The Angel Of The Annunciation by Lorenzo Lotto
In 2009 the results of a survey about what people believe in
was published in an Australian Newspaper. In this survey (which of course is never representative) it says, “51 per cent
of respondents say they believe in angels”. I would like to ask those 501
people what exactly they think angels are.
The Greek word angelos
means messenger. We know that a messenger takes a message from one place or
person to another and the purpose of a message is to inform. Therefore, we must
ask several questions.
2. In what form of communication can a message be conveyed to us?
It would be over-simplifying the situation to say that the
Angel carries a message from God. In another post Who or what is God? I discussed that there are different ‘gods’ or spiritual beings who have
certain responsibilities in the universe to keep everything in balance. Dionysius the
Areopagite listed them, and in later posts I will explore them further.
Angels feature often in the Bible, in this quote bringing a
message about the birth of Jesus.
But as he considered this, behold, an angel of the
Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, "Joseph, son of David, do not
fear to take Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy
Spirit; Matthew 1:20
One reason for this communication between Joseph and the
Angel is the fact that Angels are the closest spiritual beings to man. They are
the interface between the physical and spiritual worlds. Angels are beings who
are one stage higher than human beings, as animals are beings one stage lower
than humans. As we care for our animals, so Angels watch over us. Archangels
like Gabriel and Michael are one stage higher than Angels, putting them two
stages higher than humans.
We could say that Angels are like human beings without a
body. This assists us to understand these beings but we should also know that
when we no longer need a physical body we will be greater beings than the
present Angels are now. This is because we are in a different evolutionary
stream. The difference between Angels and human beings is that human beings
have the I Am, the element which makes us unique. St Paul tells us about our
relationship to Angels in Hebrews:
Thou didst make him for a little while lower than the angels, thou hast crowned him with glory and honor, Hebrews 2:7
The present task of the Angels is to be intermediaries who
help and guide the evolution of human consciousness. We could even say that
they are interpreters of what higher spiritual beings want to convey to us;
what they ‘say’ is then made intelligible through the Angels. Of course, they
wouldn’t use language; they speak to us in images – the universal language. For
example, the image of a tree means the same thing to every human being on
earth.
Genealogy Tree by Vladimir Kush
While some people might doubt the validity of these ideas, I
could point out that animals communicate with each other, and with us, in ways
we do not fully understand either. Communication is an important topic for
human beings at present. We live in unsettling times where fake news is a
thing. We could ask ourselves if we are willing to believe fake news without
any fact checking, why can’t we also believe in Angels?
