Angels Are Not Just For Kids

In Jesus Holy Name September 29, 2013

Text: Daniel 6:16a, 19-22a

St. Michael and All Angels Redeemer

“Angels Are Not Just For Kids”

The date was September 25, 1995. The wife and mother of two was suffering from kidney failure for the past two years. She had been going to dialysis several times a week for just over a year. Her health was failing. She was in bed most of the time. Energy was failing. Friends had dropped by for a visit when the traveling nurse arrived to take her vitals during the regularly scheduled home visits.

While the friends were sitting near the bed and the nurse was taking her temperature, the 86 year old woman stopped everyone and said: “Look, there is an angel walking towards us…. Do you see him?” The nurse and visitors looked but saw nothing. Everyone was stunned. They knew she was not hallucinating because she had not been on any drugs.

The next morning, September 26, 1995, while preparing to leave the farm house for another dialysis treatment my mother, Irene, died. She was carried home to heaven.

James Steward in the film “It’s a Wonderful Life” had a guardian angel. Michael Landon came to earth to give heavenly advice in the show “Highway to Heaven”. George Washington is said to have seen an angel at Valley Forge.

The bible tells us that millions of angels are at God’s command and at our service. When Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane we are told that an angel came and strengthen him. Jesus himself told the disciples….”Do you not think that I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? Put away your swords.” (Matthew 26:53) The hosts of Heaven stand at attention ready to do God’s will at any moment of any hour of any day.

His angels are on call at all times. They don’t take vacation days. They don’t take sick days. They don’t take off for holidays. They never age and they are always ready and available to carry out God’s plans!

The angels of God are here to help us and they are prepared for any emergency, and Satan has no firepower that can match the heavy artillery of God!

In Genesis they guard the Garden of Eden with flashing swords. In Ezekiel they overpower the prophet with visions of multi-winged creatures who guard the Throne of God. Angels visited the home of Lot and took him and his family by the hand and lead them out of Sodom and Gomorrah. Angels closed the mouth of lions and protected Daniel. The angel Gabriel told Mary she would be the mother of the long expected Messiah. An angel warned Joseph in a dream to not divorce Mary and later warned him to leave Bethlehem.

Angels brought God’s message of hope to the childless Abraham and Sarah & Zechariah and Elizabeth. During the time of Moses an Angel of death was sent to all the homes in Egypt but passed over the homes of the Israelites who had blood on their door frames.

An Angel rolled the stone away from the tomb of Jesus and announced the “good news” that “I know you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here. He has risen from the dead. Come and see the place where he had been laid.” (Matthew)

Angels, angels, angels they are not just stories for kids. And believe me….children and adults do not, do not become angels when we die, despite the rhetoric at some funerals.

The Bible teaches us that God created angels. At one time no angels existed; there was nothing but the Holy Trinity, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Apostle Paul writes in Colossians 1:16 “For by him were all things created, things that are in Heaven, and that are in earth, both visible and invisible.”

Angels are indeed among the invisible things made by God, for “all things were created by Him, and for Him.”

With 273 verses in scripture dealing with angels, you have to wonder why most preachers don’t deal with the subject anymore. Angels aren’t soft, cloud-clothed babies floating around. They are God’s secret agents, and messengers, and also Warriors!

Our modern culture has reduced the mighty angels who wield God’s sword of Justice, who are messengers of God, to fearless doll shaped cherubs, made for those who to easily choke on God and His rules. Only in the New Age of Crystals could a culture invent an angel so mellow and sweet that he can be ignored.

One only need remember the poor village girl whose life was forever changed by the message of Gabriel.

Billy Graham in his book: Angels, Angels, Angels tells many stories of how God intervened in the lives of his people, even in the lives of his wife’s parents when they were missionaries in China. An Angel is a “messenger” of God. They do not have flesh and bones. They are spirits created by God and can become visible in human form if God deems it necessary. They do not possess a human soul.