(Ver 1.1)  This is now Part 6 of a series of studies about the spiritual reality of angels found in the Bible.   We have covered a lot of information that is not all going to be repeated, so if you have not read these lessons from the beginning, I would recommend that you go back and start with “Part 1”.  I was planning on talking about the negative side of angels today, but God seemed to say that I wasn’t done teaching on the last subject about angels being servants of God.  You see I seemed to imply some things that could be taken wrong in my last lesson.  I seemed to say that you could tell an angel something to do and they would have to do it.  But, that is not the entire truth; usually you find that the truth is always more complicated than your first impressions.   In the last lesson I showed you where God said in Hebrews that angels are ministering spirits sent “for” those who are heirs of salvation.  The meaning of the word “ministering” meant a servant.  We have seen several times where angels were sent from God because of the words of men and women on the earth.  So obviously angels are not our personal servants, they are actually the servants of God who do things for us when we speak right words.  How do you know you are speaking right words?  That is why we need to learn more today.  I always like to think that you learn what God says in the Bible and speak what God says in order to be on the safe side.  You are much more likely to think and say the right things when you do this.  Do you recall what God said to Joshua?  God gave Joshua a formula for success.  I have heard many people try to preach against taking formulas from the Bible, but yet you must be spiritually blind to think that God would tell one person the way to be successful and this rule not to apply to everyone else also.  Read the words of Jehovah God and see what they say:

Jos 1:7  Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law, which Moses my servant commanded thee: turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest.

To be strong and courageous is the opposite of being fearful and weak.  God is revealing a faith principle to Joshua without calling it faith.  God tells Joshua that by doing the Law of Moses and not deviating from it, he would be prosperous in whatever he did.  To turn to the right or to the left means to depart from going straight down the path that God has instructed you to go in.  This gets more Christians into trouble more than many other things.  To depart from God’s Words is sin.  However, God does not put any restrictions on how you can prosper unless you try to prosper by violating God’s law.  In other words you cannot lie, cheat or steal and think that God and the angels will cause you to be a success in life.  You see God always gets back to the basics.  The basics are always found in God’s Word.  If you can follow God’s spiritual laws you will succeed in the natural realm.  Apparently this is what Abraham did in our last lesson without having the Law of Moses to follow.  Because Abraham did the right thing before the eyes of God by finding a wife for his son among his own people God was able to send an angel to help make it happen.   So how do we insure that we do God’s Word?  God gives us some more clues in the very next verse in Joshua:

Jos 1:8  This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.

Did you see what this verse says?  It says the Book of the Law will not depart from your mouth.  Where is the key to your success?  It is in your mouth according to God.  By reading, learning, memorizing and speaking God’s words constantly, God said you will make your way prosperous and always have good success here on the earth.  The term “meditate” means to murmur or mutter under your breath; to keep it in your mind by speaking it with your mouth.  It is very difficult to teach any subject in the Bible and not get back to the reality of the importance of your words that you speak.  So was the servant of Abraham successful and prosperous in his attempt to find a wife for Isaac?  He obviously was, so Abraham followed God’s law of success given to Joshua in order to make this happen.  Do you see and understand the connection that I just made and why this applies to a lesson on angels?  Do you also remember the verse that I gave you in Psalms?

Psa 103:20  Bless the LORD, ye his angels, that excel in strength, that do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word.

Does this verse make any more sense to you now?  You see this verse does not say that angels only obey words.  It says angels hearken unto His Words.  But it does not say that God has to speak them?  It says “the voice” of His Word and that is totally different than the “voice of God”.  What if you begin to say what God says about you, are you now the voice of His word?  I believe that you become the “voice” of His word when you say what He says.  If you say what God says, I believe that allows angels to do what God said to do for you.  So what is the key to success in life?  It starts with first learning what God said and then saying and doing that whole heartedly in faith.   Remember God said to be strong and courageous and not weak and fearful.  There are just many factors in life that we need to learn about in studying this subject.  If Abraham was fearful that his servant would not find the wife for his son, guess what there would have been no wife found.  So you have a major part to play in being successful in life and you just cannot speak a command to the angels to do something that God has not already told them to do.

Here is another aspect about angels that I have already alluded to that you should learn.  While angels have been sent to the earth to minister for those who are heirs of salvation, they are not our direct servants.  As we have seen they work for God and only do what He says for them to do.  However, if we say what God has said then we have the ability to give voice to God’s commands and they will normally hearken to our words.  Here is another key factor to consider in this discussion on angels being servants.  Jesus in speaking to his disciples said the following:

Mat 10:24  The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord.

Jesus was calling his followers both disciples and servants.  Meaning Jesus was the Master and Lord that this verse is referring to.  Paul in Romans 1:1 says “Paul a servant of Jesus Christ”.  If Christians are servants of God also, what does that make our relationship to the angels of God?  We are about to learn another key factor to angels:

Rev 22:8  And I John saw these things, and heard them. And when I had heard and seen, I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel which shewed me these things.

