NXR Podcast - THE FRIDAY SPECIAL - Angels | Classifications, Physicality, & Sexes
Aired: 2024-06-07
Duration: 01:10:23


=== The Angel of the Lord (14:21) ===

[00:00:00]  After this, I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven.
[00:00:05]  And the first voice, which I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet, said, Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.
[00:00:13]  At once I was in the spirit, and behold, a throne stood in heaven, with one seated on the throne.
[00:00:18]  And he who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian.
[00:00:23]  And around the throne was a rainbow that had the appearance of an emerald.
[00:00:27]  Around the throne were twenty four thrones.
[00:00:30]  And seated on the thrones were twenty four elders.
[00:00:33]  Clothed in white garments with golden crowns on their heads.
[00:00:38]  From the throne came flashes of lightning and rumblings and peals of thunder.
[00:00:42]  And before the throne were burning seven torches of fire, which are the seven spirits of God.
[00:00:48]  And before the throne there was as it were a sea of glass like crystal.
[00:00:52]  And around the throne, on each side of the throne, are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind.
[00:00:58]  The first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with the face of a man.
[00:01:06]  and the forest living creature like an eagle in flight and the four living creatures each of them with six wings are full of eyes all around and within and day and night they never cease to say holy holy holy is the lord god almighty who was and is and is to come revelation chapter 4 verses 1 through 8.
[00:01:30]  this is the word of the lord thanks be to god thanks indeed i feel like i should have been standing for the reading of the word of god amen i know i feel disrespectful sitting down much like john chrysostom said that no one should be allowed to pray seated for respect of the angel that is standing next to you.
[00:01:44]  Real quote.
[00:01:44]  The angel that's next to you.
[00:01:48]  Obvious.
[00:01:49]  And not even because of reverence for God, but the angel.
[00:02:06]  The angel that's right next to you.
[00:02:13]  The ang But let's line it out in question form.
[00:02:16]  What are some of the main, if we could boil it down to like top five questions that we want to answer about properly understanding angels?
[00:02:26]  Yeah.
[00:02:26]  What are those questions?
[00:02:28]  I would ask questions like Are there different classes of angels?
[00:02:32]  Great question.
[00:02:32]  It's a big one.
[00:02:33]  Also, an easy one.
[00:02:34]  Are all angels the same or are there different classes?
[00:02:36]  Because people tend to think when they hear the word angel, angel means something specific too.
[00:02:40]  Angel means messenger.
[00:02:42]  Right.
[00:02:42]  And we see particular types of angels in the Bible that appear as.
[00:02:46]  As humans, two of them are named, at least, you know, are debatably another, but are named and they bring messages from God, Gabriel and Michael.
[00:02:54]  I would also add Do the saints have guardian angels?
[00:02:58]  I think that's one that I'm personally fascinated with.
[00:03:00]  Yep.
[00:03:01]  Okay.
[00:03:01]  So, great question.
[00:03:03]  So that's two right there.
[00:03:04]  Are there different classifications of angels?
[00:03:06]  Do individual saints, Christians, have guardian angels?
[00:03:10]  Ben?
[00:03:11]  The two biggest questions for me, and these are kind of related, is.
[00:03:16]  How do we understand John saying that he was in Revelation 4?
[00:03:20]  That he was in the spirit, and in the spirit, he saw in heaven thrones with beings seated upon them with crowns on their head.
[00:03:30]  This is a spiritual thing, and yet these are this very physical language.
[00:03:34]  This is very like brick and mortar space, something you can see, touch, feel, smell.
[00:03:40]  So, how should we understand the language that's being used here?
[00:03:43]  That's sort of the second part of the question.
[00:03:45]  Is it analogical?
[00:03:46]  Is it purely metaphorical?
[00:03:48]  Is it univocal or equivocal?
[00:03:50]  Yeah.
[00:03:50]  What kind of conclusions are we actually able to draw about the angelic dwelling place and the heavenly dwelling place from texts like this?
[00:03:59]  What does it mean that an angel is spiritual?
