Hodged in the popular imagination writes Time Magazine, December 27, 1993. There are angels-only boutiques, angel newsletters, angel seminars, angels on Sonya Live. Harvard Divinity School has a course on angels. Boston College has two. Bookstores have had to establish angel sections. In the most celebrated play on Broadway, Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize-winning Angels in America, a divine messenger ministers to a man with AIDS.
In Publishers Weekly's religious bestseller list, five of the ten paperback books are about angels. Where does this recent trend of interest in angels originate? The answer, I'm sorry to say, is in the New Age Movement. This is the coming worldview that I described briefly last week. There's a general curiosity in our culture now about spiritual things, and it's focusing on angels, especially from a New Age perspective. A Time CNN poll recently discovered that 69% of Americans believe in angels.
46% believe in guardian angels, and more than that, 49% believe in fallen angels or demons. 32% had personally felt an angelic presence in their lives, and that may be true of some here this morning. Time tells the story of Ann Cannaday, who in 1977 had a third test for cancer, and it came back positive. Her husband, Gary, a retired Air Force officer, had lost his first wife to cancer of the same type in fact, and so they didn't know if they would have the strength to go through what was ahead.
She says, we spent the next eight weeks scared and praying, praying and scared. I kept begging God, saying, please, if I'm going to die, let me die quickly. I don't want Gary to have to face this again. Then one morning, three days before she was to enter surgery, Gary answered the door. Standing there at the door was a large man who was at least a good inch taller than his six foot, five inch frame. Ann says, he was the blackest black I've ever seen, and his eyes were a deep, deep azure blue.
He introduced himself simply as Thomas, and then said, your cancer is gone. How do you know my name, and how do you know that I have cancer, she stammered. She turned to her husband and said, Gary, what shall we do? Shall we ask him in? They did, and Thomas came inside and told them they could stop worrying, and quoted to them by Isaiah 53, 5, and with his stripes we are healed. Ann was still confused and looked at the man and said, who are you? He said, I am Thomas. I am sent by God.
Next Ann recalls with these words what happened. He held up his right hand, palm facing me, and leaned toward me, though he didn't touch me. I'm telling you, the heat coming from that hand was incredible. Suddenly I felt my legs go out from under me, and I fell to the floor. As I lay there, a strong white light, like one of those search lights, traveled through my body. It started at my feet and worked its way up.
I knew then with every part of me, my body, my mind, and my heart that something supernatural had happened. She passed out. Her husband woke her up wondering if she was still alive. By that time Thomas was gone. We went to the doctor, and the doctor through a series of tests discovered that in fact there was no sign any longer of her cancer. 32% of the people in America claim to have personally felt an angelic presence in their lives at some time.
The coming world view, the New Age world view, is heavy into angels and spirit beings. The only problem is that they're the wrong kind of beings. They're plugging into the dark side and don't realize it. So I want to say to all of us to beware of the New Age angels, which are accessed and gained through channeling, guided imagery, and visualization. They may appear for a time as angels of light, but the New Age angels are angels of darkness.
The Bible talks a lot about angels too, several hundred times in fact, and nearly one half of its books talk about angels. Hebrews chapter 1 mentions angels a number of times. We're going to look at verse 13 and verse 14. But to which of the angels has God ever said, sit at my right hand until I make thine enemies a footstool for thy feet? Are they not all ministering spirits sent out to render service for the sake of those who will inherit salvation? The writer asks.
Angels exist as a created order in the spiritual realm. I have several general statements that I want to briefly make about angels before we get into the real meat of our study this morning. I want to affirm first of all that angels are real, but they are not human. They exist in a spiritual form, which means they do not have human bodies as we do, but they can appear in human form, as perhaps was the experience of Ann Kennedy. Angels are personal.
By that I mean that they have intellect, emotion, and will. Angels were directly created by God, and they do not procreate after their kind. There are an innumerable number of angels, and yet it is a fixed number, whatever it is. They do not multiply. Angels are not eternal, but they were present at the creation of the world and sang for joy according to Job 38 verses 6 and 7. Angels do not die, and they exercise great power.
In our study this morning I want first to think about their classifications. There really are two classifications of angels, holy angels and evil angels. Holy angels are now as they were created by God, and they are God's servants. They serve Him in heaven. They serve Him on earth. They have a variety of duties, including carrying out God's judgments in the world. In Acts 12 we have the record of Herod standing before a great crowd giving an oration in his pride.
