Heavenly Host Authorities and Powers (2)

This topic is the continuation and conclusion to “Heavenly Host Authorities and Powers (1)”.  For additional related background about God’s created angels and other spirit beings, see the topics: “Spirits – Made by God in Light”, “Watchers and Gen. 6 ‘Sons Of God”, “Names & Titles of God in Scripture”, “Jesus Was the Old Testament God”, “Michael in the Bible”.

Little of the material covered in “Heavenly Host Authorities and Powers (1)” is repeated here.  Part 1 noted Bible verses which show that God is supreme among His host (tsabáw Strongs h6635, Hebrew) of celestial beings.  Transliterated Lord of “sabaóth” in New Testament Greek, Ro.9:29 & Ja.5:4.  In the Old Testament (OT), there are lesser spirit beings called “sons of God” (béne ha Élohim h1121 h430).

Some members of God’s celestial host were given a measure of authority over nations.  Wikipedia: Origins of Judaism – Iron Age Yahwism “The various national gods were more or less equal, reflecting the fact that the kingdoms themselves were more or less equal.”  De.32:8-9 Septúagint/LXX “When the Most High divided the nations, He set the bounds of the nations according to the number of the angels of God. His people Jacob became the portion of the Lord [Kúrios Strongs g2962, Greek], Israel.”  Book of Jubilees 15:32 “Over Israel He did not appoint any angel or spirit, for He alone is their ruler.”  Israel belonged to the Lord.  Ex.20:3 Israel shall have no other gods before/besides YHVH [h3068]!

Some of the “sons of God”, ‘junior elohím’ (h430) or ‘godlings’, weren’t loyal & obedient to God; they didn’t follow His guidelines!  Jb.4:18 “His angels He charged with folly.”  Jb.15:15 “He puts no trust in His holy ones; the heavens are not pure in His sight.”  Poole Commentary Jb.15:15 “i.e. angels.”

Ancient Israel desired to disobediently worship those gods/elohim of the pagans.  De.32:17 “Israel sacrificed to demons [LXX daimónia g1140], and not to God [Elóah h433], to gods [elohim] whom their fathers knew not.”  Wikipedia: Daímon “Ancient Greek; originally referred to a lesser deity or guiding spirit.”  1Co.10:20 “The things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons [daimonia], and not to God [Théos g2316].”  1Ki.11:33 Israel forsook its God YHVH; and worshiped Astóreth goddess of the Sidoníans, Chemósh god of the Moabites, Milcóm god of the Ammonites.  De.29:26 “They [Israel] went and served other elohim, and worshiped them; gods whom He [YHVH] had not given to them.”  Ps.106:37 LXX the Lord’s people even sacrificed their sons and daughters to daimonia/demons.

De.4:19 “When you [Israel] see the sun, moon or stars, all the host of heaven, don’t worship them which the Lord your God has apportioned to all nations under heaven.”  Pulpit Commentary “Egyptians worshiped the sun as Ra, the moon as Ísis, and the stars as symbols of deities.”  The heavenly bodies represented the heavenly host of spirit beings.  cf. Jg.5:20 (symbolically) “The stars in their courses fought against Siserá [Canaaníte captain].”  De.17:3 no Israelite was to serve or worship other gods/elohim, and not the sun or moon; none of the host of heaven.  No idolatry.

But ancient Israel spurned their God YHVH; they wanted to worship the gods of the heathens instead or too.  So…Ac.7:42 “God turned, and gave them up to worship the host [stratía g4756, Greek] of heaven.”

Following are excerpts from theologians about God’s heavenly host, “sons of God”, celestial “powers”, and God’s ‘council’:

G.B. Caird Principalities and Powers: p.2 “The inferior gods are to recognize the supremacy of Yahweh [YHVH].”  p.3 “These supernatural beings are conceived as forming a heavenly council around the throne of God.”  Ps.89:6-7 see Part 1.  p.4 “In the Old Testament the ‘host of heaven’ usually denotes the sun, moon, and stars; but sometimes it denotes the heavenly court of Yahweh.”  New Bible Dictionary “The two meanings ‘celestial bodies’ and ‘angelic beings’ are inextricably intertwined.”  Ps.96:5 LXX “All the gods of the nations are demons [daimonia].”  In classical Greek, a daimónion was a divine being, bad or good.  ‘To the Greeks it denoted any heavenly mediator between God and man.’

Caird op. cit.: p.12-13 Plato had spoken of daimonia as guardians of cities [Laws.4:713c, 5:738d]….The stars as ‘visible and created gods’, who derived their divinity from the one God, the Démiurge [Timáeus 40d].”  p.15 “According to Philo [On The Change Of Names 4], God performs some of His providential actions personally, and others through the agency of incorporeal powers.”  p.74 “The deities of the pagan state were responsible for the maintenance of law and had been identified with the astrological gods who represented the reign of natural law.”  p.23 “Pagan nations could be represented either by their angelic governors or by their earthly rulers. Any derivative authority which sets itself up as an absolute authority takes on a demonic [daimonion] character.”

Michael S. Heiser The Unseen Realm: p.325 “The New Testament is silent on the origin of demons [daimonia]. There is no passage that describes a primeval rebellion before Eden where angels fell from grace and became demons.”  p.171 “Yahweh chose to disinherit nations at Babel [Ge.11]. Lesser elohim He had placed over [nations].”  p.127 “(De.32:8-9) Yahweh placed the nations under the governance of junior elohim – sons of God of His divine council.”  p.322 “Lesser elohim had governed corruptly and not maintained loyalty to the Most High. Instead, they embraced the worship that should have gone only to Yahweh (De.17:3, 29:26) [Israel especially].”  p.29 “What the ancient idol worshipers believed was that the objects they made were inhabited by their gods. This is why they performed ceremonies to ‘open the mouth’ of the statue.”

Heiser op. cit.: p.324 “The Hebrew text of Ps.8:5 has humanity being ‘a little lower than elohim.”  p.36 “Jesus is indeed identified with Yahweh and is therefore with Yahweh, unique [monogenés g3439, Jn.1:1, 14, 18] among the elohim that serve God.”

Brian Godawa When Giants Were Upon the Earth: p.45 “Yahweh is incomparably THE Elohim of elohim (Deut.10:17).”  Ps.95:3 “YHVH is a great El [h410 God], above all elohim.” (Though other gods exist; cf. De.32:39 & Is.47:5-7 with Zep.2:13-15 Assyria.)  Ps.96:5 LXX “The gods of the nations are daimonia, but the Lord made the heavens.”  p.46 “The physical objects [idols] were without deity, they could not ‘see or hear or walk’; but the gods behind those objects were real beings with evil intent.”

Godawa op. cit.: p.48 “As punishment for man’s repeated spurning of His authority in primordial times (Gen.3–11), God deprived mankind at large of true knowledge of Himself.”  (see the topic “Kingdom of God”.)  Traditionally, 70 ‘nations’ are indicated (Ge.10) prior to Babel.  The (supposed) Book of Jasher 9:32, “God said to the 70 angels who stood foremost before Him, ‘Let us descend and confuse their tongues”.  p.275 “God divided the 70 nations…the sons of God became the ‘princes’ [cf. Da.10:13, 20] or ‘gods’ of those pagan nations, rulers of those geographical territories.”  p.49 “God then allots the people [Israelites] for Himself, through Abraham. But God’s people fall away from Him and worship these other gods and are judged for their apostasy.”

Godawa op.cit.: p.53 “In the Bible, the concept of ‘god’ (elohim) was about a plane of existence, not necessarily a ‘being’ of existence. There were many gods [1Co.8:5] who existed on that supernatural plane, yet only one God of gods.”  Henothéism.  p.54 “Physical idols (images) are ‘nothing’ and ‘have no real existence’ in that they are the representatives of the deities and not the deities themselves. But the deities behind those idols are real demonic beings, the gods of the nations who are not THE God. Monólatry [henotheism? see Part 1] maintains Yahweh as being of a different substance, essence, or species than the other gods.”  p.56 “A heavenly host of thousands of sons of God called gods, watchers, and holy ones who surround God’s throne as an assembly, who counsel with God and worship Him, and some of whom were given rule over human nations in the past, but have lost that privilege.”  p.53 “Jesus is the species-unique [monogenes] Son of God, the ‘visible Yahweh’ co-regent over the divine council. (Da.7:13-14).”

Ac.17:26 “From one man, God made every nation to live on all the earth; He determined their appointed times, and the boundaries of their habitation.”  Godawa op.cit.: p.197 “At Babel, God dispersed the peoples, placing them under the sons of God as their deities. God ‘gave them over’ to their wickedness. With the arrival of Messiah, the gospel liberates those gentile nations from their bondage to be united as one in Christ through faith.”  p.276 “After the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, these spiritual powers have been overthrown, at least legally losing their hegemony (Eph.1:20-23). The fallen angelic powers are still around, but have been defanged with the inauguration of the Messianic kingdom of God.”  p.282-3 “Jesus said His ministry of casting out demons [spirit non-principalities?] was a binding of the satan [ha satán h7854]. With the advent of Christ, the satan/Accuser has been exiled from the divine council of Yahweh [Jn.12:31].”

Brian Godawa When Watchers Ruled The Nations: p.19 “Yahweh gave the host of heaven to all the peoples as their gods because they were already idolators.”  p.20 “We have no historical or biblical evidence of a period of righteous spiritual rulers or worship of Yahweh [by gentile nations] after Babel.”  p.27 “Stars were equated with gods and gods were equated with stars. This explains the development of astrology as the stars determining our destiny; because the ancient mind thought of the stars as gods, and the gods controlled their lives….[gods] represented in the sun, moon and stars that were worshiped by pagans (Da.8:10-11, Ps.148:2-3).”  also ref Part 1.

Walter Wink Naming the Powers “Much tradition identified Satan as the angel of Rome. Since Rome had conquered the entire Mediterranean region and much else besides, its angel-prince had become lord of all other angel-princes of the vanquished nations.”  The ‘Watcher of Rome’, the national “beast” of Re.13:1-8.  Other theologians view the satan in the OT as the label for an adversary or prosecutor.

Caird op. cit.: p.32 “The Satan. He is one of the sons of Elohim [Job 1:6] and has the right of access to the heavenly court. He acts as public prosecutor (Ps.109:6); his duty is to indict sinners before the bar of divine justice.”  (Da.7:9-10 a view of God’s heavenly court.)  p.16 “It is obvious that the principalities, authorities, and powers which are being reduced to impotence by the regnal Christ are spiritual beings [1Co.15:24].”  p.17 “Paul discerned the existence of angelic rulers who shared with their human agents the responsibility for the crucifixion [1Co.2:6-8].”  p.29 “Men and angels alike have been reconciled to God through the Cross [Col.1:16-20].”  Caird includes even disobedient angels.  p.30 “The state itself may be brought progressively more and more within the Christian dispensation.”  p.46 “In Col [1:20] Paul emphatically asserts that the powers are created beings… destined through Christ to be reconciled to God.”  p.56 “The sphere of Yahweh’s sovereignty was steadily extended until it became commensurate with the universe.”  p.83 “The powers could be reconciled to God only when they had been deprived of their evil potentiality and made subject to Christ.”  p.91 “Thus in putting Christ to death the powers were not asserting their control over Him, they were losing the only chance of control they ever had.”  p.101 “The powers of evil have been defeated by the obedience of Christ.”  p.69 “The world empires of the past are to give place to the saints of the Most High [Da.7:27].”

He.2:5 “He [God] did not subject to angels the world [inhabited earth] to come.”  Cambridge Bible He.2:5 “Things in their pre-Christian condition had been subjected to angels.”  Now there’s no legal angelic dominion.  Col.2:18 ESV “Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and the worship of angels.”  Angels aren’t to be worshiped (ref Re.19:10, 22:8-9, Lk.4:6-8).  Rather….

Ps.97:7 “Worship [shakáw h7812] Him [YHVH], all you gods [elohim h430, LXX angels].”  2Ki.5:14-18 Syrians worshiped (h7812) the god Rimmón (Remphán Ac.7:43); the healed Syrian Naamán took back to Syria some Israel soil to make an altar on which he’d sacrifice to YHVH.  Zep.2:11 YHVH the Lord of hosts will famish all the elohim of the earth, and eventually all people will worship (h7812) Him.  Barnes Notes Zep.2:11 “One universal worship shall ascend to God from all everywhere.”  Jesus asserted that His heavenly Father is the “only true God”, Jn.17:3.

Paul wrote that Christians become adopted sons (and daughters, 2Co.6:18) of God!  Ro.8:15 “You have received the Spirit of divine adoption as sons, by whom we cry out, ‘Abbáh, Father.”  also see Ro.8:23, Ep.1:5.  Humanity, made in God’s image & likeness, will share in the God Family!  Heiser op. cit., p.353 “Humanity will become divine [2Pe.1:4?] and displace the lesser elohim over the nations under the authority of the unique divine Son.”  According to Paul, we saints will even judge angels (1Co.6:3).

Again, for more about God’s spirit creation, see Part 1 and the topics: “Spirits – Made by God in Light”, “Watchers and Gen. 6 ‘Sons Of God”, “Names & Titles of God in Scripture”, “Michael in the Bible”.

 

Heavenly Host Authorities and Powers (1)

This topic is about God’s heavenly host.  It expands on the material and Bible verses presented in the topics “Spirits – Made by God in Light”, “Watchers and Gen. 6 ‘Sons Of God”, “Names & Titles of God in Scripture”, “Jesus Was The Old Testament God”, “Michael in the Bible”.  Reference those topics for more background.

