Angel Study by Susan L.

  I sat down for several hours yesterday combing the scriptures in a serious quest to learn more of angels and prayer. My reference Bible is a large King James tome and represents a lifetime of work with its incredibly detailed notes and footnotes. There were several hundred entries listed in my accompanying Strong's concordance for those two words so I decided to simply look up those highlighted as coming from Jesus' mouth. I also used a plain, old, but ancient dictionary picked up years ago at a yard sale. There's something satisfying about turning pages in a book.
  Here's what I discovered:
  Angels belong to God. They are pure. They have emotions. They can be dressed in white. There are legions of them in Heaven where they reside. They always look to God and can see His face. They are holy. They are not the same as the heavenly host.
  There's more but at one point I broke out in laughter that must've lasted a good ten minutes or so. For some reason, I always imagined Mr. Dake, the one who created the reference Bible, as a solemn, slightly balding, pudgy, dedicated scholar working in a dark, dusty room for decades. Then I read one of his footnotes. Scriptures say angels can move between heaven and earth. The foot note read, "they don't need flying saucers to do this". It made me see Mr. Dake in a whole new light and reminded me that God also has a sense of humour!
  Angels are given by God to Jesus and are obedient to His commands. They ministered to Him in His time of tribulation in the desert. They will accompany Him in His return to the throne of glory. When He returns, we will be able to see them moving between Heaven and earth as they gather the elect to Him.
  On earth, angels serve as messengers, comforters, protectors. They are reapers and gatherers. God assigns them to people to watch over us. They can communicate with us although I am sure the sight of one would set me trembling. They have physical strength and are witnesses to the confessions of man but are not all knowing.
  They will be the ones who carry our departed souls where they go. (Gulp.) They will be the ones who feed the furnace of fire with those gathered, those lost souls who never find Jesus in their lifetime. (We must spread the word!) The devil, too, has his angels, the fallen ones who can never know the redemptive work of Christ on the Cross but will be condemned for all eternity to those same fires.
  Whew. Thank You Lord that I have the resources at my fingertips.
  "And He shall send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other." Mat 24:31