St. Michael’s and All Angels’ Day - 29 Sep 1963

The Bible is full of references to the appearances of angels and of their ministering to men. Nowadays when men speak of their religious experiences we don’t hear of their talking about angels. At the Holy Communion Service we affirm our belief in the ministry of Angels in Heaven. We join them in worshipping God. “Therefore with Angels and Archangels and all the company of Heaven we laud and magnify Thy glorious name.…” We say this at the beginning of the consecration in our Communion Service. What are we to believe about angels? Have they anything to do with us? Has their ministry on earth ceased?

Before we answer these questions let us keep two things in mind:

There is plenty of shallow unbelief today about spiritual matters compared to the days of our forefathers. We have, no doubt, made much progress in the knowledge of the material world. We have discovered new things and have found out secrets of nature that our forefathers did not know about. But in spiritual matters we cannot say we are wiser than them. In the simplicity of their lives, perhaps they knew more. We can be quite sure that there is nothing in our modern knowledge, which in any way, disproves the faith by which our forefathers lived – faith in God and in angels. The religious experiences of people are the same – the same in ancient times as now. Perhaps the language in which the religious experiences of people are expressed in the Bible may appear strange to us. We may want to express them in different ways, but the experience is the same. This is the first thing to keep in mind – the experience is the same, but the language may be different.

Secondly the pictures of angels in Christmas cards and in stained glass windows gives us a wrong notion of angels. Those effeminate looking creatures with wings growing out of their backs give us wrong ideas. This soft minded pretty angel imagined by some artist is false in itself and untrue to the biblical idea. Let us get that out of our minds.

What do we learn about angels from the Bible? In Hebrews [1:14] we read: “Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to do service for the sake of them that shall inherit salvation?”

The first thing to remember is that angels are spirits. They have no bodies like ours. When we have to think of them we picture them in bodily form. So the Bible represents angels as in a bodily form, but the biblical writers never think of an angel as needing food or sleep. Angels are ministering spirits, guarding and guiding us, coming into the world as messengers of God’s purpose, with warnings and as agents of his judgments. Angels are as active today in the world as they were during the Bible period of history. No doubt our faith in the ministry of angels has grown dim, because we have become accustomed to an unworthy and sentimental visual image of an angel. But with our minds we can believe that angels are as active as ever. They are active in ways which perhaps we do not recognise.

Let me suggest some ways in which the angelic activity may show itself:

The Bible describes what we call guidance by such phrases as – ‘The angel of the Lord spoke unto ….’ In Acts we read: ‘The angel of the Lord spoke unto Phillip and directed him to go out, and meet the Ethiopian Eunuch.’

There are groups of Christians who have a false idea of guidance. Some of them believe and practise that every thought that comes to your minds when you remain in quiet prayer comes to you as guidance from God. This can be a dangerous idea. The Bible asserts the reality of guidance and warns us against this danger. 1 John 4:1 – ‘Beloved believe not every spirit, but prove the spirits whether they are of God.’ Again the apostle goes on to give a test by which we can know whether our guidance is from God or not. Here is the test: ‘Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: every spirit which confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God; and every spirit which confesseth not Jesus is not of God.’ The guidance given to us must be in accordance with the Christian faith. Our Lord gives another test in his words about the prophets: ‘Ye shall know them by their fruits.’

Every thought that comes to us as God’s guidance must be put to the test. Here are two tests given: (a) The thought or idea must be in accordance with the Christian faith. (b) By their results.

Guidance needs careful testing. The danger of false guidance and delusion is one that is familiar in the lives of some of the Catholic saints. St. Paul warns us that Satan himself can appear as an angel of light. The prophet Jeremiah speaks in much the same way of false prophets who speak ‘a vision out of their own heart and not out of the mouth of the Lord.’ But the teaching of Jeremiah and the Bible is that there is a true word of the Lord, and there is true guidance, only it needs to be tested. In other words if angels are ministering their guidance and bringing to us God’s teaching and warnings, we have got to learn to distinguish their true guidance from the false notions of our own heart. We must not be in a hurry. We must be critical of ourselves. We must lay our thoughts open before God, and seek to know what is the right way, and be prepared to follow it. We have all, I expect, verified this to some extent in our own experience and have known that we have been rightly guided. And here, I think, is one definite way in which angels appear today, even if they appear without being seen. Do angels minister to us even in these days? Yes, they do. They guide and direct us in accordance with God’s will though we do not see them with our eyes.

There is God’s Providence ; the ordering of circumstances for good in a ways which we could not foresee. In Psalm 91 we have the promises of God given to us: “He shall give his angels charge over thee to keep thee in all your ways: they shall bear thee in their hands lest thou dost dash thy foot against a stone.” I do not know whether it is necessary to give instances from the experiences of men. You may give any number of instances, but they don’t amount to positive proof. But we can say, from our own experience, how in wonderful ways we have been preserved from harm and danger, and how we have been guided in the right way. We have had the help of the ministering angels.

There is a third form in which we have the ministry of angels. St. Paul says in his Epistle to the Ephesians that ‘our wrestling in not against flesh and blood (the real enemy is not this man or that), but against the principalities, against the powers, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in high places.’ It is good for us to realise that there is a tremendous conflict between spiritual forces taking place all the time in this world. All around us are the forces of godlessness, lust and ambition, the setting up of false ideas of worship, the materialism which sets itself to organise human life with God left out completely, the blasphemous denial of God, the idolatry of self, the devilry that can seek to corrupt innocence; these are the demonic forces of which St. Paul speaks and these are near to us every day. In this conflict angels are the champions of God. We read in the Book of Revelation that “Michael and his angels fought against the dragon.” In such a conflict we might seem to be as helpless as rowing boats caught in a gale on the sea. But thank God we are assured of the presence of forces of good as well as forces of evil.

Such thoughts as these may help us to see that the belief in angels is no childish fantasy – something we have to grow out of. Belief in angels is not one that an honest minded Christian has to be ashamed of. Only, the angels are God’s angels. Silly people will have silly ideas about angels just as they have silly ideas about other things. The Christian will seek to fashion his ideas of angels on the Biblical model. He will see them as strong, righteous and holy, because they are ministers of God’s holy will. See the reverence with which they behold the face of Him who is to be feared; see their tender care for us, God’s children, for whose salvation the Son of God took human flesh.

Let us pray:

1. Let us thank God for the ministry of angels to guide and guard us during our earthly life.
2. Let us pray that in all things we may seek to know God’s will for us, and that we may learn to distinguish between the guidance that comes from God and the promptings of our own self will.
3. In the conflict that is going on in the world between the powers of evil and good, let us pray that the influences and example of our own lives may always be to strengthen the forces of good.