of what

I'm getting at. You know, I think sometimes when we talk about angels or any subject for that matter, what we want to do is go through and find a little snippet of a verse here, a little snippet of a verse there, you know, and pull a bunch of pieces together from all over.

And that becomes our theology. Right. I don't know that that's always the most helpful start.

I think it's better to say, hey, like, what is scripture teaching within those passages and within the broader story of what

God's trying to accomplish? And then let that give rise to the answers to some of the questions that we have.

And so like the Hebrews passage that you referenced there, the whole point of that passage is that Jesus, the

Christ, the son is superior. He is supreme over the angels. And so the writer of Hebrews is saying, look,

God never gave the angels the authority that he's given to Christ.

And so he is superior. And so, you know, what can we draw from that?

Well, they are subservient, those that those that are that are not fallen anyway.

They're subservient to the will of the sun and his agenda and ushering in the kingdom of God and in salvation for and the restoration of the earth and all of those things.

They're carrying out the will of the sun. That's that's when we say Jesus sits at the right hand of the father and has the authority over the heavens and over the earth.

That's what we mean. They're his angels. And so I don't think that we can pull from that passage like some do and say, you know, see, they're meant to serve us.

Well, again, context of Hebrews is the point is that they're serving

Christ and Christ has his church and his agenda and salvation.

And so, yes, do they serve? Do they serve and minister to humans, to God's people? Yes. But they're not there for quote unquote us.

Ultimately, they're for Christ and Christ is seeing us as his people. So so looking at that passage first, that gives us maybe a little bit of a window here.

You asked this question about hierarchy. Yeah. Great question, man.

What a good question. I see. Here's what I see. I see in scripture references to, say, archangels, this idea of arch or chief.

You know, we might interpret it with that word chief angel. What I don't see is much delineation past that.

I, of course, on the fallen side, I will see language like powers and rulers and dominions.

And so that seems to indicate hierarchies of some sort on the fallen side.

I would maybe associate that with geographical elements and we can unpack that in a second.

But as far as coming up with like heavenly choirs and specific ranks and all of those things, a

Protestant typically is not going to recognize that. You know, my answer to that would be maybe.

But scripture is not telling us. And I think a lot of a lot of where that's coming from in church history, you'll get the medieval theologians.

I think about Thomas Aquinas, you know, he's writing a lot about angels in his work.

But he's also heavily influenced by someone by the name of Pseudo Dionysius, who's writing in the fifth century.

He's got a whole treatise called the Celestial Hierarchy where you'll see like a hierarchy of angels.

And again, that's influencing people like Thomas Aquinas. Where does where does

Dionysius get that information? Not scripture. Oh, OK. So that doesn't mean it's wrong.

It could be right. But again, I would be more inclined to say, well, maybe maybe there are specific other hierarchies beyond Archangel.

But I can't say for certain. And I'm OK with that. OK, yeah, it seems like it's a priority thing.

And like, again, I'm just like leaning into what I've been told and what I've seen is you you know that there's a seraphim at the gates with a sort of fire of Eden.

And then you have, you know, the Archangel Gabriel. And then it almost seems like a guardian angel is something we made up.

But, you know, we we see these different classifications for you. Do you kind of group them all together?

Like it's not biblically a priority to create these different choirs based on how they're referenced in scripture.

OK, good question. Maybe let me can I answer it in a little bit of a different way than you ask it?

I think, first of all, the word angel just means messenger.

I don't think that that is a state of being so much as it is a job description.

OK, so we we in our American way of thinking, because of tradition, think of angel as a an ontological category or category of creature.

Yes. I don't I don't think that that's the case. I think what we've got to look at the biblical narrative, we've got

God creating the heavens and the earth. And he has his heavenly family and he has his earthly family.

His heavenly family are made up of spiritual beings. And his earthly family are made up of embodied beings, as in Adam and Eve, human beings.

His his earthly family fall. And then so do some of his spiritual family,

Satan being one of them. But there are there are others. But, you know, as far as like, do we have a hierarchy in his spiritual family?

Well, we do have references to like a divine council. So I know that opens up Pandora's box, but a council, it seems like God has his you know, he's got his folks that he's listening to and that they have authority that he's that he's given them.

But to think that they all look the same or have the same functions or, you know, would appear in the same way,

I don't think we see that in Scripture. So you mentioned cherubim and seraphim. OK, so like I would look at those individuals, seraphs, for instance, seraphim, a seraph is described, for instance, in Isaiah.

As a serpent like a seraph is a serpent like figure with with wings, you know, praising the

Lord around the throne. And then the ancient context, ancient Near Eastern context, you know, serpents would have been thrown guardians of sorts like praising

God around the throne. And so the Israelite conception is consistent with this.

You've got angelic beings that are holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty. You know, when we sing that in court in church, we're singing the song of the angels, which is a beautiful thought.

And then cherubim seem to be associated with the holiness of God in the face of, say, sin or in the face of those that have broken

God's law. So, for instance, the Ark of the Covenant, you know, have have the cherubs, the cherubim on top that have wings that are touching one another.

And very, very descriptive, you know, very descriptive figures of what these cherubim look like.

And the cherub at the garden that's guarding the guardian, the garden and so forth.

Now, some scholars will say that, OK, we've just got the same sort of figure, you know, sometimes described as a seraph and sometimes described as a cherub.

I think probably the scripture is using two different words. I think probably you've got descriptions of, you know, spiritual beings, heavenly beings that have different functions or roles.

And yes, they might have different presentations, but they have different functions or roles in scripture.

So as far as like a taxonomy of all that, there are many there are many functions and roles of heavenly beings in scripture.

And they look different. Some look humanoid. Some look serpent like. Some have multiple heads of an eagle and an ox and, you know, eyes on wheels and all kinds of things like that that we see in Ezekiel.

