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by: Judi Amey
Saturday Ramblins, Vol. 1, No. 13 (August 8, 1998)
Angels are a separate creation, purely spiritual beings who are already living in the presence of God. Angels are, literally, messengers. Throughout the Old and New Testaments and in the sacred writings of many world religions, angels come from heaven (in the Judeo-Christian tradition, in human form), providing the direct link between heaven and earth.
Some angels are ministering spirits, indeed "… sent by God," as say the angelic characters of a popular television show. Others, "fallen angels," are the "principalities and powers" of whom St. Paul makes reference (Eph. 6:12); evil spirits determined to draw us away from goodness and God.
In scripture, those ministering spirits, angels and archangels appear to men and women in human form, for some the messenger appears suddenly or unexpectedly creating a fear-response in the person to whom a message is carried; for instance, the archangel's first words to the Virgin Mary: "Do not be afraid." Other angels, aided the Old Testament prophets (e.g., Daniel and Zechariah) to interpret their visions. Still more, like those who came to Abraham at Mamre, were so like humans that they were not recognized as angels. It is for such as these that the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews says, "Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares (13:2).
"The name Angel refers to their office, not their nature. You ask the name of this nature, it is spirit; you ask its office, it is that of an Angel, which is a messenger." St. Augustine
Many of us, from earliest childhood, have believed that we are blessed with a guardian angel — one special messenger, ours alone — to guard and guide us through life. Somehow, we often seem to "outgrow" our faith in these guardian spirits until some life experience or life reflection causes us to realize that Someone or something greater than ourselves has intervened, protecting us from our own foolishness, or from a potentially fatal situation. (As an aside, but for the record, I believe that God, in His mercy, allowed my first guardian angel to retire when I turned 25; that angel, I'm sure, more than earned his stripes in my first quarter-century.)
It is in the sense of our guardian angels that we must understand angels as our friends. "New age" spiritualists would have us believe that our beloved pets and we humans become angels after our deaths. This is simply not true. Such belief is deceitful — as is attested to by analyzing the "feel-good" principles of new age spirituality and its other beliefs, e.g., reincarnation, as a total philosophy.
It is not the intent of any Angel Friends publication to imply or encourage belief in angels in anyway outside of Judeo-Christian tradition. It has been said before [Saturday Ramblins, No. 6, 6/20/98], and it bears repeating, "... it is a theological truth that our beloved pets and we humans are not truly angels, nor will they or we ever be."
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