078. Angelology

Angelology

Jdg_13:19 : ’93And the angel did wondrously.’94

Fire built on a rock. Manoah and his wife had there kindled the flames for sacrifice in praise of God, and in honor of a guest whom they supposed to be a man. But, as the flame rose higher and higher, their stranger guest stepped into the flame and by one red leap ascended into the skies. Then they knew that he was an angel of the Lord. ’93The angel did wondrously.’94

Two hundred and forty-eight times does the Bible refer to the angels, yet I never heard or read a sermon on Angelology. The whole subject is relegated to the realm mythical, weird, spectral and unknown. Such adjournment is unscriptural and wicked. Of their life, their character, their habits, their actions, their velocities, the Bible gives us full-length portraits, and why this prolonged and absolute silence concerning them? Angelology is my theme.

There are two nations of angels, and they are hostile to each other; the nation of good angels and the nation of bad angels. Of the former I chiefly speak today. Their capital, their headquarters, their grand rendezvous, is heaven, but their empire is the universe. They are a distinct race of creatures. No human being can ever join their confraternity. The little child who in the Sabbath-school sings, ’93I want to be an angel,’94 will never have her wish gratified. They are superhuman; but they are of different grades and ranks, not all on the same level or the same height. They have their superiors and inferiors and equals.

I propose no guessing on this subject, but take the Bible for my only authority. Plato, the philosopher, guessed and divided angels into super-celestial, celestial, and sub-celestial. Dionysius, the Areopagite, guessed and divided them into three classes’97the supreme, the middle and the last’97and each of these into three other classes, making nine in all. Philo said that the angels were related to God, as the rays to the sun. Fulgentius said that they were composed of body and spirit. Clement said they were incorporeal. Augustine said that they had been in danger of falling, but now are beyond being tempted. But the only authority on this subject, that I respect, says they are divided into Cherubim, Seraphim, Thrones, Dominations, Principalities, Powers. Their commander-in-chief is Michael. Daniel called him Michael, St. John called him Michael. These supernal beings are more thoroughly organized than any army that ever marched. They are swifter than any cyclone that ever swept the sea. They are more radiant than any morning that ever came down the sky. They have more to do with your destiny and mine than any being in the universe except God. May the Angel of the New Covenant, who is the Lord Jesus, open our eyes and touch our tongue and rouse our soul, while we speak of their deathlessness, their intelligence, their numbers, their strength, their achievements.

Yes, deathless. They had a cradle, but will never have a grave. The Lord remembers when they were born, but no one shall ever see their eye extinguished or their momentum slow up or their existence terminate. The oldest of them has not a wrinkle or a decrepitude or a hindrance; as young after six thousand years as at the close of their first hour. Christ said of the good in heaven, ’93Neither can they die any more, for they are equal unto the angels.’94 Yes. deathless are these wonderful creatures of whom I speak. They will see world after world go out, but there shall be no fading of their own brilliance. Yea, after the last world has taken its last flight, they will be ready for the widest circuit through immensity, taking a quadrillion of miles in one sweep as easy as a pigeon circles a dovecot. They are never sick. They are never exhausted. They need no sleep, for they are never tired. At God’92s command, they smote with death, in one night, one hundred and eighty-five thousand of Sennacherib’92s host, but no fatality can smite them. Awake, agile, multipotent, deathless, immortal!

A further characteristic of these radiant folk is intelligence. The woman of Tekoah was right when she spoke to King David of the wisdom of an angel. We mortals take in what little we know through eye and ear and nostril and touch; but those beings have no physical encasement and hence they are all senses. A wall five feet thick is not solid to them. Through it they go without disturbing flake of mortar or crystal of sand. Knowledge! It flashes on them. They take it in at all points. They absorb it. They gather it up without any hinderment. No need of literature for them! The letters of their books are stars. The dashes of their books are meteors. The words of their books are constellations. The paragraphs of their books are galaxies. The pictures of their books are sunrises and sunsets and midnights auroras, and the conqueror on the white horse with the moon under his feet. Their library is an open universe. No need of telescope to see something millions of miles away, for instantly they are there to inspect and explore it. All astronomies, all geologies, all botanies, all philosophies at their feet. What an opportunity for intelligence is theirs! What facilities for knowing everything, and knowing it right away!