To begin, from the topic “Spirits – Made By God in Light”: After Light was brought forth on the 1^st day (Ge.1:3), God made spirit beings lesser than Himself.  Ps.104:2-4 Septúagint/LXX “Who makes His angels spirits”.  The angelic order is composed of spirit beings.  God’s heavenly host (tsabáw Strongs h6635, Hebrew) includes angels.  Ne.9:6 “You are the Lord [YHVH h3068], who has made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host. The host of heaven worships You.”  Cambridge Bible Ne.9:6 “Most probably means the created spirits.”  Benson Commentary “All the inhabitants of heaven.”  Gill Exposition “Angels were made by him, Heb.1:7; and, as the Jewish writers say, on the 2^nd day of the creation, though some say on the 5^th.”  Col.1:16 “By Him [Christ the Son] all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible.”  The Lord Christ shared in the Creation.  It includes the heavenly host of beings, normally not visible to human eyes.  JFB Commentary Col.1:16 “Invisible – the world of spirits.”  Barnes Notes “The angels we cannot see. Inhabitants of distant worlds.”  Benson Commentary “The different orders of angels, both those that stood and those that afterward fell.”

Jn.1:14 Jesus was the primordial “Word” (lógos g3056, Greek) of God.  Jn.1:1-3 “The Word was God. All things came into being through Him [Christ the Word].”  “All things” may include lesser spirit beings.  Expositor’s Greek Testament Jn.1:3 “In 1Cor.8:6 Paul distinguishes between the Father as the primal source of all things and the Son as the actual Creator.”  Christ as Executive Creator.  He.12:9 God is the “Father of spirits”.  Meyer’s New Testament Commentary “God, who is Father in regard to the higher spiritual domain of life.”  Barnes Notes He.12:9 “God is Himself a Spirit [Jn.4:24]. Angels and human souls [or spirits] may be represented as especially His offspring.”  JFB Commentary “God is…the Creator of spirits like Himself, in contrast to men who are flesh.”  Pulpit Commentary “It isn’t human spirits only that are here in view. God is the Father of all ‘the spirits.”

In the Old Testament (OT), some lesser spirit beings are referred to as “sons of God”, béne ha Élohim (h1121 h430).  Jb.38:7 at Creation “the morning stars sang together, and the sons of God [bene Elohim] shouted for joy.”  v.7 LXX (Greek) “When the stars were made, all My angels praised Me with a loud voice.”  Da.3:25 “Like a son of Elaáh [bar Elahin h1247 h426, Aramaic].”  Ps.89:6-7 “Who in heaven can be compared to YHVH? Who among the sons of El [bene Elim h1121 h410] can be likened to YHVH? El is greatly to be feared in the council [sode h5475] of the holy ones, to be had in reverence of all those around Him.”  Poole Commentary Ps.89:7 “The whole society of angels.”  Ps.97:9 “You, YHVH are exalted far above all gods [elohim].”  Ex.15:11 LXX “Who is like You among the gods [théos g2316], O Lord [Kúrios g2962].”  Ps.29:1 “O you sons of El [bene Elim], give unto YHVH glory and strength.”  Barnes Notes Ps.29:1 “The psalmist calls upon the angels.”  Ps.96:9 LXX “Worship the Lord [Kurios] in His holy court.”  YHVH the Lord is superior to others.

Da.4:35 the Most High does according to His will in the army of heaven.  JFB Commentary Da.4:17 “A solemn council of the heavenly ones is supposed (cf. Job 1:6, 2:1), over which God presides supreme.”  Jb.1:6, 2:1 “There was a day when the sons of God [bene ha elohim] came to appear before YHVH.”

1Ki.22:19-23 LXX NETS “I saw the Lord God of Israel sitting on His throne, and all the host (stratía g4756) of heaven stood near on His right and on His left.”  Here one of the Lord’s host offered to be a lying spirit to deceive king Aháb!  In the New Testament (NT), Lk.2:13 “Suddenly a vast heavenly host [stratia] appeared, praising God”.  Is.6:1-3 “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord [YHVH] of hosts.”

Ps.82:1-2 “Elohim stands in the assembly of El; He judges among the elohim. How long will you judge unjustly?”  v.6 “I have said, ‘You are elohim’; all of you are sons of the Most High [bene Elyón h1121 h5945].”  However, v.7 “But you shall die like men” may indicate physical judges (not celestial)?  Ps.8:5 Humans are created a little lower than the heavenly beings (elohim h430; LXX “angels”, He.2:7).  ref the topic “Watchers and Gen. 6 ‘Sons of God” for Bible commentaries regarding God’s council.

Yet some celestial beings weren’t loyal or obedient to God; they didn’t follow His guidelines!  Jb.4:18 “His angels (maláwk h4397) He charged with folly.”  Barnes Notes “The idea is that of foolishness.”  Jb.15:15 “He puts no trust in His holy ones; the heavens are not pure in His sight.”  Poole Commentary “i.e., angels.”  Jb.25:5 “The stars are not pure in His sight.”  JFB Commentary “Angels, of which stars are emblems.”

In the NT, some beings in God’s celestial host are called “authorities”, “powers”, “principalities”.  Our Bible translations use English words to describe or identify (ruling) members/groups of God’s spirit creation, the heavenly host.  But some translations use the same English word to represent various terms of the Greek text source manuscripts.  That unspecific practice may confuse.  For consistency, I’ll use the following English words for the associated Greek NT & OT LXX terms:

Authority exousía g1849: Col.1:13 “The Father has rescued us from the authority of darkness.”

Authority g1849 and Powers dúnamis g1411: 1Pe.3:22 “Angels and authorities and powers having been subjected to Him [Christ].”  Cambridge Bible “Including the whole hierarchy of heaven.”  Pulpit Commentary “The evil angels also…against their will.”  Re.13:2 “The dragon gave the beast [a human rule] his power and authority.”  (cf. Lk.4:36, 9:1 regarding the power of Jesus given to His disciples.)

Principality arché g746 and Powers g1411: Ro.8:38 “Neither death, nor life, nor angels, principalities or powers…shall separate us from the love of God.”

Principalities g746 and Authorities g1849: Ep.3:10 “That there be made known to the principalities and authorities in the heavenly places the wisdom of God.”  Ep.6:12 “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but with principalities and authorities, against spiritual authority in heavenly places.”  Col.1:16 “In Him [Christ the Son] were all things created, those visible and invisible; whether thrones, lordships, principalities or authorities; all things by Him and for Him.”  Col.2:10 “You are made full in Him [Christ], who is the head of all principality and authority.”  Col.2:15 “Having stripped the principalities and authorities, He made a show of them openly, having triumphed over them.”  (cf. Lk.12:11 & 20:20 & Tit.3:1, which relate to human rule.)

Principalities g746 and Authority g1849 and Powers g1411: Ep.1:20-21 “He [Father God] set Christ at His own right hand in the heavens, far above every principality, authority and power.”  Gill Exposition “Far above…good angels and bad angels, and civil magistrates.”  1Co.15:24 “Then comes the end…when He has put down all principality and authority and power.”  JFB Commentary “Whether openly opposed powers, as Satan [a seraph dragon? cf. Is.6:2] and his angels, or kings & angelic principalities.”

Ruler/Prince árchon g758: Da.12:1 LXX Michael the archangel is the great (mégas g3173) ruler/prince.  (cf. Da.10:13, 20-21, Jude 9.)  Jn.12:31 Jesus said, “Now will the prince of this world [kósmos g2889] be cast out”.  Ellicott Commentary “Prince of this world’ was the regular rabbinic title for Satan, as ruler of the gentiles. Jews as well as gentiles have been subjects of the prince of this world (Jn.8:44).”  Re.12:9 “The great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and satan.”  Robert Henderson Operating in the Courts of Heaven, p.173 “Fallen seraphim are now principalities.”

Ruler g758 and Authority g1849: Ep.2:2 “In time past you lived according to the eon [aión g165] of this world [kosmos], according to the ruler of the authority of the air, the spirit that now works in the sons of disobedience.”

Thrones thrónos g2362: Col.1:16 again.  Re.11:16 “The 24 elders [who wear crowns, Re.4:10], sitting on their thrones before God, fell on their faces and worshiped God.”  also cf. Re.20:4, Mt.19:28.

Most of the occurrences of the above NT terms relating to the heavenly host come from Paul’s writings.

What of those celestial beings/“sons of God” and their human rulers who weren’t loyal or obedient to God?  Is.24:21 “In that day the Lord will punish the host of high ones on high, and the kings of the earth on earth.”  Ellicott Commentary “The ‘principalities and powers in heavenly places.”  Je.46:25 “YHVH of hosts, the God of Israel says, ‘I will punish Amon the god of Thebes [capitol of S. Egypt], Egypt, its gods [elohim] and its kings.”  cf. 1Co.6:3 “Don’t you know that we will judge angels?”

Da.10:13 LXX NETS “The ruler [archon g758] of the kingdom of Persia withstood me 21 days. Michael, one of the chief rulers [g758], came to help me; and I left Him there with the ruler of the Persians.”  G.B. Caird Principalities and Powers, p.6 “These princes are not to be identified with Alexander the Great and Darius 3. They are the angelic guardians of the two nations (Da.10:13, 20, Da.12:1).”  Ibid., p.11 “The Septuagint. It is here we find the terms powers (dunamis g1411), authorities (exousia g1849), principalities (arche g746)…applied for the first time to angelic beings (Ps.148:2, 103:21).”

Members of God’s heavenly host had a measure of authority over their nations.  De.32:8-9 LXX “When the Most High divided the nations, He set the bounds of the nations according to the number of the angels of God. His people Jacob became the portion of the Lord, Israel.”  Wisdom of Sírach 17:17 “In the division of the nations, the Lord set a [celestial] ruler over every people, but Israel is the Lord’s.”  Book of Jubilees 15:32 “Over Israel He did not appoint any angel or spirit, for He alone is their ruler.”

Wikipedia: Origins of Judaism – Iron Age Yahwism “The various national gods were more or less equal, reflecting the fact that kingdoms themselves were more or less equal, and within each kingdom a divine couple, made up of the national god and his consort – Yahweh [YHVH] and the goddess Asheráh in Israel and Judah – headed a pantheon of lesser gods.”  The “sons of God” [bene ha Elohim] were lesser.

Ex.20:3 Israel shall have no other elohim before/besides YHVH!  Claude Mariottini Other Gods Mentioned in the Old Testament “The 2^nd commandment declares that in Israel no other god should be worshiped in addition to YHVH…the words of the commandment do not deny the existence of other gods…Monothéism, that there was no other god besides YHVH, came into existence late in Israel.”

Wikipedia: Monotheism “The belief that there is only one deity, an all-supreme being that is universally referred to as God.”  Wikipedia: Polythéism “The belief in multiple deities, usually a pantheon of gods and goddesses.”  Wikipedia: Henothéism “The worship of a single supreme God that does not deny the existence or possible existence of other deities.”  Wikipedia: Monólatry “The belief in the existence of many gods, but with the consistent worship of only one [selected] deity.”  Monolatry and henotheism are similar, but henotheists worship only the God they view as the greatest.

Paul wrote in 1Co.8:5-6, “There be many gods and many lords. But for us there is one God, the Father…and one Lord, Jesus Christ.”  Jesus spoke of His heavenly Father in Jn.17:3. “This is life eternal, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”

This topic is continued and concluded in “Heavenly Host Authorities and Powers (2)”.  Part 2 includes additional views of theologians and commentaries about God’s host.

Watchers and Gen. 6 ‘Sons of God’ (2)

This is the conclusion to “Watchers and Gen. 6 ‘Sons of God’ (1)”.  Part 1 identified the “Watchers” (Da.4:13-17, 23), and tied the Watcher angels that sinned in the intertestamental book of 1Enoch to 2Pe.2:4 & Jude 1:6, 14-15.  Material from Part 1 isn’t repeated here in Part 2; Part 1 should be read first.

Part 2 mostly focuses on the expression “sons of God”, as seen in the Old Testament (OT) scriptures.

Ge.6:2 “The sons of God saw the daughters of men were beautiful, and took wives for themselves.”

Who were those very ancient “sons of God”?  Some commentaries interpret them as human men.  But earlier sources interpreted them as supernatural beings (also reflected in various Bible translations).

The OT Septúagint/LXX is older than the Masoretic text.  Ge.6:2 Alexandrian LXX “The angels of God, having seen the daughters of men were beautiful, took to themselves wives of all they chose.”  Ge.6:2 Good News Trans “Some of the heavenly beings saw that these young women were beautiful.”  Ge.6:2 ISV “Some divine beings noticed how attractive human women were.”  Ge.6:4 CEV “The children [the giants] of the supernatural beings who had married women became famous heroes and warriors.”

Let’s examine the occurrences of “sons of God” in the OT, and then cite early interpretive views.

The expression “sons of God”, bene haElohím (Strongs h1121 h430, Hebrew), is also found in the OT Job 1:6 and 2:1. “There was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them.”  Ellicott Commentary Ps.89:6-7 “Sons of God’ – i.e. angels. For a picture of the court of heaven see Job 1:6.”  The Job.1:6 & 2:1 “sons of God” refers to heavenly beings.

The Lord questioned Job in Jb.38:4-7. “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth…When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?”  The Jb.38:7 “sons of God” didn’t mean humans.  No humans were created yet when God “laid the foundation of the earth”.  Pulpit Commentary Jb.38:7 “Sons of God’ here must necessarily be the angels, since there were no men as yet in existence.”  Jb.38:7 LXX “…All My angels praised Me with a loud voice.”

Da.3:25 King Nebuchadnézzar perceived four men (not three!) in the blazing furnace and exclaimed, “Behold! The appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods [h426, Aramaic]!”  v.28 God’s angel.

In the OT, there are no human individuals named who were called “sons of God/god”, bene haElohim.  Rather, the expression referred to supernatural beings…created, unbegotten.

Ps.89:6 “Who in the skies can compare with the Lord? Who among the heavenly beings is like the Lord?”  Some older translations literally read “sons of the mighty”.  1599 Geneva Bible Ps.89:6 note “Meaning, the angels.”  Gill Exposition Ps.89:6 “None of the angels [can compare].”  Cambridge Bible Ps.89:6 “Denotes angels….Synonymous with Job 1:6, 2:1, 38:7.”  Celestial beings, not human beings.

Ps.29:1 “Ascribe to the Lord, you heavenly beings, glory and strength.”  Some older translations literally read “you sons of the mighty.”  JFB Commentary Ps.29:1 “Sons of the mighty’. Heavenly beings, as angels.”  Barnes Notes Ps.29:1 “The allusion is undoubtedly to the angels, as being in an eminent sense the sons of God.”  (also see the topic “Heavenly Host Authorities and Powers”.)

