What do angels know, and what don’t they know?

Question 08135.

Working out what angels know turns out to be a surprisingly practical exercise, because a great deal of bad teaching depends on assuming they know rather more than they do, and a great deal of needless fear depends on the same mistake.

Scripture gives us a clear enough picture. Angels are intelligent, experienced and well informed. They are also creatures, which means their knowledge has edges, and Jesus said so in as many words.

Angels Are Not Omniscient

Start with the limit, because it is stated most plainly. Speaking of the day and hour of His return, Jesus said that no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only (Matthew 24:36).

That single verse settles the shape of the question. Whatever else we say about what angels know, we are talking about creaturely knowledge. Only God is omniscient, and the angelic order is not a junior division of the Godhead.

The Greek angelos means messenger, and messengers by definition carry what they have been given rather than knowing everything by nature.

What They Do Know

Their knowledge is still considerable. They know God directly and continuously, standing in His presence. Gabriel introduces himself to Zechariah as one who stands in the presence of God (Luke 1:19), which is a claim about access as well as authority.

They know what God commissions them to know. Daniel receives detailed prophetic information from an angelic messenger. Gabriel announces two births with precision. Angels give instructions to Joseph, to Philip, to Cornelius and to Peter. When we ask what angels know, a great deal of it is what they have been told and sent to deliver.

They also observe. Paul says that the manifold wisdom of God is being made known through the church to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places (Ephesians 3:10). They are learning, which means they did not already know.

What They Are Still Learning

That last point deserves a section of its own. Peter says the prophets searched, and that the things now announced through the gospel are things into which angels long to look (1 Peter 1:12). The verb pictures stooping to peer in, the way you might lean over a wall to see what is happening on the other side.

So what angels know is not static. They are watching redemption unfold and discovering the wisdom of God in it as it happens. That is a striking thought for anyone who imagines heaven as a place where everything is already understood.

I have written more on this in why angels long to look into the gospel.

Do They Know Our Thoughts?

This is where the practical edge shows. If angels, and by extension demons, could read minds, then every private thought would be public property in the spiritual realm, and the enemy would have a permanent tactical advantage.

Scripture consistently reserves the reading of hearts to God. Solomon prays to the One who alone knows the hearts of all the children of mankind (1 Kings 8:39). Jeremiah says the heart is deceitful and that the LORD searches it. Jesus is repeatedly noted as knowing what people were thinking, and it is presented as evidence of His deity rather than as a routine spiritual capacity.

So what angels know about you is what they can observe, and what they can observe is a great deal after several thousand years of practice. My answer on whether angels can read our minds works this through properly.

What Fallen Angels Know

The demons are fallen angels, and their knowledge runs along the same creaturely lines with the same limits. James notes drily that they believe God is one, and shudder. They have accurate theology and no salvation.

In the Gospels they recognise Jesus immediately, often before anybody else in the scene does. They know who He is, they know judgement is coming, and in one case they ask whether He has come to torment them before the time. That last phrase tells us they know there is a schedule, without knowing the date.

Understanding what angels know and do not know takes the mystique out of the enemy. Satan is not omniscient. He observes, infers and remembers, which is impressive enough without inflating it into something godlike. See my answer on whether Satan knows Scripture.

Why This Matters for Prayer

Here is the pay-off. If the enemy cannot read your mind, then your silent prayer is genuinely private. You do not need to whisper strategy or worry that praying about a temptation alerts anybody to it.

It also removes a superstition I meet often, which is the fear that thinking about a sin invites an attack on that exact point. What angels know of your inner life is not the running commentary some people imagine, and God is not obliged to share it.

Pray plainly. The One who searches hearts is the One you are talking to, and He is the only one in the room with that access.

Keeping Angels in Their Place

A last caution. Curiosity about what angels know easily slides into a fascination that Scripture does not encourage. Paul warns the Colossians about anyone insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions.

Angels are servants. Hebrews 1:14 calls them ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation. They are not to be consulted, contacted or courted. My answers on praying to angels and speaking to angels deal with the boundary.

The most interesting thing about what angels know is that they are still learning it from watching God save people like us.

What Angels Know About the Future

Scripture shows angels delivering detailed predictions, which means they have access to information about what is coming. Daniel receives a sweep of history in advance from an angelic messenger. Gabriel announces two births before either child exists.

But there is a limit, and Matthew 24:36 draws it. The day and hour is withheld from them. So what angels know of the future is what God has disclosed for the purpose of the message, and no more.

There is a useful pastoral point buried in that. Any teaching which claims a timetable for the return of Jesus is claiming knowledge the angels themselves do not have, which ought to be the end of the conversation.

Knowledge Without Change of Heart

One of the sharpest observations in the New Testament is James saying that the demons believe God is one, and shudder. Their information is impeccable. Their condition is hopeless.

That should stop any of us who have quietly assumed that knowing more about God is the same as being right with Him. What angels know, fallen and unfallen alike, exceeds anything you or I will accumulate in a lifetime of study, and it saves nobody.

The difference is not data. It is trust, and it is the reason a new believer who can barely find Ephesians is nearer to God than any fallen angel has ever been.

What Angels Know and What We Are Told

There is a final point of proportion. Scripture tells us what angels know in passing, never systematically, and always in the service of some other argument.

Jesus mentions their ignorance of the day and hour while warning against speculation. Peter mentions their curiosity while encouraging suffering believers. Paul mentions their observation of the church while describing the wisdom of God. Nobody in the New Testament sets out to teach us angelology for its own sake.

That should shape our curiosity. It is good to know what angels know, and better to notice why each writer brought it up. Every time, the subject is being used to make us look at God rather than at His messengers.

A Final Thought on Humility

Nothing shrinks a person’s self-importance quite like a serious look at the created order above us.

Angels are older, stronger and better informed than we are, and they cover their faces before God and serve without complaint. If that is the posture of beings with their advantages, it is difficult to justify the confident opinions we hold about matters far beyond us.

Knowing what angels know, and how much they do not, is a good cure for the assumption that our understanding is the measure of reality.

So, now what?

Let this settle two things for you. The enemy is not omniscient, so your inner life is not an open book to him, and heaven is not a place where wonder runs out, since even the angels are still leaning in to see what God is doing.

If you have been living with a low-level fear that something is always listening, put it down. Pray silently and know you are heard by the only One with access. And then let the angels do what they have always done, which is watch the gospel work on people like you and find it astonishing. What would you pray about today if you were certain nobody but God could hear it?

But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.

Matthew 24:36 (ESV)