are not 'tooth-fairies' adopted from a past pagan perspective* out of Israel's Exilic experience, as some seriously misguided 'Christian' academics today apparently allege. They are as real as the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ (Matthew 22:30).

*It may be of interest to note that Christ's resurrection-ability in physical movement reflects that of the angels of God. 'Scotty' is not needed to beam anyone anywhere.
The views of Benny Hinn on angels ought not to be taken seriously, nor the angel-feathers* of the Johnsons' Bethel Church, Redding, California. *Feathers are for those that need air to fly. God's angels do not need air!

The first mention in the Bible of an angel is the cherubs, with a flaming sword between them, placed before the single entrance of God's garden in Eden at the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. They were placed there to prevent humanity's return to get access to the Tree of Life, which otherwise would have prevented the natural process of aging and death (a process from which humanity had been exempted before they sinned). The garden remained, for it then came to represent to humanity the loss of their past unimpaired relationship to God. The cherubs' placement at its entrance demarcated the representative presence of God associated with that garden, where the first human couple had walked with God daily in the cool of each evening. (The Sabbath day was simply a total rest day).

is a cherub?

The original meaning of the word (its etymology) has been lost in history. Our New Testament simply transliterates the Hebrew term כּרוּב ('cherub') with the plural הכרבים/χερουβίμ ('cherubim', Heb.9:5). The 'im' ending is simply its Hebrew plural form.

These cherubs (or cherubim, if one wants to use the Hebrew plural) are next described in Scripture as flanking and overarching the representative place of God's presence, the solid gold reconciliation-covering called the 'mercy seat' (כּפּרת) on the Ark of God's covenant with Israel which contained its Ten Commandments on two stone slabs which summarized and represented Israel's Sinai Covenant.

said to Moses –

“There I will meet with you, and from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim that are on the ark of the testimony [witness], I will speak with you about all that I will give you in commandment for the people of Israel.”

This feature is the dominant characteristic of these particular angelic beings – the demarcation of the holy presence of the Most High. For this reason therefore, both in Ezekiel's vision and in John's Patmos vision, the place of the presence of the Most High is marked off by cherubs around the Throne.

In Solomon's temple the same cherub theme continues concerning the presence of God. Solomon had two huge olive-wood cherubs carved and gold-clad under which Israel's covenant ark was placed with its own golden cherubs flanking and sheltering the mercy seat of God's presence, according to instructions given to him in David's inspired written design (1 Chron.28:18-19). Cherubs represented the Presence by demarcating its place.

In Ezekiel and in John's vision the form of their appearance carries a deeper symbolism. They are four in number, with the representative face of each of the four forms of life for which God guaranteed protection in His covenant with us through Noah – namely: humans; birds; domesticated animals; and wild animals; symbolised respectively in the face of a man, an eagle, an ox, and a lion. These angelic beings are real but the form of their appearance is symbolic.

The next term used for angels in the Bible is 'sons of God'. This is a generic term for divine being in the Hebrew. It is important not to read a New Testament meaning into the term simply because a similar phrase is used there. This has been done in the past for theological reasons to make it appear that the sin of Genesis Six which precipitated the Flood of Noah was intermarriage between believers and unbelievers. This is not so!

The Hebrew term associated with this event is 'nephilim', sometimes translated as 'giants'. The idea is of a mutant specie of human as consequence of this intrusion into the human race. This perversion is presented as the precipitating corruption which brings the devastating annihilation of Noah's Flood. It is referred to in our New Testament, regarding this particular group of angels, who, unlike other fallen angels, left living as angels and were therefore removed from history by God until the end comes. These nephilim were the mutant product of demonic genetic interference with women. It therefore required an annihilation.

This same sad state eventually occurred again in human history for the same reason. This time among the Amorites who occupied the land promised to Abraham. In Abraham's time these Amorites included godly men such as Aner, Eschol, Mamre, and Melchizedek. For this reason God said that Abraham could not take possession of the Land of Promise because in his time the existing inhabitants did not deserve to loose it. But, as God had said, when the iniquity of the Amorites was full (Gen.15:16), the same corruption occurred and the mutant nephilim are found among them (Num.13:33). For this reason then, Israel under Joshua is required to annihilate the entire population of the Amorite cities, including children and animals. Some fled to the Philistines, of whom Goliath, and his six-fingered colleague whom David's nephew killed, were mutant descendants.