An angel of the Lord struck him, it says, because of his pride. He did not give God glory, and within a few days he died eaten up internally by worms. The book of Revelation is full of angelic creatures who carry out the judgments of God in the world. And then angels have an influence on the affairs of nations as suggested in Daniel chapter 10. It mentions there Michael, the archangel. It mentions the prince of Persia, who is a very powerful demonic creature.
It mentions a lesser angel who is bringing an answered prayer to Daniel. It describes a struggle between these angelic forces in Daniel chapter 10, which surrounded the Jewish people and the kingdom of Persia. Spiritual beings influence the affairs of nations. And we see in Revelation chapter 16 verse 8, for example, that angels can control weather and the forces of nature. With regard to believers specifically, angels in the first place provide general help and aid.
As it says in verse 14, they are ministering spirits sent out by God, of course, to render service for the sake of those who will inherit salvation. Here is the finest, the clearest verse in the scriptures that I know that underscores the idea and the existence of guardian angels for believers.
I am personally convinced that we are all who are saved, that is, we are all assigned spirit beings who guard us in this life and who may well be the same ones that carry our souls to the presence of the Lord at death, as Jesus describes in the Gospel of Luke. Angels provide protection for God's own and deliverance by the purpose of God. An example of that is Lot, who as you know was living disobediently in the city of Sodom.
Nonetheless, God sent angels to Sodom to deliver Lot, to take him by the hand and lead him out of the city before God's judgment came on that wicked place. God sends his angels to provide protection for us. And then angels bring answers to prayer. I mentioned Daniel, but think too of Acts chapter 12, where the church is praying for Peter's release from prison and God sent an angel to effect that release. Peter was free. Angels observe us.
According to 1 Corinthians 4, 9 and 1 Timothy 5, 21, we live our lives in their constant sight. And angels are occasionally sent to encourage us in danger. And in Acts 27 verses 23 and 24, Paul talks about an angel who appeared to him on an occasion to encourage him in a time of danger. That's the ministry of the holy angels. Never are people commanded to worship angels. We are not to pray to them. We're not to seek to communicate with them. Our focus is to be upon God and the Lord Jesus Christ.
But they exist. And they are around us this morning. And then there are evil angels, the second classification. These angels were created holy, but now are evil because they chose to disobey God and to follow Lucifer. On your own time, turn to Isaiah 14, Ezekiel 28, and their study regarding the king of Babylon and the king of Tyre, who were two earthly sovereigns who are addressed by God but who cannot fulfill all of the language that is used in those texts.
Nearly all sound Bible scholars understand those texts in Isaiah and Ezekiel to be describing not only earthly rulers but beyond them, the one who was manipulating them as puppets, Satan. We learned there that he was the bright one. The day star is actually what he is called in Isaiah. He apparently was created as a cherub. And it would seem the one who was given the responsibility to guard the very throne of God.
The language suggests to us that he was assigned the duty that was greater than any other duty any other angel had. That was to stand in the presence of God before his throne. He was incredibly beautiful when he was created. That may have helped lead to his sin. The sin is the sin of pride. It was pride this morning who was most like his master of those beings that were demonstrated in the drama. In Isaiah the five-fold willful statement of Satan is recorded. He wanted to counterfeit God.
He wanted to be like the Most High. The statement that he makes there is very similar to the lie by which he deceived Eve. You will be like God, he said to her. He himself could not be like God. And when that pride was found in him, he was cast out of heaven. And with him there followed many angels. They apparently had joined with him in some sort of planned rebellion against the Most High. And when their leader was cast out, they were forced to follow him out of heaven.
It is these angelic beings who are called today demons. Satan is called in Matthew 12, 24 the ruler of the demons. It is important to understand as we think about this classification of angels that they were judged at the cross. And although waging a fierce battle against God and his hosts, they are today already damned and doomed and they know that. And their end is the lake of fire that was created for the devil and his angels according to Jesus in Matthew 25, verse 41.
Their eventual destiny is the lake of fire that burns forever and forever because of their rebellion against their creator. And so we have the two classifications of angels setting up for us the warfare that we have been talking about. Now let's think for a moment about their organization. There seems to be a similar organization to both sides of this cosmic battle. Either the holy angels or the demonic angels are highly structured.
