ANGELOLOGY

The Agency and Ministration of Holy Angels

by George Clayton Jr.

1851

"Of good angels, we learn, that they continue in their primeval dignity. They are endued with great power, and because they are employed in the constant execution of the decrees of Providence, they have received the name of messengers or angels. They are called the armies and the hosts of heaven ; in innumerable companies they surround the throne of Deity; they are made partakers of his glory and rejoice to fulfill his will.

Their office, as ministering angels to the sincere and accepted worshippers of our common God, is more fully and accurately related. Through the whole volume of revelation we read of the agency of superior beings in the affairs of mankind. They were stationed at the tree of life in paradise. In Jacob's vision of the ladder, they are represented as ascending and descending upon earth. They appeared to the patriarchs, to Abraham, to Lot, to Jacob, and they were made alike the ministers of both the vengeance and mercy of God. They were intrusted with the destruction of the cities of the plain. ' And the angel of the Lord went out and smote in the camp of Sennacherib a hundred and fourscore and five thousand.' (2 Kings xix : 35.) God sent an angel to Jerusalem to destroy it — who was seen between the earth and the heaven, having a drawn sword in his hard, stretched out over Jerusalem. In the New Testament, they announced the birth of Christ, and of his forerunner ; they became visible to the shepherds, and proclaimed the glad tidings of salvation to the senseless world. They are interested for, and sympathize with, man; for 'there is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth.' They were the watchful and anxious attendants of Christ in his human nature. They ministered to him after his triumph in the wilderness and his agony in the garden. As they announced his birth, so also they proclaimed his resurrection, his ascension, and his future return to judgment. They were made the spiritual means of communication between God and man. They were the divine witnesses of the whole scheme of Redemption. By an angel Joseph was warned to flee into Egypt. (Matt. ii. 13.) By an angel Cornelius was directed to the house of Peter. (Acts x. 3-22.) By an angel that apostle was released from prison. And by the ministry of an angel were signified to St. John those things which should be hereafter. . In his last and mysterious revelation, the agency of superior beings is uniformly asserted, and they are represented as fulfilling the most solemn decrees of omnipotence. They are represented as standing on the four comers of the earth, as having the seal of the living God, as offering on the golden altar the incense and prayers of the saints, as holding the key of the bottomless pit; and as executing the vengeance of God upon the visible creation, and upon all those who have not the seal of God upon their foreheads ; all which, though metaphorical expressions, imply the probable agency of these invisible beings in the affairs of the world. And when time shall be no more, these holy beings who have sympathized with man here, and been witnesses of his actions, and the infinite mercies of his almighty Creator and Eedeemer, will be the accusing or approving spectators of the sentence passed upon him in eternity ; for our Savior has expressly declared, that ; whosoever shall confess me before men, him shall the Son of Man also confess before the angels of God. But he that denied me before men shall be denied before the angels of God." — DR. TOWNSEND