Ho.1:10 “Yet the number of the sons of Israel will be like the sands of the sea….It will be said to them, ‘You are the sons of the living God.”  However, Hosea’s prophecy refers to Israelites becoming sons of God in the future.  Poole Commentary Ho.1:10 “God will bring it about in His time.”  Barnes Notes Ho.1:10 “Sons of the living God.’ God adopts us as sons (Rom.8:15).”  Gill Exposition Ho.1:10 “The Jews will be converted, and all Israel saved, Rom.11:25.”  According to the apostle Paul, humans become adopted sons of God now via the gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit.  But only Jesus is Son of God conceived by the Holy Spirit (Mt.1:20)!  Other celestial spirit beings were created sons of God.

The New Testament Lk.3:38 indicates Adam the first human was a “son of God”.  But Adam was a created son of God (Ge.1:27); he wasn’t begotten.  And God is the Father of created spirits, He.12:9.

Again, there are no humans named in the OT who are called “sons of God”, bene haElohim (Hebrew).

The Book of Jubilees (also known as Little Genesis) was written in Hebrew ca 150–100 BC.  It told of the very ancient “sons of God” who had relations with the “daughters of men” in Ge.6:1-4.  Jub.4:15, 22 “Jared [Enoch’s father, Ge.5:18-19]. In his days the angels of the Lord descended on the earth, those who are named the Watchers….He [Enoch] testified to the Watchers who had sinned with the daughters of men.”  Jub.7:21-22 “The Watchers, against the law of their ordinances, went whoring after the daughters of men and took themselves wives. They begat sons the Naphidim, and they devoured one another…the Giants.”  This ancient Jewish work says that some angels/Watchers sinned and fathered evil giants.  See “Watchers and Gen. 6 ‘Sons of God’ (1)” about the Watchers in the book of 1Enoch.

The term incubus relates to a spirit lusting after and having sex with a human woman.  (also cf. Tobit 6:14 “A wicked spirit loves her”; Ge.19:1, 4-7 sex with a different kind of being.)

The fragmentary Book of Giants is an apocryphal Jewish work, dated ‘before the 2^nd century BCE’.  Aramaic copies were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) at Qumrán.  It tells of the birth of the hybrid giants.  Wikipedia: The Book of Giants “This book tells of the background and fate of these ante-diluvial giants and their fathers, the Watchers, the ‘sons of God’ or ‘holy ones’ (Dan.4:13, 17) who rebelled against heaven when…they commingled, in lust, with the ‘daughters of men’. Their even more corrupt offspring, the giants, were variously called thereafter nephilim, gibborim, rephaim, being the earthly half-breed races that fought against God and His followers.”  Interestingly, one of the giants named in this work is Gílgamesh.  That may be a polemic against the Epic of Gilgamesh; it is uncertain.

Also part of the DSS is the Damascus Document (4Q271), dated ca 100 BC. “The watchers of heaven fell. And their children whose height was like the loftiness of cedars fell [cf. Amos 2:9]. All flesh that was on dry land perished.”  That alluded to Noah’s Flood.

The Jewish philosopher Philo Judaeus of Alexandria (c 25 BC – c 50 AD) used the Alexandrian Codex version of the Greek OT text (forerunner of our LXX/Septuagint).  Philo quoted Ge.6:2 in his On The Giants (De Gigantibus) 2:6. “When the angels of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, they took unto themselves wives of all them who they chose.’ Those beings whom other philosophers call demons.”  In Philo’s view, those fallen angels who fathered the giants/Nephilim were demons.

Josephus Antiquities of the Jews 1:3:1 “Many angels of God accompanied with women, and begat sons that proved unjust, and despisers of all that was good, on account of the confidence they had in their own strength. The tradition is that these men did what resembled the acts of those whom the Grecians call giants.”  Josephus’ translator William Whiston added, “That the fallen angels were, in some sense, the fathers of the old giants, was the constant opinion of antiquity”.  Most ancients thought it to be so.

Both Philo and Josephus thought the “sons of God” in Gen.6 were (fallen) angels of God.  But it seems that Josephus thought demons were the spirits of deceased wicked humans.  Josephus Wars of the Jews 7:6:3 “Demons…are the spirits of the wicked which enter into men which are alive, and kill them.”

Some people think demons are the earthbound spirits of deceased evil humans, malevolent ghosts.  Others think demons are fallen angels.  Or they’re spirits of the hybrid Nephilim offspring of Watchers (1Eno.15:8).  Or demons are aliens created by God who came here from other worlds, trespassers.

Justin Martyr (ca 100–165 AD) was a gentile Samaritan Christian.  He wrote in Second Apology, Chpt 5 “Angels transgressed this appointment, and were captivated by love of women, and begat children who are those that are called demons”.  This prominent early martyr believed angels were the fathers.

Irenáeus (ca 130–202 AD) was a leading early Greek bishop (in Lyons) who developed Christian theology.  He wrote in A Discourse in the Demonstration of Apostolic Preaching, 18 “Illicit unions took place upon the earth, since angels were united with the daughters of the race of mankind. And they bore to them sons who for their exceeding greatness were called giants”.  This prominent early theologian too believed that angels fathered those giants.

The Aramaic Targum Neofití and Targum Jonathán also indicate that fallen angelic beings mated with human women.  Legend ties the Watchers or their giant offspring to the Titans of Greek mythology.

Natan Lawrence The ‘Sons of Elohim’ and ‘the Giants’ “The idea that fallen angels were the fathers of the giants is the general opinion of antiquity.”  Belief that those fathers were human men is more recent.

The pseudepigráphical Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (T12P, the sons of Jacob) is a late 2^nd century BC Jewish biographical work, thought to also now contain early ‘Christian additions’.  Testament of Reuben 5:6-7 “They [women] allured the Watchers who were before the flood; they lusted after them and conceived the act in their mind. For they changed themselves into the shape of men, and appeared to them when they were with their husbands. And the women lusting in their minds after their forms, gave birth to giants, for the Watchers appeared to them as reaching even to heaven.”  Deliriums Realm: Watchers/Nephilim comments, “He says the real fathers were humans, but giants were conceived from mutual passions of angels and women.”  Testament of Naphtali 3:5 “The Watchers also changed the order of their nature, whom the Lord cursed at the flood.”  Wikipedia: Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs “A copy of the Testament of Naphtalí was discovered at Qumran among the DSS taken from Cave 4 (4Q215).”  It is thought the original T12P possibly was an Essene writing.

However, the (supposed) Book of Jasher differed on who were those Ge.6:1-4 very ancient “sons of God”.  Jash.4:18 “Their judges and rulers went to the daughters of men and took their wives by force from their husbands according to their choice.”  In Jasher, those “sons of God” were human men, not angels.  This view differs from that of more ancient sources.  Ken Ammi Book of Jasher on the Nephilim “The fact that this text doesn’t offer an Angelic interpretation of the Gen.6 affair is evidence that it isn’t an ancient text, as the earliest Jewish (as well as Christian for that matter) interpretation was that the sons of God weren’t humans in any capacity, but were Angels (see Jude 6-7 and 2Peter 2 specifically).”  The Book of Jasher we have today dates from only a few hundred years ago.

Biblical Archaeology Society: The Nephilim and the Sons of God “Though centuries of rabbinical and church tradition would say otherwise, the audience to whom the text [Ge.6:1-4] was intended would have understood the ‘sons of God’ to be members of the divine assembly mentioned throughout the literature of the ancient Near East, including the Bible. In the Biblical texts, the ‘sons of God’ are usually described as lesser heavenly beings in the service of the Most High.”

International Bible Standard Encyclopedia: Sons of God “Most scholars…interpret ‘sons of God’ as referring to supernatural beings. The intent of the original writer [of Ge.6:1-4] was to account for the rise of the giant race of antiquity by the union of demigods with human wives. This interpretation accords with Enoch [1Enoch] chapters 6-7, etc., and with Jude 1:6.”  (again, see Part 1.)

ReasonsForHopeJesus: Who Were the Nephilim & Sons of God in Genesis 6? “Fallen Angels. This interpretation is probably the most probable and credible, but it is also the most controversial.”

This is a controversial topic.  My focus hasn’t been on what may or may not seem logical to our modern minds, or accord with our church’s belief.  In OT verses, “sons of God” always meant supernatural beings, not humans.  The bulk of surviving applicable ancient writings reflect that the “sons of God” or Watchers who sinned were celestial beings…falling in their illicit desire for human women.

Watchers and Gen. 6 ‘Sons of God’ (1)

Several types and classes of spirits/spirit beings are seen within the pages of the Bible.

First, God is (a) spirit, Jn.4:24.  Of spirit essence.  God is holy.  The ascended Jesus is spirit, at Father God’s right hand in heaven (He.1:3).  God is the “Father of spirits” (He.12:9); His created heavenly host is composed of spirit beings.  God “makes His angels spirits” (Ps.104:4 Septúagint/LXX, He.1:7).  One class of spirit beings are the cherubim/cherúbs (Ge.3:24).  Another class is the seraphim/seráphs (Is.6:1-7).  Also there were 24 elders seen at God’s throne in heaven (Re.4:4).  And God has given each of us humans our human spirit (Is.42:5).  “There is a spirit in man” (Jb.32:8).  See the topic “Spirits – Made by God in Light” for description of those spirits/spirit beings.

The Watchers were another group of sprit beings.  Wikipedia: Watcher “Watcher is a term used in connection with Biblical angels.”  The Hebrew Old Testament (OT) term rendered “watcher” in our English Bibles is iyr, Strongs h5894.  It occurs only 3 times, all in Daniel chapter 4…Da.4:13-17, 23.

The term “watcher” may reflect their job description or ready alertness as a sentinel.  Da.4:13 LXX “I saw in the night vision a watcher, a holy one [hágios Strongs g39, Greek], came down from heaven.”  JFB Commentary Da.4:13 “Called a ‘watcher’, because ever on the watch to execute God’s will.”  Daniel calls this watcher a “holy one”, a saint.  Poole Commentary Da.4:13 “A watcher is meant an angel, the instrument of God…to execute His judgments, which they watch constantly to perform.”  Gill Exposition “One of the holy angels that never sinned, nor left their first estate [cf. Jude 1:6 KJV].”

Da.4:17 “This sentence is by the decree of the watchers, and the demand is a word of the holy ones.”  Watchers were given mandate to execute decrees.  JFB Commentary Da.4:17 “A solemn council of the heavenly ones is supposed (cf. Job 1:6, 2:1), over which God presides supreme. His ‘decree’ and ‘word’ are therefore said to be theirs (cf. Da 4:24 ‘decree of the Most High’).”  Barnes Notes Da.4:17 “The watchers…as entrusted with the execution of the high and important designs of God.”

Ps.89:6-7 “Who in the heavens compares to the Lord? Who among the sons of God [El h410] is like the Lord? A God [h410] greatly feared in the council of the holy ones, and awesome above all who are around Him.”  In God’s heavenly council are “sons of God” the “Father of spirits” (He.12:9).  Ellicott Commentary Ps.89:6-7 “Sons of God’ – i.e. angels. For a picture of the court of heaven see Job 1:6.”  Cambridge Bible Ps.89:6 “The angels form the council of the great King.”  JFB Commentary Ps.89:7 “The congregation of saints or holy ones; that is, angels.”  Watcher angels were among the holy ones.

But according to scripture (and other ancient sources), some angels or watchers committed trespass.

Jb.15:15 “Behold, He [the Lord] puts no trust in His holy ones; the heavens are not pure in His sight.”  Heavenly angels had sinned!  Pulpit Commentary Jb.15:15 “As in Job 5:1, speaks not of holy men, but of holy angels.”  Poole Commentary Jb.15:15 “His angels, as appears by comparing Job 4:18.”

Jb.4:18 “He [God] charges His angels [h4397 maláwk] with error.”  Compare Jb.4:18 in the LXX. “He perceives perverseness in His angels [g32 ággelos].”  This verse too shows that angels had committed folly.  JFB Commentary Jb.4:18 “Imperfection is to be attributed to the angels, in comparison with Him [God]. The holiness of some of them had given way (2Pet.2:4).”  Some angels were no longer “holy ones”.  Gill Exposition Jb.4:18 “They must be understood of angels, as the following clause explains it [Jb.4:19].”  Cambridge Bible Jb.4:18 “His [God’s] heavenly ministers.”  Not all the watchers had continued as “holy ones”.  Not all were good and righteous, entirely devoted to God.  Benson Commentary Col.1:16 “…Orders of angels, both those that stood and those that fell.”

New Testament (NT) writers also wrote of angels that had fallen from holiness, having sinned.  2Pe.2:4 “God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them down to the abyss [Tártarus, Greek] in chains of darkness, to be held for judgment.”  When did their sin occur?  Ellicott Commentary 2Pe.2:4 “What sin is meant? Not that which preceded the history of the human race. More probably, to distinct and frequent statements in the Book of Enoch that certain angels sinned by having intercourse with women.”  Cambridge Bible 2Pe.2:4 “The degradation of their nature by sensual lust, as in Gen.6:2…it seems probable.”  Compare Ge.6:1-17, the prelude to Noah’s Flood.  Meyer NT Commentary 2Pe.2:4 “What sin the apostle refers to is only faintly hinted at…the example of the flood immediately follows [v.5]. It cannot be doubted that the sin meant here is the same as that of which Jude speaks.”

Here’s the parallel passage in Jude. Jde.1:6 “Angels who did not stay within their own principality, but abandoned their proper dwelling, He kept in eternal chains under darkness.”  This verse also is thought to relate to the watchers in 1Enoch.  (Jde.1:14-15 even quotes 1Eno.1:9!)  Expositor’s Greek Testament Jde.1:6 “Cf. Eno.12:4 of the Watchers (angels) who abandoned the high heaven and defiled themselves with women.”  Pulpit Commentary Jde.1:6 “The sin suggested by the context is… a sin against nature. That some angels, yielding to the beauty of the daughters of men, forsook their own kingdom, and entered into unnatural relations with them.”  Angel spirit beings are a different kind, not human flesh.