The generic meaning of this term 'sons of God' is illustrated in its use by king Nebuchadnezzar when he looked down into his super-heated furnace and, in addition to the three faithful believers, saw a fourth who looked like a 'son of God'. The term had no meaning to Nebuchadnezzar other than an angelic or divine being.

It is these same 'sons of God', all angelic beings both good and bad, who come to account their conduct before the justice of the Most High God, when Satan, as one of them, maligns godly Job and God demonstrates in Job that His rule among men is not based on self-serving as is Satan's kingdom among men.

The Bible teaches that the angels of God, the sons of God, are essentially God's administration through which human history is managed –

“When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when He divided mankind, He fixed the borders of the peoples
according to the number of the sons of God.”

Israel's scribes bequeathed a corrupted version of this verse (as Jeremiah had warned – Jer.8:8) which is reflected in some older translations, in which human history is made by their prejudice to pivot on their nation Israel: the nations divided according to the population of Israel; the term 'Israel' being substituted for God.

The Bible's record of history has a wider scope than Israel or Palestine, and manuscript comparisons expose this falsification. The meaning of the original text is attested by the pre-Christian Jewish translation of this verse into Greek (the Septuagint) which has – ἀγγέλων θεοῦ: 'angels of God'; for non-Hebrew readers would not have understood the Semitic idiom of 'sons of God' as meaning angels if they had given a literal translation.

A sad inconsistency among Bible translations is the many which willingly follow the Septuagint reading of Isaiah 7:14 (which gives the meaning of the cultural idiom of the Hebrew עלמה, almah, as 'virgin'), yet choose to ignore this Septuagint reading of Deuteronomy 32:8; whereas it is this Pentateuch part of the Septuagint which is its most reliably translated part of the whole.

While the Contemporary English Version (CEV) and the Good News Bible (GNB) are commendable in their attempt to reflect the original, the Bible certainly does not say as they give –
"He assigned a guardian angel to each of them [the nations], but the Lord himself takes care of Israel" (CEV); or equally wrong,
"He assigned to each nation a heavenly being, but Jacobs descendants he chose for himself" (GNB).

The Bible is not saying that the total number of angels is the basis of how many nations their are, or that each nation has a guardian angel except Israel.

It is not the nations but their borders or boundaries which were set according to the number of the angels of God, for the migration of nations and tribes is a product of God's angelic supervision of human history (Daniel 10:20).

Elsewhere the Bible in Daniel 12:1 makes it clear that a chief angel named Michael has a particular responsibility regarding Israel as a nation (the people, not the political state). But the demon "prince of the kingdom of Persia", who opposed God's angel delivering this special revelation to Daniel, is not a God-appointed guardian angel over Persia's empire.

When the angel of God says to Daniel –

“But I will tell you what is inscribed in the book of truth:
there is none who contends by my side against these [demonic princes of Persia and Greece] except Michael, your prince”

he is referring to God's angelic management of history, concerning which the angels of God had received prior guidance ('book of truth') regarding their responsibility. It is on those terms that they appear before the Most High concerning their function, as referred to in the book of Job mentioned above.

This 'book of truth' is not to be understood as God's predetermined written future, as though history has no voluntary variables, nor is it some undisclosed or missing part of Holy Scripture. This 'writing' exists for those who have access to it – the angels of God only!

It simply guides God's angels in their work, and yet it still leaves them surprised by God's work among us through Jesus Christ. As was written for us from the pen of the Apostle Peter –

“It was revealed to them [Old Covenant Prophets] that they were serving not themselves but you [New Covenant believers],
in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from Heaven, things into which angels long to look.”

After the Genesis Six reference, the next presentation of angels in the Bible is of those delegated to a specific task. These are those who accompanied the Captain/Commander of God's army on His unique visit to Abraham. For their interaction with humanity they appear as human. Lot, nephew of Abraham, and the inhabitants of Sodom saw two of them simply as good-looking traveling men.

Lot does not know that they are angels, and his care for them is presented in our New Testament as an example to us of hospitality with its unexpected reward.

“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”

This kindness of Lot allows God's angels to justly favour Lot's home in their mission to destroy. It was to give this opportunity to Lot that they came in this manner, rather than to immediately shift the tectonic plates under the plain of Siddim and engulf its cities in a rain of flaming asphalt and lava –

“For we are about to destroy this place, because the [angelic] outcry against its people has become great before the LORD,
and the LORD has sent us to destroy it.”