[00:04:02]  Does it mean that that vision is of something else or something projected or something not really truly its essence?
[00:04:09]  Or is it just an apparition, a hologram?
[00:04:10]  Right, right.
[00:04:11]  Or does it mean that he was actually seeing the real thing?
[00:04:13]  That is what that thing is.
[00:04:14]  Right, right.
[00:04:15]  It was what it looks like.
[00:04:16]  But at a different plane.
[00:04:17]  And that it's still spiritual, but not exclusive, not only merely spiritual.
[00:04:21]  Yeah.
[00:04:21]  It's like us.
[00:04:23]  We are a spiritual. spirit, you know, a soul body composite, right?
[00:04:27]  There's, there's both elements there.
[00:04:29]  And then angels, perhaps there's an emphasis.
[00:04:31]  They're maybe more spiritual, but still a physical component.
[00:04:35]  Or maybe in a different realm, in the heavenly realm, maybe to be spiritual doesn't mean precisely what we often conceptualize in our mind.
[00:04:45]  Maybe first Corinthians 15, there are heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies.
[00:04:48]  To me, that's like the biggest question that I'm almost, that's a huge one.
[00:04:52]  We won't actually answer.
[00:04:54]  But we'll give it our best shot.
[00:04:56]  Yeah, we've got some thoughts.
[00:04:57]  We'll kick it off.
[00:04:57]  And then last question here would be my question.
[00:05:00]  So that was two questions.
[00:05:02]  Yeah, it was kind of a two-parter, but.
[00:05:04]  Yeah, well, like what kind of language?
[00:05:05]  How much can we draw from that?
[00:05:06]  You know, is the language strictly under the banner of analogical, typological, symbolic language?
[00:05:13]  Or can we read some of this literally?
[00:05:15]  Yeah.
[00:05:16]  And then that was the question as per your hermeneutics, how to read the angel passages in the Bible.
[00:05:22]  But then the question you're deriving from that is, How physical/slash how spiritual are angels?
[00:05:28]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:05:28]  Your question again: are there different classes of angels?
[00:05:30]  And then are there guardian angels among one of the classes?
[00:05:34]  And then my question, in a typical chauvinistic style, are there any female angels or are they all male?
[00:05:45]  Yeah.
[00:05:45]  I think we should start with first, let's start with classifications and then go to the physics.
[00:05:51]  How much of this is literal physical?
[00:05:52]  Yeah.
[00:05:53]  Right?
[00:05:54]  Because if you just start with literal physical, Um, a part of the difficulty is there are some, you know, for lack of a better word, there are some unhinged angel texts in scripture.
[00:06:04]  Ezekiel, we're talking about wheels, yeah, wheels within wheels, yeah, eyes all over with eyes.
[00:06:09]  And then, you know, Revelation chapter four, um, you've got the four living creatures covered in eyes with six wings, they cover their face, they cover their feet, and two wings they're flying.
[00:06:18]  Uh, 24 elders seated on 24 thrones with golden crowns, uh, cherubim, and the seven spirits of God that are fire before the throne, right?
[00:06:25]  Which and and in it says, and in them are the seven spirits, right.
[00:06:30]  Of God, which I mean, right there, I'm like, that already is.
[00:06:32]  Well, we even, honestly, I'm like, is that soul shatter?
[00:06:36]  Is that like Harry Potter, straight up Voldemort?
[00:06:38]  I have an idea of that whole passage that I'm just gonna like shamelessly throw in eventually, whenever we get there.
[00:06:45]  Yeah, wow.
[00:06:45]  And uh, that I think answers all of it.
[00:06:47]  We even, okay, well, maybe maybe you lead with that.
[00:06:50]  We even have passages.
[00:06:51]  This is probably bringing in another category altogether, but I think it fits into classes because you have to answer this is the angel of the Lord, right?
[00:06:59]  Yeah, and passages like in Exodus where in the burning bush.
[00:07:03]  The angel of the Lord is speaking.
[00:07:05]  I mean, he appeared in the midst of the fire.
[00:07:07]  So, real quick, let's define.
[00:07:10]  Yeah.