There is only one thing that puts them to their wit’92s end, and the Bible says they have to study that. They have been studying it all through the ages, and yet I warrant they have not fully grasped it’97the wonders of Redemption. These wonders are so high, so deep, so grand, so stupendous, so magnificent that even the intelligence of angelhood is confounded before it. The apostle says, ’93Which things the angels desire to look into.’94 That is a subject that excites inquisitiveness on their part. That is a theme that strains their faculties to the utmost. That is higher than they can climb, deeper than they can dive. They have a desire for something too big for their comprehension. ’93Which things the angels desire to look into.’94 But that does not discredit their intelligence. No one but God himself can fully understand the wonders of Redemption. If all heaven should study it for fifty eternities they would get no further than the A B C of that inexhaustible subject. But nearly all other realms of knowledge they have ransacked and explored and compassed. No one but God can tell them anything they do not know. They have read to the last word of the last line of the last page of the last volume of investigation. And what delights me most is that all their intelligence is to be at our disposal, and, coming into their presence, they will tell us in five minutes more than we can learn by one hundred years of earthly surmising.

A further characteristic of these immortals is their velocity. This the Bible puts sometimes under the figure of wings, sometimes under the figure of a flowing garment, sometimes under the figure of naked feet. As these superhumans are without bodies these expressions are of course figurative, and mean swiftness. The Bible tells us that Daniel was praying, and Gabriel flew from heaven and touched him before he got up from his knees. How far, then, did the angel Gabriel have to fly in those moments of Daniel’92s prayer? Heaven is thought to be the center of the universe. Our sun and its planets only the rim of the wheel of worlds. In a moment the angel Gabriel flew from that center to this periphery. Jesus told Peter he could instantly have sixty thousand angels present if he called for them. What foot of antelope or wing of albatross could equal that velocity? Law of gravitation, which grips all things else, has no influence upon angelic momentum. Immensities before them open and shut like a fan. That they are here is no reason why they should not be a quintillion of miles hence the next minute. Our bodies hinder us, but our minds can circle the earth in a minute. Angelic beings are bodiless and have no limitation. God may with his finger point down to some world in trouble on the outmost limits of creation, and instantly an angelic cohort is there to help it. Or some celestial may be standing at the furthermost outpost of immensity, and God may say, ’93Come!’94 and instantly it is in his bosom. Abraham, Elijah, Hagar, Joshua, Gideon, Manoah, Paul, St. John, could tell of their unhindered locomotion. The red feet of summer lightning are slow compared with their hegiras. This doubles up and compresses infinitudes into infinitesimals. This puts all the astronomical heavens into a space like the balls of a child’92s rattle. This mingles into one the Here and the There, the Now and the Then, the Beyond and the Yonder.

Another remark I have to make concerning these illustrious immortals is that they are multitudinous. Their census has never been taken and no one but God knows how many they are, but all the Bible accounts suggest their immense numbers. Companies of them, regiments of them, armies of them, mountain-tops haloed by them, skies populous with them. John speaks of angels and other beings around the throne as ten thousand times ten thousand. Now, according to my calculation, ten thousand times ten thousand are one hundred million. But these are only the angels in one place. David counted twenty thousand of them rolling down the sky in chariots. When God came away from the riven rocks of Mount Sinai, the Bible says he had the companionship of ten thousand angels. I think they are in every battle, in every exigency, at every birth, at every pillow, at every hour, at every moment. The earth full of them. The heavens full of them. They outnumber the human race in this world. They outnumber ransomed spirits in glory. When Abraham had his knife uplifted to slay Isaac, it was an angel who arrested the stroke, crying: ’93Abraham! Abraham!’94 It was a stairway of angels that Jacob saw while pillowed in the wilderness. We are told an angel led the hosts of Israelites out of Egyptian serfdom. It was an angel that showed Hagar the fountain where she filled the bottle for the lad. It was an angel that took Lot out of doomed Sodom. It was an angel that shut up the mouths of the hungry monsters when Daniel was thrown into the caverns. It was an angel that fed Elijah under the juniper tree. It was an angel that announced to Mary the approaching nativity. They were angels that chanted when Christ was born. It was an angel that strengthened our Saviour in his agony. It was an angel that encouraged Paul in the Mediterranean shipwreck. It was an angel that burst open the prison, gate after gate, until Peter was liberated. It was an angel that stirred the Pool of Siloam where the sick were healed. It was an angel that John saw flying through the midst of heaven and an angel with foot planted on the sea and an angel that opened the book and an angel that sounded the trumpet, and an angel that thrust in the sickle and an angel that poured out the vials and an angel standing in the sun. It will be an angel with uplifted hand, swearing that Time shall be no longer. In the great final harvest of the world, the reapers are the angels. Yea, the Lord shall be revealed from heaven with mighty angels. Oh, the numbers and the might and the glory of these supernals! Fleets of them! Squadrons of them! Host beyond host! ’93Rank above rank! Millions on millions! And all on our side if we will have them.

