The Lord has a variety of angels that perform a variety of jobs for Him. In Revelation 1:4,16,20; 2:1,8,12,18; 3:1,7,14 we find that some of them have been assigned to oversee the operations of His church. Some travel throughout the earth to check on what is going on and to report back to Him (Rev. 5:6; Zech. 4:10; I Chron. 16:9) while others look after God’s true saints (Ps. 91:11; Acts 12:15; Mat. 18:10). At times these angels have appeared to His saints in the form of men. Among them was Abraham, Lot, Daniel, Hagar, Moses, Manoah, Gideon, Elijah.  Twelve of God’s angels will be assigned as gatekeepers in New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:12). The Bible mentions three angels of higher rank: Lucifer (Isa. 14:12); Gabriel (Dan. 8:16, 9:21; Lk. 1:19,26) and Michael (Dan. 10:13). We are told that Michael ministers to the 12 Tribes of Israel (Dan. 12:1; 10:2-13,21) and to God’s true church today (Rev. 12:7), which are primarily the same people. See White Fields.

That there was no sin in the angels at the time of their creation is born out in the creation sequence when God said that everything He had created was “very good.” God creates perfectly and to perfection. However, the angels and humans He creates have character options–they can choose whom they will obey. Again, ANGELS AND MEN OBEY EITHER GOD OR SATAN AT ALL TIMES.

Man was not the first of God’s creations to inhabit earth. In 2 Peter 2:4-6 we are told about “angels that sinned.” Then we are told about the world before The Flood beginning with Adam and proceeding on through the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Sin, as we are told in 1 John 3:4, is the transgression of the Law. Angels sinned, therefore they had to have broken God’s Law. Being like human beings–free moral agents–they had the option of either obeying God or Satan. Scriptures reveal that as many as one third of them chose to obey Satan. ALL SIN IS OBEDIENCE TO SATAN WHO HAS CONVINCED MANKIND THAT THE LAW IS DEAD.

At this point I want to make an important point. As we will see, angels inhabited the entire earth prior to man’s appearance. Those angels sinned all over the earth. GLOBAL SIN BRINGS ABOUT GLOBAL DESTRUCTION. Therefore, because there is global sin today, and God being no respecter of persons, there must also come the destruction of the earth. In The Great Flood destruction, only one man was found to be righteous–Noah. His family survived so as to repopulate the earth. Think about it. Of the hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people on earth at that time, only one man was found to be walking with God (Gen. 6:8-13). When God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities of the plain, only one man–Lot–was found to be walking with Him. Next: Lucifer’s place among the earthly angels. L.J.