ANGELS: THE STRAIGHT SCOOP -- Devotional for July 31, from "Good Seeds"

He will give His angels charge over you, to guard you in all your ways. They will bear you up in their hands, lest you strike your foot against a stone. Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father. Are not these angels all ministering spirits, sent out to render service for the sake of those who will inherit salvation? (Psalm 91:11-12; Hebrews 1:14; Matt. 18:10)

Relatively little is said in the Bible about angels. I’ve chosen three well known passages which speak of the relationship between angels and people. In order to understand the character and purpose of angels, we must learn the important distinctions between mankind, angel-kind, God-kind. There is so much false information running through our beliefs simply because we don’t respect the very clear differences between these three kinds of beings. It’s almost a macro-evolutionary thinking that allows people to believe a man can become a god, or an angel – or that God could become an angel, or a man. Now right away we remember that God did become a man, when the eternal Son of God was born of Mary and lived a human life on earth. But the Son of God did not morph into a man, changing His nature from eternal God to mortal man. Rather, immortality took on mortality, the two existing together in one person. This is not something that happens. It happened, yes, but just once. God took on humanity, in order that man might take on immortality, but God did not cease being God when the Son of God became the offspring of Mary. In the same way, we do not cease being fully human when we “become partakers of the divine nature” (II Peter 1:4). Now, what about angels? They are a separate kind of being, created prior to man, for when the serpent beguiled Eve this was an angel using an animal to tempt mankind to reject God, the Creator of all. The only change an angel could make was to turn from good to evil, which in the case of Lucifer had already happened. The angel did not become a snake, he just used it, to get to Eve. Some folks think when people die and go to heaven they become angels – the caricature is always of the same face, but the guy now has wings and is playing a harp! Let’s get the facts straight by getting the straight scoop from Scripture: Evil angels want us to be like them, and if we follow their lead in rejecting God, we will be with them for all eternity, in the place designed for their eternal destruction. But good angels are servants of the most high God, whose only intention is to keep us on track to find, love and serve our Lord, so that we will spend eternity with Him, and with them too, in the heavenly realm. Angels are God’s servants, and our friends.