Scottish theologian William Barclay (1907-1978) said, “Some angels with the glory of heaven as their own had come to earth and corrupted mortal women with their lust (Gen.6:2). Indeed, if Jude and 2 Peter were not referring to Genesis 6, then, pray tell, to what are they referring?”  Barclay’s comment reflects the traditional majority view of Genesis 6 held in the early centuries of the church.

Barnes Notes Da.4:13 “He was one of the class of ‘watchers’ who were ranked as holy, as if there were others to whom the name ‘watcher’ might be applied who were not holy.”  A number of angels or watchers had sinned, according to other ancient writings too.

Cambridge Bible Da.4:13 “Watcher’…is of frequent occurrence in the Book of Enoch [1Enoch], where it is applied usually (1:5, 10:9, 15, 12:4, 13:10, 14:1, 3, 15:2, 16:1-2, 91:15) to the fallen angels, but it is also (12:3, and perhaps 12:2) used of the holy angels.”  The (somewhat fragmentary) book of 1Enoch is included in the Bible canons of the Ethiopian and Eritréan Orthodox churches (again, cf. Jude 1:14).

The book of 1Enoch contains 108 chapters.  Wikipedia: Book of Enoch “The older sections (mainly in the Book of the Watchers [chpts 1–36]) of the text are estimated to date from 300–200 BCE. A short section of 1 Enoch (1:9) is cited in the NT Jude 1:14-15, and is attributed to ‘Enoch the seventh from Adam.”  Jude numbered Enoch’s generation directly from 1Eno.60:8 where Noah said, “My grandfather [Enoch] was taken up, the seventh from Adam”.  Jude also said Enoch “prophesied” (Jde.1:14).

Let’s look at some of the verses in 1Enoch applicable to this issue.  1Eno.1:4-5 “The eternal God will tread upon the earth….The Watchers shall quake.”  1Eno.6:1-2, 6 “When the children of men had multiplied, in those days were born unto them beautiful daughters. The angels, the children of heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another: ‘Come, let us choose us wives from among the children of men and beget us children….And they were in all 200; who descended in the days of Jared [Enoch’s father, Ge.5:18-19] on the summit of Mt. Hermon.”  200 Watchers took human ‘wives’.

1Eno.12:2-4 “His [Enoch’s] activities had to do with the Watchers, and his days with the holy ones. The Lord of majesty said to me: ‘Enoch, you scribe of righteousness, go declare to the Watchers who have left the high heaven, and have defiled themselves with women, and have done as children of earth do, and taken to themselves wives.”  Enoch said in 1Eno.14:1-3, “The holy Great One…has given me the power of reprimanding the Watchers, the children of heaven”.

Celestial beings weren’t to marry or beget children on earth.  In Mk.12:25, Jesus implied that angels in heaven aren’t to marry.  Compare Mk.12:25 with the Lord’s remark to sinful Watchers in 1Eno.15:6-7. “You were spiritual, living the eternal life…and therefore I have not appointed wives for you.”  But any capability of angels to have sexual relations with women isn’t addressed by Jesus.  It seems those Watchers engaged in a form of incubus with women.  (cf. Tobit 6:14 “A wicked spirit loves her”; Ge.19:1, 4-7 sex with a different kind.)

1Eno.7:1-6 “They [the Watchers’ human wives] became pregnant, and bare great giants. And when men could no longer sustain them, the giants turned against them and devoured mankind. They began to sin against birds, beasts, reptiles and fish, and to devour one another’s flesh and drink the blood.”  (Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum…the blood?!)  The watchers’ human wives bore hybrid children of mixed kind.

1Eno.88 relates to the punishment of those Watcher angels.  1Eno.88:3 “…Bound them all hand & foot and cast them in an abyss of the earth.”  Then 1Eno.91:15 “There shall be the great eternal judgment, in which He will execute vengeance among the angels.”  1Eno.20:2 “Uriel, one of the holy angels, is over the world and over Tartarus.”  1Eno.21:9-10 “Uriel answered me [Enoch]…This place is the prison of the angels.”  The Watchers who sinned were imprisoned in the Tartarus abyss.

Ref 2Pe.2:4 again. “For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them down to the abyss [Tartarus, Greek] in chains of darkness, to be held for judgment.”  This verse ties to the account in 1Enoch.  We saw that Jde.1:6, 14-15 also ties to the book and prophecy attributed to Enoch.

But what of the Watchers’ offspring, the giants?  The Lord said to Enoch in 1Eno.15:8, “The giants, who are produced from the spirits [Watchers] and flesh [women], shall be called evil spirits upon the earth”.  v.11 “The spirits of the giants afflict…and work destruction upon the earth.”  The giants fate….

1Eno.10:1-2 “The Most High sent Uriel to the son of Lamech [Noah, Ge.5:28-29]…‘A deluge is about to come upon the earth.”  Noah’s Flood will drown the giant offspring of the union between Watchers and women.  v.9 “To Gabriel said the Lord, ‘Destroy the children of the Watchers from among men.”

Ge.6:1-4 relates to the giants.  v.4 “The Nephílim [LXX giants] were on the earth in those days, and also afterwards, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men.”  The Hebrew term “Nephilim” is Strongs h5303.  It meant ‘giant, bully, tyrant’.  The root term is naphál h5307, meaning ‘to fall’.  The term nephilim h5303 only occurs in Ge.6:4 and Nu.13:33.

The Jewish translators of the Hebrew OT into the Old Greek version (now the LXX) used the term “gigántes” Strongs g1095.2…“giant”.  It occurs 30 times in the LXX: Ge.6:4, 10:8-9, 14:5; Nu.13:33; De.1:28; Jsh.12:4, 13:12; 2Sa.21:18, 22; 1Ch.1:10, 11:15, 14:9, 13, 20:4-8; Jb.26:5; Ps.19:5, 33:16; Pr.21:16; Is.3:2, 13:3, 14:9; 49:24-25; Ezk.32:12, 21, 27, 39:18-20.

Cambridge Bible Nu.13:33 “If the Nephilim were thought of as superhuman or semi-divine beings, the spies may have used the name to heighten the effect of their description of the ‘sons of Anák’ (v.28).”  Josephus Antiquities of the Jews 3:14:2 “They [the spies] told them also that they found at Hebrón the posterity of the giants.”  Israelites viewing the land of Canáan were affrighted at the sight of them!

This topic is continued & concluded in “Watchers and Gen. 6 ‘Sons of God’ (2)”.  There we’ll examine more the expression “sons of God”, as found in the OT.  And we’ll look at surviving documentation from other ancient sources to see their interpretation.  Did they understand those “sons of God” to be human men…or angels?

 

Spirits – Made by God in Light

What is spirit?  Spirit is non-material essence.  Merriam-Webster Dictionary shows fourteen definitions for “spirit”.  The first two are: “An animating or vital principle held to give life to physical organisms; a supernatural being or essence.”  Scientific theories regarding aether, vacuum energy, neutrinos, which some relate to “spirit”, won’t be discussed here.  This topic mostly discusses supernatural spirit beings.

God is Spirit.  Holy.  Jesus said in Jn.4:24, “God is (a) spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth”.  Father God is Self-Existent spirit.  God isn’t physical matter.  No physical object or image can adequately depict God.  The Godhead or God Family is spirit essence…invisible (1Ti.1:17), ethereal.  2Co.3:17 “The Lord is that Spirit.”  The ascended Jesus is spirit at His Father’s right hand in heaven (He.1:3).  In Lk.24:39, Jesus said that a spirit being doesn’t have flesh and bones.

God is Light.  1Jn.1:5 “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.”  Jesus said in Jn.8:12, ”I Am the Light of the world”.  cf. Jn.12:46.  The Old Testament (OT) prophecy quoted in the New Testament (NT) Mt.4:16 refers to Jesus. “The people who sat in darkness [in Galilee] saw a great light.”  1Ti.6:16 God dwells on His heavenly throne in brilliant light which physical human eyes cannot behold or approach.  (Also see the topics “Godhead in Prehistory” and “Jesus Is God…Jesus Has a God”.)

Psalm 104, written by David, is about God’s Creation.  Ps.104:1-3 Septúagint/LXX “Bless the Lord. You are very great. Who robes Thyself with Light [Ge.1:3] as with a garment; spreading out the heaven [Ge.1:8] as a curtain.”  Compare the Creation account sequence in Ge.1:1-8.  After Light was brought forth, lesser spirit beings were then made.

God makes His angels spirits.  After Light, continuing with Ps.104:4 LXX, “Who makes His angels spirits”.  The angelic order is composed of spirit beings.  Cambridge Bible “It is clear that the spiritual nature of angels isn’t in question here.”  He.1:7 of the NT quotes the Ps.104:4 LXX “angels”.

God’s heavenly host includes angels.  Ne.9:6 “You are the Lord, who has made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host. The host of heaven worships You.”  Cambridge Bible Ne.9:6 “Most probably means the created spirits.”  Benson Commentary “All the inhabitants of heaven.”  Poole Commentary “The angels, who are so called.”  Ps.148:2-4 “Praise Him, all His angels; Praise Him, all His hosts! Praise Him, sun and moon; all stars of light! Praise Him, highest heavens!”  Angelic voices on high praise the Lord.  At Jesus’ human birth, in Lk.2:13 the heavenly host was seen extolling God. “Suddenly there appeared with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God.”

Angels serve as messengers, agents, and helpers. They can make themselves visible to man as need be, appearing as humans.  The writer to the Hebrews admonished in He.13:2, “Don’t neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for some have entertained angels without knowing it”.

The Hebrew term rendered angel in our OT is maláwk, Strongs h4397.  It means messenger.  The term malawk occurs over 200 times in the OT.  It also refers to human messengers and the Messenger of YHVH.  (see “Michael in the Bible”. The only archangel so-named in scripture is Michael, Jude 1:9.)

The Greek term for angel in the LXX and NT is aggelos g32 (pronounced ángelos).  It occurs 185 times in the NT.  It can also refer to human messengers. (e.g. Ge.32:3 LXX, and John the Baptizer in Mt.11:10.)

The Lord Christ shared in the Creation.  Col.1:16 “By Him [Christ the Son] all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions, rulers or authorities.”  The Creation includes the heavenly host of beings, normally not visible to human eyes.  JFB Commentary “Invisible – the world of spirits.”  Barnes Notes “The angels we cannot see. Inhabitants of distant worlds we cannot see.”  Gill Exposition “Angels were made by him, Heb.1:7; and, as the Jewish writers say, on the 2^nd day of the creation, though some say on the 5^th.”  Benson Commentary Col.1:16 “The different orders of angels, both those that stood and those that afterward fell.”

According to Jn.1:1-14, Jesus was the primordial Word or Lógos (Greek) of God.  Jn.1:3-9 “The Word was God. All things came into being through Him [Christ the Word/Logos]…That Word was the true Light [g5457].”  “All things” included lesser spirit beings.  Bengel’s Gnomen Jn.1:3 “All things, which are outside of God, were made; and all things which were made, were made by the Logos [Jesus, v.14].”  Expositor’s Greek Testament Jn.1:3 “In 1Cor.8:6 Paul distinguishes between the Father as the primal source of all things and the Son as the actual Creator.”  Christ the Light was Executive Creator.

He.12:9 God is the “Father of spirits”.  Barnes Notes He.12:9 “God is Himself a Spirit [Jn.4:24]. Angels and human souls [or spirits] may be represented as especially His offspring.”  JFB Commentary “God is a spirit Himself, and the Creator of spirits like Himself, in contrast to men who are flesh.”  Meyer’s NT Commentary “God, who is Father in regard to the higher spiritual domain of life.”  Pulpit Commentary “It isn’t human spirits only that are here in view. God is the Father of all ‘the spirits.”

The cherubim (plural) or cherúbs were another class of spirit beings.  Telus.net: Cherubim “Cherubim are spiritual beings.”  They serve as God’s guardians.  The Hebrew term cherub (h3742) occurs 90 times in the OT.  Ge.3:24 God cast Adam & Eve from the garden of Eden, and then stationed cherubim on the east side to guard the way to the Tree of Life.  Scripture doesn’t depict cherubs as chubby human babies with wings flying around!

Ex.25:16-22 Moses was to construct the mercy-seat of God’s Tabernacle with two winged golden cherubs atop the Ark of the Testimony; there the Lord ‘dwelt’ with ancient Israel.  Ellicott Commentary Ge.3:24 “The office of the cherub here is to guard the Paradise [Garden], lest man should try to force an entrance back; and so too the office of the cherubs upon the mercy-seat was to protect it, lest anyone should impiously approach it, except the high-priest on the Day of Atonement.”  In 1Ki.6–8, figures of cherubim were later carved & embroidered (2Chr.3:14) in Solomon’s Temple.  (This wasn’t idolatry.)  In the Greek NT, cheroubim g5502 occurs only in He.9:5.

Ezk.10 is Ezekiel’s vision of cherubs at the Lord’s portable throne.  Ezekiel calls them “living beings”.  Ezk.10:20 LXX “This is the living being [g2226] that I saw below the God of Israel by the river Chobar, and I knew they were cherubs [g5502].”  How did they appear to Ezekiel?  Ezk.1:1, 5 “I was by the river Chebár among the exiles. There were figures resembling four living beings.”  Ezk.1:10 “The likeness of their faces was the face of a human…the face of a lion…an ox…and an eagle.”  Compare the appearance of the four living beings (g2226), but having six wings, that John envisioned at God’s throne in Re.4:6-9…lion, ox, man, flying eagle.  The Nature and Purpose of the Cherubim “These cherubic forms combine the excellencies of these four chiefs of God’s terrestrial creation.”

Winged sphinxes resembled cherubs.  Wikipedia: Sphinx Both the Egyptian and Greek sphinxes “were thought of as guardians, and often flank the entrances to temples.”  An ancient sphinx composite had the head of a human, the paws & tail of a lion, the hind body of an ox, and the wings of an eagle.  Dr. Raanan Eichler What Kind of Creatures Are the Cherubim? “The prevailing opinion is that the cherub is a winged sphinx…such as that depicted on the sarcophagus of the late 2^nd-millennium BC Phoenician king Ahíram.”  William Finck Cherubs Are Sphinxes “A sphinx is a variation on a cherub.”

