Chapter One
Angels 101
P
eople have believed in angels for thousands of years. Today, at a time when the world has become more and more secular, one would expect the number of believers to have declined. Interestingly, the opposite has occurred—more people believe in angels today than ever before. A December 2011 Associated Press—Gf K poll found that 77 percent of Americans believe in angels (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ poll-nearly-8-in-10-americans-believe-in-angels/).
What Angels Are In his 1966 book The Christian Universe, eminent theologian Eric Lionel Mascall (1905–1993) wrote: “Behind and beyond the physical universe, there is a realm of purely spiritual beings” (Mascall, 110). Angels are spiritual beings of pure light who operate on a different vibrational frequency to us. They exist solely to help God carry out his will (Tobit 12:18). John of Damascus (ca. 675–ca. 749 CE) wrote, “An angel, then, is an intelligent essence, in perpetual motion, with free will, incorporeal, ministering to God, having obtained by grave an immortal nature: and the Creator alone knows the form and limitation of its essence.” The word “angel” comes from the Greek word angelos, which means “messenger.”
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