The Worship of Angels

With hard times upon us, angels are in the news.  A story this week out of Baylor University indicates people put a lot of faith in guardian angels.”   In a seemingly unrelated story in the UK, the outright worship of angels is practiced widely. If angels were only mythological creatures, the story would be quaint.

 However, angels are very real, both the good and bad variety.  It is important to remove the cultural myths about angels, such as the cute little figurines in the curio shop, from the reality of these ancient creatures who share our universe.   Despite the cultural perceptions, the Bible paints a very different picture of the angelic reality.

 Angels are not phantasmagorical ghosts or spirits, but are very real, enormously powerful and sophisticated multidimensional beings.  In the Bible, one single angel slaughtered 185,000 soldiers:

35 And it came to pass that night, that the angel of the Lord went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses. II Kings 19

 The Bible also makes it clear that humans aren’t readily able to distinguish accurately between good and bad angels.  It notes ” for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14).  In modern times this has great significance for us, for as many have said before, much of the extraterrestrial phenomena, with its non-human aerial technology, that is attracting so much media attention is generated by malevolent, deceptive fallen angels.

 A key identifying difference between good and bad angels is in fact the subject of worship. Fallen angels demand and need worship by humans.  The fallen leader of these ultra-dimensional beings, Satan, demanded worship from the son of God himself (Matthew 4:9)  In contrast, when the apostle John attempts to worship a good angel, he is quickly rebuked.

I, John, am the one who saw and heard all these things. And when I saw and heard these things, I fell down to worship the angel who showed them to me.But again he said, “No, don’t worship me. I am a servant of God, just like you and your brothers the prophets, as well as all who obey what is written in this scroll. Worship God!”  (Revelation 22:8-9) NLT

 While I do not discount the possibility of good, “guardian” angels, it is important to be very wary of this newfound focus upon angels, rather than the God who made them.