The Lord Jesus referred to this particular visit to Abraham when He said to the belittling leaders of Israel –

“Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see My day. He saw it and was glad.”

In its Genesis context, Jesus is presented as Yahweh (LORD in most translations), God, who is accompanied by these two angels who are to carry out the mission of destruction on the plain of Siddim. But, by reason of Abraham's faith and Lot's relative righteousness, the mission becomes an outreach of God's grace within this angelic delivery of judgment.

In the Book of the Covenant of God's instructions to Israel, the Lord solemnly promised that nation in their wilderness encounter with Him –

“Behold, I send an angel before you to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared.
Pay careful attention to him and obey his voice; do not rebel against him,
for he will not pardon your transgression, for My name is in him.”

The angels of God work only on assignment from the Most High. There is no free-lance activity, except by the fallen, those who serve Satan. These, by their perverse activity among humans, are known as demons and are a separate issue.

In Holy Scripture, the Court of God in Heaven is presented as consisting of God's central Throne flanked by other thrones –

“As I looked, thrones were placed, and the Ancient of Days took His seat;
His clothing was white as snow, and the hair of His head like pure wool;
His throne was fiery flames; its wheels were burning fire.”

These multiple “thrones” represent God's angelic assessors who sit with the Most High in the Court of Justice over the nations. These are they who are shown in more symbolic detail in John's Patmos vision.

“Around the throne were twenty-four thrones, and seated on the thrones were twenty-four elders [seniors],
clothed in white garments, with golden crowns on their heads.”

must be remembered that angels have independent thought no less than human beings. They are not simply robots of the divine will. This is why it was possible for Satan to rebel against God, but it also means that views of these angelic Seniors are real assessors in the divine court of Heaven.

Unfortunately, these twenty-four are often treated by scholars as not real but simply symbols of our Old Testament (12 for Israel's tribes) and New Testament (12 for the twelve apostles of Jesus). This is really silly, for the 12 apostles are only twelve because they are sent to these 12 tribes, so these two cannot be added together.

“These twelve Jesus sent out, instructing them,
'Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans,
but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel'.”

Rather, the number twelve itself carries a significance that precedes both Israel and our Bible.

Of Ishmael son of Hagar were born twelve princes in fulfilment of God's promise to Abraham. The number twelve, as symbol of God's rule, goes back to the beginnings of our human history arising from the Creator's division of the earth-year into twelve moons.

So, the ancient Egyptians divided daylight into twelve parts and night into twelve parts, each accountable to a spirit lord who reported to the Most High. (From this we today have a day of twenty-four hours). Even today, Chinese culture counts in twelves rather than tens as our Western world does.

To the ancient world then these twenty-four simply represented God's rule over night and day – over all things on earth. This historical background, reflected in the Bible's report concerning Ishmael, should govern our understanding rather than to speculate by reading later developments (two Testaments of Scripture) back into the meaning of the twenty-four thrones.

The Court of God is a court of absolute justice involving God's administration of all creation and therefore it rightly reflects its angelic administration in the twenty-four thrones. The Patmos vision of John confirms this when it presents one of these twenty-four speaking to John's deep distress at the apparent total failure of human history to fulfil God original intention (that humanity represent Him fully to inherit His rule) –

“And one of the elders said to me [John],
'Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered,
so that He can open the scroll and its seven seals'.”

This elder is not one 'twenty-fourth' part of our Bible speaking to John. It is just as it says! One of those who are directly involved in the rule of God's Court tells John that Jesus-the-Man has overcome in complete fulfilment of God's original intention for humanity. He alone is therefore worthy to inherit the rule of God! Hallelujah!

Again, in this exhortation of the Apostle Paul to Timothy, the Court of the Most High calls to account regarding Timothy's leadership of God's people –

“In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus and of the elect angels
I charge you to keep these rules without prejudging, doing nothing from partiality.”

In addition, to every faithful believer, the Lord Jesus Christ promised us acknowledgement before this highest Court –

“I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.”

And in the light of the earlier quoted Scriptures above, these angels then are more than a choir or crowd of spectators. They are part of the oversight of all creation of the Most High, the Maker of heaven and earth, the Almighty.

The Lord Jesus Christ declared –

“And I tell you, everyone who acknowledges Me before men,
the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God,
but the one who denies Me before men will be denied before the angels of God.”

