Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 08131 Few questions in theology generate as much emotional difficulty as this one. If God is good, if He knew from eternity past what Satan would become and what devastation his rebellion would cause, why did He create him at all? The question feels urgent because it touches on the deepest issues of God’s…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 08139 Whether angels experience something analogous to human emotion is a question the Bible does not answer systematically, but it does offer a number of passages that present angelic beings as responding to events with what looks remarkably like genuine feeling. The question matters because it touches on what it means to be a…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 08136 Peter’s statement that angels “long to look into” the things of the gospel is one of the most striking and often overlooked remarks in the New Testament. It sits within a passage about the privilege of salvation, and its force depends on grasping what it tells us about the gospel from the perspective…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 08135 Angels are spiritual beings of immense power and long experience, but they are not God. That distinction matters enormously when considering the scope of their knowledge. Scripture presents angelic intelligence as genuinely superior to human understanding in many respects, while also marking clear limits that set their knowledge apart from the omniscience that…
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 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…