Turn with me to Ephesians chapter 1 and notice the language that is used by the apostle Paul as he describes the creatures in the spiritual realm. He is here talking about the resurrection of Jesus Christ and his exaltation to the very right hand of God in the heavenly places. Notice verse 20. Now that term is unique to Ephesians and it refers to the realm of spiritual things, the invisible realm. This one realm that we were talking about last week that our world culture denies.
It is there that Jesus Christ is seated in the place of ultimate authority. Verse 21, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and every name that is named. He is talking not only about human rule and authority and power and dominion, but he is talking about spiritual ranks and hierarchies as well.
Turn to chapter 3 verse 10 where we understand one of the reasons for which God is calling out the church in order that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the realm of spiritual things in the heavenlies, the heavenly places. Again notice the terms used. Then to chapter 6 and verse 10, verse 12 rather, where it says for our struggle, so here he is directly addressing what we are talking about, spiritual warfare.
He says for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places, that is the spiritual realm again. Now Bible teachers have put together these various terms and I want to share with you one possible organizational outline as it were for the heavenly realms. Far above all principalities and powers, whether human or spiritual, is the Lord of hosts.
In that great hymn of Luther, a mighty fortress is our God. You find that name Lord Sabaoth. It's not Lord Sabbath, it's Sabaoth, which means the Lord of hosts. It is one of the great names of God in the Bible. It refers to the fact that he is the Lord over all of the hosts, the spiritual beings that exist in creation. So he's at the very top. Even below him there seem to be two or three categories of spiritual beings that are next in rank.
There are the Seraphim, such as those seen by Isaiah flying around the throne of God crying out, holy, holy, holy. And then a different kind of spiritual being called Cherubim. Cherubs are similar to Seraphs, very powerful, and yet we see them doing different things. For example, there is a cherub who stands at the Garden of Eden to prevent Adam and Eve and their descendants from coming back in the garden.
There may be a third classification on this same level, a parallel level, called living ones, which are described to us in Revelation chapter 4, again around the throne of God. Then if we drop down another level on our organizational chart, we come to two names. On the side of good is Michael, who is given a unique title in Scripture, that of Archangel. He seems to be the very most powerful of the Lord's army. He's the captain, as it were, of the Lord's army, the Archangel Michael.
And then on the other side, the side of evil, there is Lucifer, or Satan, as we have called him. He is called the anointed Cherub, which would indicate to us that Lucifer was a Cherub, and the very highest of them before the throne of God until the time that sin was found in him and he was cast out, and now he is a dethroned Cherub. When serving under Michael and Satan, there are these levels, so it seems, of spiritual powers on the side of good and the side of evil.
Below them there are thrones, dominions, rulers or principalities, authorities, powers, world rulers or lords, and then angels and wicked spirits. These are the privates, as it were, in the two armies. These ranks or hierarchies have varying levels of power and responsibility. And it seems that there is good argument in the Scriptures for saying that they are assigned to various kinds of duties. There may be some of them that are characterized by pride, for example, or diversion, or apathy.
But there are others of them that are assigned to geographical areas. And because of what is said in Daniel 10, I think that we can safely say today that there is a prince of the United States on the side of evil. And you can imagine where he lives. It's not in St. Paul. He is closer to the root of power in our nation. And then below that prince would be others assigned to geographical areas, perhaps over Minnesota. And then another powerful creature over St. Paul.
And then another perhaps over this block that we are in, or in the realm of the churches. Perhaps the city is divided by where the enemy from their perspective is located. The point is that there seems to be good reason to believe that there are geographical or territorial kinds of spirits in their organization. Now third, I want to talk about the confrontation that is involved here. And with this we will close.
These angels on both sides in all of the ranks, all the way up to Satan and Michael, are at war. It is a continuous war. It is a war for the control of the world. It is a war that involves human beings. As I said last week, God has created human beings of the earth and of heaven. We are part physical, we are part spiritual. We are material, we are immaterial. We bridge these two realms that overlap. And we're right there in that overlapping area.
Thus the war is around us, and indeed the ones who are lost in the world of humanity are involved on that side of evil. Now it's not necessarily that they have chosen to be there. They were born to be there, as we all were in our sin, and then chose. There's a lot of deception that is involved. There's a lot of fear. Through the fear of death, Satan manipulates people. And they serve the forces of evil, many times unwittingly.
