Could anything be more mysterious than the question of the unseen spirit world? Angelic beings have always been a mystery to people on the earth. Do angels actually exist? Is there, in fact, a Satan the devil? Is Satan a literal, immortal being? Did God create a devil?
Some religions worship gods they believe to be evil spirits. Some of the great cathedrals of the Christian religion are embellished on their exterior with gargoyles, ugly and grotesque carved faces, which are supposed to frighten evil spirits away.
All the evils and troubles in the world are caused by minds clashing with minds. But what is the real cause of clashing of minds? Is there any connection between contentious attitudes and the unseen spirit world? It is a mystery to almost everybody, but the Bible reveals a very real but invisible world—another dimension, as some choose to call it—existing along with our own, absolutely indiscernible to our five senses. It is the spirit world.
In the first chapter of Hebrews, we read of angels serving as God’s secret messengers, sent forth to minister to those God has called to salvation and eternal life.
In Ephesians 6 it is stated that our contentions and strivings are in fact not with other human people, but against “principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness [evil spirits] in high places.” (picture right)
How can this be? Why is the world filled with such clashings and contentions between human minds?
In Ephesians 2:2, humans have been walking “according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air [Satan], the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.” People simply do not realize that there is an invisible spirit power injecting into their minds these hostile attitudes.
Even to professing Christians, these scriptures have been a mystery. Why?
This invisible spirit world (Col. 1:15-16) is very real but because it is invisible it has been a mystery. The fact that holy angels and evil spirits are invisible does not negate their existence. In truth the invisible spirit world is more real than the material and the visible. In fact, most people do not know what electricity is but are well aware of its reality. The Bible explains: “If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: in whom the god of this world [Satan] hath blinded the minds of them which believe not” (II Cor. 4:3-4). Satan is the god of this world.
The time of UNDERSTANDING has come.
The Supreme Invisible Power
It is clear that God from eternity has been a family, originally composed of two members, God and the Word who almost 2,000 years ago became Jesus Christ. God is invisible—the supreme all powerful Spirit Being. We saw that God lives. He acts! What does he do? He is the creating family. Perhaps few realize, the very first thing God created was not the earth, suns, other planets—the universe. Before all these He created the angelic beings—a spirit world of myriads of angelic beings.
The Great God through the Word first designed and created these spirit beings—angels, each individually created—millions or perhaps even billions of them! Angels are actual personal spirit beings, each having a mind of greater capacity and ability than human minds, capable of attitudes, purposes and intentions. It is stated that even Jesus as a human was made “a little lower than the angels” (Heb. 2:7). They are composed wholly of spirit. They were given self-containing life—life inherent—immortality. They have no blood circulating in veins and do not need the breath of air to sustain life, but have self-containing inherent life.
Angels are, because created by God, called sons of God (Job 1:6), but they were not begotten and born sons of God.
Why the Creation of Angels?
Why were invisible spirit-composed angels created before all else? Why were they created even prior to the creation of physical matter and the physical universe? Why were they created at all?
Jesus Christ said, “I work and my Father works” (John 5:17). In John 1:1-5 it is revealed that God and the Word (the God family) live. In the preceding chapter we noted how they lived—in mutual love, total agreement and perfect harmony. But if they lived, what did they do? They created. One might say that by profession they were in the creating business. To aid them in the work of creating, governing and managing what was to be created, they first of all created other spirit beings on a lower plane than the God family. Angels were created to be ministers, agents, helpers in God’s creation. They were created as servants of the living God.
From eternity God was supreme, which to our human minds means God sat on the throne of all that existed or was to exist. In the 25th chapter of Exodus, we find an earthly description of the very throne of God in heaven, in the description of the ark built by Moses under God’s instruction. On either side of God’s throne was a super archangel, a cherub, whose wings stretched out covering the very throne of God. This signifies that these superior angels were involved in the very administration of the government of God over all of God’s creation. They were aides, ministers, servants, assisting God.