[00:07:10]  So, let's define a couple of terms.
[00:07:11]  What's a theophany?
[00:07:13]  A theophany is an appearance of God in bodily form.
[00:07:16]  Right.
[00:07:17]  But it doesn't mean that God himself, in an ontological sense, that God in his essence is flesh.
[00:07:22]  Correct.
[00:07:22]  But it means that God is taking upon himself, not even flesh, but a physical, visible manifestation form.
[00:07:30]  So, like we would say, it was a theophany, or maybe even more particularly, in my opinion, a Christophany.
[00:07:37]  of God walking with Adam and Eve in the garden in the cool of the day.
[00:07:41]  That Jesus was walking with them.
[00:07:42]  And the reason why we say it a Christophany is because this was not Jesus, God in the flesh, because this predates the incarnation.
[00:07:50]  He had not yet taken on flesh.
[00:07:51]  It would be to limit or reduce the incarnation, what happened in the times of the incarnation.
[00:07:56]  Exactly.
[00:07:56]  We say the incarnation is, you know, he was already doing this.
[00:07:59]  He could have just, you know, showed up again.
[00:08:01]  We can't do that because the incarnation is the strangest thing that's ever happened in the history of the world.
[00:08:05]  It's incredible that God became man.
[00:08:06]  Yes.
[00:08:07]  Yeah.
[00:08:07]  Incredible.
[00:08:08]  But God appeared as man.
[00:08:10]  So another word, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
[00:08:12]  Yeah.
[00:08:12]  Yeah.
[00:08:12]  In the midst of the fire.
[00:08:13]  This is the fourth one.
[00:08:14]  Who looked as though he was one of the gods, yeah, you know, a son of the gods?
[00:08:19]  His sounds like radiant, shining.
[00:08:22]  Abraham hosted Yahweh for dinner, yeah, with two other angels, right?
[00:08:25]  So, there are two angels, and in that case, in terms of classifications, we say these are messenger angels, and angel just means messenger, so these are like Gabriel type angels, right?
[00:08:34]  But the Lord, but there's two of them are that, yeah, is what I'm saying.
[00:08:37]  But there's a third, uh, that is the angel of the Lord, so accompanied by two messenger type angels, but one is the angel of the Lord.
[00:08:44]  That we would say again is a Christophan, Christophan, Jacob wrestles.
[00:08:48]  With the angel of the Lord.
[00:08:49]  And that's a Christophany.
[00:08:50]  I have wrestled with God.
[00:08:51]  Right.
[00:08:52]  It's not Gabriel.
[00:08:52]  Correct.
[00:08:53]  It's not Michael.
[00:08:54]  Right.
[00:08:55]  And then Joshua.
[00:08:56]  The armies.
[00:08:57]  They dress for battle, but it says, the angel of the Lord.
[00:08:59]  Are you for us or against us?
[00:09:01]  No.
[00:09:01]  You know, no.
[00:09:03]  Well, you know what?
[00:09:04]  Man, I preached through Joshua recently and digging into the text, there's a really good case to be made where instead of no meaning neither, he says, are you for us or for our enemies?
[00:09:18]  And it's like two separate questions.
[00:09:19]  Are you for us?
[00:09:20]  And there's not an answer.
[00:09:21]  Yeah.
[00:09:21]  Are you for our enemies?
[00:09:23]  No.
[00:09:23]  No.
[00:09:24]  Because he doesn't actually say neither.
[00:09:25]  It's clearly for them.
[00:09:26]  It's for them.
[00:09:26]  Yeah, by the end of it.
[00:09:27]  No.
[00:09:28]  I'm like, how dare you even ask?
[00:09:30]  Yeah, of course I'm not for your godless pagan enemies.
[00:09:32]  Yeah, get out of here.
[00:09:34]  I'm about to wipe those people off.
[00:09:36]  In the angel discussion, though the angel of the Lord is a messenger in the sense that it is bringing the revelation of God somehow, the message of God, we clearly make a distinction that we're not saying that God himself is in the same category of being.
[00:09:53]  No.