This leads me to speak of the offices of these supernals. To defend, to cheer, to rescue, to escort, to give victory to the right, and overthrow the wrong; that is their business. Just as alert today and efficient as when in Bible times they spread wing or unsheathed sword or rocked-down penitentiaries or filled the mountains with horses of fire hitched to chariots of fire and driven by reinsmen of fire. They have turned your steps a hundred times, and you knew it not. You were on the way to do some wrong thing, and they changed your course. They brought some thought of Christian parentage, or of loyalty to your own home, and that arrested you. They arranged that some one should meet you at that crisis, and propose something honorable and elevating or they took from your pocket some ticket to evil amusement, a ticket that you never found. It was an angel of God, and perhaps the very one that guided you to this service, and that now waits to report some holy impression to be made upon your soul, tarrying with one foot upon the doorstep of your immortal spirit, and the other foot lifted for ascent into the skies. By some prayer detain him until he can tell of a repentant and ransomed soul! Or you were some time borne down with trouble, bereavement, persecution, bankruptcy, sickness, and all manner of troubles beating their discords in your heart and life. You gave up; you said: ’93I cannot stand it any longer. I believe I will take my life. Where is the rail-train or the deep wave or the precipice that will end this torment of earthly existence?’94 But suddenly your mind brightened. Courage came surging into your heart like oceanic tides. You said: ’93God is on my side and all these adversities he can make turn out for my good.’94 Suddenly you felt a peace, a deep peace, the peace of God that passeth all understanding. What made the change? A sweet and mighty and comforting angel of the Lord met you. That was all.

What an incentive to purity and righteousness is this doctrine that we are continually under angelic observation! Eyes ever on you, so that the most secret misdeed is committed in the midst of an audience of immortals. No door so bolted, no darkness so Cimmerian, as to hinder that supernal eyesight. Not critical eyesight, not jealous eyesight, not baleful eyesight, but friendly eyesight, sympathetic eyesight, helpful eyesight. Confidential clerk of store with great responsibility on your shoulders and no one to applaud your work when you do it well, and sick with the world’92s ingratitude, think of the angels in the counting-room raptured at your fidelity! Mother of household, stitching, mending, cooking, dusting, planning, up half the night, or all night, with the sick child, day in and day out, year in and year out, worn with the monotony of a life that no one seems to care for, think of the angels in the nursery, angels in all the rooms of your toiling, angels about the sick cradle, and all in sympathy!

Railroad engineer, with hundreds of lives hanging on your wrist, standing amid the cinders and the smutch, rounding the sharp curve, and by appalling declivity, discharged and disgraced if you make a mistake, but not one word of approval if you take all the trains in safety for ten years, think of the angels by the throttle-valve, angels by the roaring furnace of the engine, angels looking from the overhanging crag, angels bracing the racing wheels off the precipice, angels when you mount the thunderbolt of a train, and angels when you dismount! Can you not hear them, louder than the jamming of the car-coupling, louder than the bell at the crossing, louder than the whistle that sounds like the scream of a flying fiend’97the angelic voices saying: ’93You did it well; you did it well’94? If I often speak of engineers, it is because I ride so much with them. I always accept their invitation to join them on their locomotive, and among them are some of the grandest men alive.