We read about angels in the first chapter of Hebrews. This chapter first speaks of Jesus. “He, . . . stamped with God’s own character, sustains the universe with his word of power . . . and thus he is superior to the angels, as he has inherited a Name superior to theirs. For to what angel did God ever say, ‘Thou art my son, to-day have I become thy father’? Or again, ‘I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me’? And further, when introducing the First-born into the world, he says, ‘Let all God’s angels worship him.’ While he says of angels, ‘Who turns his angels into winds [spirits], his servants into flames of fire,’ he says of the Son, ‘God is thy throne for ever and ever, thy royal sceptre is the sceptre of equity: thou hast loved justice and hated lawlessness, therefore God, thy God, has consecrated thee with the oil of rejoicing beyond thy comrades’—and, ‘Thou didst found the earth at the beginning . . . .’
”To what angel did he ever say, ‘Sit at my right hand, till I make your enemies a foot-stool for your feet’? Are not all angels merely spirits in the divine service, commissioned for the benefit of those who are to inherit salvation?” (verses 3-10, 13-14).
Humans are created a little lower than angels, though we have the awesome potential of becoming far greater. This fact is expressed in the second chapter of Hebrews and will be treated in chapter 7 of this work.
It will come as news to most readers that angels were created before the earth and the physical universe were brought into existence. Job 38:1-7 shows the angels shouted for joy when God first created the earth. It is stated in both Genesis 1 and 2 that the earth was created at the same time as the entire physical universe.
Angels are invisible, immortal spirit beings with power and knowledge superior to humans (II Pet. 2:11). They have seen all the activities of mankind on the earth and therefore know more about the human mind, psychology, sociology, science and all the arts than any living man.
Angels serve a great function in carrying out God’s purpose for humanity. They are his invisible agents often ministering in ways few understand to us poor humans who are heirs of salvation.
God’s Invisible Agents
God has had angels specifically assigned to supervise and protect his Church throughout all of its history (Rev. 1:4, 16, 20; 2:1, 8, 12, 18; 3:1, 7, 14). He has angels who continually walk through the earth to observe and report back to him the overall conditions on earth (Rev. 5:6; Zech. 4:10; II Chron. 16:9).
And God has angels specifically assigned to look after his begotten human children (Acts 12:15; Matthew 18:10). God promises: “For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to
keep thee in all thy ways” (Psalm. 91:11). (picture right)
Twelve of God’s angels will be the gatekeepers in the new city of Jerusalem (Rev. 21:12), one for each tribe of Israel. These 12 may be assisting the archangel Michael now.
Angels are messengers. They appeared to Abraham, Lot, Hagar, Moses, Manoah, Gideon, Elijah and many of the prophets and apostles.
When these angels manifest themselves to human beings, they generally do so in the form of men.
The Bible mentions three angels of high rank: Lucifer (Isa. 14:12), now Satan the devil; Gabriel, who appeared to Daniel on two occasions (Dan. 8:16; 9:21), to Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist (Luke 1:19), and later Mary, the mother of Jesus (Luke 1:26); and third, Michael, called one of the chief princes (Dan. 10:13), and whom Jude identifies as an archangel (Jude 9). Michael is the archangel specifically assigned to protect and minister to the 12 tribes of Israel (Dan. 12:1; 10:2-13, 21) and to the true Church of God today (Rev. 12:7).
The Supreme Creative Accomplishment
God assigns angels responsibilities, but God created within them minds—with power to think, to reason, to make choices and decisions!
But there was one super-important quality that even God’s creative powers could not create instantly by fiat—the same perfect, holy, righteous character inherent in both God and the Word!
This kind of character must be developed, by the choice and the intent of the one in whom it comes to exist.
So mark well this super-vital truism—that perfect, holy and righteous character is the supreme feat of accomplishment possible for Almighty God the Creator—it is also the means to his ultimate supreme purpose! His final objective!
But how?
I repeat, such perfect character must be developed. It requires the free choice and decision of the separate entity in whom it is to be created. But, further, even then it must be instilled by and from the Holy God who, only, has such righteous character to endow.
But what do we mean by righteous character?
Perfect, holy and righteous character is the ability in such separate entity to come to discern the true and right way from the false, to make voluntarily a full and unconditional surrender to God and his perfect way—to yield to be conquered by God—to determine even against temptation or self-desire, to live and to do the right. And even then such holy character is the gift of God. It comes by yielding to God to instill his law (God’s right way of life) within the entity who so decides and wills.
Actually, this perfect character comes only from God, as instilled within the entity of his creation, upon voluntary acquiescence, even after severe trial and test.
