Reading Time: 2 minutesQuestion 8025 The idea that people become angels when they die is deeply embedded in popular culture and in a great deal of casual Christian conversation. When a child dies, grieving parents are sometimes told that God needed another angel. When a believer passes away, someone will often say they have their wings now. However…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 8028 The idea that angels might be present when God’s people gather for worship sounds either startling or sentimental depending on one’s assumptions. Scripture is less ambiguous than either reaction might suggest. Several biblical texts indicate that the gathered church exists in a context that is far more populated than what is visible to…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 8009 The question of whether angels have access to our inner thought life is both practically urgent and theologically revealing. If angels, and by implication demons, can read our minds, the implications for prayer, spiritual warfare, and personal holiness would be considerable. Scripture addresses the matter more directly than many people realise. Mind-Reading as…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 8010 Few figures in the Old Testament are as theologically significant and as frequently misunderstood as the Angel of the LORD. He appears at burning bushes, at the threshing floor, to barren women and wrestling patriarchs, and in each case the encounter is unmistakably more than a meeting with a created messenger. He speaks…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 8011 Michael is one of only two angels named in the Protestant canon of Scripture, and of the two he is the one most consistently portrayed in an active, combative role. His name in Hebrew means “Who is like God?” — a rhetorical question that functions as an affirmation of divine uniqueness rather than…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 8012 Gabriel is one of only two angels named in the canonical Scriptures, and his role is remarkably consistent across every appearance: he comes to bring understanding, to interpret visions, and to announce the purposes of God at moments of supreme significance in redemptive history. Where Michael is a warrior, Gabriel is a herald….
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 8013 The question of named angels has attracted enormous speculation across Christian history, producing elaborate catalogues of heavenly beings drawn from sources ranging from the Apocrypha to medieval mystical writing. The more important question for those who take Scripture as the final authority is simply what the biblical text itself actually names, and the…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 8014 The phrase “host of heaven” appears throughout the Old Testament and is sometimes used to warn against the worship of stars and planets, while at other times it clearly refers to the angelic company surrounding God’s throne. Understanding how the phrase works in its different contexts prevents both confusion and a flattened reading…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 8016 Genesis 6:1-4 is one of the most disputed passages in the Old Testament. The “sons of God” who take human wives and produce the Nephilim have generated interpretive controversy for centuries, but the most exegetically consistent reading points in a clear direction when the relevant evidence is laid out carefully. The Three Main…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 8017 Revelation 9:11 introduces a figure who stands in sharp contrast to the named holy angels of Scripture: the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in both Hebrew and Greek means one thing — Destroyer. His appearance belongs to the judgements of the Tribulation, and his name defines his function with a directness…