[00:09:53]  As other beings that are called angels.
[00:09:55]  No, right.
[00:09:56]  This is a word you can use generally to refer as well to human messengers.
[00:10:00]  Right.
[00:10:00]  Pastors and other human messengers.
[00:10:02]  In fact, a lot of people think that in Revelation 1, Revelation 1, when Christ is holding the seven stars for the seven churches that are the seven angels, that he's actually referring to the pastors of those churches.
[00:10:12]  Yeah.
[00:10:13]  Because the angels are the pastors.
[00:10:15]  The lampstands are the churches.
[00:10:16]  Yes, exactly.
[00:10:18]  Yeah.
[00:10:18]  The seven ministers is another translation.
[00:10:20]  And he's holding them in his hand.
[00:10:23]  It's also, you know, because John is caught up in the same chapter, in the very beginning, he's caught up on the Lord's day.
[00:10:28]  So this is the day that Christ rose from the dead, Christ, who is Lord of the Sabbath.
[00:10:33]  He never uses his authority, his lordship over the Sabbath to remove the Sabbath, but he strictly reminds those who had abused the Sabbath, namely the religious rulers of the day, that God didn't make man to observe his Sabbath, but he made Sabbath to serve man, that man needed a rest.
[00:10:50]  God didn't need to rest on the seventh day, but he rested to set an example for his finite creatures who would need a rest.
[00:10:56]  And then Jesus doesn't eradicate the Sabbath, but simply reminds us as Lord of the Sabbath that the Sabbath is a gift to us.
[00:11:03]  And then he renews, not removes, but renews the Sabbath from the last day of the week to the first by virtue of his resurrection, then twice more by appearing to the disciples in both instances on the Lord's day.
[00:11:14]  So multiple cases to be said for that and not just, oh, it was the Catholic Church.
[00:11:19]  The Christian Sabbath is very much the first day of the week.
[00:11:22]  And then the Apostle John, back to Revelation, is caught up in the Spirit on.
[00:11:27]  The Lord's Supper, which is the Christian Sabbath that the New Testament church already with the first century church was meeting.
[00:11:33]  They were meeting, sure, every single day, daily, devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching, the breaking of bread, which I don't think is the Lord's Supper.
[00:11:40]  I think it's a daily potluck meal and theology and prayer.
[00:11:45]  But then on the first day of the week, that is, I think, the whole church, not just small groups and organic discipleship and fellowship and communion, but that's the church actually gathering in an ecclesia, formal sense for the ordinary means of worship, church.
[00:12:01]  That's the Lord's Day.
[00:12:02]  That's already been being done in the first century.
[00:12:05]  It's unique to the other daily meetings throughout the week.
[00:12:08]  That one's unique.
[00:12:09]  And on that day, John's caught up.
[00:12:11]  And so I think he's seen.
[00:12:13]  He's seen heaven, but he's also seen church from heaven's perspective.
[00:12:18]  What church, what we do see church on earth, but he gets to see church in heaven.
[00:12:22]  So the lampstand is the church, but it's lit.
[00:12:25]  And I think it's because the church is gathered and it's the Lord's day, the day that they're supposed to be gathered.
[00:12:30]  And when the lampstand that is the church is lit, aka gathered on the Lord's day, the Christian Sabbath, Christ is walking in their midst and holding the minister, the pastor, and the sword, the minister speaks the word of God.
[00:12:43]  But the sword actually begins to protrude not from the minister's mouth, but from Christ's mouth and cuts the hearts of men.
[00:12:50]  And so we come, we gather because man shall not live by bread alone, but every word that proceeds from the mouth of God, Christ is God.
[00:12:56]  And a word proceeds not only from the minister's mouth, but from his.
[00:12:59]  And apart from that, you can't do anything.
[00:13:01]  So if you're listening to this, you like YouTube, you claim to be a Christian, but you don't go to church, stop it.
[00:13:06]  Stop it, guys.
[00:13:07]  Go to church.
[00:13:08]  The devil will get you.
[00:13:09]  So let's take a stab at answering the first question.