On the other hand, with the spiritual forces of God, there is the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Those who are called saints, who are called out of this part of humanity to belong to Christ. And therefore there is warfare that takes place on the human level, but the real essence of the warfare goes on on the spiritual level. And we're caught up in it. The work of evil spirits in this war can be described in a number of ways. First they promote Satan's program.
They do this by extending his influence through gaining the control of people. And then by expressing his propaganda through ideas and notions and worldviews that are contrary to Scripture. So you can understand the source of the lies that our traditional worldview in the West is. The source of the lies of the West is Satan. That's where the materialistic worldview comes from, as well as all the false materialistic, supernatural and spiritualistic worldviews that we talked about last week.
It is Satan who distributes the doctrines of demons. Not does it mean doctrines about demons, but doctrines taught by, instigated by demons in order to deceive people and to bring them under the control of Satan. The battle you see is for the mind. We have an example that I want to share with you this morning. Peggy Kershka has agreed to talk to us about her own journey spiritually.
And as you listen to her testimony, you're going to see how it began very simply with experimentation of palm reading. And then it became something much, much more serious as Satan continued to bring influence and ultimately control over the way that she was thinking. Peggy, I want to thank you for being willing to talk about your journey this morning. At the age of 10, I read my first book on how to read palms. I memorized the lines and the definitions of the hand.
At the age of 15, I knew all the zodiac signs of my family, friends and classmates. At the age of 21, I was desperately battling depression from drug and alcohol abuse. I searched for an answer to my problems. I began to see a psychic on a regular basis. She told me I was surrounded by demons and gave me a rosary. When I looked at Jesus on the cross, it meant nothing to me. I was attending the University of Wisconsin in La Crosse when I switched out of my English major and into philosophy.
I went to a seminar sponsored by the school given by a well-known witch named Starhawk. I started studying metaphysics and became involved in Buddhist philosophy and Eastern mysticism. I was going to finally connect with the interrelatedness of all things. In 1986, I went to Europe and did independent research on how Eastern philosophy was infiltrating Western society. I spent a week at a meditation center in the Black Forest.
I was the star pupil at UW La Crosse for the development of philosophy of creativity and presented a paper to the APA. For my honors thesis at graduation, I wrote and presented a paper called Philosophy of Creativity as Meta Paradigm. I was beyond needing a model for my behavior. God was impersonal and I was miserable. In a last effort to obtain some meaning, I took a class on how to be psychic. My life was so empty and I remember we would smoke pot on our way to this class.
The new age was a part of my daily life and yet I was still so dissatisfied. After my marriage to Dennis, I became pregnant. I took a class at Lakewood Community College in ethics. It was here I discovered what I had been missing in all of my studies, a right and a wrong. Strategy was vague and visualization unreliable for changing my behavior. I was so unstable. I needed something consistent, something unshakable, and something that was unchangeable.
My best friend Kelly Boleyn had been attending Grace Church for two years when she convinced me to come to Lady's Bible Study and study Genesis. I was so impressed by the intelligent and professional lectures of Jeanne Howes and the non-threatening leadership of Gwen Cressman that I committed to the study for a year. I was amazed at the consistency of comparing scripture to scripture.
I was intrigued by the lie in the Garden of Eden and how closely it related to what my previous studies had led me to believe. There were morals and values and God was reliable and faithful. By the retreat that March, I told my mother I had accepted Jesus Christ as my savior and I was baptized that spring. Jesus was the answer to all of my problems, all of my pain. God's word is full of hope, stability, and meaning and now because of him so is my life. Amen. Isn't that wonderful?
Thank you Kelly. We thank God for the ministry of the Lady's Bible Study and for others in our church who are seeking to help people like Peggy. But you know there are thousands and thousands of people, millions of people who by one way of thinking or another have been led astray by Satan and are deceived and held captive. That is the work of evil spirits. They work on our minds to get us to believe lies.
Satan and his spirits also oppose God's program through rebellion, slander, idolatry, and false religion. They oppress mankind, distracting from God's truth, destroying body and mind, degrading man's nature, and doing everything possible to erase the image of God in humanity.
They oppose believers of course by accusing and slandering, by attacking commitment and confidence, by tempting to sin, by inciting persecution against the church, by preventing service on the part of God's people, by infiltrating the church, and by promoting division among the people of God. Those are the tactics of the side of evil. The side of God, the side of righteousness is involved in pressing righteousness and truth against the side of lies and wickedness.
