Which angels are the highest ranking in Heaven?
What exactly was Lucifer?
And can angels have children?
You’ll be surprised by how many things people get wrong about angels.
In popular imagination, angels are winged, heavenly beings that protect people against
evil.
The term "angel" is actually a job description that explains what these heavenly beings do.
The Greek term "aggelos," is the root for the English word "angel," and it means messenger.
In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word for angel has the same meaning.
Hence, an angel is simply one of God's messengers.
So what does this job entail?
Well, that depends on the angel's rank.
There are nine types of angels with different assigned roles in the angelic hierarchy.
Some angels are close to God and look upon him in adoration.
Others are tasked with supervising lower-ranking angels, who serve as intermediaries between
God and Man.
These angels are responsible for delivering God's orders directly to their recipients.
According to Chabad, God, quote, "pre-programmed" his angels for specific purposes.
For instance, the archangel Gabriel is explicitly a messenger, while Raphael's job is to heal.
Their specific job descriptions lead to some interesting theology regarding what they can
and cannot do.
One would expect heavenly creatures endowed by God with divine powers to be able to do
basic things that humans can do.
But angels are limited in their powers and are incapable of simple things such as multitasking.
This limitation is perhaps best illustrated in the Book of Genesis.
In Genesis 19, three angels of the Lord visit Abraham to inform him that his wife is pregnant,
Sodom will be destroyed, and he will be healed.
One angel could theoretically have accomplished all three of these orders, yet, for some reason,
God sends out one for each task.
Jewish commentators suggest that the ability to only perform one task at a time is one
of the defining characteristics that makes angels so special.
Angels were created to serve God.
When assigned a task, an angel must throw itself wholeheartedly into its mission to
serve God properly, something that humans should aspire to imitate.
The most common portrayal of angels originated in the Late Roman Empire and is that of graceful,
winged beings.
Popular imagination has long held fast to this kind of image, which is beautifully encapsulated
in William-Adolphe Bouguereau's painting the Virgin of the Angels . But these are just
popular representations that do not represent angels' bodily form.
According to both Jewish and Christian theology, angels are not physical beings.
Jewish magazine Aish perhaps best sums up what angels are like physically, saying proper
angels do not have, quote, "bodies, wings, or one drop of physicality."
This belief has entered Christianity as well, where angels are purely spiritual beings with
no real physical form.
But if angels are not physical beings, how can they appear to people, as they do repeatedly
in the Bible?
According to Compass News, angels can take human form in order to deliver revelations
or carry out God's orders.
But this is all a facade because humans often require images to understand that which they
cannot see.
Angels are often depicted as gendered beings.
A common misconception is that every boy gets a male guardian angel and every girl a female
one.
Angels are often depicted as female, or at least as feminine, the Virgin of the Angels
is an excellent example of this trend.
The angels serenading Mary and Jesus appear highly feminized.
Contrary to popular art, biblical angels are always described as male, perhaps because
the Greek and Hebrew words for angel are both masculine.
The main archangels — Michael, Raphael, and Gabriel — all have masculine names.
Judges 13, meanwhile, describes an angel as, quote, "a man of God."
It seems pretty straightforward.
Angels must be male, right?
The truth, according to Jewish and Christian tradition, is that angels are neither male
nor female.
The distinction between male or female in Christianity is a physical question that depends
upon genetics.
The female-male dichotomy distinguishes the two genders through physical characteristics
related to reproduction.
As noted earlier, however, angels do not have bodies.
Without bodies, they cannot be distinguished sexually or engage in reproduction.
The rules, so far, are fairly absolute when describing angels.
But in Genesis 6, there is a passage about a group of males called "the sons of nobles"
that seems to contradict these rules.
These beings mated with "the daughters of man" and sired a race of giants called the
Nephilim.
But other Bible translations call them "sons of God" instead.
So who were these "people"?
According to Chabad, one Jewish tradition identifies the fathers of the Nephilim as
two angels.
This angelic pair went down to earth with God's permission, where they fell victim to
their inclination for sin.
This interpretation suggests that angels are capable of reproduction, in contradiction
of both Jewish and Christian teachings.
So how do Christians and Jews deal with the apparent contradiction?
According to Catholic Answers, early Christians rejected the idea of human-angel hybrids.
These "sons of God" were equated with mortal men.
In Judaism, the question is still open and rabbis have debated this story fiercely throughout
late antiquity.
The consensus rejected angel-human hybrids.
But Professor Rachel Adelman notes that it may be a very old Jewish myth that the rabbis
sought to suppress because of its resemblance to pagan myths from the Ancient Near East.
According to Faith Magazine of the Diocese of Lansing, a popular saying suggests that
when someone dies, "heaven [gains] another angel."
This may be of comfort to grieving relatives, but it is a myth, albeit a persistent and
widespread one.
The belief is based on twisting the words of one of Jesus' sayings.
The source of the controversy is Mark 12:25.
In this passage, Jesus discusses the afterlife and the resurrection of the dead.
When the dead are resurrected, according to Christ himself, they will not marry.
Christ says,
"They will be like the angels in heaven."
What a difference one word makes!
Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary of the Bible notes that, historically, this passage
is interpreted to mean that in heaven, spiritually pure human souls will be like angels.
But nowhere does it say that humans will become angels.
Angels are popularly thought of as peaceful, benevolent beings.
In English, the word "angelic" is used to describe something pure, holy, innocent, or
beautiful.
But angels can also inflict violence and vengeance on God's behalf.
The Bible provides numerous instances of angels committing gruesome violence against God's
enemies.
This includes small-scale violence against individuals to mass killings of entire cities
and nations in pursuit of God's justice.
The story of Passover is an excellent example of angelic violence.
When Pharaoh refused to let the Hebrews leave Egypt, God ordered the angel of death to kill
the firstborn sons of Egypt.
But, according to Chabad, the archangel Uriel nearly killed Moses.
His wife Zipporah circumcised their son and forced Uriel to relent, saving Moses from
the divine wrath.
Even Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, was punished for doubting God's word delivered
via the archangel Gabriel.
When the old man learned his wife Elizabeth was pregnant, despite her advanced age, he
doubted the archangel's words.
As punishment, Gabriel rendered him mute and only restored his speech faculties when he
obeyed the divine order to name his son John.
But despite the capacity for violence, angels that serve God are not evil or malevolent.
They are simply doing their jobs in executing God's will.
"You never take responsibility for anything!"
There are different categories of angels.
The best known, yet often misunderstood, are the archangels.
This term does not appear in the Bible until the New Testament.
But, that makes sense, as it's a Greek word and the New Testament was written in Greek.
However, angels and archangels do appear in the Old Testament.
Although it does not use any term to classify the archangels, they are distinguished from
lesser angels in other ways.
In Daniel 12:1, the archangel Michael, for instance, is referred to as, quote, "the Great
Prince", implying that he occupies a higher position relative to some other group of angels.
In the Book of Tobit, the archangel Raphael reveals,
"I am Raphael, one of seven angels who stand ready and enter before the glory of the Lord."
And, this reference provides the earliest background for a group of angels that outranked
others.
The term "archangel," according to Christianity Magazine, literally means "chief angel" and
suggests that these angels are the highest-ranking angels of heaven.
But in reality, they are quite low down in the angelic hierarchy.
The highest-ranking angels are the seraphim, the cherubim, and the throne angels.
They worship God directly and serve him.
The seraphim, in particular, are closest to God and burn with a fiery passion in their
love for him.
Following the top three tiers of angels are another three middle-ranking groups.
At the second-lowest position are the archangels, who fall below the angels that watch over
principalities but above guardian angels.
Despite their relatively low position in the angelic hierarchy, the archangels are still
very important.
Archangels, and their servants below them, are the only two groups of angels that interact
directly with humans on God's behalf.
They are the chief messengers in the truest sense, bearing God's instructions or executing
his will on earth, making them key players to moving salvation history forward.
After all, without the archangel Gabriel, there would not have been an Annunciation
or a Christ.
Lucifer, also known as Satan or the devil, was once an angel himself.
He is sometimes popularly thought of as an archangel, but this is not quite accurate.
Lucifer was much nearer to God as a member of the seraphim, the highest-ranking angels
in God's inner circle.
He had the privilege of adoring God and looking upon his face.
As such, Lucifer's job was to adore God with a burning passion.
The Book of Ezekiel described Lucifer as, quote, "the seal of perfection, full of wisdom
and perfect in beauty."
But because of his gifts, Lucifer grew proud and jealous of God.
Eventually, he decided that he was above serving God and desired God's glory for himself.
He then rebelled but was soundly defeated in the war that followed.
As punishment for his rebellion, Lucifer and the other rebels were cast into hell.
This is likely the source of confusion relating to Lucifer's rank.
It was Saint Michael the Archangel who cast Lucifer into hell, as depicted in Giuseppe
Cesari's painting.
The two angels, however, were not equals.
In the end, the lesser angel defeated the former seraphim, leaving Lucifer to reign
in hell over the souls of the damned.
From Saint Michael's defeat of Lucifer to Gabriel's announcement of Mary's pregnancy
and the impending birth of Christ, the world of the Bible depends on archangels to keep
moving forward.
Given their importance, one would expect Christians to agree on their identities.
But they do not.
Different Christian denominations recognize different archangels, drawing from both biblical
and extra-biblical traditions.
While Christians agree that there are seven archangels, the Bible only names three.
According to Catholic Online, the Catholic Church only recognizes the names of Gabriel,
Michael, and Raphael.
The church acknowledges the existence of the other four, just not by name.
The Eastern Orthodox Church and Anglicans recognize a fourth archangel, Uriel, who appears
in non-canonical texts.
The 66-book Protestant Bible omits the Book of Tobit, and since Raphael appears in Tobit,
some Protestants do not recognize him by that name.
While the Orthodox and Western churches limit themselves to four archangels, the Coptic
Orthodox Church recognizes the names of all seven archangels.
The names of the three missing archangels are Sarathiel, Sedakiel, and Ananiel.
But these names are drawn from tradition, not the Bible.
So which names are correct?
It is not known for certain, but while the Coptic Church fully embraces traditions in
this regard, the other churches are more cautious.
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