[00:13:11]  Yeah, let's talk about, we've made a distinction now.
[00:13:14]  The angel of the Lord is a Christophany or theophany.
[00:13:17]  Different category.
[00:13:17]  We have angelic messengers, but what kind of classification are we seeing in scripture for angels?
[00:13:22]  So the first thing that we have to understand is that when we use the term angel, we're using a catch-all term to describe many different beings.
[00:13:30]  Yes.
[00:13:30]  So an angel is a rank of the angels.
[00:13:34]  An angel is actually the lowest rank.
[00:13:38]  That doesn't take away from their nobility.
[00:13:39]  That just in the rank of order, they are the lowest ones because they are the most concerned with the affairs of man directly.
[00:13:46]  They are most like unto man.
[00:13:47]  They're most concerned with what's happening to man.
[00:13:50]  They are the messengers.
[00:13:52]  They herald God's decree to man.
[00:13:54]  Gabriel does this to Mary, et cetera.
[00:13:56]  The angel Gabriel also goes to Daniel, et cetera.
[00:14:00]  And they're ministering spirits.
[00:14:01]  And they're ministering spirits.
[00:14:02]  But when it says all angels, that doesn't necessarily mean the wheel guys.
[00:14:05]  Right.
[00:14:05]  And it doesn't necessarily mean the four living creature guys.
[00:14:07]  It could, maybe.
[00:14:08]  It could.
[00:14:09]  But we don't know.
[00:14:09]  It could.
[00:14:11]  But certainly the angels, as it pertains to messengers, man facing angels, are not all them ministering spirits to serve the children of Abraham who are to inherit salvation.

=== Guardians of Holiness (03:39) ===

[00:14:22]  Right.
[00:14:22]  But then we would say the larger context of the word angel.
[00:14:26]  Is the spiritual servants of God that are serving him in different ways, but in the spiritual plane.
[00:14:34]  And so these would include things like the seraphim, which are the highest of the order of angels.
[00:14:38]  And I believe they are the spirits of fire before God that contain the seven spirits of God.
[00:14:45]  But we know that they are fiery spirits that guard God's holiness.
[00:14:50]  They are guardians of God's holiness.
[00:14:52]  And we have the cherubim.
[00:14:53]  The cherubim are guardians of God's throne.
[00:14:55]  They're also just guardians in general.
[00:14:57]  They guard everything.
[00:14:58]  They guarded the Garden of Eden before the flood wiped it away.
[00:15:01]  And so the cherubim are the living creatures.
[00:15:03]  They're the ones who, in Ezekiel, all of them have four faces the lion, the ox, the man, and the eagle.
[00:15:11]  In Revelation 4, each one has a different face.
[00:15:14]  One of them is the lion, one is the ox, one is the man, one is the eagle in flight.
[00:15:17]  They're all covered with wings.
[00:15:19]  And also, it's interesting in Ezekiel, they only have four wings, but in Revelation 4, they have six wings.
[00:15:26]  So that's fascinating in itself.
[00:15:27]  And they're covered with eyes, which is terrifying.
[00:15:29]  It's like you get a two-door sedan and you get a four-door sedan.
[00:15:31]  Double it and give it to the next.
[00:15:32]  There's multiple different types of these beings.
[00:15:36]  But that's the cherubim.
[00:15:36]  But that would be like subclasses within overarching class being cherubim.
[00:15:40]  Right.
[00:15:40]  So they're guarding the throne of God.
[00:15:42]  And then you have the Ophanim, which are a little bit more of a subtextual category, but they would be the wheels within wheels that are next to the cherubim and together are the living creatures with the cherubim.
[00:15:55]  And they are the throne of God.
[00:15:58]  They proceed from the throne of God.
[00:16:00]  Some people believe that this is what Moses was encountering in the burning bush, but that's kind of iffy.
[00:16:05]  And then you have powers and principalities and dominions and authorities.
[00:16:09]  Which are over, you know, more concerned with the realm of men, but really concerned with ensuring God's decree is carried out in the realm of men.
[00:16:18]  And then you have angels and archangels.