So now that begs an interesting question, but is that making sense so far? I love the way that you put it of like, it's

God's heavenly family. And I feel like I was maybe approaching the conversation of like,

OK, if I got to guard so -and -so, I'll go to the archangels. But if I want to get a one -on -one, then

I'll go to the guardian angels. But it seems like kind of what you said is like this is his angelic spiritual family of like, and on earth we have the embodied human family.

Just like I might be a teacher or a knight or a king the same way that angel is going to be in these different roles within that spiritual realm.

Is that the simplest way I could kind of say? Yeah. And if you think about it, even in the human realm, right, there is a lot of diversity in our humanity, different gifts, different abilities.

And even if we were to go outside of just humanity, God creates the earth with diversity across many different kinds of creatures.

So why think that God lacks creativity in how he creates his heavenly family?

Absolutely. And you even mentioned the divine counsel, which like we can go as deep into that as you want.

I will not hold you back. But we see that in Genesis with the counsel of like all the hosts of heaven.

But then we also see it in Job. And I would love to know, I mean, Job, when I spoke about it with Dr.

John Wallen, it was Job is kind of a hypothetical. But I'm curious if you take

Job as a literal story with a man from Uz named Job. And at the beginning, God is talking with others in heaven before Satan shows up.

How would you interpret the book of Job in that way? Yeah. You know, Dr. Walten is a legend in biblical studies.

And so far be it from me to try to sit here and give the more expert opinion. But I think

I will just for the sake of, for the sake of, I mean, you're asking me the question. So I'll say I think

Job is not giving us, you know, allegory or something like that. I think we've got a, we've got a literal rendering of what happened, that this actually happened.

The Satan is making an accusation of Job in God's divine counsel.

And so I say it that way because sometimes people just say, OK, this person in Job is the same as the person in Genesis 3 with the serpent.

Maybe, maybe not. Some will say that what you've got going on there is one of God's counsel members.

The Satan just means accuser. Maybe this could be, for instance, one of the roles of a council member is to sort of test the fidelity of people on the earth.

So some scholars will take it that way. Others will say, no, there seems to be a more nefarious intent behind this.

So perhaps this is an angel that is falling by virtue of going against what God is saying.

I'm one in the camp to say it may not be the serpent from Genesis. But I do think it is an angel that is questioning

God's declaration of Job's righteousness. And so in that sense, we've got an angel that's toying with sin.

And so there's something more nefarious going on than just simply saying, well, what about, you know, the only reason you think that Job is righteous is because you've never tested him.

I don't think that's an honest question. I think that there's an actual, you know, a nefarious intent behind it.

So that being said, I do think that we're getting insight into the dynamics of God's counsel in Job.

And what's interesting, too, kind of going back to what I was referring to about God's heavenly family, what is it

Job 38 refers to? Like in the conversation

Job is having with God, we get this description. It's like, who are you, Job? Were you there when the stars in the sky were applauding and shouting for joy at the creation of the earth?

So who are the stars of the sky? And I take that to mean these are angelic beings.

Because that Hebrew word is used interchangeably between like stars in the sky and heavenly hosts.

Correct. Got it. Okay. It kind of seems like,

I mean, we know humans. We've got crazy free will. We can, you know, do right, do wrong. To me,

I guess I perceived angels of like, well, if you're on the good side, you're 100 % good. And if you're on the bad side, you're 100 % bad.

But is it fair to say that maybe like angels who are serving the Lord can have free will in a way that no longer serves the

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Thank you so much. Now back to the show. Well, certainly they have to have free will because we can't say that God creates a being that's already fallen or sinful.

Because that would bring into question God's integrity as a creator. Wow. That means he created something that was evil.

And so we have to say that he creates even the angels with free will.

I mean, principally the same as how he creates Adam and Eve with free will. Again, the story of the

Bible is a story where God wants a family. He wants a family on earth and he wants a family in heaven.

And when that is lost, he does a series of things to restore it, redeem it.

And when it's all said and done, we're going to have a new heavens and a new earth. Those two kingdoms are merged so that we no longer have brokenness in both or one and so forth.

There's a merging. But yeah, I think God always in this desire for a family wanted his creatures to choose to demonstrate their affection and love and obedience towards God.

So I would say the same is true in that sense for the angels. Now, if they have choice, then that means they have intellect.

That means they have not only volition, but in some sense, they have real, very real intelligence.

And they're morally responsible for the choices that they make. And so, yeah,

I think absolutely they can make a choice to fall and they make a choice to fall even to the point of, you know, like Satan and the demons.

You know, they are now condemned as a result of that choice. Do you,

I mean, again, I'm just like pushing this. So you tell me when you're like, we're totally off scripture. But like, do you think that they get kind of the same chance that we get of like becoming fallen and like redeeming themselves or is like, well, that's a spiritual realm.

It has different rules than the human realm. OK, great question. Fantastic question.

I don't think that the Bible tells us. OK. But it's almost like the silence on this question is kind of deafening.

What we are told is that those fallen beings are going to die like men. Psalm 82. We are also told that Satan and his demons are going to be cast into the lake of fire.

Now, is that a universal statement across the board? All of them? I take that language to be communicating that.

And so whether or not it is the case that they hypothetically could repent and God provided a mechanism for redemption.

We're not told. Since scripture doesn't speak to that, I tend to say, no, there's no mechanism.

You know, there is no Messiah given for them. Now, theologically, the question is like,

OK, but why? Why does God do that? There's this principle that I use in my own classes and teaching.

I think people are accountable for the revelation that they receive. And I'll let that one kind of sink in a little bit.

So like if you are, you know, the classic question in theology and apologetics, what about the guy on the island unto themselves never heard the gospel?

