The Biblical teaching about the angels is an essential and, in many respects, a distinctive element in the Christadelphian faith. Trinitarians, with their false understanding of the nature of God, are inevitably vague about the function of angels in the hierarchy of heaven. ( So vague, in fact, that angels are not so much as mentioned in the Anglican ‘statement of faith’, The 39 Articles of Religion.)
Evangelicals, with their emphasis on the direct influence of the personal Holy Spirit, and members of the so-called ‘Jesus movement’, with their exclusive devotion to their false Christ, find little room for angels in their theology. For them, it seems, the advent of the ‘age of the Spirit’, has made the angels mere watchers on the sidelines and has reduced them to a kind of secondary supporting role in which they are supposed to be occupied mostly with the control of natural phenomena and the maintenance of man’s created environment.
Few indeed amongst the millions now professing the name of Christ appear to understand rightly the central role of the angelic hosts in the unfolding purpose of God, not just in creation, but also in the work of Christ and in the everyday lives of the saints as they press towards the Kingdom of God on earth.
Adam largely understood the place of angels in the Divine scheme of things, of course. For when he talked with God, and heard Him “walking in the garden in the cool of the day” (Gen. 3:8-10), he was speaking with (or hiding from) the angels, the Elohim, the Divine messengers who spokefor God and as God.
As the creative fingers of God, it was they who had formed Adam “of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life” (Gen. 2:7); as the manifesters of God’s wrath, it was they who pronounced sentence upon him (Gen. 3:17-19), and who meted out the Divine punishment on him (Gen. 3:22-24); and, as the ministers of God’s mercy, it was they who promised him a saviour (Gen. 3:15), and who inaugurated for him a way of sacrifice which would ultimately lead his race back to the tree of life (Gen. 3:21,24).
Abraham, too, was no stranger to the Edenic principle of God being revealed to men by angels. When he spoke to the Yahweh angel, who bore the name of God Himself (Gen. 18:1-33), Abraham was well aware that what the angel said was from the very mind of God, Whose will the angel performed unerringly.
And when, in his old age, he charged his servant to find a wife from the children of his own people, his confidence in Divine guidance was based on the certainty that God’s blessing would be extended by angelic ministration (Gen. 24:12,40,48,56). Their faith in angelic ministration was richly rewarded in the outworking of the circumstances and events of the selection of Rebekah as a wife for Abraham’s son.
These basic principles—and much more besides—are carefully laid out by Brother Jim Luke in the opening chapter of The Angels of God. Most of it will be familiar to any Christadelphian who knows his or her Bible and who is at all well read in the literature of the Truth. Indeed, the author openly acknowledges “his indebtedness to those who have gone before” (p. 4). His aim is not so much originality as synthesis—the distillation of disparate elements of Bible teaching on a single theme into a coherently presented whole. And in this the author’s work has been a great success; for here the Brotherhood has, for the first time, a separate, substantial publication on a most important aspect of the work of God.
There have, of course, been very many other published treatments of the doctrine of angels: pamphlets (like Geoff and Ray Walker’s Ministering Spirits), foundation works of the Truth containing sections on angels (like Dr. Thomas’s Eureka and Elpis Israel, and Robert Roberts’s Christendom Astray and The Ways of Providence), books on the doctrine of God-manifestation (Dr. Thomas’s Phanerosis and C. C. Walker’s Theophany), studies of specific aspects of the nature or work of the angels (H. Madeley’s The Cherubim, Robert Roberts’s The Visible Hand of God, Tony Benson’s Stormy Wind Fulfilling His Word, and Aleck Crawford’s The Spirit: a study on New Testament usage)—all these, with a number of other works, form the basic corpus of Christadelphian writings about the angels, amongst which Brother Luke’s booklet now takes an important place.
And this new contribution is all the more welcome because it comes at a time when the central role of the angels in the work of God with men needs renewed emphasis as an antidote to the influence of evangelical doctrines in our midst.
Apart from the fact that the booklet is well printed and attractively presented (which always helps to catch the eye and hold the reader’s attention), the contents are helpfully laid out and fully indexed (a task often neglected by Christadelphian writers, much to the detriment of the usefulness of their work).
The four chapter headings explain the manner in which the overall subject has been broken down:
- “God revealed in the angels”;
- “Their origin, form and capabilities”;
- “Their heavenly society and characteristics”;
- “The activities and functions of God’s messengers”.
There is, inevitably, some overlap in these divisions, especially between chapters 1 and 4; but for the purpose of the study they achieve the author’s aim, in providing a comprehensive outline for his exposition of most of the passages of Scripture which are relevant to his theme. Originally prepared for a young people’s study class, the material is presented simply and clearly, with none of the obfuscation or vagueness which sometimes mars the study of themes which enter into the very sensitive arena of the nature and work of God.
A 12-page Appendix on “Difficult Scriptural passages involving ‘angels’ is another useful feature of the booklet. “Angel” in Ecclesiastes 5:6 is shown to refer (like the “gods” of Ps. 82:6) to Israel’s appointed judge/priests (cf. Ex.22: 8,9,28); arguments are put forward in favour of understanding the Comforter of John 16:7,13 as the Holy Spirit exercised through a revealing angel (a view which has gained widespread acceptance in recent times); helpful comments are given here, too, on Galatians 1:8, where it might appear on first reading that Paul is countenancing the possibility of angels acting in ways hostile to the Truth—instead this is shown to be an example of “hyperbolic hypothesis where something impossible is mentioned to express the greatness of the subject being spoken about (the gospel)” (p. 41).
Altogether this booklet is an excellent summary of our communal understanding of God’s ‘ministering spirits’, and it deserves the widest circulation in our midst. Brethren and sisters at all stages of their lives in Christ would benefit from the reassuring picture that emerges from these pages of the angels “busily occupied on behalf of saints, guiding, protecting and assisting them in their lives” (p. 29).
Once again, the Christadelphian Scripture Study Service has filled a gap and, in so doing, has produced yet another worthwhile addition to the literature of the Truth.
Review of “The Early Earth” by John Whitcomb (1972)