[00:16:20]  Angels are the messengers that we've already discussed.
[00:16:22]  They're ministering spirits.
[00:16:23]  And then the archangels seem to be some special category.
[00:16:26]  We only see the word appear in in reference to the cry of an archangel.
[00:16:30]  Yes, in scripture, specifically Michael at least that's what we think yeah that yeah, and even that is a supposition right, rather than a doubt.
[00:16:38]  They seem to be a, a special category of angel that is a warrior, the head of God's armies.
[00:16:45]  It's not Christ, Michael is not Christ, no way, but he is the head of Christ's armies, which is very fascinating.
[00:16:52]  Assuming it's Michael with the ark, right?
[00:16:53]  Yeah um, and so those are kind of all the different categories.
[00:16:56]  So in my, in my mind, well then, we also have the watchers thrown in there.
[00:16:59]  Yeah, from Daniel Four, we know that there's a category of heavenly being, that's a servant of God, called the watcher, and we don't know if they might be another name for one of these other existing types.
[00:17:10]  It could be another name, for my guess is another name for the for messengers angels angels, or It could be my, probably I lean stronger towards this if messenger angel angel, angel messengers like, so there's your, you know Gabriel, if that's a very large class and the watchers was like like the the highest, it's a rank you know, so you could have rank with.
[00:17:33]  But within that class, within an army, everybody is a person right, but a general is not a captain, is not a lieutenant, is not an intelligence officer, is not a combat engineer.
[00:17:42]  And so within the Thrones dominions rulers, authorities overseeing thrones, bringing messages to men, for all we know, that might be The same type of thing that actually has a different role, right?
[00:17:54]  A different rank, yeah.
[00:17:55]  It could be like they're all generals, so they're all in that class, but there's two star generals, two star, three.
[00:18:00]  Yeah, there's lots of variation.

=== The Divine Council Debate (15:27) ===

[00:18:01]  Are you a beef jerky enthusiast?
[00:18:03]  Well, then stop it seriously, stop it because Biltong is superior to beef jerky in every single way.
[00:18:12]  It's a traditional South African meat snack, but it's free from all the preservatives, the sugar, and the soy.
[00:18:19]  It's like the wagyu of jerky.
[00:18:21]  Now, here's the exciting news from Farmer Bill's.
[00:18:24]  Provisions Farmer Bills is introducing their brand new product line for your enjoyment.
[00:18:29]  We've got right here the traditional beef slab.
[00:18:33]  You've also got, if you want a smaller portion, you've got the slices.
[00:18:37]  It's just as much meat, but you're able to eat it in increments.
[00:18:40]  This is for yourself as an individual, or maybe for you and your family, your kids.
[00:18:44]  Then you've got the meat sticks.
[00:18:46]  This is what, if you're a working man, you want a snack to keep in your pocket to eat, you know, before lunch or something like that, grab one of their beef sticks and take it on the go.
[00:18:55]  Lastly, You got to check out the tallow for all the moms out there.
[00:18:59]  My wife, she swears by this.
[00:19:01]  Many women in our church say that it's a fantastic product.
[00:19:05]  So don't waste any more time.
[00:19:07]  Go to farmerbillsprovisions.com today to support a Christian owned small business.
[00:19:14]  And while you're at it, go ahead and subscribe so that you can save on multiple options and ensure that you and your family will never be without your favorites.
[00:19:23]  And the last thing is this if you want to get 15% off your purchase, all you got to do is type in the promo code.
[00:19:30]  Right response.
[00:19:31]  Again, the promo code type in right response.
[00:19:35]  So, visit farmerbillsprovisions.com today and get 15% off your purchase.
[00:19:41]  So, I'd like to say two more things just real quick.
[00:19:43]  So, in Revelation 4, I think that one compelling argument would be that the 24 elders are watchers.
[00:19:49]  I think that the fiery spirits are the seraphim and the cherubim are named.
[00:19:53]  They are the living creatures.
[00:19:54]  The seven spirits?
[00:19:56]  Spirits of God.
[00:19:57]  Are what?
[00:19:58]  The seraphim.