Well, they're accountable for natural revelation. God has made himself clearly known in creation.

And there's a moral law via the human conscience, Romans chapter one. And the attributes of God are clearly seen in that natural revelation.

And people are accountable for that. If they've been given the gospel and they say no to it, they're accountable for that, that rejection as well.

The angels have been given in some sense, you know, access to a spiritual realm where they see that there's a

God and they see that God is on the throne. And yet they've still chosen to fall and rebel against him despite the greater amount of access, informationally speaking, to that God.

And so it would seem like that accountability comes with it. No access to redemption.

Now, everything I just said, as far as the angels not having redemption, I'm kind of in speculation land.

But I do think it's a biblical principle to say people or creatures are accountable for the revelation that they receive.

And I follow your logic. It makes complete sense, especially for a spiritual being experiencing

God in a way that we aren't on this earth. You're right. We're held accountable for what we do or don't see on this earth.

But God has still made himself evident. Like you said, a spiritual being is so much more,

I would say, in the same realm as God that any choice to not serve him is a well -informed choice that is very clearly for or against.

So I really love that logic. I think I'm like fishing for ways of like, well, where do the rules differ?

But I think that what you're saying makes sense. You mentioned intellect and how angels get their knowledge.

And when I spoke about this with Dr. Carr, he was essentially saying angels are created with the amount of knowledge that they are meant to have.

As opposed to our empirical way of understanding knowledge in this life is we get more knowledge with the more experiences we have.

And then we experience it and we understand how it works. Whereas angels are created with all the knowledge that they need at that moment to serve out the purposes of the

Lord. Again, this is like a Catholic perspective where I'm just kind of like, okay, if that's what you say, what would you say to that?

Well, how did God create Adam and Eve? Did he create Adam and Eve as a baby?

And I don't think so. I think he creates Adam and Eve as man and woman. So now does that mean that Adam and Eve aren't learning about their environment?

Yes, they are. But they've been created and sort of imbued with all of the cognitive tools and faculties to be able to do that.

So at least in my view, I don't think that, you know, does God hardwire into an angel a certain amount of knowledge?

Maybe. Did God hardwire a certain amount of knowledge into Adam and Eve?

I think I'm okay to say that too. If they're sort of made as a mature adult, wouldn't they have to have a certain amount of cognitive maturity and information in order to function?

I think so. So I think I'd want to say

God may very well imbue them with information and ability, but that doesn't mean that they don't learn and continue to grow.

Now, one of the reasons I say that is because they can fall. So if they can fall, then that means they can learn experientially what it means to be evil, right?

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Take a deep breath, slow down, and dwell in the good things. Now back to the show. Right. Because I mean, just on, again, depending on how you parse out what knowledge is, and I'm including as part of that experiential knowledge.

So if experiential knowledge comes with it, not just the experience itself, but discovery, a certain aspect of discovery.

Now in a twisted and evil way, but still discover, right? And God didn't create them evil.

Then I don't see how we can get around this idea that they can, in fact, develop whether for good or for evil.

Now, is it possible that God creates some, you know, and sort of binds their will?

I guess that's possible. I'm open to that idea. But at least for the ones that have fallen, it would seem to me that God's given them free will and wants them to choose to follow him like he wants us to choose to follow him.

And with that, I have no reason to think that he wouldn't have imbued them with the same sorts of faculties as he did us.

So that would be, I guess, my answer. And again, scripture doesn't tell us we're in speculation land.

But I do think that, you know, some of the elements of what I just said have to be the case if they have free will.

Okay. Well, let's shift into how we as humans interact with angels.

How do they do that? I guess like my main thing is, you know, there's a bunch of angels that work for God directly.

And then there's like the runners that are assigned to us as guardian angels. I am going to be honest.

I don't know where in scripture we talk about guardian angels. I think I just kind of took that as a Sunday school concept and have never been refuted on that.

Is it even biblical to have a guardian angel? Here's a good Protestant answer.

Maybe. Yeah. So we do get a lot of tradition that gets handed down to us about guardian angels.

And I don't think that scripture says it's a one to one sort of thing. I don't see that anywhere in scripture, but it at least opens the door to the possibility of that.

We do see instances where God's people are specifically taken care of by the angels.

You know, Acts 12, Peter is taken out of prison by an angel.

And then Peter coming to the rest of the group, they mistake him as being

Peter's angel. And so that could indicate that Peter has a specific angel assigned to him.

Or it could just be that God is taking care of his people for his purposes, you know, without sort of a one to one correlation.

It could be either way. But yeah, you know, we get other references.

There's that Luke 16 passage about, you know, an angel sort of ministering to God's people at the point of death and taking them to God.

So maybe that could kind of speak to a specific angel. But there's nothing that actually says there is one angel assigned to one person.

So, you know, it's possible. It's possible. Now, how do they interact with us?

It's a lot of things just to be said about that, right? I'm thinking a lot about,

I'm sorry to cut you off, but I specifically want to understand about the angel that appeared to the donkey that started talking.

I think those numbers are Deuteronomy. I just read it and I was like, what the heck is going on?

Yes, with Balaam. I was so baffled by this, but it's this angel that appears. So it's interacting.

And it's so scary that only the donkey sees it. The donkey gets beaten three times and then God opens the eyes of Balaam and then he sees it.

And it seems like a very terrifying experience for him. But we kind of just move past the talking donkey part.

And I'm sure that serves a purpose of like God can do anything. But to me, that seemed like a very direct messenger from God to like stop

Balaam into cursing the Israelites. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, God does a lot of that, like the empowerment of the spiritual agents behind the prophets.

Also, I think you can make the case that there are times when the angels minister to Jesus himself and his humanity.

There are times when God's angels provide specific messages to prophets of God.

