Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8026. Paul says that we will judge angels, and he says it in the middle of telling off a church for suing one another. “Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life!” It is one of the great throwaway lines of the New…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8025. The idea that we become angels when we die is everywhere, and I have heard it spoken at gravesides by people who meant every word of it kindly. Films use it, greeting cards use it, and well-meaning relatives tell grieving children that Grandma has her wings now. Scripture teaches something different and, I…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8024. The idea that we can command angels has become surprisingly common in certain circles, usually presented as a believer’s neglected authority. Conferences teach it, books promote it, and sincere Christians come away convinced they have been leaving a resource untapped. I want to handle this carefully rather than dismissively, because the people drawn…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8023. Whether we may pray to angels is a question I want to answer with real clarity, because the stakes are higher than they first appear. Prayer is not a neutral activity. It is worship, and worship belongs to God alone. Scripture nowhere invites us to pray to angels, records no example of anyone…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8022. Whether we may speak to angels is a fair question, because the Bible is full of people who did exactly that. Zechariah answered Gabriel. Mary questioned him. Manoah asked for a name. Nobody in Scripture is ever rebuked for replying to an angel who has come to them. The distinction that matters, and…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8021. Whether we can see angels is one of those questions that people ask me quietly, usually after a service, usually because something has happened that they cannot explain. Scripture does not laugh at the question. It takes the unseen world seriously, and it tells us enough to answer honestly without pretending to know…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8020. Whether angels appear today is a question I get asked more often than almost any other in this category, usually by someone who has heard a story and does not know what to do with it. The honest answer has two parts, and both need saying. Scripture nowhere states that angelic appearances have…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8018. The four angels bound at the great river Euphrates appear in Revelation 9:14 and 15, and the detail that stops most readers is not the binding but the timing. They are released for the hour, the day, the month, and the year. That is a strange way to describe a moment. It is…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8017. Abaddon and Apollyon are two names for a single figure, and Revelation 9:11 gives us both because John is writing for readers in two languages. He is called the angel of the bottomless pit, and both of his names mean the same thing: Destroyer. That is a rare piece of transparency in a…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 8016. The sons of God in Genesis 6:1 to 4 have been argued over for well over two thousand years, and the argument shows no sign of settling. Four verses, a strange union, an unusual offspring, and then the flood. It is one of the most compressed and most disputed passages in the Old…