I have devoted a few paragraphs to this point because it is the supreme pinnacle means in God’s overall purpose!
Now as to the prehistoric angels: God 1) created them with minds capable of thinking, reasoning, making choices and decisions with self-will; and 2) revealed plainly to them his true and righteous way. But God of necessity allowed them free moral agency in accepting God’s right way, or turning to contrary ways of their own devising.
What was God’s ultimate objective for the angels? Beyond question it is that which, now, because of angelic rebellion, has become the transcendent potential of humans!
As the testing ground, and opportunity for positive and active creative accomplishment, God created—brought into existence—the entire vast material universe.
First of all, God had created angels. After that, and for angels and for humans who were to be created later, God formed and brought into existence the earth and the entire universe.
God now created not only matter, but with and in it energy and such laws as man has discovered in the fields of physics and chemistry. God formed matter to be present in both the organic and the inorganic states.
And so we come now to that which is revealed in Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning [of the physical universe] God created the heavens and the earth.” These are material and physical.
As previously stated, in the Authorized Version will be found the word heaven in the singular. But this originally was written by Moses in Hebrew. And in the Hebrew the word is in the plural—heavens—thus including not only our earth, but the entire material universe.
It is therefore indicated that at that time—after the creation of angels—the entire universe was brought into existence at the same time as the creation of our earth. I find strong indication of this in other biblical internal evidence, and also it is definitely stated in Genesis 2:4.
The Perfect Creation
The original Hebrew words (the words written by Moses) imply a perfect creation. God reveals himself as Creator of perfection, light and beauty. Every reference in the Bible describes the condition of any completed phase of God’s creation as “very good”—perfect.
This first verse of the Bible actually speaks of the original physical creation in its entirety—the universe—including the earth, perhaps millions of years ago—as a perfect creation, beautiful and perfect as far as its creation was a finished, completed work. God is a perfectionist!
In Job 38:4, 7, God is speaking specifically of the creation of this earth. He said all the angels (created “sons of God”) shouted for joy at the creation of the earth. This reveals that angels were created before the creation of the earth—and probably before the material universe. The suns, planets and astral bodies are material substance. Angels are individually created spirit beings, composed solely of spirit.
It will come as a surprise to many to learn that angels inhabited this earth before the creation of man. This passage from Job implies it.
Other passages place angels on earth prior to man.
Notice II Peter 2:4-6. First in time order “angels that sinned.” Next in time sequence, the antediluvian world beginning with Adam, carrying through to the Flood. After that, Sodom and Gomorrah.
This book of books, containing the revealed knowledge of the Creator God, tells us that God created angels as composed of spirit. But can you imagine angels becoming sinning angels? Angels were created with power of thought, of decision and of choice, else they have no individuality of character. Since sin is the transgression of God’s law, these angels rebelled against God’s law, the basis of God’s government.
Angels on Earth Sinned But how and when did the angels sin?
Notice carefully what is revealed in II Peter 2:4-5: “For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment; and spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly.” The words “cast . . . down to hell” in the above verse is an English expression translated from the Greek tartaroo, from tartaros, found in no other Bible passage. Tartaros means a place or condition of restraint.
These verses show that universal sin brings universal destruction of the physical earth. The antediluvian sin, culminating with the Flood, was worldwide, universal sin. Notice: “. . . the earth was filled with violence . . . for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth . . . for the earth is filled with violence . . .” (Gen. 6:11-13). “But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord . . . . Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God” (verses 8-9). All flesh had sinned—over the whole earth. But only Noah “walked with God.” So, the Flood destroyed the whole earth—all but Noah and his family.
The homosexual and other sins of Sodom and Gomorrah spread over the territory of those two cities. And physical destruction came to their entire area. The sin of the angels was worldwide; the destruction of the physical was worldwide. (And there is reason to believe, as will be explained in chapter 7, universe wide.)
The verses quoted above place the sinning of the angels prior to the antediluvian sins that started with Adam, prior to the creation of man. And that should be a surprise revealing of one phase of the mystery! Angels inhabited this earth before the creation of man.
It is revealed in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28, that God placed the archangel Lucifer, a cherub, on a throne on the earth. He was placed there as a ruler over the entire earth. God intended him to rule the earth by administering the government of God over the earth. And the government of God was administered on earth until the rebellion of the sinning angels.