And there are times, I think, where demonic spirits are empowering false prophets.

You know, the false teaching is said to be the teaching of the demons, you know, that kind of thing. So, yeah,

I do think, you know, God often uses a spirit to do his bidding.

There's this really interesting passage. I just I can't have this conversation and not bring it up.

There's this passage in, it makes me want to look, it's in Kings.

It's 1 Kings 22, where we get a reference to that divine council that I was talking about.

Yeah. And there's a council member. God seems to be sitting around in his council, his general, you know, strategy room.

And he's looking down on the earth. And there's a king by the name of Ahab who has been worshiping false gods and things like that.

And he has his own false prophets. And so one of the council members,

God's like, hey, how are we going to stop Abraham? So God being all powerful doesn't have to use other entities to accomplish his will.

But he wants to because, again, he wants family. You know, his desire is to have dynamic relationships with his creatures.

And so he asked, who's going to do this? What are we going to do? And there's a spirit on the council that says,

I will go and I will deceive Ahab using the false prophets.

I will deceive his prophets so that ultimately he will fall in battle. And so God says,

OK, that'll work. Go do that. And so in this instance, we've got

God having this dynamic relationship with essentially, I think, an angel.

You know, this is not a demon to go and not just in this case give truth to God's people, but in this case to deceive those that are against God in warfare.

And so, you know, God uses the angels to accomplish his purposes in all kinds of ways.

And very often that does live up to the word angel. Very often it is message, message.

But then there are other times where it's not just message. It's like this one in First Kings.

It's deception and a number of other kinds of of actions like that. So you mentioned divine counsel theory, and we have honestly like not really talked about it, even within the unseen realm discussion that we had.

But do you mind just kind of giving like a high level on what is the unseen realm? I'm sorry, what is the divine counsel theory?

Yeah, the theory is, and I do subscribe to this. I think it's right. I think it paints a picture of what's going on in the biblical narrative across all of Scripture.

Again, we've got a heavenly family and an earthly family. And God is interested in seeing both families, you know, choose to follow him.

Well, you know, Adam sins in Genesis chapter three as a result of the temptation from the serpent.

So we've got interference essentially from the heavenly realm to the earthly realm.

And then also we've got this reference in Genesis chapter six. I think we talked about last time with the

Nephilim where it seems like some of the angels in heaven are descending to earth to sort of mess up God's plans by sleeping with women.

And you've got these Nephilim that are the product of that union. And then even after that, we've got the

Tower of Babel in Genesis chapter 11. And so the

Tower of Babel, you know, what's going on there? Why has God upset that people made a tower?

Well, the tower is essentially, we know this from, you know, our archaeological data.

It's what's called a ziggurat in ancient Mesopotamia. It's a tower built to the heavens.

And at the top of it is a room where basically it's an invitation for the gods to come and stay with people on the earth.

And so if you wanted a fertility, you know, God, maybe they would come and you'd be able to negotiate to have better fertility and things with your people.

So here's what's going on. People are essentially following after false gods that aren't

Yahweh. And they're choosing to sin over time. This sort of creates a civilization where you've got people that are hostile to gods and to God, and you've got

Nephilim that are sort of egging this thing on in civilization. And so God says, look, enough of this.

You know, I'm going to essentially distribute out over the earth people after Babel.

We see in places like Psalm 82 and then in Deuteronomy 32 as well, we see references to God saying,

I'm going to take my heavenly council members and I'm going to basically give them territories of the earth to oversee.

And, you know, those heavenly angels, those sons of God, as they're referred to in the text, they will oversee these various territories.

And in Deuteronomy 32, it says he divvies up the territories according to the number of these sons of God in heaven.

And so there are many territories, but it also says he's holding back Israel for himself.

So this is truly God's chosen people in God's chosen place. And so the story, the narrative throughout the

Old Testament is you've got God's chosen people in God's chosen land up against people that have rebelled against God and have in many cases worshipped these territorial angels.

And some of those angels, Psalm 82 says, have decided to allow themselves to be worshipped.

They like the fact that people were worshipping them. And so this is part of the fall.

You know, it's not just one Satan that is hostile towards God. It's actually many agents that have fallen by virtue of liking that mankind have chosen to elevate them above their status, so to speak.

And so, yeah, we get a number of references to this kind of thing. You've got these other gods of these other nations that are actually fallen angels is how

I would want to interpret that. And we can unpack that further. But that's the idea in a nutshell.

I'm so happy that we're talking about this because it scratches an itch that just does not get touched on.

Because I think in the Sunday school mentality, we see angels as the good guys, angels that work for God. And then you have this concept of fallen angels that are assigned these territories after the

Tower of Babel. And then they are still spiritual beings that are not message. They're not doing the messenger job.

They're just spiritual beings with an assigned job. But then they ask they rebel against God for these territories to worship them.

And so it's almost like our brain has to switch off and say these gods of Egyptian culture, these gods of these

Babylonian culture. Those were formerly angels that have rebelled against God. And now as a

Christian, if you are against God, you have a spiritual element that people can pray to.

It can react towards. It has this interdimensional reaction that's possible. But technically, that's a demon.

That's no longer an angel for God. Now I see that as a demon. It didn't come from Satan. It wasn't sent from Satan.

That was a previously former angel that has now rebelled against God. So those gods of other cultures, that's just not another culture.

That is not the gods that I worship. That is demons. Yeah. And we use that language of the demonic or the fallen.

And that's how I would take it. You've got territorial spirits that have decided to rebel against God.

And God is going to judge them and maybe is in fact judging some of them now. But it's sort of in process.

They're currently empowering their acolytes, if you will. Those that are worshiping them and influencing them, attempting.

That's what spiritual warfare is. We talk about spiritual warfare. It's not just a war with the flesh.

