Angels Angelology Spiritual Messengers 

This Angelology Spiritual Messengers Page is a single place to come looking for information on the doctrine of angels, spiritual messengers send from God on missions. Note that demons-demonology is technically in this category, but it has its own landing page.

QUICK DEFINITION: An “angel” is simply a “messenger” between two persons. The word in both Hebrew and Greek is both used without distinction for spiritual beings in the heavenly realm, and also for human messengers in the earthly realm. The translators of our Bibles have taken the liberty to try and distinguish where these messengers are heavenly or earthly and accordingly translate the word “angel” or “messenger”.  Whenever you see the words “angel” or “messenger” in the Bible you must remember that the translators are not infallible, and they may see the context as heavenly when it may be earthly, or vice a versa. After Christ’s temptation, angels came and ministered to him. They may have just been some humans that were passing by and God directed them to give him food and water.

SOME TAKE AWAYS

1. When we think of heavenly created beings, were use the term “angel”. That is not a given logical conclusion in all cases. An angel is a messenger, and we would assume that would be between God and humans, maybe between God and other angels “on assignment” like protecting a nation. We just do not know these details. But Scripture may use the term “angel” as representing a class of celestial beings, those that delivery messages and do missions. We do know that Scripture designate the cherubim and seraphim as heavenly beings that probably are not messengers, but doing other tasks for God. So “angel” would be parallel and equal (or one above the other rank) to a cherubim or seraphim, and the cherubim and seraphim do not necessarily have to be “angels” per se.

2. The demons lost their spiritual place of communication between God and man. They are now purposeless, and they have taken opposition to God Jehovah as their purpose. But they were not created for this. This opens them to “creational weaknesses” (things that they were not created to do like planning warfare against God) that hinders their activity and efficiency.

3. To really understand the term correctly, you must understand that God created the angel class to serve Him, and although their name means messenger, the idea of being a “missionary”, a servant dispatched to accomplish something not entirely a verbal message is also in the root idea of the word “angel”. This is to accomplish a spiritual task, and thus, the word is correctly used in Scripture without much distinction between a human or a celestial being. When some miraculous power like blinding the men of Sodom is done by an angel, we would presume it would be a celestial being. But inherently the word masks the difference between human and celestial, and only on very few occasions is it so clearly discerned. (I overlook the obvious point that even if those Sodom-visiting angels were humans, and they had some kind of phosphorous flash bomb that would be possible today). My view is that they were celestial beings because preincarnate Jesus was with them.

4. Although celestial angels are a grade above man in creation, it is strange that God condemned those who make the mistake of rebelling without giving them a chance to redeem themselves as he has done with mankind. I would presume that reason lies in the fact that they saw God in person, and they know God and his character in a way much above whatever any man can know. Greater privilege brings greater responsibility.

5. Satan, Lucifer, convinced a third of heaven to defect with him. Since their corporate motto is rebellion, I do not understand how Satan’s army can be so orderly as some would present them. All marching together under the orders of Satan their commander. That is not their nature, to obey and work together, but rather to attack their equals and disobey any organized attempt at a mass movement under an order from their leader. By their chosen nature, their army should be a disaster.

Barnhouse’s book, The Invisible War, describes Lucifer before his fall as the high priest of heaven, receiving praise and worship from all creation and then offering it to God. From that idea, Lucifer would be the most powerful created being. Perhaps that is how Satan operates, by the sheer force of his will and his strength abilities to affect others. But neither is he a great planner nor a great organizer if he has refused organizational skills that come with submission to an orderly authority. The hordes of the Asian plains conquered much by sheer strength, but in the end their power failed because of the same reason that they were conquerors, their  savagery. Satan’s strength is in his rebellion, but it is also the doom of his future. Satan has erred the greatest error of all generals, he underestimated the power and intelligence of his enemy, the Lord God Almighty. Neither in planning, in astuteness, nor in sheer strength can he win a war with Jehovah. He can only cause trouble for a short while.

6. Demons appear to be disembodied spirits, i.e. angels that have lost the ability to take a human form. The angels that visited Abraham going to Sodom appeared to eat and drink as any human can. Christ assured his followers that he was not a demon, or disembodied spirit, by letting them touch him and giving him food and drink. The demons made demoniac pleading with Christ to not send them into the abyss but into the pigs. So they do not have their own bodies nor the ability to create a human like body it would seem.