Fiery seraphim (plural), seráphs h8314, were another class of spirit beings.  They’re celestial attendant worshipers of God, having three pairs of wings.  In the OT, seraphs only appear in the vision of Is.6:1-7.

They were around the Lord’s throne, praising. “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory.”  Then with a glowing coal of fire from the altar, a seraph figuratively purged Isaiah’s unclean lips & iniquity.  Fire purifies.  Ellicott Commentary Is.6:2 “This is the only passage in which the seraphim are mentioned as part of the host of heaven. ‘Burning ones’…with six wings.”  cf. Rev.4–6.  Gill Exposition Re.4:8 “Cherubim…like the seraphim in Is.6:2.”  Nu.21:6-9 Moses made something like a bronze replica of a seraph, and set it on a pole to aid in healing Israelites bitten by serpents.

The watchers (Da.4:13-17, 23) were another group of spirit beings.  They are discussed in the two-part topic “Watchers and Gen. 6 ‘Sons of God”.

Also there were “24 elders” at God’s throne in heaven.  They are mentioned specifically in Re.4:4, 10; 5:8; 11:16; 19:4.  The apostle John envisioned them in Re.4–5.  Re.4:4 “Around the throne were 24 thrones. On the thrones were 24 elders sitting, dressed in white garments, with crowns of gold on their heads.”  Theologians and Bible commentators have put forth various explanations as to their identity.

The elders wear crowns of gold.  Barnes Notes Re.4:4 “These elders…are of a kingly order. They are human beings.”  In the Bible, elders refer to men.  Gill Exposition “In allusion to the 24 courses of the priests, into which they were divided by David [1Ch.24:4-19].”  Re.5:10 Young’s Literal Translation “And [the Lamb] did make us to our God kings and priests.”  They were as a royal priesthood (ref 1Pe.2:9).

Compellingtruth.com “Information in scripture most likely identifies these 24 elders as representatives of the church.”  Expositor’s Greek Testament Re.4:4 “Heavenly beings, angelic figures corresponding to the ‘thrones’ of Col.1:16. The significance of the doubled 12 has been found in the 12 patriarchs or tribes [of Israel] plus the 12 apostles, or in the 24 classes of the priests.”  Cambridge Bible Re.4:4 “They act as priests in Rev.5:8.”  Pulpit Commentary Re.4:8 lists possible interpretations, including…“The 24 elders represent the great and minor prophets; higher angels – the celestial priesthood”.

Could the 24 elders be redeemed humans who are spirit beings serving on God’s heavenly council or court?  I’ll leave the choice of interpretation to the reader.  (see “Heavenly Host Authorities and Powers”.)

[Aside: Hierarchical angelologies (and demonologies) developed over the centuries in the traditions of Judaism, kabbálah, and medieval Christianity.  That, and other ‘gods’, isn’t discussed here.]

God has given each of us humans our human spirit, the “breath of life” (Ge.2:7).  Is.42:5 God the Lord gives breath to people on earth, “and spirit to those who walk on it”.  Job’s countryman Elihú said in Jb.32:8, “There is a spirit in man, and the breath of the Almighty gives them understanding”.

The human spirit is a vital incorporeal component within our body which imparts consciousness and intellect to our brain.  We are a spirit, dwelling in a physical body on earth.  1Th.5:23 man is made up of “spirit, soul, and body”.

We communicate with God through our spirit.  At conversion, the Holy Spirit (HS) of God joins with our human spirit.  1Co.6:17 “The person who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him.”  Paul wrote to Timothy in 2Ti.4:22, “The Lord be with your spirit”.  The HS becomes part of our persona.  1Co.3:16 “The Spirit of God dwells in you.”

At physical death, our human spirit is to “return to God who gave it”, Ec.12:7.  The dying Stephen said in Ac.7:59, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit”.  (Ja.2:26 “The body without the spirit is dead…our physical body is then a corpse. Also see the topic “Life and Death – for Saints”.)  Php.1:23 Paul said it was better to depart our physical body and “be with Christ” in heaven with a spiritual body (1Co.15:44, 50).

Jesus prepares our heavenly abode for us.  He said in Jn.14:2-3, “I go to prepare a place for you”.  He.12:22-24 dwelling in heaven are the spirits of men (righteous).  Lk.16:22 God’s holy angels will escort our spirit too, returning it to God who gave it…for His disposition and use.  Lk.16:8-9 as the “sons of light”, we’re welcomed into eternal dwellings.  Our spirit returns to the Light.  1Jn.1:5 God is Light [g5457].  Paul/Saul saw it from afar…Ac.9:3 “Suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him.”

Jn.3:20-21 those who do truth don’t fear the Light.  But the spirits of those who do evil or are unbelieving are afraid to go to the Light at death, to return to God (Ec.12:7).  They stumbled in darkness (Jn.11:10), not receiving the HS.  These may remain for a time as earthbound spirits (ghosts), stuck.

Those who believe in Jesus and repent of sin won’t abide in darkness (Jn.12:46)!  Ps.36:9 “In Thy Light, we shall see light.”  After death, we shouldn’t fear to return to God…going to the Light!  Trust in His destiny for our human spirit.  God is good (Lk.18:19)!  Medical personnel confirm numerous Near Death Experience (NDE) cases where patients saw the light.

Ja.1:17 God is the “Father of lights [g5457]”.  He made spirit beings, and human spirits (and stars too).  Bengel’s Gnomen Ja.1:17 “He is the Father even of the spiritual lights in the kingdom of grace and glory.”  Pr.20:27 LXX “The spirit of man is a light [g5457] of the Lord.”  Gill Exposition Pr.20:27 “The spirit of man…was a bright and burning light at first, but through sin is become a very feeble one.”

Yet Christians whose human spirit is joined to God’s HS are able to figuratively “shine as luminaries [g5458] in the world” (Php.2:15).  Jesus exhorted the disciples with Him in Jn.12:36, “While you have the Light [g5457], believe in the light, in order that you may become sons of light”.  It’s our destiny too!

Re.22:5 “The Lord God has given them light, and they shall reign forever.”  Col.1:12 Father God “has enabled us to share in the inheritance of the saints in Light [g5457].”  Prepared by God, it is the future for our spirits on into eternity…in His heavenly Light!

 

Life and Death – for Saints

The Christian hope is to live eternally with God!  As our years in the body advance, this hope becomes nearer.  Jesus said in Jn.10:10, “I came that they might have life, and more abundantly”.  Life after death may be better than we thought!  Here we’ll look at scriptures about life and death for the saints.

As we age, most will experience aches & pains in the body.  Yet the future for saved Christians is wonderful!  Ex.23:25-26 the Lord will fulfill the number of our days.  We can receive healing in the body until that last illness or the day we take our final breath.  (see the topic “Healing Our Bodies”.)  Pr.9:11 “Years of life will be added to you.”  Ps.48:14 “This is our God forever; He will guide us unto death.”  Is.46:4 “Even to your old age and grey hairs, I will deliver you.”  God sustains us and will give us the abundant life!  Physical death is a time of transition to the afterlife; it isn’t the end of our existence.

Ps.91:16 “With long life I will satisfy him, and show him My salvation.”  (The Hebrew term for salvation is yeshúwah, Strongs h3444.)  God saves His people.  The Lord gets us out of trouble, in general!  He ‘saves’ us from danger, catastrophe, enemies, sickness, etc…and saves us in the spiritual sense.  God saves us from death.  And the Bible indicates there are (at least) two kinds of death.

One kind of death occurs when we take our last breath.  Our physical body is buried; it decomposes or disintegrates.  God formed the first human from the elements of the earth, breathed life into him, and he became a living soul (Ge.2:7).  The Lord told the first man Adam in Ge.3:19, “You return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. You will return to dust.”  Adam died physically at a very advanced age (Ge.5:5).  David said of God in Ps.103:14, “He is mindful that we are but dust”.  And Ec.12:7 (the reverse of Ge.2:7), “The dust returns to the earth, and the spirit returns to God who gave it”.  (The term for spirit is Hebrew rúwach h7307, Greek LXX & New Testament pneúma g4151.)  We breathe our last, our spirit returns to God, our physical body returns to dust or decomposes…this is physical death.

God has given each of us a human spirit, the “breath of life”.  Jb.32:8 “There is a spirit in man, and the breath of the Almighty gives them understanding.”  The human spirit is a non-physical component which imparts self-awareness & intellect to our brain.  At physical death, our spirit is to return to God.  Ja.2:26 “The body without the spirit is dead.”  Without our human spirit, our body is just a corpse.  ref Lk.8:53-55 the girl who’d died was a corpse (until Jesus brought back her spirit, which returns to God after death, to her body).  When Adam finally died physically, the human spirit God had initially breathed into him went back to God.  We humans undergo this physical death.  Ps.104:29 “You take away their spirit, they die and return to dust.”  When the Lord takes away our spirit…we expire.  Man’s spirit returns to God for His renascence, re-embodiment, placement or disposition, as He sees fit.

Now let’s look at another kind of death.  When Adam & Eve ate from the wrong tree, they died in another sense.  Mankind is made in the image & likeness of God (Ge.1:26-27).  God said in Ge.2:16-17, “The tree of the knowledge of good and evil, in the day you eat from it you shall surely die”.  The serpent deceived Eve (Ge.3:4-7).  When Adam & Eve ate from it and disobeyed God or sinned, they became separated from God spiritually.  That day their spiritual death occurred.  (Their physical death wasn’t until centuries later.)  Ge.3:8 so they hid themselves from God.  Ge.3:24 although they’re made in God’s image…to further separate them from Himself, the Lord banned them from the garden of Eden.  (see the topic “Tree Symbolism in Scripture”.)

Death is a form of separation.  Adam & Eve were separated from God’s Presence and the Tree of Life.  Even if they’d previously eaten some from the Tree of Life while obedient (Ge.2:9, 16), outside the garden they couldn’t continue to eat its fruit…and Adam finally expired at age 930 (Ge.5:5).  Gill Exposition Ge.2:9 “Before Adam sinned there was no prohibition of his eating of it.”  (Perhaps the effect of the Tree of Life was passed down through very long-lived descendants for generations?)

At physical death, one’s human spirit is separated from the physical body.  Spiritual death is separation from God, who is eternal Life.  Is.59:2 “Your iniquities have separated you from your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you.”  Sin kills us spiritually, in this sense.

Since Adam & Eve, humans are born spiritually ‘dead’.  David referred to his unborn self, Ps.51:5 “I was shaped in iniquity, in sin my mother conceived me”.  Natural man from birth is spiritually unaware, our eyes ‘blinded’ to spiritual eternal Life (e.g. 2Co.4:4).  Ro.5:12 “Just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, so death spread to all, because all sinned.”  Mankind has inherited a sin nature.  Ja.1:15 “When sin is accomplished, it brings forth death.”  Separation from God.  Gill Exposition Ja.1:15 “As the first sin of man brought death into the world, brought a spiritual death.”  Orthodox Bible Ge.2:17 “The words ‘you shall die’ indicate a spiritual death through separation from God.”  Spiritual death happened to Adam at the wrong tree; it became the common state of all mankind.

We were all dead spiritually.  Paul wrote to the saints in Ep.2:5, “We were dead in our transgressions”.  Of course Paul and those he was writing to weren’t dead physically!  Rather, they’d been spiritually dead earlier, while physically alive!  Continuing in Ep.4:18, “Being alienated from the Life of God”.  As Adam & Eve had become alienated from God; separated from the Lord and His Presence.

Jesus said in Mt.8:21-22, “Let the dead bury their dead”.  Jesus expressed two kinds of death here…in other words, let those who are spiritually dead bury their relatives who had died physically.  And in Jesus’ parable of Lk.15:24, 32, the prodigal son had been spiritually dead, while physically alive.  In 1Ti.5:6, Paul wrote of the profligate widow who “is dead even while she lives”.  Spiritually dead, physically alive.  Paul also wrote in Col.2:13, “You were dead in your transgressions”.  The Colossians were physically alive, yet earlier had been spiritually dead by reason of sin.  But not dead forever!

Continuing in Col.2:13 “…He has made you alive together with Him”.  Those Christians were no longer spiritually dead!  1Co.15:22 “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive.”  Since Adam, humanity was spiritually dead or separated from God, and also died physically.  But through Jesus and the Holy Spirit (HS), we’re made alive spiritually; there’s no separation from God (though we still die physically).

Peter said in Ac.2:38, “Repent and be baptized, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit”.  The HS is Life eternal (He.9:14).  1Co.6:17 “The one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him.”  It’s a spiritual union.  We become spiritually alive!  Ga.6:8 “The one who sows to the Spirit shall from the Spirit reap eternal life.”  Wikipedia “For Paul (as in Ga.6:8), future eternal life arrives as a result of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit during the present life.”  The seed of eternal Life is now within us.

The New Testament (NT) doesn’t describe eternal life in detail.  But it does provide assurance that the saints will receive it.  Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible “The nature of eternal life is only sketched in its essential elements in the New Testament.”  The saved Christian becomes spiritually alive, no longer are we spiritually dead!

John wrote in 1Jn.3:14, “We know that we have passed out of death into life”.  Saved Christians are spiritually alive.  1Jn.5:11-12 “God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who doesn’t have the Son doesn’t have life.”  The eternal Life made possible by Jesus indwells us.

Jesus said in Jn.8:51, “If anyone keeps My word, he shall never see death”.  Jesus was referring to spiritual death, not physical death.  Of course we all die physically.  Jesus also spoke of Himself as the living bread.  Jn.6:50-51 “One may eat of it and not die. I AM the living bread that came down from heaven.”  Not die spiritually, that is; having the kernel of eternal Life.  Jn.11:26 “Whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die.”  Shall never die spiritually; won’t be separated from God.