It's a war against the world and then the enemy. And when I say enemy, I don't mean just Satan.

I mean many enemies. And so when that language in Ephesians 6, we're dealing with powers and principalities, dominions, rulers.

Where does that language come from? What is Paul talking about? Well, the

Old Testament context is exactly what I'm saying. Powers and principalities implies geographical,

I think. Geographical language related to these hierarchies or these individuals in other areas.

And so Paul, when he goes off on his missionary journeys and is bringing the gospel, the

Jewish mindset is I'm taking this into the Gentile lands, these lands of other gods, into those territories.

And I'm going to see them won back for Yahweh. And so the story of the scriptures looked at it through this lens, is that people continue to worship these false gods.

So God fixes it by sending a specific Messiah in the line of Abraham.

And now the culmination of what the strategy that God is cooking all the way through the

Old Testament is that Jesus actually takes back the territories through the church with the gospel.

And so it's no longer, you know, God's people are just those in Israel in that land.

It's God's people go out into those other territories and take back what belongs to Yahweh all along.

It's almost like you got that reference in Luke. You know, Jesus says, you know, he's accused of casting out demons using the power of Satan.

And Jesus, I think it's Luke 11. And Jesus says, actually, if Satan is the strong man,

I'm going to bind the strong man and I'm going to go into his house and plunder it.

So in this analogy, Jesus is the one that's tying Satan up and taking back what belongs to him all along.

And what's funny about that is in the passage, he says, I'm going to use the finger of God to do it.

That's a really important term, language in the New Testament, because that's the same language that the

Egyptian magicians said that Moses was performing the miracles of Yahweh using the finger of God.

And so once again, the power and might of God is on full display in opposition to Satan and those that have fallen from heaven.

This time, it's with the power of the Messiah to take back, you know,

Gentile lands and so forth, Gentiles for Yahweh. I love like, gosh,

I just like I'm so caught up in my faith and I'm so caught up in like what the church teaches me that you almost like miss the obvious of like how needed it was for the gospel, not just to take place in the lands of where Jesus was, but to go out into those

Gentile regions and use that as an equal opposite, equal or greater than force to oppose these demonic forces that were reigning over those territories, like going into the

Greek mythological territories and the paganistic societies and the polytheistic societies of Asia and to preach against that using the gospel too.

I want it like I'm getting the visual like cleansing them. Would that be the right one? Yeah, it's a good word. And to win back these people that are already under the principality of a demonic force.

Right. And so, again, taking in this sort of lens, if that's what's going on throughout scripture, if that's the through line, it makes a lot of sense of this language that Paul is using and others, you know, what's going on?

Why use that language? He's the prince of the power of the air. You know, why does

Satan think that he can tempt Jesus by giving him the keys to the kingdom of the earth in his third temptation?

If you'll bow down and worship me, why does he think that? Well, it makes sense if Satan, the

Satan, the accuser, is one of these fallen beings and, you know, they were sort of given dominion over these territories.

And now Jesus is there to take it all back. But, you know, he's offering it to him if he would worship

Satan like the other peoples of the earth did at the time of Babel.

Whoa. Would it be? That's insane. That's whoa. Oh, my gosh. I hate when this happens on live.

I'm like, oh, my gosh, that just blew my mind. But then, OK, so just again, going back to that Sunday school, is

Satan one person or is Satan or is Satan like kind of a generic term, kind of like angel for messenger?

Satan is the accuser for any opposing force that was reigning over those territories.

Or is there like head Satan, mini Satans? Yeah, that's a really good question.

And let me give you the Protestant answer again. Maybe. Here's my take.

By the time we get to the New Testament and especially by the time we get to the book of Revelation, it seems like we're referring to a figure, you know, the dragon.

Satan is personalized, uppercase S, you know. So but down through the

Old Testament, you know, I think we get a lot of imagery related to hostility against God.

In many different forms, like you've got sort of like Leviathan as the sea serpent, that's the chaos on the earth, you know, that kind of thing.

You know, are we talking about the same serpent? That's an interesting term, by the way, to the serpent in Genesis three.

You know, is it the case that it's an actual serpent or do we have a seraph who is dragon like?

It's confusing. That's so confusing that there's an angel that's a serpent and then the serpent in the garden and then the serpent in Revelation.

Like to me, the connotation of serpent, it was bad. That's bad. That's the bad animal.

But then you say the seraph is actually a serpent. It's like, OK, we got a good one now. Like that's that's difficult as the

Christian mind because we're so symbolic with what we assign things to. Yeah. Yeah.

And and that's a lot of tradition. But but certainly, again, by the time we get to the New Testament, it's used in a derogatory way.

The serpent, the dragon, the Satan, it seems to coalesce as he's the representative of all of this hostility against God.

But that doesn't mean there's only one. There could be representatives of that throughout biblical history that coalesces around an individual later at the

Battle of Armageddon and so forth. So, yeah, I think there are lots of ways to maybe interpret that.

But that's generally how I take it. I think, yeah, you know,

Psalm 91, which is a Psalm that gets used in Jewish tradition for exorcism.

But Psalm 91 is referring to someone coming who keeps the law and is going to crush the head of the serpent.

You know, picking up on that language from Genesis even, you know, but also is going to be ministered to by the angels.

So Jesus fulfills that Psalm in a very profound way. And so, yeah, you know, the serpent does represent all that is hostile to God.

And I do think there is an ultimate one individual dragon serpent when it's all said and done, who is the leader in some sense.

But that doesn't mean that they all agree currently. We could interpret that in many ways. So that begs the question.

I know you put this in the show notes to ask about it, but we get that language of Lucifer. So that word's coming from Isaiah 14.

So the Isaiah 14 passage is a really interesting one. Lucifer means morning star.

