Angels, God’s mighty host

Angels. What a fascinating part of God’s kingdom. If we look at them we can do nothing but marvel at God’s perfect creation. How perfect is everything He made indeed!

But what do we know about them, have you ever encountered an angel? And if so, what happened? Did he comfort, guarded, or aided you?

I know I have, to me angels are a truthful reality. I have encountered them myself on various occasions. The first occasion was when I was approximately six years old. I was sitting along the beside of my bed, pondering and worrying about the coming night. You see, my mother had bought a witch doll which had a bag attached to her belly, where we were supposed to drop our filthy underwear in.

At that time, my little sister and I did share the bedroom together,  and every single night when my mother switched off our bedroom light, both of us would literally see this doll flying over to our beds. Or shall I say floating over to our bedside. We both saw it always at the same time, it was really no childlike fantasy anymore, for we were both very much afraid of this 'underwear witch doll' (that is what we called her). It really did haunt us for quite a while, and whenever we told our mother about it, she would just laugh it off as childish imagination. We could not understand that our mother was not willing to remove that doll or that she doubted us, her own children! We sometimes even talk about it today, and both of us have mixed feelings about the whole episode for it was really very real and very frightening to us. So naturally, I was very much afraid of going to sleep, let alone the dark for this witch doll came flying towards us the minute the lights were switched off.

Thus one day, while sitting at the bedside worrying and hovering about it, I happened to look outside. Our bedroom overlooked a small forest. And to my surprise I saw an angel, just walking in the forest! He was playing seek and hide behind the woods. He was trying to catch my attention. I remember looking in utter amazement at this marvelous spectacle. And guess what shortly after this sight my mother did remove the doll. After this marvelous sight, I remember loosing my fear of this doll and fear of the dark. I cannot remember exactly what happened after that, but I do remember that my fear was gone. This was my first encounter with an angel. I told my mother about this whole episode not long ago, and she again laughed it off as being a childish imagination. She never believed in God, so naturally she did classify this incident as being a child's tale.

To be honest, I never quite understood why I do believe so strongly in God, while the rest of the family does not. As far as I can remember that I exist, I do believe in God. I even used to hear him call my name in a loud voice, just like Samuel did, very often during my childhood. I often would ask my mother or my father if they had called me. They never did, so I knew it was God. I talked with my religion teacher at school about it, and he told me that the voice I was hearing was indeed the voice from God. He also told me to cherish it for it was something very special that was happening to me. He knew the Bible and the story of Samuel, I did not, I was a just a kid.

But it would not be the last special thing that happened to me. God had much more in store for me and I know for a fact that He has much more awaiting for me still.

One of the following angelic encounters I had, was after a deliverance session. I used to be very much involved in the occult, going very often to psychics. This opened the door for strong demonic activity in my life. I was ruled by several demons all related to the occult, and one of these demons was a demon of anger. I remember once quarreling over the phone with my mother, I was so rude to her that she ended up sobbing uncontrollably and me being delighted in her being hurt. At that point I realized that it was not I who was hurting my mother, but it was something inside of me. A strong fight started to happen within me. I, the real Anne was saying sorry to my mother, feeling really guilty for hurting her, while this demon started to manifest and was hurling the most vicious words out of my mouth. I had no control over it anymore. It was frightening. I quite remember the battle I had that day. That was the turning point when I decided to quit anything related to the occult. You see, I not only had this demon within me, but I was being harassed by other demons as well. All this demonic activity started when I started going to these people. So now I decided to get a deliverance and nothing could hold me back!

Needless to say, that these demons inside of me manifested themselves quite strongly during this session. It even scared the pastor off a bit. My pastor thought that this deliverance session would not be a strong one, for he knew me to be such a decent girl who never got involved in something dangerous, (ha ha). Little did he know. He thought the deliverance session to be a quick one and never gave my account of my involvement with the occult much thought. All he told me was to fast that morning and come over. How wrong he was. The demons soon started to manifest, and afterwards he told me, he was quite scared. God allowed him to look into the spiritual realm while delivering me, and he saw an angry demon, with all kinds of chains around him coming out of me. This demon was really angry indeed, he had to leave his home .I remember that there was a particular moment during the deliverance in which the struggle was very difficult. It was with this demon who was manifesting itself. This demon was the demon that had got a legal doorway into my life through my involvement with the occult. But, the session turned out to be quite successful and I got delivered. An overwhelming sense of peace came over me,and I never felt Christ so close in my life as after the deliverance. I was a new person. Even people close to me told me I looked different. And I did.

Back at home, a couple of nights later, while sleeping the Holy Spirit awoke me in the early hours of the morning to inform me I was in immediate danger. And I sensed the danger, it was frightening indeed. I started to pray to Jesus for protection, calling out His name aloud, and God in His mercy opened at that very moment of prayer, my spiritual eyes, and what I saw has comforted me very strongly up until this day. What I saw was an ugly demonic entity, pitch black which emanated evil all around him, who tried to reach my bedroom. At that very moment a huge angel stood at my doorpost and this evil thing could not enter my bedroom. I could not see his face for this angel was huge indeed. All I saw was his legs up to his knees. He was huge indeed!The demon left the house immediately, never to return. When I saw this, as strange as it may sound, I just turned around and went back to sleep, peacefully, fully knowing that I was protected by my loving Jesus.

