And I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and they were given seven trumpets. Sermons
I. THE REALITY OF THE ANGELIC WORLD. And there can be no doubt but that 1. The Scriptures plainly assert it. They are spoken of there in clear and positive manner as to their high dignity, their sanctity, their power, their blessedness, their heavenly home, their employments, their vast numbers, and their immortality. All this is told of the holy angels. But there are evil angels likewise, who are represented as serving under their prince Satan, as the holy angels serve under God. They are evil and wretched, and full of all malignity and wickedness. 2. And all this is not mere accommodation, on the part of the Scriptures, to popular ideas and beliefs. This has been long and loudly asserted. No doubt there were all manner of strange beliefs on the subject of the spirit world. The ancients peopled the universe around with all kinds of strange inhabitants, and the Jews were only less credulous on these matters than the heathen around. Hence it is said that our Lord and his apostles accommodated themselves to these ideas, and represented the various facts of nature and providence as if angels or demons were employed about them, but not teaching that such actually was the case. But this theory has only to be stated for its untenableness immediately to appear. And the plain teaching of Scripture would have been more readily received had not poets and painters - those mighty manufacturers of so much, and manifold, and often mischievous mistake - persisted in always representing angels in one way - beautiful youths with wings. Milton is very great upon their wings. But the result of this has been to relegate the whole doctrine of angels to the region of myth and imagination, and to rob the Church of the comfort and help the real truth as it is given in the Bible would afford. The fancies and fables of heathendom were but one more out of the many instances in which, as St. Paul describes them, they were feeling after the truth. 3. And why should there be any doubt as to the reality of angels? Is not all life, from the lowest zoophyte up to the most gifted of the sons of men, one continual ascent? But why should the progression halt with us? why should there not be an ascent beyond, as there is up to, ourselves? All analogy leads us to think there is, and to be on the look out and expectation for orders of beings that may span the vast distance which must forever separate us and God. The Bible and analogy confirm one another. But a more important and difficult inquiry relates to - II. THEIR NATURE, ORIGIN, AND HISTORY. Who and what are they? 1. Much has been assumed concerning them, but resting on very slender foundations; as: (1) That they existed long before the creation of man, in vast throngs, sinless and blessed, in attendance upon God. (2) That they were altogether different in nature from man. (3) That some of them kept not their first estate, and hence are reserved in chains unto the judgment of the great day. (4) That Satan, their chief, dared to rival God, and with his confederates to "defy the Omnipotent to arms." Milton represents Satan as telling how God - "... to be avenged, 2. Angels are perfected men - " the spirits of the just made perfect"? Young, the author of the 'Night Thoughts,' thus sets forth this belief - "Why doubt we, then, the glorious truth to sing? (1) That there is no being higher in nature than man except God himself. For man was created in the image and likeness of God. Now, is an angel more than this? Could he be more without being God? Hence, however blessed and glorious the condition of angels may be, in nature they are not and cannot be higher than man. (2) And if they be a different order of beings from men, beings of another nature and kind, why, then, were men created at all? If the motive of our heavenly Father in creating man was, as we believe it to have been, to gather round him a race of pure, holy, happy beings, his children, on whom he might lavish his love, and in whose blessed companionship he might forever rejoice; if there were already such a race of beings in existence, why was man formed? Why was he made to pass through all the manifold miseries of this life, its unnumbered sins and sorrows, if already there were an infinite host who from the first were already what man can only become after so many and so great struggles and trials and cares? If all the sanctity and blessedness of the angelic character could exist without all man's preliminary sorrow, for what reason, then, was unhappy man created? But if, on the other hand, it be true that there is no other entrance to the angelic state than this weary life of ours, and if in order that we may be angels it is necessary that we first be men, then the mystery of life, often so mournful a mystery, has some light shed upon it, and we can bear it more patiently. But if all that man is to be could be attained without his trials, as on the common belief in regard to angels it could, then, may we not ask, "To what purpose is this waste?" (3) These angels are in Scripture called men. See the angel that wrestled with Jacob; that appeared to Joshua, to Manoah; the three angels that came to Abraham, are called "the three men;" the angel that appeared as a writer to Ezekiel and passim both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. (4) And there is no proof that they were only men in appearance and not in reality. Why should they not be what in appearance and name they seem to be? (5) And our Lord said that in the resurrection we shall be "as the angels." And in the Epistle to the Hebrews we are said to have "come to... myriads of angels, to the general assembly and Church of the Firstborn,... and to the spirits of the just made perfect." But do not these three expressions tell of different facts in connection with, not different, but the same persons? Certainly "the spirits of just men made perfect" are the same as "the general assembly and Church of the Firstborn," and if so, they are the same as the "myriads of angels." 