It just doesn't translate very well to the English. That has become sort of the name that we attribute to the serpent.

But if you read Isaiah 14 in context, he's talking about the king of Babylon.

So I think probably what's going on there, the king of Babylon comes against God's people in Israel and the king of Babylon.

We get this sort of ancient, they call it taunt language, language taunting the king from the other side.

You know, that king is evil. That king tried to elevate himself above God and he's going to fall.

You know, he thinks he's the bright and morning star, the Lucifer. And in the face of our God, Yahweh, he's going to fall.

But it could be what's going on is that Isaiah is using very sort of hyperbolic language that's referring not just to the earthly king, but in the ancient

Near East, they thought of the earthly king as deriving their power from the heavenly entity that they serve.

So if you think about like in Egypt, Pharaoh is serving Ra. And so that's the power behind the throne, so to speak.

And even in Isaiah's text, you know, the Isaiah six passage where Isaiah sees the seraphs, you know, the seraphim and sees the

Lord on his throne. If you go back to the beginning of that passage, it says in the year that King Uzziah died,

I saw the Lord, meaning in the year when we're wondering who's the power on the throne.

I saw the real king of heaven, the power behind the throne. So I think what's going on here, it's like Isaiah is referring to this territorial fallen angel.

That's sort of the power behind the Babylonian king's throne and saying, you dare to elevate yourself above Yahweh, you and your earthly king.

And you're going to find out real quick that Yahweh is going to make mincemeat of you, you know, like this kind of language.

So I think that's what's going on. We've got fallen angels in these various territories.

Is that referring to Satan? Well, it's certainly satanic. It's patterned after the serpent.

But I don't think that that necessarily is the same individual that we see in Genesis chapter three, that is the fallen angel there.

It could be multiple fallen beings that are patterning themselves after hostility and rebellion against God.

Does that make sense? Yes. Yes. I think it really is just difficult to have this conversation because I'm so used to what

I've known. And this is really recharacterizing these characters and their roles and their abilities and how

I should see them and kind of their origin story. So I feel like it's painting a very clear picture of like these disembodied spirits that are either for God or against.

And the enemy is this opposition that does play a role.

And the specifications of like the snake here or the leader down there in like the lakes of fire, regardless of it, it is a demonic force that we come in contact with as principalities over certain territories or just as an enemy taking us away from our father.

And the demons that may or may not be attaching themselves to are trying to oppress, depress or obsess over us or attach themselves to places like when

I was speaking with Christopher Carr and Dr. Carr, we equally talked about demons and kind of how they can antagonize and pull us away and how we can interact with them.

I'm having a lot of discussions about New Age. I mean, I wanted to kind of ask like this masquerade, this angel that masquerades, the enemy masquerades as an angel of light.

Right. We interact with angels as messengers and then the enemy shows up almost as a messenger, but it's a masquerade for something much more nefarious.

Is that the right interpretation of it? I think so. I think certainly some of these fallen beings still maintain their abilities, what they were originally intended to do.

It's not like God says, I'm going to revoke your power. Right. At least not at this point.

There seems to be it's like, OK, they were able to show themselves to us in light.

We see that description on a number of instances. When Jesus ascends, there are two human like people that are supposedly dressed in robes of white that tell the people that he's going to return.

They're angels. We get references in Daniel chapter 10 of an angel with a shining face and that kind of thing.

It seems like even as fallen beings, they're able to still perform many of the functions that they had.

It's just now that they're doing it with evil intent. That other passage, kind of like Isaiah, you got

Ezekiel 28, where you've got a reference, I think in that case, specifically to Satan.

But he seems to be the power behind the throne of the king of Tyre. And so, you know, we get references in Ezekiel to that kind of thing.

And we also get references of like, oh, gosh, you get the prince of Persia, for instance, where it seems like Michael is warring against this fallen angel for weeks.

So they still maintain power, even power to war against God's unfallen angels.

They've maintained that and they're able to continue to sort of try to thwart the will of God.

Yeah, I think it's really, I think that's an interesting thing. And a lot of people will say, well, why doesn't God just take away their power?

Well, why does God not take away our power as sinners? I mean, because, again, the whole point in this whole story is that God wants to see choice enacted as part of his redemptive plan.

He is in process with us and with them. Oh, so you think that there is redemptive qualities in angels?

No, I'm not necessarily saying that, but I'm in process with them, in process for the fallen angels towards judgment.

In the process of fallen humans offering salvation in the coming of his kingdom.

So he's in process of making all things right. Colossians tells us he's going to reconcile all things to himself, meaning he's going to make it all right in the end.

But we're like, no, I want it to happen right now. That doesn't seem to be what God wants. He wants to see this thing play out on the board, so to speak.

Okay, so just as like a closing thought on this discussion, and then I do have a couple audience questions that I want to ask you.

How do we today, right now, as Christians trying to connect with our Lord and Savior, how can we interact with angels now?

Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah, I don't see any reason in the world.

I mean, Acts is full of examples where the angels are being sent by God to accomplish

God's purposes. And so we even get that. Oh, goodness, it's in Hebrews.

It's not the Hebrews 1 or 2 passage. I think it's Hebrews 11, if I'm not mistaken. I might be wrong about that.

But there's this passage that says there are times when we may very well be ministering or being hospitable to angels, and we don't even know it.

Right. And so, you know, we get those references in the

New Testament. I see no reason that God has cut that off. Does the angels empower, you know, the angels?

You know, I think there are probably plenty of books you can go and get of testimonies and things like that where people say, yeah,

I encountered an angel. Church history is replete with those examples. And a lot of times people that encounter angels that actually know their angels are terrified of the experience.

Yeah. I mean, it's really it's a fascinating thing. And sometimes we don't even know. How many angels are there?