John in writing the book of Revelation says that an angel came to him and he fell down to worship him.  However, the angel stops John from doing this and says the following statement to him:

Rev 22:9  Then saith he unto me, See thou do it not: for I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them which keep the sayings of this book: worship God.

The angel of God says very clearly not to worship him, for he is a “fellowservant”.   In other words the angel says we both have the same Master and Lord.  The word translated as “fellowservant” means co-slave.  It can also mean “ministrant of the same master”.  You can clearly see that the correct order of things is that God is always the highest one over all others.  What we discover from this information is that we are all working for the same cause and good.  Angels can certainly do things that we cannot do and in many ways they have an advantage over us.  However, once you see that it is God’s purpose that we are working for, then we realize that both angels and Christians have a common enemy with God.  God’s enemies are now our enemies and we are working and fighting against these spiritual beings.  We who are Christians are also working to get more people into the kingdom of God, but that is not an angelic assignment to preach the gospel.  Preaching the Gospel is a human assignment from God.   So our roles are different because we are dominated by different realms of reality.  Humans are resident in a natural realm and angels primarily stay in the spiritual realm.  I have seen where men can cross into the spiritual realm in the form of a vision and see things that they normally do not see.  We of course in our studies have seen where angels can cross into the natural realm and do things for those who are heirs of salvation.  So the lines between these two realms can be blurred to some degree, but yet we still have specific primary responsibilities that have been placed upon us by God.  These roles will further blur in the future.  After the church is taken up to heaven, then who preaches in the earth?  Apparently according to Revelation, the angels will be allowed to preach to men on the earth:

Rev 14:6  And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people,

So today there are no angels preaching in the world that I know of.  But, later I believe you can see that this verse says that will change.

Today I’m going to end this lesson from a story that I learned from a preacher that I consider one the greatest men of God in the past century.  This man said that God told him to stop praying for money and to command his angel to bring in his finances.  God gave him the verse in Hebrews that we looked at about angels being a minister and other verses that said the laborer was worthy of his pay (1 Tim 5:18).  He was struggling financially before this revelation from God and he read a verse in the Bible that said I “If you be willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land”.  He realized that he was not eating the good of the land so there must be a problem.  So this man was a full time minister of God and traveled to church to church speaking and teaching the Word of God.  He used to totally depend upon the pastor of the church to treat him fairly and pay him according to the offerings that were supposed to be given to him.  Sometime this worked and sometimes men were not as good of Christians as they appeared on the surface and withheld from him.  So this minister when he would go to a church would determine how much money he needed to meets his bills for the week and then place a demand on the angels of God to go and cause the money to come.  He would not pray to God and ask for any amounts of money, he would not tell the pastors of the church that he expected any amounts of money specifically; he would just say to his angel to go and work for him and they did it every time.  God was teaching this man a principle that is found in the Bible and it works regardless of your profession.  If you can find the same Bible verses and believe them, the angels will hearken to your voice also.  Just as Rebecca was influenced by an angel to come and minister to the servant of Abraham and all of his camels, the angels of the Lord can cause people to give to you also.  Angels will of course never make anyone do anything that they do not want to do already.  God will always use people to be a blessing to others who want to be a blessing.  In return God can bless them further.  You may recall in Genesis that God told Abraham that I will bless you so that you can be a blessing to others (Gen 12:2).  This is also not a license to steal or even a get rich overnight scheme.  You can take any truth found in the Bible to the extreme and make it a lie.  There are also many other truths in the Bible that apply; your heart condition, your attitude, your willingness, your obedience to God and His Word and I could go on and on.  This is the problem with many Christians, that they hear one good thing and jump on it like that is all there is.  God is not a lottery and we are not pulling a Heavenly Vegas slot machine trying to hit it big.  Keep balanced at all times and stay in the Word of God and allow God to teach you what else you need to know.

So here is the next part that you need to know.  This will not work if you only try it!  This preacher knew God’s word and believed God’s words and then he did them and spoke to the angel.  You better get the scriptures in your spirit so that they are resident and firmly set within you before you begin to say them and expect them to happen.   That was a very basic lesson in faith and believing God’s Word.  There are many who do not understand it in the world but yet there are also many others who do this every day.   I am not here to convince you of anything that you do not want to believe in.  If you read the Bible and see things differently than I do, that is fine with me.   Just do not criticize me like you are God and know everything.   How you believe in angels will not affect your salvation, but it might affect your finances.  If you have a story about how an angel has helped you, I would very happy to hear about it.  Later in these lessons I will try to give you some examples from my personal life of how I believe that angels have helped me in life.  I thank you for taking the time to study the Bible with me and pray that it was a blessing to your walk with God.

If you would like to continue to the next lesson you may select “Part 7“.