[00:19:58]  The seraphim.
[00:19:59]  Because they're fire guarding the holiness of God.
[00:20:02]  Four living creatures are cherubim.
[00:20:04]  The living creatures are the cherubim because they're guarding the throne.
[00:20:06]  The Ophanim is the throne.
[00:20:08]  The and the uh and the 24 elders are the watchers.
[00:20:12]  So I, and I don't think that's all of the angelic categories, right.
[00:20:15]  I also think that there could be more.
[00:20:18]  God is not yeah, not obligated to the Bible.
[00:20:21]  Doesn't tell us this is the exhaust of God, is not obligated to tell us these are all the heavenly beings.
[00:20:26]  Right, we get, we get peeks behind the curtain into the heavenly realm.
[00:20:29]  Right, we don't get full access.
[00:20:32]  And we know this because Paul says, right, I was caught up to the third heaven, whether in body or in vision, I don't know and i'm not allowed to tell you.
[00:20:39]  And you're like, thanks Paul Yeah, he was supposed to, obviously, supposed to be divinely inspired.
[00:20:45]  I'm not criticizing the Holy Spirit, but we know for a fact that there are things about this topic that are outside of our knowledge and intentionally.
[00:20:57]  So, God didn't, He did not intend for us to, yeah, it's not an accident, it's all the way to the bottom.
[00:21:02]  Yeah, yeah, so that would be my attempt at answering.
[00:21:04]  Yeah, so the 24 elders that's interesting.
[00:21:06]  I think you could say that, but you're saying that more probabilistically than certainty.
[00:21:11]  Oh, I'm not having any certainty behind it, I'm saying that would help.
[00:21:15]  That would help me personally conceptualize the scene that's going on.
[00:21:20]  Because we know that the watchers are some category that decrees something that's then carried out.
[00:21:27]  It would even work, I think, with your idea that, and I do think that's right, that it's the heavenly church.
[00:21:33]  I've heard that before.
[00:21:34]  I think it's really compelling.
[00:21:35]  Yes, it's the liturgy from heaven to earth.
[00:21:36]  And so you're actually seeing the watchers that are overseeing the heavenly liturgy, ensuring that it's true.
[00:21:42]  I thought you were going to make fun of me, but go ahead.
[00:21:45]  No, no, no.
[00:21:46]  I've heard that before and I think that it's right and I've heard it before too.
[00:21:48]  It's really compelling.
[00:21:49]  It's the thing that I'm saying.
[00:21:51]  I agree with that one.
[00:21:52]  It's not my original.
[00:21:53]  Sure.
[00:21:53]  And none of this is like stuff that we like I'm the first time.
[00:21:56]  Well, in a few of the episodes that we've recorded, there have been a couple.
[00:21:59]  There have been some first originals.
[00:22:01]  This is not one of them.
[00:22:02]  This is not true except for what I'm saying about the watchers and the 24 elders.
[00:22:05]  That's the only thing that I would push back on that, Ben, is just because it just seems like a very God facing role, you know, that they're, you know, taking off their crowns and throwing them down, you know, and singing along with like it.
[00:22:17]  This is the throne room.
[00:22:18]  Whereas I kind of imagine the watchers being more a higher concern of the affairs of men.
[00:22:24]  And not because they don't, talking about watchers that didn't fall, but the good watchers that never rebelled, not because they're not, that they don't, that their allegiance isn't to God above men because it is to God, but that it's actually more directed towards man.
[00:22:41]  Yeah, they're rolled.
[00:22:41]  They're designed to be.
[00:22:43]  But the elders, everything in the Revelation 4 description seems like none of it seems like messengers don't get listed.
[00:22:49]  Mm hmm.
[00:22:50]  You know what I mean?
[00:22:50]  Like, they don't make the list.
[00:22:51]  No.
[00:22:52]  I see watchers make, to me, makes more of a sense of relating more to the messengers than cherubim.
[00:23:00]  I think that's a really good point.
[00:23:02]  My understanding of the watchers would be more like the messenger is the manager.
[00:23:06]  Exactly, a messenger manager.