Well, the Psalms tells us there are 10 ,000 times 10 ,000. So there are many. There are armies. And I don't think we can throw away those testimonies.

People don't, I don't think generally, I don't think everyone is lying about that or sort of deceived about that.

So, yeah, I think we encounter angels all the time. What I don't think we should do. I don't think we need to be pursuing those encounters for their own sake.

I think that gets us into some serious problems because the spirit realm is pretty, it's pretty tricky.

You know, it's pretty tricky. I think I think the goal, again, in the story of Scripture is that is that God wants us to be reliant on him.

Not addicted to the encounters of the supernatural for their own sake. Not addicted to like these mystical sort of experiences that we try to try to generate or drum up in our lives.

But no, like we want to worship him for who he is, regardless of what we're experiencing in a supernatural way.

Right. And God's gonna, God's gonna give us his presence. He has. He's indwelling us.

That's a spiritual sort of thing. But I think our focus needs to be on God, the most high, not on the lesser spiritual agents that work for God, so to speak.

Wow. Wow, that is such a clear clarification. Thank you for that. We've got a couple of questions from the audience that DM'd me.

A couple of them are repetitive, so I think we could just like summarize the answer. So the first one is from Ashley Frazier.

Are fallen or non -fallen angels stars? And that's something we kind of touched on right at the beginning.

Like, I don't, does this mean I need to be looking up at the Big Dipper and be like, look at all those angels?

Like, is that, or is it just like a Hebrew linguistic thing? Well, look, okay. The ancients, when they, when they think about the heavens, they don't have the same, you know, astronomical information and data that we have today.

Like they aren't able to use the language of galaxies. You know, you know what I mean?

Like that's not something that exists yet. As far as a data point, they're thinking of God who is out there, the spirit realm that is out there.

And so they look to that, they look up to the, to the sky and that's their sort of representation of what's out there.

So, yeah, I think stars is for in the ancient world. That's a pretty good description of what's out there in that other dimension.

Right now, do we take that literally and say, hey, there's a, there's a large universe out there.

Does God have, you know, has he assigned angels to other planets and things like that?

I don't know. Maybe that would be very interesting. I'm really looking forward to try to figure that out.

But I think the star language has a lot to do. Like, I don't think, I don't think that the sun as a star is an angel.

But I also don't think that when the, when the biblical writers were making those claims, they meant to say that this sun is literally an angel.

I think that they're sort of referring to those out there that are overseen.

Sometimes angels are called watchers. So I think that that's the kind of language we're getting at.

Does that make sense? That does make sense. And I really like how clarifying you are with like idolatry and how quickly we can start worshiping something and how we need to not, how that can be misplaced.

Okay. We all, somebody said, this is gypsy snow white. We all have a guardian angel. Is there any way that we can detect them scientifically?

Yeah. Yeah. That's such a, that's such a modern way of thinking.

And by the way, that doesn't mean it's wrong. I'm not trying to knock you at all. That's, that's, it's a cool question. Thank you for asking it.

I'm not a scientist. I would imagine though, that the physical realm is interacting with the spiritual realm.

Like when I think about my own sort of anthropology, for instance, I'm not just a body.

I have a soul, a spirit. And my spirit, my spiritual state impacts my physical state.

And so I think probably, yeah, you could, you could hook my brain up to a, you know, an

EKG or whatever, whatever the machine is that, and you could probably detect when something's going on spiritually with my soul as it's impacted my body.

Okay. And so it is, I'm sure you could come up with a, you know, a scientific process to try it.

Maybe there's a gland. I think I've read that somewhere. There's a gland. That's like the spirit gland. Like when people have religious experiences, that's what's, that's going off in your head.

That doesn't, that doesn't explain away the spiritual. That just speaks to how the physical is interacting with the spiritual.

So scientifically, yeah. Can we study the engagement with these spiritual beings?

Yeah, maybe. Sure. Can we bottle them?

Like, can we like do some sort of scientific thing and that spirit is going to show up in a test tube?

I don't think we're going to be able to do that. Maybe, but I doubt it.

I don't think that their anatomy is such that we can study it phenomenologically like we can the human body.

Again, by definition, they are disembodied or, you know, they don't have a body.

They're immaterial. So I don't think that they function like we do in that sense.

Yeah, that's very logical. I can follow that. Okay. This is from Aston Mackin.

Explain praying for someone else. How does it not interfere with God's will or another person's free will?

Praying for someone else and it doesn't interfere with God's will or free will.

So that question in theology, by the way, is called the problem of prayer. So if anyone wants to research that, it's a whole big thing.

And so, honestly, we probably could do a whole podcast episode on that if you want to at some point.

But yeah, broad strokes, broad strokes. I would say that God's sovereignty is big enough and comprehensive enough to encapsulate the choices that we make.

Okay. So that is called the doctrine of concurrence, if anyone wants a name for it.

God is concurrently allowing us to make choices while still bringing about his purposes.

And, you know, there are a lot of models for thinking about that. And this kind of gets into the classic, you know, and I hate to even say it because people are going to like roll in their eyes.

But the classic debate between Calvinism and Arminianism and that kind of thing. But yeah, it gets into some of that.

I do think I can say God's will encapsulates our will and that helps us to think about it.

I think it's also possible that it is God's will that we interact with our choice and within the parameters of the environment that he's established for us.

And here's what I mean by that. I think that it is within his will that I'd be allowed, if I so choose, to sin.

And I think it is within his will, at least permissively, that I'd be allowed to pray and ask for help and then receive it as a result.

So God's sovereignty includes the opportunity for me to have a dynamic relationship with him.

That's what he wants is that kind of dynamic relationship. John Peckham has a really, really interesting book that just came out on this.

