Revelation 8:2 - Homilies By S. Conway

The ministry of angels.

"And I saw the seven angels." These holy beings are continually spoken of in Scripture, and in no book of the Bible more frequently or emphatically than in this. From their first mention in connection with the touching story of Hagar and her child, which we read of in Genesis, down to their constant ministry, now of mercy, now of terror, which we read of in these closing pages of the Bible, we are continually meeting with references to them. It, therefore, cannot but be important to us to understand what we may on this most interesting but most mysterious subject. For we cannot think that their work and ministry are finished, and that now they have nothing to do with us, nor we with them. We feel sure that the reverse is the truth. True, there has been much of mere imagination in the representations that have been given of angels by poets and painters both. They have been the makers of men's common ideas concerning angels, and have caused not a little misunderstanding and misreading of the Scriptures on this theme. Jewish fables and legends of various kinds have been mingled with the plain teaching of God's Word, and hence the whole subject has come to be wrapped in a haze of difficulty and doubt, leading, in many cases, to complete denial of the existence of angels at all. But a careful study of the Scriptures will show that the truth as to the angels is one full of consolation and of sacred impulse; of solemn warning also; in short, that it is part of that truth which is "profitable for doctrine, for reproof," etc. Consider—

I. THE REALITY OF THE ANGELIC WORLD . And there can be no doubt but that

1 . The Scriptures plainly assert it. They are spoken of there in clear and positive manner as to their high dignity, their sanctity, their power, their blessedness, their heavenly home, their employments, their vast numbers, and their immortality. All this is told of the holy angels. But there are evil angels likewise, who are represented as serving under their prince Satan, as the holy angels serve under God. They are evil and wretched, and full of all malignity and wickedness.

2 . And all this is not mere accommodation, on the part of the Scriptures, to popular ideas and beliefs. This has been long and loudly asserted. No doubt there were all manner of strange beliefs on the subject of the spirit world. The ancients peopled the universe around with all kinds of strange inhabitants, and the Jews were only less credulous on these matters than the heathen around. Hence it is said that our Lord and his apostles accommodated themselves to these ideas, and represented the various facts of nature and providence as if angels or demons were employed about them, but not teaching that such actually was the case. But this theory has only to be stated for its untenableness immediately to appear. And the plain teaching of Scripture would have been more readily received had not poets and painters—those mighty manufacturers of so much, and manifold, and often mischievous mistake—persisted in always representing angels in one way—beautiful youths with wings. Milton is very great upon their wings. But the result of this has been to relegate the whole doctrine of angels to the region of myth and imagination, and to rob the Church of the comfort and help the real truth as it is given in the Bible would afford. The fancies and fables of heathendom were but one more out of the many instances in which, as St. Paul describes them, they were feeling after the truth.

3 . And why should there be any doubt as to the reality of angels? Is not all life, from the lowest zoophyte up to the most gifted of the sons of men, one continual ascent? But why should the progression halt with us? why should there not be an ascent beyond, as there is up to, ourselves? All analogy leads us to think there is, and to be on the look out and expectation for orders of beings that may span the vast distance which must forever separate us and God. The Bible and analogy confirm one another. But a more important and difficult inquiry relates to—

II. THEIR NATURE , ORIGIN , AND HISTORY . Who and what are they?

1 . Much has been assumed concerning them, but resting on very slender foundations; as:

"... to be avenged,

And to repair his numbers thus impaired,

Whether such virtue, spent of old, now failed

More angels to create (if they at least

Are his created) or to spite us more,

Determined to advance into our room

A creature formed of earth, and him endue

With heavenly spoils (our spoils)."

But may it not be that:

2 . Angels are perfected men —" the spirits of the just made perfect"? Young, the author of the 'Night Thoughts,' thus sets forth this belief—

"Why doubt we, then, the glorious truth to sing?

Angels are men of a superior kind;

Angels are men in lighter habit clad,

High o'er celestial mountains winged in flight,

And men are angels loaded for an hour,

Who wade this miry vale and climb with pain

And slippery step, the bottom of the steep."

But on such a theme as this we want Scripture, and not poetry, to tell us what we are to believe; and from Scripture we gather:

3 . And all this is not set aside by the statements in 2 Peter and in the Epistle of Jude . In both these Epistles it is said that God "spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down into hell." It is on these statements, amplified and enlarged by Milton and others, that the popular belief is based. But it is to be noted that the two statements in these Epistles are but copies one of another or of some common document. Place the passages side by side, and this will be evident, the writer of 2 Peter probably copying from Jude. And it is not to be forgotten that the canonical authority of these two Epistles is the least and lowest of all the Scriptures. But even were it not so, the source whence their statements on this question are taken is well known. They are a quotation from the apocryphal Book of Enoch—a book of no authority and little worth, but which was familiar to those to whom these Epistles were written; and, hence, illustrations drawn from it, whether true or not, would serve the writers' purpose, and are therefore made use of. It therefore cannot be allowed that these two isolated statements—though they are one rather than two, and of such doubtful authority—should set aside what Scripture and reason alike teach on this most interesting theme.

CONCLUSION . See some of the consequences of this understanding concerning the angels.

1 . The future life becomes far more real to us. For now that we have identified the angels, as we think has been done, with "the spirits of just men made perfect," we are delivered from that vagueness of idea as to those who have gone away from us through their having died in the Lord. They are no longer formless, incorporeal, unimaginable beings, mist and cloud-like rather than human, but we know that it is as the disciples believed—the angel, the spirit of their Master resembled him. His resurrection body did resemble his former material body so that he could be recognized as we know he was.

2 . And we know some of the occupations of that heavenly state. So long as we regarded angels as a different order of beings from redeemed men, we could not regard their work as that which one day shall be ours. But looking upon them as ourselves as "we shall be," we can see what vast store of holy employ and sacred service awaits us. See their manifold service as shown in this chapter only. Heaven is not an everlasting sitting on "green and flowery mounts," an "eternity of the tabor," as one has described it, but a life of holy and blessed service for God and for man.—S.C.