Men and women of all circumstances, only partly appreciated, or not appreciated at all, never feel lonely again or unregarded again! Angels all around; angels to approve, angels to help, angels to remember. Yea, while all the good angels are friends of the good, there is one special angel your body-guard. This idea, until this present study of angelology, I supposed to be fanciful, but I find it clearly stated in the Bible. When the disciples were praying for Peter’92s deliverance from prison, and he appeared at the door of the prayer-meeting, they could not believe it was Peter. They said: ’93It is his angel.’94 So these disciples in special nearness to Christ, evidently believed that every worthy soul has an angel. Jesus said of his followers: ’93Their angels behold the face of my Father.’94 Elsewhere it is said: ’93He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep the in all thy ways.’94 Angel-shielded, angel-protected, angel-guarded, angel-canopied art thou! No wonder that Charles Wesley hymned these words:

Which of the petty kings of earth

Can boast a guard like ours,

Encircled from our second birth

With all the heavenly powers?

Valerius and Rufinus were put to death for Christ’92s sake in the year 287, and after the day when their bodies had been whipped and pounded into a jelly, in the night in prison, and before the next day when they were to be executed, they both thought they saw angels standing with two glittering crowns, saying: ’93Be of good cheer, valiant soldiers of Jesus Christ! a little more of battle and then these crowns are yours.’94 And I am glad to know that before many of those who have passed through great sufferings in this life some angel of God has held a blazing coronet of eternal reward. Yea, we are to have such a guardian angel to take us upward when our work is done. You know, we are told an angel conducted Lazarus to Abraham’92s bosom. That shows that none shall be so poor in dying he cannot afford angelic escort. It would be a long way to go alone, and up paths we have never trod, and amid blazing worlds swinging in unimaginable momentum, out and on through such distances and across such infinitudes of space, we should shudder at the thought of going alone. But the angelic escort will come to your languishing pillow or the place of your fatal accident, and say: ’93Hail, immortal one! All is well; God hath sent me to take you home.’94 And, without tremor or slightest sense of peril, you will away and upward, further on and further on, until after a while heaven heaves in sight, and the rumble of chariot wheels and the roll of mighty harmonies are heard in the distance, and nearer you come, and nearer still, until the brightness is like many mornings suffused into one, and the gates lift, and you are inside the amethystine walls and on the banks of the jasper sea, forever safe, forever free, forever well, forever rested, forever united, forever happy. Mothers, do not think your little children go alone when they quit this world. Out of your arms into angelic arms; out of sickness into health; out of the cradle into a Saviour’92s bosom. Not an instant will the darlings be alone between the two kisses’97the last kiss of earth and the first kiss of heaven. ’93Now, angels, do your work!’94 cried an expiring Christian.

Yes; a guardian angel for each one of you. Put yourself now in accord with him. When he suggests the right, follow it; when he warns you against the wrong, shun it. Sent forth from God to help you in this great battle against sin and death, accept his deliverance. When tempted to a feeling of loneliness and disheartenment, appropriate the promise: ’93The angel of the Lord encampeth around about them that fear him and delivereth them.’94 Oh, I am so glad that the spaces between here and heaven are thronged with these supernaturals taking tidings home, bringing messages here, rolling back obstacles from our path and giving us defense; for terrific are the forces who dispute our way, and if the nation of the good angels is on our side, the nation of bad angels is on the other. Paul had it right when he said: ’93We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.’94 In that awful fight may God send us mighty angelic re-enforcement! We want all their wings on our side, all their swords on our side, all their chariots on our side.

Thank God that those who are for us are mightier than those who are against us! And that thought makes me jubilant as to the final triumph. Belgium, you know, was the battle-ground of England and France. Yea, Belgium more than once was the battle-ground of opposing nations. It so happens that this world is the Belgium or battle-ground between the angelic nations, good and bad. Michael, the commander-in-chief on one side; Lucifer, as Byron calls him, or Mephistopheles, as Goethe calls him, or Satan, as the Bible calls him, the commander-in-chief on the other side. All pure angelhood under the one leadership, and all abandoned angelhood under the other leadership. Many a skirmish have the two armies had, but the great and decisive battle is yet to be fought. Either from our earthly homes or down from our supernal residences, may we come in on the right side; for on that side are God and heaven and victory. Meanwhile the battle is being set in array; and the forces celestial and demoniacal are confronting each other. Hear the boom of the great cannonade already opened! Cherubim, Seraphim, Thrones, Dominations, Principalities and Powers are beginning to ride down their foes, and until the work is completed: ’93Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon, and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon!’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage