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By Pastor Glenn Pease
Before the turn of the century, a Bishop was paying his annual visit to a church related college.
He was the guest of one of the professors, and was stating to his host, that now since man knows all about nature, and all inventions have been discovered, we must be on the verge of the millennium.
The professor disagreed.
He felt that the next fifty years would lead to many more discoveries and inventions.
He suggested that men would probably be flying like the birds.
The Bishop said, "Nonsense, flight is reserved for the angels."
That Bishop's name was Wright, and little did he ever suspect that his two sons, Orville and Wilbur, would be the ones to prove him wrong by successfully flying in an airplane.
Wright was wrong about flight being reserved for the angels.
Man has advanced so far in this field, he now even hopes to compete with angels in interplanetary travel.
In whatever angels are successful, man is not far behind.
Angels were the first to praise God for the glories of His creation, but devout men, like the Psalmist, soon joined in the universal chorus-the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows His handiwork.
Angels were the first to announce the birth of Christ, and sing of the glorious good news of Christmas.
But man too, was soon filled with the music of this miracle.
Martin Luther expressed it for millions-
My heart for very joy doth leap
My lips no more can silence keep,
I too must sing, with joyful tongue,
That sweetest ancient cradle song.
Glory to God in highest heaven,
Who unto man His Son hath given.
While angels sing, with pious mirth,
A glad New Year to all the earth.
Man cannot refrain from joining the angels in praise to God.
Angels are the intelligent beings that break through the barrier between time and eternity, the visible and invisible, and speak of wonders, and blaze trails for men to follow in God's providence.
Angels play a major role in God's plan.
Angels are mentioned 15 times in the first two chapters of Luke.
Though they are common in Scripture, many people do not take them very seriously.
The average Christian would not deny their reality, but it would really make no practical difference to them if such beings did not exist.
The paradox is, the secular world and scientist seem to have more interest in the invisible world than many Christians.
Arthur Clarke tells of how radio telescopes are being used to pick up impulses coming from interstellar space.
Man hopes to discover intelligent life in the universe.
He writes, "We can be certain that these vast instruments will bring us nearer to a true understanding of our universe; and we can hope that, one day, they will tell us we are not alone in its immensity."
What a paradox-here is a man of science fascinated by the search for intelligent beings, and here we are as Christians with a record of such beings communicating with man on that first Christmas.
If we believe the Word of God, we already know we are not alone in the universe.
Mortimer J. Adler, chairman of the Board of Editors of The Encyclopedia Britannica, wrote the book, The Angels And Us.
He also helped edit the Great Books Of The Western World, which is the greatest collection on earth of the 102 great ideas that have shaped the history of our civilization.
The first idea dealt with is angels.
Dr. Adler is no theologian, but everywhere he goes to lecture on angels, he draws large crowds.
Why would the secular world be so interested in angels?
It is because their reality would give man hope that life has meaning and purpose.
Man longs to know he is not a freak accident of nature and a product of mere chance.
That is what the search for intelligent life in space is all about.
Earth is the hottest broadcasting body in the universe.
Man is sending out radio and television signals from around the world in hopes that they will be picked up on some other galaxy and bring forth a response.
Man longs to know he is not alone in this universe.
Adler argues that angels are a logical necessity.
They would complete what is otherwise an incomplete universe.
If man goes downward, he encounters the animal world, but if he cannot go upward and encounter the angelic world, something is missing and the universe is incomplete.
God has created creatures for every environment below man, and it is logical that He would create creatures for every environment above man.
There is body without mind.
There is body with mind.
If there is no mind without body between man and God, God has left a whole conceivable strata of life out of His creation, and thus is an incomplete Creator.
But if God did make angels, then the creation is complete.
Philosophically, angels are a necessity.
There must be an unbroken chain of life from the amoeba to the angel.
We can see the chain below man but not the one above him.
But reason demands that we believe in this invisible chain above man.
What Adler says that reason demands, the Christian says, revelation gives.
The point is, everything the Bible says about angels is consistent with the logic of reason and philosophy.
It is a mistake to ignore them, for they play an important role in the total picture of the universe and of the plan of God.
Christians are still deeply influenced by the old scientific mentality, which sought to eliminate the supernatural.
If it could not be made available to the senses, it was not real.
Materialism became a dominant world view that made even Christians blind to the mysteries of the unseen world.
We need to study the world of angels more seriously so that our appetite for the unseen world can be enhanced.
Christmas is an ideal time to do this, and so let's look at angels and first of all consider-
I. THEIR NATURE.
There are more misconceptions on this than almost any other aspect of Biblical revelation.
Poets and artists are guilty for this.
One year there was a great deal of controversy over the Christmas stamp because it was obviously female.
Artists have confused the romantic use of the word angel, with the Biblical use.
The result is, Biblical angels are usually pictured as female, even though the Bible consistently portrays them as male.
At the tomb of Christ they are even called young men.
Peter Marshall preferred Biblical scenes on Christmas cards, rather than sail boats, bells, cats and dogs, or Santa.
He said, "Angels there must be, but they need not be modernistic angels in evening dress with peroxide permanents."
But the fact is, this is what you will usually see when angels are portrayed by the modern artist.
Once in a while, however, the term angel is applied to males.
Like the case of the man who suddenly found himself standing before the gate of heaven, and he was shocked.
"How did I get here?" he asked.
Peter replied, "Don't you remember when your wife said, be an angel and let me drive?"
The problem with humorous stories is that people take them as a reliable source of information.
They do not read the Bible, and so all they know is what they hear in stories that circulate.
I heard a man in the Civil Air Patrol say that he almost got his wings.
He was referring to the fact that he almost collided with a jet when he was in his small plane.
He was expressing the popular idea that when a man dies he becomes like an angel with wings.
What is pathetic is that Christians often go right along with popular misconceptions.
Children used to sing in Sunday School,
I want to be an angel
and with the angels stand,
A crown upon my forehead
a harp within my hand.
The Bible makes a clear distinction between man and angel.
Men will never become angels.
Their natures are radically different.
Angels have neither bodies nor souls.
Angels are pure spirits.
They can take on the bodies of men, but this is not their nature.
In Hebrews 1:14, angels are called ministering spirits.
Man, because of his body, cannot be called a spirit.
In eternity men will have a resurrected body, which will make them forever different from angels.
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