What Do You Teach about Angels?

A customer inquired about the art used to illustrate Gabriel's appearance to Zechariah (not sure why the question, since that art is not used this year due to the shifting position of the beginning of Advent). The question was why Gabriel appeared with a sword. (The sword is also visible in our art for Gabriel's visit to Mary.) Here's how I responded:

Our culture takes its image of angels from cute porcelain figurines and Valentine’s Day cards. A biblical study of angels reveals an entirely different picture.

Angels (cherubim) barred Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden with flaming swords (Genesis 3:24). Angels guided Lot and his family from the sinful city of Sodom (Gen. 19). Angels protected Israel throughout the Exodus (Ex. 23:23, 32:34, 33:2 and others). An angel, invisible to God’s prophet Balaam but visible to his donkey, prevented Balaam from prophesying against God’s people, blocking his way with a sword (Numbers 22:23). In 1 Chronicles 21, God nearly allows an angel to destroy Jerusalem with a sword. In 2 Kings 19:35 and again in Isaiah 37: 36, God’s angel “strikes down” huge armies who oppose God’s people. Revelation 12 describes a great war in heaven with Michael and loyal angels fighting against “the dragon” (Satan) and his rebellious angels. Angels are warriors, guardians, protectors, fighters.

It is no wonder that an angel’s first words when appearing in the New Testament were often “Do not be afraid!” It is that statement and all the fearsome angel attributes behind it that led the artist to depict Gabriel with the sword.

In fact, we do not know exactly what Gabriel looked like. Angels sometimes appeared in human likeness (Abraham describes God and two other heavenly beings as men in Genesis 18), but not always. Ezekiel and Isaiah both describe very different heavenly beings. But the picture of the angel and Zechariah is a helpful representation, faithful to Scripture, and approved through our internal art doctrinal review process.

Other important correctives about angels? We do not become angels when we die. Angels were part of God's creation (though not mentioned specifically in Genesis 1). Not all angels have wings, though some apparently have more than one pair of them. The linguistic root of our word angel means "message" or "news"; they are God's messengers, as well as warriors and worshippers.

We do children no favors if we do not teach God's Word accurately. And we and they can take great comfort from the vast army of angels deployed to protect us.

God bless you as your teach His children His Word!

I Love to Tell the Story

I just read a blog post that advocates that we abandon the term story in connection with our teaching of the Bible's truths. I share the author's concern that the word story has a strong connotation for fictional writing, material that is not intended to be taken literally. Those of us on the conservative end of the spectrum regarding biblical inerrancy do not desire, and certainly do not intend, that our students doubt the truth of Scripture or the authentic nature of the events the Bible describes.

For that reason, I generally avoid the term Bible story in favor of less ambiguous terms like narrative or account. And the readers' version of the Bible called The Story and the curriculum marketed by that name make me uneasy (though not just because of their titles).

But, let's not go overboard. We can use the term story and still communicate truth rather than fiction. We might ask a person to tell us their story. We listen daily to the news stories that are broadcast on radio, television, and Web news services, expecting that they are not fiction. There are a dozen other ways we use the word in an obviously nonfiction sense. It makes sense, however, to pay attention to how our listeners or readers might be understanding that word when we use it.

We don't need to banish the word from our vocabularies. We just need to use it with awareness.

God's blessing as you teach God's children His Story!