Angelic Conflict part 89: Angelology 102; Basic facts – Rev 5:8; 6:1-8; 8:3-4; 15:5-7; 12:4,9; Psa 103:21; Joh 8:44.
length: 62:01 - taught on May, 31 2013
Class Outline:
Title: Angelic Conflict part 89: Angelology 102; Basic facts - REV 5:8; 6:1-8; 8:3-4; 15:5-7; 12:4,9; PSA 103:21; JOH 8:44.
The living creatures: The living creatures is a title which represents these angels as manifesting the fullness of divine life, unceasing activity, and abiding participation in the worship of God.
Activities of the living creatures.
They worship and glorify God, REV 4:8.
They thank and praise God for His creative work and for His redemptive work, REV 4:9; 5:8-10.
They gather (and perhaps pouring out as incense) all the prayers of believers upon the golden altar, REV 5:8; 8:3-4.
REV 5:8 And when He had taken the book, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, having each one a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.
REV 8:3 And another angel [unclear what manner of angel this is] came and stood at the altar, holding a golden censer; and much incense was given to him, that he might add it to the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne.
REV 8:4 And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, went up before God out of the angel's hand.
They announce the first four tribulational seal judgments, REV 6:1-8.
REV 6:1 And I saw when the Lamb broke one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures [lion] saying as with a voice of thunder, "Come."
REV 6:2 And I looked, and behold, a white horse, and he who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him; and he went out conquering, and to conquer.
The first rider is likely the antichrist who conquers and establishes a time of peace.
REV 6:3 And when He broke the second seal, I heard the second living creature [ox] saying, "Come."
REV 6:4 And another, a red horse, went out; and to him who sat on it, it was granted to take peace from the earth, and that men should slay one another; and a great sword was given to him.
Military warfare breaks out and peace is taken from the world. The hope of permanent peace by means of the UN and other human efforts is doomed to failure.
REV 6:5 And when He broke the third seal, I heard the third living creature [man] saying, "Come." And I looked, and behold, a black horse; and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand.
REV 6:6 And I heard as it were a voice in the center of the four living creatures saying, "A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; and do not harm the oil and the wine."
A denarius is a days wage and one quart of wheat is one meal and the cheaper barley will give three meals with nothing left over. This is like you making your days wage and being able to afford only one loaf of bread or three loaves of cheap bread. Therefore this is famine which always follows large wars.
REV 6:7 And when He broke the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature [eagle] saying, "Come."
REV 6:8 And I looked, and behold, an ashen horse; and he who sat on it had the name Death; and Hades was following with him. And authority was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by the wild beasts of the earth.
This is an awesome judgment and results in the greatest massacre to this point in history. If this happened today 1.75 billion people would be massacred (the entire population of North America, South America, and Europe combined.)
They distribute to seven angels the seven bowls of wrath, REV 15:7.
REV 15:5 After these things I looked, and the temple of the tabernacle of testimony in heaven was opened,
REV 15:6 and the seven angels who had the seven plagues came out of the temple, clothed in linen, clean and bright, and girded around their breasts with golden girdles.
REV 15:7 And one of the four living creatures gave to the seven angels seven golden bowls full of the wrath of God, who lives forever and ever.
That completes our study of named angels and we will include satan and the fallen angels in our study of man’s history and future in the Angelic Conflict.
The force of this conflict reaches a climax in three major instances: (a) the fall of the angels, (b) the fall of man, and (c) the sin-bearing death of Christ.
Of these, the first and second are closely related, as are the second and third; but the relation between the first and third is remote without reference in the Scripture.
For assuredly He does not give help to angels, but He gives help to the descendant of Abraham.
Evil began with the lapse of an angel. That lapse was followed by a multitude of other angels (REV 12:4, 9).
REV 12:4 And his tail swept away a third of the stars of heaven, and threw them to the earth.
REV 12:9 And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.
The same lapse was enacted by the first man and transmitted to his race in the form of a depraved nature, GEN 5:3.
When Adam had lived one hundred and thirty years, he became the father of a son in his own likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth.
Our federal head, Adam, was tempted by the angel who first sinned in heaven. The multitude of angels who would fall were also influenced by the same original sinner.
We can all identify with outward temptation.
What is difficult and has never been understood is the reason why an unfallen, untempted from without, highly enlightened angel, who stood in the presence of God’s light, should have chosen darkness.
How does evil ever emanate from that which is only good?
