Angels after Pentecost
This present darkness
In his book This Present Darkness author Frank Peretti describes a demon’s attack on a pastor who is praying in his church in the late evening: “It had arms and it had legs, but it seemed to move without them, crossing the street and mounting the fronts steps of the church. Its leering, bulbous eyes reflected the stark blue light of the full moon with their own jaundiced glow. The gnarled head protruded from hunched shoulders, and wisps of rancid red breath seethed in labored hisses through rows of jagged fangs.” The demon tries to enter the church two times, but is denied entrance by an angel protecting the pastor. Then he tries a third time: “The wings hummed in a blur as it banked sharply in a flying turn and headed for the door again, red vapors chugging in dashes and streaks from his nostrils, its talons bared and poised for attack, a ghostly siren of a scream rising in its throat. Like an arrow through a target, like a bullet through a board, it streaked through the door – and instantly felt its insides tearing loose. There was an explosion of suffocating vapor, one final scream, and the flailing of withering arms and legs. Then there was nothing at all except the ebbing stench of sulfur and the two strangers [two other angels], suddenly inside the church. The big blond man [the defending angel] replaced a shining sword as the white light that surrounded him faded away. “A spirit of harassment?” he asked. “Or doubt…or fear. Who knows?” “And that was one of the smaller ones?” “I’ve not seen one smaller.” “No indeed. And just how many would you say there are?” “More, much more than we, and everywhere. Never idle.”
Your personal bodyguard
That is how Frank Perreti pictures the ongoing spiritual warfare all around us in this world. Demons are there to attack believers and to corrupt the world. In his book the demons are mobilised to take control of a small town called Ashton. A newspaper man and a pastor resist this onslaught of evil powers. The members of the local church are mobilised and because of their ongoing and intense prayer the angels in the end manage to defeat the powers of the evil one.
It is an interesting read, an obvious mix of fact and fiction. It certainly opens your eyes for the world of angels and demons. But where does fact end and fiction begin? Is it true that angels are all around us, protecting believers from the attacks of demons? As you probably know, the Roman Catholic church believes in so called guardian angels. These are individual angels assigned to a particular person to protect him his whole life. They basically base this teaching on two texts from the Bible, Mt. 18:10 and Acts 12:15.[1] In Mt. 18:10 the Lord Jesus seems to say that children[2] have their own angels: “See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.” This is, however, hardly convincing. The text does not say that each child has an individual angel assigned to them, protecting them and following him day by day. Calvin says in his commentary on this text: “The words of Christ do not mean that a single angel is continually occupied with this or the other person; Scripture says that many have been commissioned to guard every one of the faithful.” Indeed, we do not have just one angel protecting us, but a whole army of angels (see also Ps. 91:11-12)! Besides, this verse says that the angels are in heaven, not on earth. It is an intriguing text and its meaning is widely discussed. But in itself it can not convince us that every person has their own guardian angel.
But what if you combine it with Acts 12:15? Acts 12 tells us about an angel who rescued Peter. He made his chains fall from his hands and slip past the sentries undetected. Peter then went to the house of Mary where the disciples were together, and knocked at the door. Rhoda, a servant girl, answered the door. She recognized Peter’s voice, and ran back into the house to tell everyone that Peter was there – without first opening the door for him! The disciples then said to her: “You are out of your mind.” But she kept insisting that it was true. Then they said: “It is his angel!” So, does this mean that the disciples believed that Peter had his own personal angel? Most commentators say that the disciples believed that a person’s angel often appeared immediately after the person’s death. We would say: “You’ve seen his ghost!” That is perhaps why the Lord Jesus in Lk. 24:39 after his resurrection wanted to assure his disciples that he was not a spirit. He showed them the wounds in his hands and feet and ate a piece of fish to prove it to them. Calvin, however, is prepared to say that the disciples “call him his angel, who was by God appointed to be his keeper and the minister of his safety.” But then to say that every man has a particular angel, who takes care of him, Calvin continues, is too quick. Indeed, I think we can safely assume that if the existence of individual guardian angels were reality, then we would expect this truth to be more fully revealed to us in God’s Word.
