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Unlike pre-modern Christians, we think and talk little about angels. We are often functional empiricists, who instinctively believe that only visible things are real. Of course, there's God up there somewhere, but we don't think we have to press through a crowd of angels every time we move; we don't think that a small angelic deployment runs ahead of us into danger; we don't think, as the poet Francis Thompson did, that we disturb an angel every time we turn a stone; we don't think, to quote Thompson again, that Jacob's ladder is pitched between heaven and Charing Cross.
But the Bible teaches that angels are real and active. The Lord Jesus appeared to His people in the Old Testament as the "Angel of Yahweh," and the Psalmist promises that God sets His angels as guardians around us, lest we dash our foot against a stone. Angels were mediators of the law, join in our worship on a heavenly Zion and are observers of our witness, ministered to Jesus after His temptation in the wilderness, and serve as God’s ministers. Man was made for a while lower than angels, but we are destined to judge angels. Yet, they are servants of God and man, constantly active in God's world.
Elisha finds himself surrounded by Arameans horse and chariotry, and his servant is afraid: A lone prophet and his sidekick against a regiment of hostile Gentiles. Elisha prays that his servant's eyes would be opened, and when they are, he sees that there are more with Elisha than with his enemies. Elisha the prophet stands at the center of the hosts of heaven, like Yahweh Himself in the center of His glory-cloud.
We are Elisha's servant. When we face dangers and troubles, we often despair and fear because we are seeing only with the eyes of the flesh. Paul says, "we walk by faith, not by sight," but we frequently do the opposite. If we want to see the fiery chariots that surround us, we need to have our sight cleansed and our sins forgiven. We come to Jesus with the prayer of Bartimaeus: "Lord, that I may receive my sight."
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, October 16, 2005 at 07:41 AM
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