Many believe that even Jesus Himself experienced separation from God for a short time on the cross…for our sake!  Mk.15:33-34 “Darkness fell over the whole Land. Jesus cried out with a loud voice, ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (cf. Ps.22:1)  Jesus knew He’d be resurrected (Mt.20:18-19).  But as Jesus became sin in our stead (2Co.5:21), He was separated from His Father for the only time.  Ga.3:13 “Christ became a curse for us.”  Father God is so holy; He won’t dwell with sin.

God is the Father of spirits (He.12:9).  The Lord gives breath & spirit to His creatures on earth (Is.42:5).  For physical death to occur, man’s spirit departs his body, and returns to God who gave it (Ec.12:7).

Jesus also experienced physical death when He expired on the cross.  At the transfiguration of Lk.9:31, Jesus spoke of His soon departure (g1841) which would take place at Jerusalem.  Later, Jesus said as He died on the cross in Lk.23:46, “Father, into Thy hands I commit My spirit’. He breathed His last.”  Jesus’ spirit departed and returned to Father God.  Jn.19:30 “Jesus yielded up His spirit.”

2Pe.1:13-15 elderly Peter said he would soon die physically.  The time was near for his spirit’s earthly tent (his physical body) to be laid aside.  “After my departure (g1841) you may remember these things.”  Peter’s spirit would soon depart his body.  (Ja.2:26 “The body without the spirit is dead.”)

In the last chapter of 2Timothy, Paul’s time to die physically was imminent.  2Ti.4:6 “The time of my departure has come.”  Paul’s spirit would soon depart his physical body, when he expired.  As Peter’s.

In Ac.7:54-60, righteous Stephen was stoned to death.  As he died physically, Stephen said, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit” (v.59).  Stephen’s spirit departed when his body “fell asleep” and decomposed.

At their physical death, the spirit of Peter, of Paul, of Stephen…departed their body and returned to God.  They went to be with Jesus.  Their fleshly body became dust after their spirit separated from it.  But those three, as well as the saints Paul wrote to at Ephesus, Colossae, etc., are made alive in spirit!

Paul wrote in Php.1:21-24, “To live is Christ and to die is gain. To depart and be with Christ is far better.”  Paul’s earthly life was dedicated to Christ’s purposes.  Yet Paul believed Life for him would be better after he died physically, when his spirit consciousness went to be with God and Jesus.

Here’s the final verse of the song, God Knew Your Name, by Jim Likens. “As you gracefully grew old, you know you had been told, God knew your name. And one day when you died, your friends and family cried, God knew your name. And My angels carried your soul [or spirit] to Me, And I said, ‘Welcome home’. You were one of Mine, I loved you for all time, I knew your name.”

Our spirit, returned to God who gave it, is at His disposal as He sees fit.  In Jesus’ parable of Lk.16:19-31, the poor man’s spirit…“was transported by angels to Abraham’s bosom [or Paradise]”.  The rich man’s spirit was placed in Hades, the realm of the dead (v.22-23).  Evidently some of what Jesus spoke in this parable was commonly believed by Jews in the Land, so they were able to understand His point.

Before Jesus left His disciples on earth, He said in Jn.14:2-3, “In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; I go to prepare a place for you”.  Father God’s house is in heaven, not on earth.  After Jesus died and was resurrected, He was received up into heaven, at His Father’s right hand (Mk.16:19).

Stephen asked of Jesus, “Receive my spirit” (Ac.7:59).  Stephen, Peter, Paul and other saints went to the heavenly dwelling places Jesus prepared for them.  Their spirits returned to God, and would never die!

The writer to the Hebrews wrote in He.12:1, “We have a great cloud of witnesses”.  A most unusual way to identify a group of witnesses!  There’s a “cloud” of saints in the heavens who have gone before us.  Untold numbers of saints had been “caught up in the clouds” prior to the departure of Paul’s spirit consciousness to be “together with them” (1Th.4:17).  Continuing with He.12:22-24, “You have come to…the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the assembly and church of the Firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus”.  Glory to God!  The spirits of the righteous saints in their heavenly dwelling are an innumerable cloud of witnesses!  (cf. Re.7:9-12)

Paul wrote of our body in 1Co.15:44-49, “It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. As is the earthy so are those who are earthy; and as is the heavenly, so are those who are heavenly. Just as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.”  All humans have a natural physical body on earth.  The spirits of the righteous, who departed and were received by Jesus, have a spiritual body in the heavens.  The spirits of Stephen, Peter, Paul…are among those witnesses in the “cloud” with spiritual bodies.  (compare the topic, “Rebirth to Physical Life”.)

Paul wrote more of eternal life with God in 2Co.5:1-4. “We know that if our earthly tent is dissolved, we have a house from God, not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. We long to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling. So that we won’t be naked. While in this tent we groan, not wanting to be unclothed.”  Our earthly body is made by our mother & father, so to speak.  When it dies and dissolves into dust, our spirit returns to God/Jesus.  Our spirit is there “clothed” with our heavenly imperishable spiritual body (1Co.15:42); not mortal physical bodies in heaven.  We don’t live forever as disembodied spirits.  Spiritual bodies are portrayed as being pure and clothed in white (ref Re.3:5, 4:4, 7:9).

Paul continued in 2Co.5:8, “I would rather be absent from the body and be present with the Lord.”  Paul’s preference was to depart his mortal tent here on earth, and go to be at home in his heavenly spiritual body, with the Lord.  (It’s been said that Paul was absent-minded in that regard!)

Greek Bible scholar Spiros Zódiates’ note on 2Co.5:1-10, “Our real self is the spirit within us and not the body. The mortal body is presented as a tent. When death happens we don’t become extinct. We continue to live on. God is building a completely new house for our spirit. It will be identifiable, but not the same. Paul was evidently speaking of his resurrection body.”  It’s a heavenly body for our spirit.

Php.3:20-21 “Our citizenship is in heaven. Jesus Christ will transform our lowly body to conform to the body of His glory.”  We shall be like Jesus (to a lesser degree), in our spiritual bodies.  Cambridge Bible “The saints’ body of glory.”  1Jn.3:2 “We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him just as He is.”  Vincent Word Studies “The manifestation of that glorified state, the revealing of what we shall be.”  Now our physical eyes cannot behold Jesus’ glorified brightness or the appearance of our spiritual body.

{Sidelight: Various eschatological views, the timing of resurrections, other spirits, the underworld…are somewhat related to this topic, but aren’t discussed here.  Also, the interchangeable expressions, “Kingdom of God” and “Kingdom of Heaven” (Mt.19:23-24).  see the topic “Kingdom of God”.}

Cardiologists have revived people who died physically for a brief period of time.  Pronounced dead!  While dead, their spirit left their body, and ‘saw’ the future life.  While dead, they heard conversation of nurses, or viewed streets exterior to the hospital!  As they were revived physically by the cardiologist or medical team, their spirit reentered their body (cf. Lk.8:55).  There are thousands of people who have had near-death experiences (NDE)!  Numerous documented cases are on medical record!

There’s a saying…“A man with an experience is never at the mercy of a man with just an argument”.

Raymond Edman They Found the Secret, p.33, gives Salvation Army Commissioner Samuel Brengle’s account of his final days at age 76.  Though nearly blind, Brengle ‘saw’ some of the great cloud of witnesses, saints who’d gone on before. “I had sweet fellowship at times in my own room. Saints of all ages congregate there. Moses is present, and gives his testimony, and declares that the eternal God is his refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms. Joshua arises, and declares, ‘As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord’. Samuel and David, my dear friends Isaiah, Jeremiah and Daniel, Paul and John and James, and deeply humbled and beloved Peter, each testifying to the abounding grace of God. Luther and Wesley and the Founder [General William Booth] and Finney, and Spurgeon and Moody, and unnumbered multitudes all testify…Fanny Crosby cries out, ‘Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine’! So you see, I am not alone. Halleluyah forever, and glory to God!”

The 2000 edition of evangelist F.F. Bosworth’s Christ the Healer, contains a concluding chapter written by his son Bob Bosworth, about his father’s passing in 1958 (p.246-7). “About 3 weeks after he took to his bed, we were around the bed talking, laughing and singing. Suddenly Dad looked up; he never saw us again. He saw what was invisible to us. He began to greet people and to hug people; he was enraptured. Every once in a while he would break off and look around saying, ‘Oh, it is so beautiful’. He did this for several hours. Finally, with a smile on his face, he put his head back and slept. We took turns sitting with him. My wife Stella suddenly realized that he’d stopped breathing. There had been no struggle, no sound. The psalmist had described it correctly; God had simply removed his breath and he was home! ‘O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?’ [Ho.13:14 LXX, 1Co.15:55]  This is the testimony and ultimate triumph of F.F. Bosworth.”

Death and the grave are defeated!  1Co.15:54 “When this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.” (cf. Is.25:8)  For saints who’ve received and been led by the Holy Spirit, Life with a heavenly body will be abundantly satisfying and pain-free for all eternity!  To God be the glory!

Tri-unity of God

In the English language, the word “God” is customarily used for Deity.  Is.43:10 “Declares YHVH, ‘Before Me there was no God formed, neither will there be after Me.”  Only the true God is Divine.

The true God is a uniplural Being.  Yet the God-kind is one/unified (echád Strongs h259, Hebrew).  De.6:4 “YHVH our God, YHVH is one [echad h259].”  However, Adam & Eve were to be one in Ge.2:24. “A man shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be one [echad h259] flesh.”  The two of them were one, echad!  Ezr.2:64 “The whole assembly united as one [echad h259] man was 42,360.”  In this verse, 42,360 souls were as one!  So we see the term echad/one is numerically plural in these verses.

The Hebrew term yachíd (h3173) meant absolute oneness, sole, or the one and only.  In the Old Testament (OT), yachid is never used in reference to God.  Jdg.11:34 “She was his only [yachid] child.”  The LXX Greek equivalent term monogenés (g3439) refers to Jesus, God’s only begotten Son, in Jn.1:14, 18.

God, as the God Family, consists of the Father, Holy Spirit (HS) and Jesus the Son.  The Word/Logos from eternity past later became the human Jesus, Jn.1:1-5, 14.  (see the topic “Godhead in Prehistory”.)  Ge.1:1-3 reflects the Father, HS, and the Word/Light who would become Jesus.  The first “Us” verse in Genesis, where the “Us” refers to the uniplural God, is Ge.1:26-27. “God said, ‘Let Us make mankind in our image, according to our likeness. In the image of God, male and female.” (not in the image of angels.)  Other such “Us” verses in Genesis are Ge.3:22, 11:7, LXX 2:18.  Also Is.6:1, 8 “I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Who shall go for Us?”.  And Ge.19:24 reflects plural YHVHs. “YHVH rained on Sodom & Gomorrah fire from YHVH out of heaven.”  YHVH (h3068 Hebrew) is the Lord.

God as a Father in the OT: Moses said in De.32:6, “The Lord, is not He your Father?”  Also see Is.64:8, 63:16.  Mal.2:10 “Do we not all have one Father? Has not one [echad] God created us?”

God the Father is supreme in the Godhead (as we’ll see).  Father God is the Source of all life (even of Jesus, Jn.5:26 & 6:57).  The Father chooses the time of calling His elect, Ep.1:3-5 & Jn.6:44.

Jesus the Son in the OT: Ps.2:7, 12 “YHVH said to Me, You are My Son, Today I have begotten You. Do homage to the Son.”  (YHVH isn’t referring to David.  Jesse, not God, begat David.)  Pr.30:4 “Who has ascended up to heaven and descended? What is His name or His Son’s name?”  Jn.6:62 Jesus said, “What if you should see the Son of Man ascending where He was before?”  Jn.1:18 Jesus said no one has seen Father God at any time.  In the OT Péntateuch, the God seen was the Word/Rock/Son/Angel, the Messenger of YHVH. ref Ge.31:11-13, 18:1, Ex.24:10, Is.6:1 & Jn.12:41-44.  De.32:18 & 1Co.10:4 according to the apostle Paul, “That Rock was Christ”.  (see “Jesus Was The Old Testament God”.)

The primordial Word of God, the Messenger of the Lord, took on flesh as Jesus/Yeshúa (Hebrew).  Neither the Father nor the HS took on flesh.  As human, Jesus could bridge the gap between Creator and creation.  1Ti.2:5 “There is one Mediator between God and men, the human Jesus Christ.”  He.4:14-15 Jesus as such is High Priest.  In Je.23:5-6, the Messiah would be both a human descendant of David, and YHVH!  Harvard’s Jacob Neusner Judaisms and Their Messiahs, p.275 “An early Judaism myth portrayed a supernatural God-Man King Messiah as Savior and Redeemer of Israel.”  He is Jesus.

The Holy Spirit in the OT: Is.48:16 “The Lord God and His Spirit have sent Me.”  Job.33:4 “The Spirit of God has made me.”  Pr.1:20-23 “Wisdom lifts her voice, ‘I will pour out My Spirit on you.”

Father God is in heaven.  God has operated through the HS and Jesus.  Ac.2:34 Jesus ascended into heaven and now sits there at Father’s right hand (and Jesus lives mystically in Christians, Jn.17:21-23 & Col.1:27).  The human Jesus wasn’t omnipresent.  The HS is on earth…omnipresent.  David wrote in Ps.139:7-10, “Where can I go from Your Spirit, where can I flee from Your Presence?”  Nowhere.

Although the Godhead is tripartite, a common trinitarian view is partly incorrect.  That is, the Bible doesn’t reflect the three in the Godhead as equal in authority.  Father God has the greatest authority!  Jesus said in Jn.14:28, “The Father is greater than I”.  1Co.15:27-28 Jesus is forever subject to Him.

The Father sends Jesus.  Jn.12:49 Jesus said, “The Father who sent Me has given Me commandment”.  The two are distinct.  The Father also sends the HS.  Jn.14:26 “The Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send.”  Jesus too sends the HS (Jn.16:7).  All three are distinct!  But neither Jesus nor the HS sends the Father!  They differ in order and subordination.  The human Jesus wasn’t omniscient.  Mt.24:36 “Of that day and hour no one knows, not the Son, the Father only.” (see “Jesus Is God…Jesus Has A God”.)

