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…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 8015. Nephilim giants are one of those biblical subjects where sober readers go quiet and speculative readers go loud, and the result is that most Christians have no settled view at all. My position is that the Bible describes real people of unusual size and strength, that it does so without embarrassment, and that…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8014. The phrase host of heaven runs right through the Old Testament, and it does two quite different jobs depending on where you find it. In some passages it names the angelic armies surrounding God’s throne. In others it names the sun, moon and stars, usually in the context of a warning against worshipping…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8013. Named angels are far rarer in Scripture than most Christians assume. Ask around a congregation and you will hear Raphael, Uriel, sometimes Raguel or Sariel, and a general impression that the Bible contains a substantial roll of angelic names. It does not. There are two. Michael and Gabriel. That is the complete list…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8012. The angel Gabriel is the second of only two angels named in Scripture, and where Michael fights, Gabriel explains. Every appearance follows the same shape. He arrives at a moment of great significance, he brings understanding, and he announces what God is about to do. His name in Hebrew, gabri el, means something…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8011. Michael the archangel is one of only two angels named in the canonical Scriptures, and of the two he is the one consistently found in conflict. His name is a question in Hebrew, mi ka el, meaning who is like God, and the expected answer is nobody. That name turns out to be…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8009. Can angels and demons read our minds? The question matters more than it might first appear, because a great deal of anxious teaching about spiritual warfare quietly assumes that they can, and builds practices on the assumption. My answer is no. Scripture reserves the knowledge of the human heart to God alone, and…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8008. Angelic emotions are more visible in Scripture than most readers expect, and once you start looking for them they are difficult to miss. Angels shout, sing, rejoice, long, marvel, and worship, and none of those verbs describe a passionless mechanism carrying out instructions. I think the assumption that angels are cold comes from…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8007. Can angels die? Jesus answered part of this question directly, and His answer is the natural place to begin. Speaking of the resurrection in Luke 20:36, He says the redeemed cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God. So the deathlessness of angels is used as a…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8006. Angelic free will is one of those doctrines that seems abstract until you realise it is the only way to explain how evil entered a universe made entirely good. Something went wrong before Genesis 3, and it went wrong among creatures who were not deceived by a serpent, because they were the serpent….