The metaphysical aspect of the origin of evil is a problem which theologians have never solved, and, regarding it, only certain consequential features may be observed by the finite mind.
There are a great many differences between angels and men and are as significant as the similarities.
Angels fell in a different way than man.
Man by physical birth inherits the corrupted nature which the federal head acquired through the first human sin. Each fallen angel chose sin from a state of perfection.
Also, the fall of man opened the way for the grace of God to be displayed in redemption, EPH 1:7, no such redemption is seen for angelic sin.
In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished upon us.
To say that God could have prevented the fall of either race is to rob both races of self-determination, which they clearly possess.
It is incumbent on the creature both to will and to do that which pertains to God’s holiness, and it would seem, as with man that the angels had a probationary period in which to do just that.
DEU 27:10 You shall therefore obey the Lord your God, and do His commandments and His statutes which I command you today."
DEU 28:15 "But it shall come about, if you will not obey the Lord your God, to observe to do all His commandments and His statutes with which I charge you today, that all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you.
This is the Mosaic Law, which we are not under, but it still shows the principle that God’s creatures were created to do His will and not do against His will.
In the NT you obey the gospel and then the commands:
dealing out retribution to those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.
We had our time in the Garden of Eden as did they for some unspecified number of years. There were two of us and trillions of them. With the fall of Adam we inherited sin, but with the fall of Lucifer the angels each individually chose sin or holiness. With the information we’re given that’s all we can tell.
The great difference between man and Lucifer is that with man evil had already entered the universe and the very garden where he lived in order to tempt him.
Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, "Indeed, has God said, 'You shall not eat from any tree of the garden'?"
Also, for mankind a forbidden fruit was placed in the garden and we don’t see any such thing existing before the fall of Lucifer.
The unfallen angels, or holy angels, have always beheld and enjoyed the presence of God, while earthly man has never beheld God or experienced a moment of untarnished holiness.
When the morning stars sang together,
And all the sons of God shouted for joy?
Angels were definitely influenced in the direction of holiness with what seems to be an unlimited capacity for knowledge of God’s holiness.
This existence of constant communion with God which is accorded the holy angels and was originally extended to all angels, is measureless in its potentiality.
The one law of angelic existence was the will of their Creator.
Bless the Lord, all you His hosts,
You who serve Him, doing His will.
That law answered every need of angelic experience and happiness. It determined every detail of their relation to God and to each other.
To depart from God’s will was to assume a false attitude toward all things and to change love into hate.
He [satan] was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature; for he is a liar, and the father of lies.
It only makes sense that the first sin would be self-assertion against God, for what other potentials were there since there were not yet any outside forces of temptation. Murder, lies, etc. would all have followed the great sin of self-assertion.
They [satan first followed by those who mutinied with him] must have held their admiration of their own greatness and honor from which the memory of their subordination to God and their dependency upon Him was drowned in their own conceit.
Conceit and its results are alluded to in the sense of a warning in the Bible.
and not a new convert [for ordination], lest he become conceited and fall into the condemnation incurred by the devil.
"Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty;
You corrupted your wisdom by reason of your splendor.
On the contrary we are commanded, the fallen, naturally born conceited beings are commanded to not be conceited and to be what is completely against our old nature.
PHI 2:3 Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind let each of you regard one another as more important than himself;
PHI 2:4 do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.
PHI 2:5 Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus,
PHI 2:6 who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped,
PHI 2:7 but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.
So we see the nature of the first sin but it will always remain a mystery as to how this principle of evil could find welcome in such an exalted and perfect being. People have used this mystery as an excuse to deny the existence of a benevolent God and His Savior.
To go on with God as infinite wisdom was angelic sanity, to say the least.
To depart from the course of God’s infinite wisdom and security was angelic insanity, but not the type that gains an acquittal, but the insanity which is responsible.
The presence of sin in God’s universe is lawlessness and void of reason. Since it is void of reason it can never be reasoned out.
It is possible to understand our own sin and unreasonable behavior since we are accustomed to it and have been born in it, but the irrationality of a perfectly rational creature goes beyond reason.
The creature, whether angel or human, is created to be God-centered. To become self-centered is a contradiction of the basic law of creature existence.
Keep me as the apple of the eye;
Hide me in the shadow of Thy wings,
The falsification of God’s moral order reaches its completeness when self-centeredness is complete.
Arrogance, pride, and self-centeredness are a violation of the original design of finite beings who were created to be dependent on their Creator.
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