You may say, well which side is going to win? Well the answer of course is that God's side has already had victory declared. The war presses on but victory has been declared because of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. I want to show that to you in Colossians chapter 2.
However much you may fear or if perhaps you are here today and in your mind there is a voice saying this is lies, this is lies, but there is someone telling you that Christ has been defeated, listen to the word of the living God.
I'll begin in Colossians 2 verse 13, and when you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Christ, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us which was hostile to us. And He's taken it out of the way having nailed it to His cross.
After talking about the cross He goes on to say, when He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, remember those are names for spiritual forces, here obviously on the evil side. When Christ had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him. The cross of Jesus Christ is God's triumph. The spirits of evil thought that they had won the victory on that day that Jesus was crucified.
They knew something was wrong when He said it is finished. And three days later they knew something was wrong when He was raised from the dead and their kingdom was broken. And in some sense in the spiritual realm they were disarmed and they were led in a triumph march showing that they had been defeated and were put to an open shame because of it. There are a few verses in the Bible that they hate more than this verse that clearly states the fact that they were defeated at Calvary.
While you say so much for that there is still war today. What about today? Look in chapter 2 of Colossians again and verse 9 where it says, For in Him, in Christ, all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form. What that says is that in Jesus Christ there dwells all of the attributes of God. The fullness of all that God is can be found in Him in a bodily form. Then it says in verse 10, And in Him you have been made full.
That doesn't mean that we have become deity but it means that we have been given everything that we need. Jesus Christ is the fullness of deity in the flesh. We are identified with Him by our salvation. The result of that is that we have been given everything that we need in this world to be victors. We are complete in Him. Notice how it ends. He is the head over all rule and authority. What that means is that in Jesus Christ you too are a victor over all the spiritual forces of evil.
They do not want you to know that. They do not want you to believe that. They do not want you to act upon that. But hear the truth of God this day. You are complete in Jesus Christ and He is the head over all of these spiritual forces. And Jesus Christ gives to you all that you need to be a victor in this world. Our prayers play a strategic role in pressing the victory against the kingdom of darkness.
Folks, our need today is to realize the war, to understand the truth about Christ's victory and our victory in Him. And then to press that victory over the powers of darkness. Why is this? Why is this our need? It is because the angelic war concerns us human beings.
The words of Donald Gray Barnhouse in his book The Invisible War, if we revert, he says, to the military illustration, it would appear that angels of every rank in both camps are constantly at war with each other in the invisible realm. And that since there is no question of putting one of these spirit beings to death, the victory or the defeat is gained by the application of power and the withdrawal of the inferior force.
The importance of all this to believers in our day is that it can be demonstrated from the word of God that the warfare in the invisible realm principally concerns individuals in the human realm. We who live in the human realm are involved in spiritual warfare. And we who are in Jesus Christ have been delivered from the powers of darkness and that whole organizational kingdom. We are now a part of God's kingdom, the kingdom of light. We are victors in Jesus Christ.
We are complete in him and our prayers and our activity and our use of the word of God presses the victory against the kingdom of darkness and they must withdraw as the inferior defeated force. That's where we're going to pick it up next week as we talk about how we do exactly that. So let's recognize the warfare that's going on around us all the time even while we're preaching here in this auditorium. There's warfare in this auditorium.
But the victory is Christ's and it is ours through Jesus Christ. The battle is God's. It's not ours. We are not left to our own strength and wisdom. The battle is the Lord's and we're going to sing about that in 485. I invite you to turn and sing with me this great song of confidence and victory. And let all who name the name of Jesus Christ in truth and let every spirit stand with us to acknowledge Jesus Christ as the victor as we sing 485.
In heavenly armor we'll enter the land The battle belongs to the Lord No weapon that's fashioned against us will stand The battle belongs to the Lord We sing glory, honor, power and strength to the Lord We sing glory, honor, power and strength to the Lord When power of darkness comes in like a flood The battle belongs to the Lord He's raised up a standard, the power of His blood The battle belongs to the Lord We sing glory, honor, power and strength to the Lord Now let us pray.
And now our Lord Jesus, the Christ, our King, we worship you. We ask for the fullness of the Holy Spirit upon us as we go out into the world. We pray that you will equip us and enable us that we might press the victory against darkness in our own lives as well as darkness in the world around us for the glory and the honor of your great and worthy name. Amen. God bless you.