Father God is so very great!  Jn.6:46 & 5:37 no human has ever seen His form.  They hadn’t heard His voice.  Not before Jesus and John the Baptizer heard the voice of Father God formally testify of His Son at Jesus’ baptism.  ref Jn.1:32-34 & Mk.1:9-11.  The (OT) Voice heard by God’s people was that of the Word, the Lord Jesus, e.g. Ge.18:1, 13, Jn.8:56-58.  Jesus said in Jn.10:27, “My sheep hear My voice”.

Ontology is the study of being.  God, angels, humans are called personal beings.  But God’s Being isn’t finite or limited, as we are limited.  Scripture doesn’t define ‘person’ (the term we use in modern English), and doesn’t apply that term to the triune God.  The Latin persona (or Greek prósopon) was a ‘face’ worn by Greek/Roman dramatic actors.  Church fathers applied the Greek term hypostáses (subsistences or entities or individuals) to God.

Several verses in the New Testament (NT) reflect the tripartite Godhead.  First, I should say, 1Jn.5:7 KJV is only in late manuscripts.  And the Mt.28:19 phrase, “Baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit”, wasn’t in the text Eusebius quoted ca 300 AD.  But there are many other verses….

2Co.13:14 “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the HS be with you all.”  2Co.1:21-22 “He who establishes us in Christ and anointed us is God, who also gave us the Spirit.”  Ep.4:4-6 “There is one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all.”  (That’s three!)  Ac.7:55 “Being full of the HS, Stephen saw Jesus standing at the right hand of God.”  He.9:14 “Christ, who through the eternal Spirit, offered Himself without blemish to God.”  1Co.12:4-6 “The same Spirit…the same Lord…the same God.”  (Again, that’s three.)  1Pe.1:2 “Elect according to a foreknowledge of God the Father, sanctified by the Spirit, sprinkled with the blood of Jesus Christ.”  All these verses indicate the three ‘Persons’ of the Godhead, the God Family.

As God, they are identical in essence, fully divine, a tri-unity of subsistences having self-awareness, sinless.  It’s been said as an analogy that the Father is the wall outlet, the HS is the cord, Jesus is the lamp (Re.21:23).  The tripartite Godhead is revealed to us by Jesus the Son’s coming in the flesh and His words in the NT, by other scriptures, and by the HS dwelling within us as Christians.

The terms for God as “Father” and “Holy Spirit” rarely occur as such in the OT.  Very few men had the HS in OT times; and prior to the NT, Jesus hadn’t yet come to reveal the Father.  (see “Life and Death – for Saints”.)  Jesus said in Jn.4:24, “God is Spirit”.  In Mt.10:20, Jesus spoke of Christians having “The Spirit of your Father who speaks in you”.  The HS belongs to and was part of Father God, has personality, but isn’t the totality of God.

Every human has a spirit within.  Jb.32:8 “There is a spirit in man.”  Our human spirit gives biological life to our body of flesh (Ge.2:7).  Ja.2:26 “The body without the spirit is dead.”  Without our human spirit, we’re just a clod.  Our spirit in God’s image imparts self-awareness and intellect to our brain.  It’s a non-physical component which differentiates human mind from animal brain instinct.  Our spirit gives us a moral sense of conscience, based upon the self and cultural customs & laws, not the HS.  Yet the HS will join with our human spirit (1Co.6:17); we become linked to God, able to live God’s morality.

Mt.1:18 “Mary was found to be with Child by the HS.”  The HS as God conceived Jesus in the womb of the surrogate mother Mary.  Kind begets kind.  So even as flesh, the Word/Jesus was of the Godkind.

The HS is very God, distinct from the Father.  Jn.15:26 “The Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father.”  Orthodox Bible “The HS receives…eternal existence only from the Father.”  1Co.3:16 “Don’t you know that you are the temple of God and the Spirit of God lives in you?”  The Father and Jesus are in heaven…Christians wouldn’t be God’s temple if God the HS didn’t dwell within.  Lk.3:21-22 “Jesus was baptized. The HS descended upon Him in bodily form as a dove, and a voice came out of heaven, ‘You are My beloved Son, in Thee I Am well-pleased.”  The Father sent the HS as a dove upon Jesus the Son, then the Father’s voice spoke to Him from heaven.  That’s three!  Father God didn’t appear as the bird.  And Jesus isn’t an angel’s son.  1Jn.5:10 “God [not an angel] has testified about His Son.”

The HS is a Who, not a what, not an impersonal power such as magnetism or centripetal force.  The following verses reflect HS personality:  Peter said to Ananias in Ac.5:3-4, “You lied to the HS. You weren’t lying to men but to God.”  The person of the HS can be lied to and is God!  1Co.2:10-11 “Who knows the inner thoughts of a man, except the spirit of the man. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. The thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God.”  The HS has an intellect and knowledge, as does our human spirit.  Ro.8:26-27 “The Spirit intercedes for us with deep groanings. And He who searches the hearts knows the mind of the Spirit.”  The HS has a mind and prays for the saints, unlike an impersonal ‘force’, so-called.  (see “Holy Spirit Personification”.)

The HS speaks in 1^st Person as “Me” and “I” in Ac.13:2. “The Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work which I have called them to.”  Also ref Ac.11:12, Jn.16:13, Mk.13:11, which indicate the HS is personal and speaks.  2Sm.23:2-3 “The Spirit of YHVH spoke by me. The God of Israel.”  Again, the HS is YHVH/God.

Ro.15:30 “By our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit.”  The HS is a ‘Person’ who can love!  (1Jn.4:8 God is love.)  1Co.12:11 and Ac 20:28 the Person of the HS has a will and appoints overseers in the church.  The Person of Jesus also has a will.  Mt.11:27 “The Father, who the Son wills to reveal.”

The church is the metaphorical bride of Christ (e.g. Re.19:7-9).  Christians (the “bride”) are persons.  Re.22:17 “The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.”  The Spirit and the bride speak, as persons.  Jesus is symbolically the Lion, Lamb, Word, arm (of the Lord, Is.53:1)…yet Jesus is a distinct person!  Jesus is also referred to as, “The power of God and the wisdom of God” (1Co.1:24).  Yet Jesus is clearly personal, as the four gospels reveal.  The HS isn’t just the power (or force) of God.

Is.63:10 “They rebelled and vexed His HS.”  Ep.4:30 “Don’t grieve God’s HS, by whom you are sealed.”  The HS seals believers…and can be vexed or provoked, and grieved or made sorrowful.  He.10:29 “Sorer punishment to he who has insulted the Spirit of grace.”  The HS can be insulted.  To think that an emotionless ‘force’ can be vexed, grieved and feel insulted…seems absurd!  Jn.15:26 the HS testifies of Jesus.  Any spirit who denies Jesus is false!  Yet…Mt.12:31-32 “Blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven.”

Forces such as magnetism and centripetal force don’t: have a mind, speak, pray, love, or hear and comprehend lies.  Whereas the Bible says the HS does: have a mind, speak, pray, love, hear and comprehend lies.  The HS can be vexed, grieved, insulted, blasphemed!  To repeat, the HS is personal…not just a powerful but emotionless ‘force’ from God!  (also see “Holy Spirit’s Identity”.)

Benny Hinn Welcome Holy Spirit, p.29 “There’s glory in grasping the Personhood of the Holy Spirit….your life will never be the same.”  ibid, p.199 “The Spirit is the Author of the Book.”

A church denomination I won’t name published an article about the Holy Spirit.  Their position is, “The HS is not God. It is the most powerful force in the universe. The HS can be poured out, an impersonal characteristic.”  But we read verses above, such as Ac.5:3-4 and 1Co.3:16, which indicate the HS is God.  Their article went on to say, “Only God can change hearts” (as if the HS isn’t God).

But the HS is God and does change hearts.  Ro.5:5 “The love of God is poured out in our hearts by the HS.”  2Co.1:22 “He gave us the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts.”  Ro.15:30 it’s by “The love of the Spirit.”  God’s love is “poured out” or shed abroad through the Person of the HS.  The Holy Spirit personally loves as God.  (And the HS is symbolically “poured out” as living water, Jn.7:38-39.)

Is.53:12 prophesied of Jesus, “He poured out Himself to death”.  Jesus the “Person” also “poured out” Himself or His soul.  1Sm.1:15 Samuel’s wife Hannah describes her supplication to God. “I have poured out my soul before the Lord.”  Jb.30:16 Job’s sore complaint, “My soul is poured out within me”.  David said in Ps.62:8, “Pour out your heart before God”.  In the Bible, the soul and even the heart of a person can be “poured out”!  Hannah, Job, and David are persons.  Jesus and the HS are divine Persons, in a manner “poured out”, so to speak.

Angels are also spirits, “ministering spirits” in He.1:14 (they aren’t the Holy Spirit).  An angel is a spirit who, likewise, isn’t just an impersonal force (e.g. the angel Gabriel, Lk.1:19).

Ministering spirits (angels), the Holy Spirit, our human spirits…aren’t an impersonal Star Wars type force!  Our human spirit is me, is you, within our flesh ‘suit’.  Again, the HS is changing our hearts!  We, as God’s temple of the HS, connect with God…the HS joined with our human spirit (1Co.6:17).  God will be all-in-all, Ep.4:6!

Finally, the triune God is thrice holy.  One Spirit…one Lord…one Father (Ep.4:4-6).  Is.6:3 “Holy, Holy, Holy is YHVH of hosts.”  A three-in-one Godhead.  The heavenly worshipers in Re.4:8 “Do not cease to say, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God, the Almighty”.  Yea, and Amen.

Michael in the Bible

Who is Michaél?  Jewish Encyclopedia: Angelólogy “The 70 nations of Gen.10 each had their guardian angel in heaven; Michael, the guardian angel of Israel, ranks above the rest.”  ReligionWiki “Roman Catholic tradition calls [St] Michael, Gabriel and Raphael archangels.”  Wikipedia: Michael “Within Protestantism, Anglican and Methodist tradition recognizes four archangels: Michael, Raphael, Gabriel and Uriel.”

However, some Protestants and other groups don’t position Michael in the order of angels.  They don’t believe Michael is a created angel.  This topic examines their view from the Bible.

Writers of the Bible books occasionally would use a symbolic, poetic, secondary or changed name for a place, instead of its usual name.  For example, a poetic name for Israel is Jeshurún, meaning ‘upright one’.  De.33:5 “He was king in Jeshurun, the tribes of Israel together.”  It appears a poetic or symbolic name for Jerusalem is Ariel, ‘lioness of God’.  Is.29:1 “Woe to Ariel, the city where David dwelt.”  Jerusalem also came to be called Zion.  Ps.51:8 “Do good to Zion; build the walls of Jerusalem.”

And some Bible characters have more than one name.  For example: Abrám/Abrahám Ge.17:5 “Your name is no more called Abram, your name shall be Abraham.”   Jacob/Israel Ge.32:28 “Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel.”  Saul/Paul Ac.13:9 “Saul, who was also known as Paul.”

In the Bible, our Savior (Lk.2:11) has many, many titles and names.  e.g: Jesus/Yeshúa Mt.1:21, Emmanuél Mt.1:23, Christ/Messiah Mt.1:16/Jn.1:41, Word/Lógos Jn.1:1,14, Branch Je.23:5, Angel/Messenger Ga.4:14, Rock 1Co.10:4, Son of Man Mt.12:8, Son of God Mt.8:29.  And more.

A theóphany is an appearance of the Deity to man.  Many believe that Melchisedek, who appeared to Abram in Ge.14:18-20, is a theophany.  He.7:1-4 “Melchisedek, likened to the Son of God, how great this (one) was, to whom Abraham gave a tenth.”  He was even Abraham’s superior!  Many think the theophany or christophany Melchisedek was a manifestation of the Word/Logos before becoming Jesus.

The name “Michael” (Strongs h4317, Hebrew) occurs 13 times in the Old Testament (OT), 10 times as a theophóric (a human name with the name/title of God embedded in it).  The 3 verses where Michael doesn’t refer to a human are in Daniel 10:13, 21, 12:1.  There are 2 New Testament (NT) occurrences of this Michael (g3413, Greek); Jude 9, Re.12:7.  Michael means ‘Who is like God’.

In Daniel 10, it is thought that the angel Gabriel (cf. Da.8:16, 9:21) came to help Daniel.  Gabriel said in Da.10:13 Youngs Literal Translation (YLT), “Michael, first of the chief heads [or princes h8269 sar], has come to help me”.  Barnes Notes Da.10:13 “The first in rank.”  The reformers’ Geneva Bible 1599 “Michael, that is, Jesus Christ the head of angels.”  Benson Commentary “Michael, whose name is sometimes given to Christ Himself.”  Matthew Poole Commentary “Michael, this we take to be Christ.”

Da.10:20-21 YLT “There is not one strengthening himself with me, concerning these, except Michael your head [h8269 prince].”  Gill Exposition Da.10:21 “Michael your Prince; Christ the Prince of the kings of the earth, he was the Prince, Protector, and Guardian of the people of the Jews; he is the Angel [of the Lord/YHVH] that went before them in the wilderness, their King and their God.”

The Hebrew “sar” (h8269) is translated as “head, prince, commander, chief, captain, ruler”.

Da.12:1-2 YLT “’At that time Michael the great head [h8269], is standing up for the sons of thy people. And the multitude of those sleeping in the dust of the earth do awake.”  He stands prior to resurrection.  Matthew Henry Commentary “Michael signifies the Divine Savior. Christ stood for the children of our people.”  Gill Exposition “The Archangel, the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who is as God, as the name signifies, truly and really God.”  Benson Commentary “The Messiah, not…a created angel.”

The five commentaries above say Michael is another of Jesus’ names.  Let’s compare other scriptures to see if Michael could indeed have been another name of Jesus (Yeshua in Hebrew & Aramaic).

Is.9:6 is a messianic prophecy about the “Sar Shalom”, the Prince (h8269) of Peace.  “A Child will be born to us. His name will be called Wonderful, Mighty God, Prince of Peace. There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace.”  Jesus is the prophesied Prince of Peace, the Sar Shalom.