After this encounter I have had some more encounters, but it suffices to say, that angels are all around us, to protect us to comfort us and to guard us against evil. Read Psalm 91, it tells you about God's angels protecting us. I do believe that at the very command from God they fly towards us to help us in our times of need.There are many examples, especially during WW II from people who have been successfully and marvelously delivered out of danger with the help of angels. Read these accounts, it is good reading.

But I think a word of caution should be said here: never give them any reverence that is due to God, for only God may have our worship! They are spiritual beings like us, created by God, to assist God but never to be worshipped. Therefore we may never worship them in any form! Instead, we should look upon them and learn how they worship and praise the Lord. We can learn so much from them. The are some interesting parallels that can be drawn between them and us. For example, a parallel which I find very interesting is that they once had a choice also. This choice was given to them long before the earth even existed, but just as we do have the choice of free will, they also had  the possibility to choose between good and evil. From Scripture we know that one third chose to follow Satan and as a result for that choice,got expelled from heaven. These are referred to as the fallen angels. The remaining two third chose for God and form now part of His mighty army.

From the expulsion of the fallen angels from heaven, we may learn that they possibly have the aptitude to have pride. Pride made Lucifer fall in the first place. He thought himself so good and so beautiful, that he thought he could be God. He wanted to be God, he wanted the worship God gets. I do not know if they still have this propensity, but in that particular time they most certainly had it. Another interesting parallel between the angels and us, is the concept of salvation. Their existence and ours is inextricably linked. Why is this so? Why did God make us so differently yet so close entangled? When Christ will return they will come to their full potential, just as we will also. They will co-inhabit alongside with us the new Jerusalem. They are eagerly expecting to do so, and so should we.

The picture of an angelic host who plays the harp and sings choruses of beautiful songs, is not so far fetched from reality after all. But instead on focusing on this picture, we should focus on the results of this picture. By this I mean, they worship, they praise God and the result is that they are filled with joy. Maybe God gives us this example to teach us how important it is to worship and praise Him. If we live in joy, we would not be so easily defeated, we would not hate so quickly, nor would we be so ready to react to every offense.We would be much more forgiving, no one would be able to take away that joyful feeling. Don’t we all wish that? Is that not one of the aims we ought to have in life? Why do we dislike being sad, angry or hurt so much? Because it goes against our nature. Just as it goes against the nature of the angels.

From Scripture, we also learn that there are fallen angels, the ones who decided to follow Satan. These angels, we know also are full of hatred and full of deceit. They rule on the basis of fear. Fear is lies at the root of hatred. Fear lies at the root of everything evil. For perfect love casts out all fear.So while the angels in heaven rejoice in worship and are joyful, the angels of darkness live in constant hatred and fear of their master Satan. This is the difference between the godly angels and the fallen angels. Love brings joy, and joy brings love, and fear brings hatred, and hatred brings destruction.

Angels not only surround us for our protection from evil spirits, but they are ministering spirits send by God to us to minister to us who are the heirs of salvation.  From Scripture, to be precise from Exodus 23:2-23 we learn that angels can be messengers of God's wrath also. Because of their unbelief, the Israelites provoked the angel sent by God to anger, and thousands upon thousands of them died in the wilderness. When they complained to God, God told them they should not have provoked the angel. From this example we see that an angel does not have to forgive when being provoked by us. The Israelites spoke words full of unbelief, angering God by their rebellion against Him. This tells us that we reap the fruit from every word we speak. We can provoke angels by our unbelief, and as we saw with the Israelites this can lead to utterly destruction. But we need to keep this is mind, angels of God do not act on their own behalf. They follow God's orders.

The early Christians, and the believing Jews in the first centuries of Christianity believed angels to be the messengers and takers of our prayers to heaven and back. By no means am I suggesting that Jesus’ work is less important, for His work is the most important of all. He is our High Priest,our Savour, our Rock, but what I am suggesting is this. I am convinced that Jesus, as our High Priest, petitions our ever requests to the Father, who denies Him nothing, and the blessings and answers to our prayers are taken back to us by the angels. They serve as His servants. They take care of the prayers, and blessings. They bestow them on Jesus’ request upon us. Why? Because God delights in doing this, and the angels rejoice! A good example is Daniel and the angel that came to him with the answer to his prayers (Dan.10:13).

Concluding this article, I want to say that even if we do not see any angels with our visible eyes, it does not have to mean that they do not exist. For Scripture teaches that they do exist and they do protect us. Indeed, we are all the time surrounded by them. God has foreseen in our providence and angels help Him just to do that.

If you have had an encounter with angels please write to us, we would love to hear from You!

For a more biblical explanation of angels, see my next article called "Angels, according to the Bible".