Guardian angels: A correction
Monday, 05 January, 2004
At NTE I asked Mike Raiter my question about angels (though really I should have specified guardian angels). It went something like this:
Me: I've just got a little question.
Mike: Well, then I'll just give you a little answer.
Me: In Acts 12 when Peter is released from prison by an angel, when he comes to the house of Mary, the mother of Mark, and the servant girl sees him and runs away to tell the others, they say to her, “It is his angel!” What does that mean?
(Slight pause in which everyone else in the concert hall starts murmuring to the person next to them.)
Mike: Hands up all those who think that that is not a “little question”.
(Hands go up all over the concert hall. I start feeling a bit embarassed but figure this is probably a ploy by Mike to gain more thinking time.)
Mike: The Jews at the time thought that everyone had an angel who looked exactly like them.
Me: But that's not true, is it?
Mike: As far as I have read, it's not true.
So, while I still think that angels help human beings, I am not sure that everyone has a guardian angel.
Blinks:
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What about Psalm 91:11?
But that’s not referring specifically to guardian angels (the idea that every person has a particular angel that looks after them). Angels might look after us but perhaps they do it corporately as a team (and take it turns—shift work??)
And isn’t Psalm 91 referring to Jesus anyway?
Certainly this psalm refers to Jesus (actually, most of them do!), but I don’t think there’s anything definitively restrictive in its application.
I’ve always read it as “angels concerning you”, now I realise that it could also be that it is just the command that concerns you.
But it seems that all Mr Raiter said was that the particular Jewish mythology of having a look-alike angel was not scriptural. He doesn’t seem to refute the idea of having individual angels. (Or maybe he did later?)
The references in your previous post do seem to imply (to me, anyway) that there are angels concerned with our welfare.
Maybe it’s another one of those things that we aren’t told definitively because it doesn’t really matter to our salvation. Angels shouldn’t preoccupy us, and they don’t seem to figure in any orthodox creeds. We’re supposed to trust God with our welfare and needs. Maybe this is just one of his means, or how he chooses to act in some circumstances. (But it would be cool to know! ~ insatiable selfish human need to know there…)
Ha ha, shift work. Hope they get penalty rates.
I’m sure they do for looking after you, Deb! ;P
I didn’t ask Mike about individual guardian angels. Perhaps I should have done that. I guess, though, if we did have them, it would be quite obvious from the Bible but I don’t get that impression when I read about them in the Bible. They seem to go about doing things for God or in aid of us: the angel with the flaming sword guarding the tree of life; the angel who was supposed to come and talk to Daniel only he got barred for several days; the scary angel who applied a coal to Isaiah’s lips to make them clean; the angel who rolled away the stone and sat on top of it, scaring the Roman guard; the angel who acted as John’s tour guide in Revelation (like Ezekiel’s tour guide) ... they don’t seem to be attached to particular individuals, that’s all.
I’ve got my guardian angels working overtime…
Maybe there are different kinds of angels?? As in, some around God’s throne, others announcing things, some protecting individuals, others providing the voiceover for apocalypses. Or maybe angels are multi-skilled.
How do you determine if its true or not.
If its in the Bible then its true? Or if Jesus said it then its true? where do you draw the line for finding the truth?