The decisions of this Court are legitimately described as the "decree of the watchers" or "decision ...of the holy ones" in this message of God's angel to king Nebuchadnezzar –

“'The sentence is by the decree of the watchers, the decision by the word of the holy ones,
to the end that the living may know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom He will
and sets over it the lowliest of men'.”

They participate in the decisions of the Court. They are not a window-dressing show. This is real. God is no absolute dictator. His method of rule over all His creation involves His creation. Although the appearance of these angelic seniors in John's Patmos vision is symbolic, as the appearance of God Himself, they are more than symbols.

In the future finality of God work through Jesus Christ in the lives of His people, the completion of that work deprives Satan as the 'Accuser of the Brethren' of his right to accuse Christians before the Throne of this Court. This future expulsion synchronizes with the beginning of the Bible's "Time of Punishment in fulfilment of all"' (Luke 21:22), the 1260 days, the sign of which is the 'Abomination of Desolation' in Jerusalem's holy place (Matthew 24:15). Because of the Jewish focus of this event, this Court uses Michael and his angels (Daniel 12:1) to remove Satan and his angels from their structure of manipulative exploitation of unbelief in this world's accountability to God and His Court. Satan's consequent fury at this loss unleashes the worst of times in all human history, Jesus said –

“For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be.
And if those days had not been cut short, no human being would be saved.
But for the sake of the elect [the believers] those days will be cut short [stopped/interrupted].”

Across the expanse of Holy Scripture there are prophetic events which are more than God inspired words and divinely illumined understanding. They involve a form of revelation that employs all the senses, taking the prophet into a three-dimensional realm beyond the most inspired human experience.

Although all revelation is from the Spirit of God Himself, in the experiences of believers recorded in Scripture, the angels of God become involved when the recipient's level of revelation requires an audio-visual experience for its appropriate impact. This results in what scholars have often labelled as apocalyptic prophecy.

This is clearly stated in that most complete of all apocalyptic revelations –

“The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show to His servants the things that must soon take place.
He made it known by sending His angel to His servant John,
who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw.”

Although to John, as he prays "in the Spirit", his experience of this revelation is three-dimensional and an all encompassing virtual reality, the Christ whom he hears so directly, and then on turning sees before him, did not actually leave Heaven to enter John's prison cell. The angel whom the Lord Jesus sent facilitated this participatory projection of the Lord's presence clothed in its awesome symbolism, and so also the remainder of the Revelation, as is stated in this opening verse.

The effect of this degree of revelation is sometimes more than what the human body can easily handle. We have this illustrated to us in the experience of both Daniel and John.

Therefore in kindness the preferred method of communication with human beings is not apocalypse but by an angel's full entrance into the human dimension, such as when the Lord Jesus and His two angel's lunched with Abraham in delivering to him the promise of Isaac's birth, on their way to trigger the volcanic termination of the cities of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, south of the Dead Sea (covered by its southern extent today).

The primary purpose for the existence of God's angels is not communication with humanity but the administration of the whole physical creation of God. This management responsibility includes human migration and the related rise and fall of empires in human history as referred to earlier above.

Within this responsibility, the angels of God are responsible for the spirits of all deceased humans being taken to their God-appointed place. This is necessarily so for human beings were designed to have a physical body (whether biological or resurrection) and without this a human spirit has no mobility. Therefore –

This activity is part of the climax of this age –

This administrative management activity is given special focus in God's dream-image reassurance of Jacob (in his insecurity after leaving home with the anger of Esau behind him); an image of angels ascending and descending a ladder between earth and God. The Lord Jesus made reference to this dream-image in His response to Nathanael, when He said –

Here, the humanity of Jesus is the 'ladder' in the image. The 'son of man' phrase is not a messianic title. It was a Semitic idiom for 'human', and was the equivalent of Jesus saying,

In other words, Jesus, through His incarnation into our flesh, is the pivotal factor on which the future angelic administration of human history and of the creation itself turns.

so because of the eternal effect of God becoming flesh: in which, because of Christ's Cross, sin ended its rightful condemnation of humanity, and the door of cosmic management was opened to humanity through its future sharing in the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ. For this reason the apostle Paul queries the Corinthian believers, among whom he had given so much teaching, with –