How long these angels inhabited the earth before the creation of man is not revealed. It might have been millions—or even billions—of years. More on that later. But these angels sinned. Sin is the transgression of God’s law (I John 3:4). And God’s law is the basis of God’s government. So we know these angels, apparently a third of all the angels (Rev. 12:4), sinned—rebelled against the government of God. And sin carries penalties. The penalty for the sin of the angels is not death, as it is for man. Angels are immortal spirit beings and cannot die. These spirit beings had been given dominion over the physical earth as a possession and an abode.
The universal, worldwide sin of the angels resulted in the physical destruction of the face of the earth.
God Rules His Creation
God is Creator. God is also Ruler over his creation. He preserves what he creates by his government. What God creates, he has created for a purpose—to be used, improved, developed, preserved and maintained. And this use is regulated by God’s government. When the angels rebelled against God’s government, the development and improvement of the earth—“putting the icing on the cake”—ceased. The preservation and development of the physical earth and all its original beauty and glory ceased—and physical destruction to the surface of the earth resulted!
By this angelic sin, Lucifer became satan the devil, and his angels became demons.
God is Creator, Preserver and Ruler.
satan is destroyer!
So, now we read in Jude 6-7: “And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day. Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.”
Now back to Genesis 1:1-2. Verse 1, as stated above, implies a perfect creation. God is the author of life, of beauty, of perfection. Satan has brought only darkness, ugliness, imperfection, violence. Verse 1 shows the creation of a perfect, if unfinished earth, glorious and beautiful. Verse 2 reveals the result of the sin of the angels.
”And the earth was [became] without form, and void.” The words “without form, and void” are translated from the Hebrew tohu and bohu. A better translation is “waste and empty” or “chaotic, in confusion and in a state of decay.” The word was is elsewhere in Genesis also translated became, as in Genesis 19:26. In other words, the earth, originally created perfect and beautiful, had now become chaotic, waste and empty, like our moon, except earth’s surface was covered with water.
David was inspired to reveal how God renewed the face of the earth: “Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created: and thou renewest the face of the earth” (Psalm 104:30). (picture left)
A Surprising Truth
Now another surprise for most readers. Here is another bit of the missing dimension in knowledge, actually revealed in the Bible, but unrecognized by religion, by science and by higher education.
From verse 2 of Genesis 1 on, the remainder of this first chapter of the Bible is not describing the original creation of the earth. But it is describing a renewing of the face of the earth, after it had become waste and empty as a result of the sin of the angels.
What is described from verse 2 on, in the supposed creation chapter of the Bible, did occur, according to the Bible, approximately 6,000 years ago. But that could have been millions or trillions of years after the actual creation of the earth described in verse 1!.
The earth had become waste and empty. God did not create it waste and empty, or in a state of decay. God is not the author of confusion (I Cor. 14:33). This same Hebrew word—tohu—meaning waste and empty, was inspired in Isaiah 45:18, where it is translated “in vain.” Using the original Hebrew word, as originally inspired, it reads: “For thus said the Lord that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain [tohu], he formed it to be inhabited.”
Continue now with the remainder of verse 2 of Genesis 1 (the earth had become chaotic, waste and empty): “And darkness was upon the face of the deep [the ocean or fluid surface of the earth]. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness” (verses 2-4).
Satan is the author of darkness. The rebellion of the angels had caused the darkness. God is the author of light and truth. Light displays and enhances beauty, and also exposes evil. Darkness hides both.
The verses that follow in this first chapter of the Bible describe the renewing of the face of the earth, yielding beautiful lawns, trees, shrubs, flowers, vegetation—then the creation of fish and fowl, animal life, and finally man.
But first, before coming to man, we need to fill in the prehistory portion.
And God has angels specifically assigned to look after his begotten human children (Acts 12:15; Matthew 18:10). God promises: “For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to
The antediluvian sin, culminating with the Flood, was worldwide, universal sin. Notice: “. . . the earth was filled with violence . . . for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth . . . for the earth is filled with violence . . .” (Gen. 6:11-13). “But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord . . . . Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God” (verses 8-9). All flesh had sinned—over the whole earth. But only Noah “walked with God.” So, the Flood destroyed the whole earth—all but Noah and his family.
