What the Bible teaches about angels, demons, Satan, and spiritual warfare.
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…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 8018 Revelation 9:14-15 describes four angels bound at the great river Euphrates, held at the ready for a moment so precisely appointed that Scripture describes it in terms of a specific hour, day, month, and year. Their release triggers one of the most devastating sequences in the entire book of Revelation. The Text and…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 8019 Among the most striking descriptions in all of prophetic Scripture are the living creatures of Ezekiel’s inaugural vision and John’s throne-room vision in Revelation 4. They defy easy description, they surround the immediate presence of God, and they have provoked more theological reflection than almost any other category of angelic being. Mercifully, the…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 60085 Few passages in the New Testament have generated more interpretive discussion than 1 Peter 3:18–20: “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he also went and…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 05020 Angels and human beings are both creatures made by God, and both appear throughout Scripture as conscious, personal beings who respond to him. But the differences between them go considerably deeper than the obvious observation that one is usually visible and the other is not. Understanding what sets human beings apart from angels…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 3054 Some groups, notably the Jehovah’s Witnesses, teach that Jesus is actually the archangel Michael. They argue that Jesus is a created being, the first and greatest of God’s creations, but not truly God in the fullest sense. This teaching strikes at the very heart of who Jesus is. If he is merely an…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 3031 Throughout history, various groups have tried to reduce Jesus to the level of an exalted angel. Jehovah’s Witnesses teach that Jesus is Michael the Archangel. Some early heresies considered Jesus the greatest of angelic beings. Even today, people sometimes speak of Jesus as if He were simply a more important messenger from God….