If anyone's interested, I think it is called Why We Pray. He says, and it actually dovetails with our whole discussion here.

He says that God and Satan, God basically has an arrangement, spiritually speaking, where he's agreed to send help as we've asked for it.

Otherwise, Satan maintains a sense of dominion because of the fall. And so when we pray, it basically empowers

God to respond with help. It's a really interesting idea.

And maybe we don't want to get down that rabbit hole too much. But I all had to say, I think that there are some models to deal with this.

But big picture, God's sovereignty is big enough to encapsulate our choice. I love how your answer inflates the size of God.

Like the image that I was getting is like a child being like, can you hold my little candy bar? And the parents are like, yeah, of course.

I've got many pockets. I am OK to carry your child as a need, all the needs that you have as a five -year -old.

I got a purse. I got a backpack, whatever it might be. And it's like we look to God and we're like, I've got a question.

And he's like, and? You know, that is how big our God is. And it's like what we were saying at the beginning. He wouldn't be

God if he couldn't. Well, it's like this. To use a biblical example of Joseph.

We're talking about human trafficking. He's trafficked into slavery in Egypt. That's an evil choice that man made, his brothers in particular.

But ultimately, when it's all said and done, when he's able to provide for his family during the time of famine, he says, what you meant for evil,

God meant for good. OK, well, what's he saying there?

He's saying that even choices for evil can be construed within God's sovereignty for God's ultimate purposes.

Like I think I think that's the point of the story, actually. So it's really getting at this whole question.

Like God's God's sovereignty is big enough, even something as terrible as human trafficking.

And I say that with as much sobriety as I can, because I know some people may be listening to this or like really hurt by that statement.

But even something as terrible as that, God works together all things for the good of those that love him, that are called according to his purposes.

And I think I think that's really what what we're saying. You know, that's that's what our theology is teaching. That is so good.

OK, last question. What is a biblical description of an angel's appearance?

We kind of touch on this. And why do some archangels have humanoid figures? You literally talked about this a little bit.

Is it like a costume? They like some wear this when they go to this part of human where they do this job. They wear this like how should we interpret that?

Yeah, man, what an interesting question. I think there are a couple of different ways to answer it.

It could be that these are the actual forms of the angels based on what they're supposed to do. It's based on their function.

That's very possible. Another way, just for the sake of having a fun conversation about it, it might be that these angels are presenting themselves to people in a way that those people can understand what

God is trying to communicate. So to take the example in Ezekiel with like the head of an ox, of an eagle, of a lion, right?

And these wheels with eyes, maybe that angel doesn't actually look like that. But maybe

God wanted to communicate something about a spiritual being that Ezekiel wouldn't have been able to understand if he didn't present it that way.

Yeah. Does that make sense? So it could be either.

It could be that sometimes angels, and by the way, this is something we really didn't cover.

They're spiritual beings, but it seems like they can present themselves, at least in some sense, with physical bodies.

And so, you know, they can take on a temporary body of some sort. Can they take on different types of bodies?

Maybe. Like what we saw with Lot and his daughters. Yeah. So like the angels in white at Jesus's ascension and also, by the way, at his resurrection in the garden.

If you remember, they're at the tomb, you know, or with the angels with Lot.

Another example. Were they wearing the clothes of that time? Well, yeah, probably.

Does that mean that angels always wear, you know, ancient

Near Eastern garb or do they sometimes, you know what I mean? Like, it seems like no, like they take on the presentation of the people for the purposes that they need to accomplish at that time.

And so if they were to appear today, they could appear with the clothing of a modern person, not with white robes from the ancient

Near East. And so if that's true, then I think that would extend to their overall appearance as well as, say, their clothing itself.

And probably like their demeanor and how they would speak. Yeah. You know,

Gabriel has this. Gabriel doesn't just appear to Joseph and Mary, by the way.

Gabriel also appears even before that in the book of Luke to Zechariah. Zechariah, his son is

John the Baptist, and Zechariah is in the temple giving an incense offering when the angel of the

Lord appears. And it seems like Gabriel may be upset with Zechariah and actually makes him mute as a result of Zechariah not believing what

Gabriel had to say. But Zechariah is certainly afraid. There's an angel that appears in front of him, but he's talking to him.

And at least the way I read it, it seems like Gabriel is humanoid for the purposes of communicating this message to all of those individuals.

Wow. What a conversation, Dr. Waltman. Oh, my gosh, this was so amazing.

And just like the logic that you present is so easily understood. And I appreciate the Catholic view that Dr.

Carr presented. But as fellow Protestants, I think that, you know, following the logic of what Scripture says specifically, you know, that just really strengthens our faith and helps us understand the dimensions of this unseen realm and what is possible within that spiritual realm.

So thank you for such a refreshing perspective that I just simply don't think that we get opportunities to discuss because it's so I want to just say uninformed.

Like we just don't know. So we don't talk about it. But this was so logical and easy to follow. Thank you.

Yeah. It was really a blessing. I really had a lot of fun. Thank you for the listeners that stayed to the end. Yeah.

So you're still listening. And so for those that are listening, they obviously want to connect with you. Do you have any events, any classes people can sign up for, any trips that you're going on?

Yeah. Come see me at Liberty Theological Seminary or Liberty University School of Divinity. I teach some undergraduate classes as well.

But, hey, this is the kind of conversation we have all the time in class.

And we love this. This is just a joy to talk about the things of God. So come study with us at Liberty.

And I really think we would welcome you. I think you'd really, really enjoy it. If you'd like this podcast and this episode in particular,

I think you'd really be edified by coming and studying with us. Absolutely. And we already kind of discussed some other topics.

So we'll connect offline on bringing you back on the show. But you are always welcome back on. Thank you so much for your wisdom,