In Mexico where I live, the inmates of the prisons here smuggle in cell phones and call people claiming to have their child (when they should be in school). They want them to buy phone calling cards and pass them the activation numbers over the phone when they call back in a half hour. Actually, they are in prison, and only through the miracle of cell phones can they “be outside”. But actually they are totally harmless except when somebody “on the outside” loans their abilities to do their bidding. This would seem to be similar to the situation of demons. Some demons are so powerful (co equals with Lucifer maybe?) that they are already in prisons of darkness, i.e. totally and absolutely without contact with the real world. They are in the pit of hell.

This is a very probable situation, that demons have no bodies. This means that 1) we should not be afraid of them nor of “what they can do to us”. Their abilities to mess with us is limited to what we allow them to do by heeding what lies they tell us. 2) Other humans that worship demons are a very real danger. 3) By praying to God, God can “cut their telephone call off,” and they are powerless. Considering what one single angel did to the entire Syrian army, God has crippled Satan’s forces by making them powerless against us as far as actually harming us or hurting us. The most important factor in dealing in counseling with somebody who has experience with demons is to cut the phone line conversation between that person and the demon. Men have found many ways to go into an “altered state of mind” through drugs, alcohol, even rhythm and chanting, music, etc. In my high school, there was a practice of breathing heavily for a few minutes and then squatting with your knees pushed into your chest, and you will pass out. Some said they saw strange things after doing that. So there are ways to contact the spirits, such as or like a seance, Ouija board, etc. These ways of contacting the spirit world are exactly witchcraft, and under the Old Testament law was given the death penalty. Very prohibited.

7. Again from Barnhouse’s book, The Invisible War, he mentions the “spirit of jealousy” as a type or example of a demon. I do not know that I agree totally with him, but at least some demons would apparently have some kind of bad moral character associated with them. If this is true, then these bodiless demons have a presence in the real world when some human is jealous for example. Their existence in the earthly realm is linked humans that give themselves over to that sinful conduct, or immoral character and its expression in acts. A person “purifies himself” when he studies God’s Word, sees this sinful character, and refuses to give in to it. This would make sense to me as to the inner workings of demons and sin in humanity. Behind it all is the person of Satan, but this would seem to make all sinning some factor of demonic work. This would align with a lot of things in Scripture.

Angels Angelology Spiritual Messengers

Edited by David Cox

I am constructing a knowledge base set of topics that you can consult. I am putting links to theWord modules on these pages, but I am also putting some general knowledge on the topic of Angels into these pages that may be of help to some

Knowledge Base Articles

Angels Angelology | Good Angels | Demons Demonology | Satan

Tag Cloud for Angels Angelology Spiritual Messengers




More links to Angels Angelology Spiritual Messengers

Tags Note: Each post has a series of tags, usually very similar to the chapters or topics in that work. The Tag Cloud will give you the specific tags (a marker in posts) that will take you to a listing of those works for that particular tag. For example, maybe 20 posts will be about Eschatology, and each one that somehow mentions heaven, or our heavenly hope, or “our eternal rest” (not the exact word “heaven” but the concept) would be tagged with the keyword tag “heaven”. A simple search on “heaven” would not pick up the last work, but since it is tagged with the “heaven” tag, it would be included in the tag cloud. Sometimes there will be non-name tags related to a Bible Character included in this list.

Categories Note: As each post has tags which can be many “topics” (usually what the chapter content represents) it also has a certain major topic.  This is the works “category”. Usually, we only assign 1 category per work (actually 3, the first two letters of author’s last name, his orientation-affiliation, and what the book is about). But, for example,  those works that are specifically about Bible Characters, would be classified in the Bible Characters Category. That is how you know generally what the book is about. But in a particular book, say about the Tabernacle, the author may have a chapter devoted to Moses or Aaron. In this case, the category would be “Old Testament Studies” but one of the book’s tags would be “Moses” and another “Aaron”. We have set this up this way to catch and group in an easy to use listing things that would be more difficult to locate otherwise.

Books on Angels

[catlist name=”angels” numberposts=35 pagination=yes instance=1 orderby=title order=asc]

Works on Angels, angel of God, fallen angels, satan, devil, demons…

[catlist name=”angels” tags=”angel,angels,angel-of-god,fallen-angels,guardian-angels,satan,devil,demons” pagination=yes numberposts=25 instance=2]