Therefore, the concluding climax of the Bible is the image of the Christian Church, the Bride of Christ, as the New Jerusalem from above, which has no temple for it itself is the fulfilment of the 'Holy of Holies' (hence its dimensions) and now within which is the Throne of God's righteous rule (Rev.22:3). The eternal future of the completed plan of God in human history is the closing down of the Heaven, from which God's angel's had taken instruction, and the revelation of the rule of God over all – directly through those redeemed and glorified in Jesus Christ, who will now be the eternal revelation of the Infinite to the finite.

the Angels of God do not share the omniscience of God's knowledge. Although they are physically, intellectually and emotionally the highest form of created life, apart from specific instructions given to them from the Throne, the angels of God are only aware of what they have observed in the history of this universe from its beginning and what God gave to them as their guide that is referred to as the Writing of Truth in the angel's words to Daniel (10:21).

A thorough study of the book of Daniel shows that the angel, who referred to this Writing of Truth as his own basis of understanding, did not tell Daniel any detail of the coming Fourth Beast empire (revealed in the vision of Chapter Seven as immediately preceding the End). When he describes in Chapters Ten and Eleven (from Daniel's time onward), the process of the Persian Empire (Second Beast) and Macedonian-Greek Empire (Third Beast), and it's sudden devolving into the Seleucid 'king of the north' dynasty and Ptolemy 'king of the south' dynasty, as far as it would affect Israel and the time of the Jewish Maccabees resistance, any detail of this Fourth Beast Empire is completely left out and it is treated simply as the previously announced time of the Messiah, who would bring the resurrection of the dead.

own hindsight in history however shows us a great divide between the coming of the Messiah in the time of Rome (this Fourth Beast) and His yet still future coming to bring His eternal kingdom in resurrection and judgment to this earth. This divide, even the greatest of the prophets (as Jesus called him) John the Baptist himself did not understand, and so John began to think understandably that perhaps Jesus was not really the Messiah because He had not destroyed the power of the Fourth Beast empire (Matthew 11:3; Luke 7:19-20) as Daniel had prophesied that He would.

Of this incomplete understanding of prophets (and angels), the Apostle Peter says that their prophetic words pointed beyond the horizon of their own understanding, on issues which even the angels of God long to fully understand –

we now know had been completely hidden from the angels of God. Why?

For a number of reasons, but particularly because Satan (who knew the prophesies of Daniel very well) would himself personally specially engineer the betrayal and crucifixion of the Messiah to prevent Him taking all power (over this Fourth Empire).
Satan was not to know that directly through the betrayal of Judas, into whom Satan had entered (Luke 22:3; John 13:27) to engineer it, the 'tables would be turned' upon himself through the majesty of God's wisdom in the death of the sinless Christ. He did not know!

concerning specific angels mentioned in Holy Scripture, such as Michael and Gabriel, it is important to not take these statements out of their context.
For instance, although Michael is described by Billy Graham as follows, the full context indicates otherwise –

not very accurate in a number of ways.

text of 1 Thessalonians 4:16 more accurately actually says "an archangel" (as in the ESV/DRB/EMTV/LITV/YLT English translations), and Daniel 12:1 also tells us that Michael is special only in his responsibility to oversee the angels of God regarding the affairs of the nation Israel. It is for this reason that he dealt with the disposal of the body of Moses when he died alone on the mountain (Jude 1:9). This is why it was Michael that came to help Gabriel break through the demonic obstruction of the spirit-prince of Persia, because it was to a faithful Israelite in Persian territory that the revelation was to be brought, and he is therefore referred to by the angel Gabriel speaking to Daniel as 'your prince', not my prince (Daniel 10:13, 21; over Daniel not over Gabriel!).

it deserves to be noted that when the Bible in Daniel 12 says that Michael arises, it is because he has not been active immediately prior to that time as a consequence of Israel's unbelief. This is the present state of the nation today.

Michael's arising is at the beginning of what is there described as the future 'time of trouble'; the future unique final 1260 days; or 42 months; or 3½ years, spoken of in various places as the prelude to the return of the Messiah. And so in that future time, it is Michael who prevents Israel's total annihilation in this final holocaust of Satan's anger (Revelation 12).

Michael actually means, “who is like God?”, and Gabriel means "man of God". The 'el' ending simply being the Hebrew for 'God'.

nonsense propagated by Kari Samuels ('Intuitive Numerologist' and 'Happiness Coach') concerning angels, and of Michael in particular, is to be completely ignored and to be repudiated wherever found!

Her 10/04/2015 emailed advert reads –

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