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Angels: God
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Angels communicate messages of God to His people. Angels ... have powers to perform works for God that are beyond the ability of humans. "But during the night an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the jail and brought them out" (Acts 5:19). "There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it" (Matthew 28:2). Angels have the power to minister to God's people. "Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?"
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Angels who appear as humans are not without biblical precedent. For example, two angels came to Sodom to warn Lot before they destroyed the city (Genesis 19). They visited Lot's home, ate with him, and even spent the night! They appeared as such "real people" that Sodom's homosexuals tried to accost them and have sex with them, but the angels struck them blind. The next day, because of its blatant wickedness, God destroyed the city by fire.
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Angels are wholly devoted to the worship of God. They are regarded as messengers of God, carrying out specific duties on His command. Angels are ranked and vary in their abilities and duties. Duties may include recording every human being's actions, placing a soul in a newborn child, maintaining certain environmental conditions of the planet (such as nurturing vegetation and distributing the rain), taking the soul at the time of death and more.
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[One] leading belief, not so much interwoven with the popular theology, was that of angels' intercourse with women, producing the race of giants. The idea derived from Genesis 4:2, in the adoption of which the Christian fathers followed the opinion of ancient Jewish interpreters, Philo-Judaeus, and Josephus. A particular account of the circumstances is given in the book of Enoch, which makes the angels—Uriel, Gabriel, and Michael—the chief instruments in the subjugation of the adulterers and their formidable offspring. The classic writers have perpetuated similar beliefs of the "hero" race, all of them born either from the love of the gods for women, or of the preference shown for a goddess by some mortal man.
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In some places, it is implied that angels existed before the physical creation (Genesis 1:26; Job 38:7). The earlier Biblical writings did not speculate about them; simply regarding them, in their relations to man, as God's agents. Consequently, they did not individualize or denominate them; and in Judges 13:18 HE, and Genesis 32:29, the angels, when questioned, refuse to give their names. In Daniel... there occur the names Michael and Gabriel. Michael is Israel's representative in Heaven, where other nations—the Persians, for instance—were also represented by angelic princes. More than three hundred years before the Book of Daniel was written, Zechariah graded the angels according to their rank, but did not name them.
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Even though angels are spirits and devoid of a physical nature, believers in angels have had no problem depicting and describing them. Angels, say their advocates, are invisible but can take the form of visible things. Angels are usually depicted with wings and looking like human adults or children. The wings are undoubtedly related to their work as messengers from God, who lives in the sky. The anthropomorphizing is understandable. Depiction enhances belief.
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