3. And all this is not set aside by the statements in 2 Peter and in the Epistle of Jude. In both these Epistles it is said that God "spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down into hell." It is on these statements, amplified and enlarged by Milton and others, that the popular belief is based. But it is to be noted that the two statements in these Epistles are but copies one of another or of some common document. Place the passages side by side, and this will be evident, the writer of 2 Peter probably copying from Jude. And it is not to be forgotten that the canonical authority of these two Epistles is the least and lowest of all the Scriptures. But even were it not so, the source whence their statements on this question are taken is well known. They are a quotation from the apocryphal Book of Enoch - a book of no authority and little worth, but which was familiar to those to whom these Epistles were written; and, hence, illustrations drawn from it, whether true or not, would serve the writers' purpose, and are therefore made use of. It therefore cannot be allowed that these two isolated statements - though they are one rather than two, and of such doubtful authority - should set aside what Scripture and reason alike teach on this most interesting theme. CONCLUSION. See some of the consequences of this understanding concerning the angels. 1. The future life becomes far more real to us. For now that we have identified the angels, as we think has been done, with "the spirits of just men made perfect," we are delivered from that vagueness of idea as to those who have gone away from us through their having died in the Lord. They are no longer formless, incorporeal, unimaginable beings, mist and cloud-like rather than human, but we know that it is as the disciples believed - the angel, the spirit of their Master resembled him. His resurrection body did resemble his former material body so that he could be recognized as we know he was. 2. And we know some of the occupations of that heavenly state. So long as we regarded angels as a different order of beings from redeemed men, we could not regard their work as that which one day shall be ours. But looking upon them as ourselves as "we shall be," we can see what vast store of holy employ and sacred service awaits us. See their manifold service as shown in this chapter only. Heaven is not an everlasting sitting on "green and flowery mounts," an "eternity of the tabor," as one has described it, but a life of holy and blessed service for God and for man. - S.C. 2. Those who are thus called have trumpets given them: even so whom the Lord calls and sends out to any work, He furnishes them with gifts meet for the work, which neither man nor angel can have until the same be given them from above. 3. By trumpets the Lord forewarns the world of the judgments to come upon them, before they come, that they might repent: wherein the great mercy of God is seen to the very wicked, forewarning them to flee from His wrath to come. 4. As by the trumpets of these angels He forewarned the world, even so does He yet by the ministry of those who are called angels, and by the trumpets of the law and gospel (Isaiah 58:1). (Wm. Guild, D. D.) II. THE MANNER OF THAT MESSAGE. Such truths as these are suggested by this trumpet-symbol. 1. How urgent! It is no mere matter of indifference, but life and death hang upon it. 2. How warlike! The trumpet-note was emphatically the music of war. 3. How terrible! The hosts of Midian fled in dismay when the blast of Gideon's trumpet burst on their startled ears. And God's Word is terrible to those who know Him not. The Bible is a dreadful book to the impenitent man when awakened, as one day he will be, to his real condition before God. 4. How animating to the hearts of the people of God! God's Word is full of heart-cheering truth to all them that trust in Him. 5. How joyful was the sound when it proclaimed, as so often the trumpet did, the advent of some glad festival, some "acceptable year of the Lord," the jubilee especially! 6. How irresistible is the trumpet-sound! The lofty, massive walls of Jericho fell down flat before the trumpet-blast. (S. Conway, B. A.) 1653 numbers, 6-10 4113 angels, agents of judgment Of the Way to Attain Divine Union Justification by an Imputed Righteousness; No Man Cometh to the Father but by Me. Relation v. Observations on Certain Points of Spirituality. Annunciation to Zacharias of the Birth of John the Baptist. An Advance Step in the Royal Programme His Future Work |
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