We saw a mighty spiritual Prince/Head/Commander (sar h8269) in Da.10:13, 20-21.  Another passage about the “Commander” (or Prince/Head h8269) of the “host” (h6635) is Da.8:11. “The little horn even set itself up to be as great as the Commander [h8269] of the host of the Lord.”  Da.8:25 “He will even oppose the Prince of princes [Commander of commanders, all are h8269]. Yet he will be shattered, but not by human hands.”  The great Commander/Prince/Head of the Lord’s army does the shattering!

In Jsh.5:13-15, the Commander (Prince/Head/Chief h8269) of YHVH’s angelic host appeared to Joshua, saying, “I have come as Commander of the Lord’s army [host h6635]. Remove your sandals, for the place where you stand is holy”.  Orthodox Bible note, “The chief whom tradition holds to be the Archangel Michael.”  Pulpit Commentary “The majority supposed it to have been the archangel Michael. He who spoke to Joshua was a Divine Person.”  So it was mandatory that Joshua remove his sandals.  The place where the Commander stood was holy.  Joshua fell on his face in reverence.

Moses’ experience in Ex.3:1-6 is similar to Joshua’s in that respect.  “The Angel [Messenger h4397 malákh] of YHVH appeared to him in a blazing fire from a bush. God called to him from the midst of the bush. ‘Remove your sandals for you are standing on holy ground. I Am the God of your fathers.”  The Angel or Messenger of YHVH is also God!  Moses must remove his sandals, as Joshua must!

Alfred Edersheim The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, Appendix 13, 1:2:b “Michael is also supposed to have been the Angel in the bush.”  Orthodox Bible “God the Word revealed Himself to Moses in the burning bush. He is called the Angel of the Lord because He is the Angel or Messenger of the Father.”  Is.9:6 Septúagint/LXX “His name will be called the Messenger of Great Counsel, and of His peace there is no end.”  Paul wrote of his own welcome in Ga.4:14. “You received me as an angel [or messenger g32 ángelos] of God, as Christ Jesus.”  Yet Jesus is God and not a created angel.

Humans aren’t to worship the angelic order.  John said regarding the angel in Re.19:10, “I fell at his feet to worship him. But he said to me, ‘Don’t do this, I am a fellow-servant.”  Re.22:8-9 “I, John, fell down to worship at the feet of the angel. But he said to me, ‘Don’t do this.”  Yet God/Jesus is to be worshiped!  He.1:6 “Let all the angels of God worship Him.”  Joshua fell on his face and must remove his sandals in the presence of Commander Michael.  Again, Michael means ‘Who is like God’.

In scripture, a spiritual being of the angelic order is an attendant, agent, or messenger for God.  Jesus said in Re.22:16 YLT, “I, Jesus, did send [g3992 pémpo] My messenger [angel g32 angelos] to testify these things”.  But beings of the angelic order aren’t the only messengers.

Humans too can be messengers.  Ge.32:3 “Jacob sent messengers [malakh h4397] to Esau his brother.”  Homing pigeons are used as messengers.  There’s messenger dogs (e.g. German Shepherd, Doberman, Airedale).  The term angel/messenger/angelos doesn’t always refer to the angelic order (ref Ga.4:14).

Jesus is Father God’s Messenger!  Jesus said in Jn.8:16, “I and the Father who sent [g3992] Me”.

The Messenger of YHVH was sent by Father YHVH.  God’s Word transl Ge.16:7, 13 “The Messenger of the LORD found her by a spring in the desert….Hagar named the LORD, who had been speaking to her, ‘You Are the God Who Watches Over Me.”  The Messenger was God!  Jacob in Ge.31:11-13, “In a dream the Messenger of God called to me, ‘I Am the God who appeared to you at Bethél”.

In the Péntateuch, the Angel or Messenger of God…is God!  cf. Ex.13:21 & 14:19!  Zec.12:8 LXX “The house of David will be as the house of God, as the angel of the Lord before them.”

Zec.3:1-2 “He showed me Yehoshúa [Joshua] the chief priest standing in front of the Messenger of the Lord. Satan was standing at Yehoshua’s right side to accuse him. The Lord said to Satan, ‘The Lord rebuke you.”  The Messenger or Angel of the Lord who spoke was the Lord (YHVH)!

Those exact words (“The Lord rebuke you”) were spoken in only one other verse of the Bible.  Jude 9 “When Michael the archangel disputed with the devil over the body of Moses, he said, ‘The Lord rebuke you.”  Michael is the archangel or Chief Messenger, the great Head/Prince (Da.12:1).  Perhaps their dispute had to do with whether or not Moses was guilty for killing the Egyptian (Ex.2:11-15)?  Only Michael’s words in Jude 9 parallel the words of the Messenger/Angel of the Lord (“the Lord”) in Zec.3:1-2.  Gill Exposition Jude 9 “By whom is meant the Lord Jesus Christ, not a created angel, as appears from His name Michael, who is as God, the Son of God.”

The only archangel (g743 archángelos, Greek) named in our Bible is…Michael!  The term archangel is never plural in scripture.  Gabriel & Lucifer aren’t specifically called archangels in the Bible.  Edersheim op.cit. “The superiority of Michael over Gabriel [Strong Man of God] is asserted in Ber.4 b.”

Michael again opposes satan the devil/dragon in Re.12:7. “There was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought.”  Matthew Henry Commentary “The parties were Christ, the great Angel of the covenant, and his faithful followers; and Satan and his instruments.”  Michael is the Commander or leader of his angels (or host).  And in Mt.25:41, Jesus spoke of “The agelong [aiónios g166] fire prepared for the devil and his angels”.

Similar is Mt.13:41. “The Son of Man will send forth His angels.”  Both Michael and Jesus the Son of Man is Commander of the angelic order.  Mt.24:30-31 “The Son of Man will send forth His angels with a great trumpet blast.”  Do Jesus and Michael the Archangel command two separate groups of ‘good’ angels…or is it the same innumerable group?  And satan the devil/dragon commands over all the ‘bad’ angels.  From those verses, Jesus the Son of Man and Michael appear to be the same.

We saw back in Da.12:1-2 that Michael stands up and resurrection occurs.  “Many to everlasting life but others to shame and everlasting abhorrence.”  In Mt.24:30-31, the elect are gathered as that great trumpet sounds.  1Th.4:16 “The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel [g743], and with the trumpet of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise.”  The Lord blows the great trumpet.  (cf. Zec.9:14 “The Lord God shall blow the trumpet.”)  At the time the dead rise (Da.12:1-2 Michael), we see whose voice is heard, who the Archangel or Chief Messenger is….

Jesus follows-up on Da.12:1-2 in Jn.5:25-29, where He said “The dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God. All who are in the tombs shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; those who have done good to a resurrection of life, those who done evil to a resurrection of judgment.”  Jesus said the voice heard is that of He Himself, the Son of God!  In 1Th.4:16, the voice heard is that of the archangel, the Lord Himself descending.  Jesus and the Archangel appear one and the same…Michael (in Da.12:1-2)!

The term archangel (archangelos g743) or Chief Messenger occurs only twice in the entire Bible, in 1Th.4:16 and Jude 9.  (The term doesn’t appear in the Greek OT LXX).

A broad angelology and demonology with ranks & functions emerged in Judaism during the time of the Babylonian and Persian periods.  Two angels of note are Raphael (‘God heals’) and Uriel (‘Flame of God’).  Tobit 12:15 “I am Raphael, one of the seven holy angels who report the prayers of the saints, and enter before the glory of the Holy One.”  2Esdras 4:1 “The angel Uriel had been sent to me.”  (The apocalyptic 2Esdras was written in the 100s AD, too late to be included in the old Greek version, written 270–132 BC.)  In the decades prior to Jesus’ human birth, near the time of the Greek translation (which became the LXX), the Jews developed the more detailed angelology with names and categories of angelic beings.  ref 1Eno.9:1 Michael, Uriel, Raphael, Gabriel.  1Eno.40:8-10 has Phanuel (‘Face of God’), not Uriel.  2Eno.22:6 (written late 1^st century AD), “Michael, the Lord’s greatest archangel”.

But to the Jewish philosopher Philo (20 BC – 50 AD), the Lord/Word/Logos is the one supreme archangel.  Philo On Dreams, Book 1:25:157 at the top of Jacob’s ladder [Ge.28:12-13] stood “The archangel, the Lord Himself; the living God stands above all things”.  In Philo, there’s no indication of plural archangels.  He didn’t subscribe to four or seven archangels, seen elsewhere in Jewish thought.

Philo Who is the Heir of Divine Things 42:205 “The Father who created the universe has given to His archangelic and most ancient Logos a pre-eminent gift. This same Word is continually a suppliant to the immortal God on behalf of the mortal race.”  That Archangel is Jesus.  In the Bible (e.g. Jn.1:1, 14), Jesus is referred to as the Logos in Greek, the Word in English (the Mémra in Aramaic Targums).

Philo On the Confusion of Tongues 28:146 “His firstborn Logos, the eldest of the angels, the great archangel of many names, for He is called the Authority, and the Name of God, and the Word.”  (Again, Jesus has well more than a dozen names/titles in scripture.)

Also, the Dead Sea Scrolls 11Q13 document has Melchisedek as the leader of God’s angels, instead of Michael.  This DSS passage refers to Melchisedek as Elohím (God).  Wikipedia: 11Q13 “11QMelch is a fragmentary manuscript among the DSS which mentions Melchisedek as leader of God’s angels in a war in heaven [cf. Re.12:7] against the angels of darkness instead of the more familiar Archangel Michael…date of composition is circa 100 BCE. (Isa. 52:7) Melchizedek is ‘Your Elohim’ who will deliver the sons of righteousness from Belial [satan].”  (see the topic “Melchisedek Order Priesthood”.)

To summarize, comparing the above passages in the light of each other, many similarities are apparent:

Jesus is the prophesied Prince of Peace, and the Prince or Commander of the (angelic) host.  Michael is the first chief head, Commander, the Prince of princes.  Michael is the great Prince.  Michael means ‘Who is like God’.  The Angel/Messenger of the Lord, often seen in the Pentateuch, is ‘like God’.

In Jsh.5:15 & Ex.3:5, there was holy ground around both the Commander of the host and the Angel/Messenger of the Lord (who is like God) theophany.

In Zec.3:1-2 & Jude 9, the Angel/Messenger of the Lord who is “the Lord” and Michael the archangel both said to satan the devil, “The Lord rebuke you”.

In Mt.24:30-31 & Re.12:7, Jesus the Son of Man & Michael are both the leader of (the ‘good’) angels.

In Jn.5:25 & 1Th.4:16, the Voice heard when the dead rise is that of both Jesus the Son of God and the Archangel.

In Da.12:1-2 & Jn.5:27-29, both Michael & the Son of God connect to the rising of the just & unjust.

The 1^st century AD thought of Philo was…There exists only one supreme Archangel who is the Word or Logos, the Name of God, the Lord Himself.  The Bible passages support the Hellenist Philo’s view.

The DSS 11QMelch document refers to Melchisedek as God, and substitutes Melchisedek as leader of God’s angels instead of Michael (Re.12:7)/Son of Man (Mt.24:30-31).

Five Protestant commentaries were quoted (near the top) who endorsed the view that Michael is Jesus.  There’s more than those five.  conversationalfaith.org Michael the Archangel is Jesus “The belief that Michael is the Son of God is shared by many influential Protestants throughout history. John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, Matthew Henry, Matthew Poole, Charles Spurgeon, John Gill, John Wesley all believed this to be true. As do the Geneva Study Bible and International Standard Bible Encyclopedia.”

Gill Exposition Da.10:13 “Michael…called in the New Testament an Archangel, the Prince of angels, the Head of all principality and power; is no other than Christ the Son of God; the first of the chief Princes; superior to angels in nature, name and office; the General of the armies in heaven.”  Jesus is God…He’s not an angelic being.  Jonathan Edwards Christ Exalted “This Michael is Christ (Da.10:21 and 12:1).”  John Wesley Notes Da.10:13, 21 “Michael here is commonly supposed to mean Christ. Michael-Christ alone is the protector of His church.”  According to Wesley, Protestants commonly believed Michael was Jesus Christ.  Charles Spurgeon Our Lord’s Transcendant Greatness “Our Lord, who is the true Michael, the only Archangel.”  Spurgeon The Angelic Life “Michael is the Lord Jesus.”

Jewish Encyclopedia: Michael “Michael is identified with Melchisedek. Michael, the high priest, is the standard-bearer of God. He announced to Sarah that she should bear a son (Gen.18:10). Michael prevented Isaac from being sacrificed by his father. It was Michael who wrestled with Jacob and afterward blessed him. Michael led the Israelites through their 40 years in the wilderness. Michael is on the right hand of God’s throne, at the right hand of God, occupying the first place near God.”

The above things attributed to Michael in the Jewish Encyclopedia are all attributed to God & Jesus in the Bible!  ref: Ge.14:18-19, He.7:1-4, 4:14 Jesus is high priest; Ge.18:1, 10 the announcement to Sarah was made by YHVH/the Lord; Ge.22:1, 10-12 the Angel of YHVH saved Isaac; Ge.32:24, 29-30 Jacob said he wrestled with God face-to-face; Ex.14:19 & 13:21 the Angel of God and YHVH in a pillar cloud led the Israelites; Ac.2:32-33 & Col.1:18 Jesus is at the right hand of God and is in first place.

Though our minds don’t fully comprehend theophanies/christophanies, the scriptural case can be made that supports the view…Michael is one of the many names/titles of Christ Jesus.  Again, one of Jesus’ names is Emmanu-el.  Micha-el is Jesus’ warrior name, as He fights & defeats the powers of darkness.

The scriptures (but not religious traditions/presuppositions) indicate that “Michael” may well be another or a symbolic or poetic name for Jesus the sole Archangel or Chief Messenger, who Father God sent.  also see the topics “Jesus Was the Old Testament God”, “Jesus Is God…Jesus Has a God”, “Heavenly Host Authorities and Powers”.

Lastly, this exposition isn’t based upon, nor did I utilize the literature of, any church or denominational teaching (such as Jehovah’s Witnesses or Seventh Day Adventist).