On the other hand, it is true that in Dan. 10:13.20 and 12:1 angels are joined to a particular people, here the Persians and the Greeks. We also learn in Rev. 1 and 2 that John was to write letters to the angels of the seven churches in Asia. Some believe that these angels of the seven churches are the pastors of these churches. I find the arguments for that view unconvincing.[3]
Admittedly, when you list these texts and their explanations, some questions remain. But the popular belief that every person has his or her own personal life-long guardian angel is not supported by God’s Word.
Changing dispensations
So that is where fiction begins. Now, what are the facts? What does the Bible teach us about the work of angels in our time? In this discussion we take our starting point in Hb. 1:14 where we read that angels are “ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation.” Note the tense of the verb in this sentence. The writer of Hebrews says that they are sent out, present tense. He does not say that they used to be sent out, or that they will be sent out, but that they are sent out in his time, which is the time of the NT after Pentecost, which is also our time. Therefore we conclude that also in our day and age angels minister to us.
But what do they do? How are we to picture that? Many of the books I read list all the things that angels did in the Old Testament and simply state that since angels are still active, they must do the same kind of things in our time. This is where the great weakness of much popular evangelical theology is exposed, for it does not take into account that very important and distinct aspect of Reformed theology: that of the changing of the covenantal dispensations in redemptive history. This means that our time is different in many ways from the time of the Old Testament because the Lord Jesus has come, and the Holy Spirit has been poured out over the church. These crucial moments in redemptive history are the reason why we call the time of the Old Testament the book of promise, and the New Testament the book of fulfillment. We live in the time after Ascension Day and after Pentecost. We have seen the fulfillment of the promises of God in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. That has consequences also for the ministry of the angels in this Pentecostal era.
One thing that has changed is the nature of the people of God. In the old dispensation the people of God was an actual nation, the kingdom, the people of Israel. Israel in the Old Testament was a theocracy, a nation ruled by God. Israel had their own land and their own national laws. God was king. He used judges and kings as instruments to govern his people. God protected this people for the sake of the coming of his Son Jesus Christ. Israel was to live almost completely isolated from the surrounding peoples and nations so that the coming of the Messiah was not jeopardised. God was the God of the angelic hosts, his heavenly armed forces, who would intervene at his command at crucial moments to do just that: make sure that the history of Israel continued towards that pivotal moment in the history of mankind: the coming of the Son of God in the flesh of sinful human being.
In the New Testament all of that has changed.God’s covenantal promises were fulfilled when Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem, died on the cross for all God’s children, ascended into heaven, and when the Spirit of God was poured out over the church. In Jesus’ ministry on earth it became clear that God’s kingdom would be under his control, and that all people should acknowledge his rule. Israel’s physical separation from the world in the Old Testament became the church’s spiritual separation in the New Testament. The kingdom of God is now Christo-cratic, meaning that Christ is King. He sits at God’s right hand, the hand of power and authority. From there he governs the church through his Word and Spirit. This change in the nature of the people of God and the coming of the Holy Spirit has brought about a significant change in the ministry of angels. In the final installment, next time, we will see what kind of change that is.
E. Rupke
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[1] The Roman Catholic church also bases this belief on texts from apocryhpal books (like Tobit 5:4-16), but even these are not convincing. The Roman Catholic appeal to the early church fathers is not decisive.
[2] At this point I will not enter into the discussion about who these ‘little ones’ are; children or weak disciples/followers of Jesus.
[3] Again, I will not go into the specific exegesis of these passages. That would take us beyond the scope of these articles. Let me just say that nowhere else in the Bible are pastors or elders identified with angels, and that the mention of angels of the churches is in harmony with the specific genre of the book of Revelation, that of visions and apocalyptic prophecy.