[00:23:08]  And the watcher is like the COO, CEO type person.
[00:23:12]  And I think that it would just condemn them yet more to look down and condescend to that far.
[00:23:20]  But here he is.
[00:23:21]  But also, the number 24, like, very clearly intentional.
[00:23:24]  Typological.
[00:23:25]  So, the idea that, like, I don't like the idea that by happenstance, none of it happens.
[00:23:29]  God's sovereign over all things, including even, you know, a fall of angels.
[00:23:33]  But, but I, but then it's like, that seems like a number like God's was very precise.
[00:23:37]  He started with it.
[00:23:38]  He still has it.
[00:23:39]  There's 24 of these guys.
[00:23:40]  Did eight of them fall?
[00:23:41]  Right.
[00:23:42]  No.
[00:23:42]  Yeah.
[00:23:42]  It's not like, well, we had once upon a time, we had 36.
[00:23:45]  I don't even necessarily think that that's all the watchers.
[00:23:47]  Okay.
[00:23:48]  I think that that's 24 elders of the watchers.
[00:23:51]  Oh, I see.
[00:23:52]  I see.
[00:23:53]  Okay.
[00:23:53]  Now I have to would have to reconsult my notes, but I'm trying to remember what some of the traditional views of that passage would be.
[00:24:00]  Apostles and tribes.
[00:24:02]  Yeah.
[00:24:02]  Leaders, patriarchs, and apostles.
[00:24:04]  Yeah.
[00:24:05]  Patriarchs and apostles are what I've heard.
[00:24:06]  Uh huh.
[00:24:07]  Because it's 12 and 12.
[00:24:08]  But who are the apostles?
[00:24:10]  Would Paul be in there or would Matthias be in there?
[00:24:16]  Oh, yeah.
[00:24:17]  The classic traditional joke that everyone always says is that they're half cheeking it.
[00:24:21]  Yeah.
[00:24:21]  Paul and Matthias.
[00:24:23]  Yeah, yeah, sure.
[00:24:24]  They're sharing a seat.
[00:24:25]  Who's in whose line?
[00:24:26]  But then I've also heard others say that the 12th seat is.
[00:24:32]  Well, never mind.
[00:24:33]  Never mind.
[00:24:33]  I'm not even going to share that one.
[00:24:35]  Basically, long story short, I'm presenting that as a brand new idea, like brand spanking new, that would help me understand the passage for what I believe it to be, which is a purely heavenly scene.
[00:24:46]  A big point, I think, to make, we've already made it, but just a big point to remember is that in a lot of these things, I think in particular here with the angels, there are things we know, and then there are things that we can composite and compile together based on the data.
[00:25:00]  But because the scripture's main focus isn't here, There's going to be, you have like two different instincts that are always kind of warring in the church.
[00:25:08]  You have the hyper-biblicist minimalism.
[00:25:12]  Right.
[00:25:13]  It's like, if it's not directly said about them in scripture, do not.
[00:25:16]  And then you give them one that New Testament, please.
[00:25:18]  Yeah.
[00:25:19]  Yeah.
[00:25:19]  And then you're like half the Bible.
[00:25:20]  And then even then on that.
[00:25:22]  I won't take a shower unless you can show me in the red letters.
[00:25:24]  What's funny is that people that tend towards that also tend to think of the angels as a monolith, generally.
[00:25:30]  Just like there's the angels, right?
[00:25:31]  And some of them are fallen and whatnot.
[00:25:33]  Don't tell me there's Nephilim spirits, whatever.
[00:25:36]  On the other side, you have like the medieval and these conceptions with multiple ranks and nine ranks.
[00:25:41]  And there's, and they went all the way out, not only with angels, but with their demonology.
[00:25:45]  Right.
[00:25:46]  And they had developed an elaborate, and some of it was almost like a bit of a reach empiric where they were in, they were, they were like trying to in their fight against the demons.
[00:25:55]  They're like, well, there's this demon.
[00:25:56]  And so I'm not even right now saying which one I think is right.
[00:26:00]  I'm just saying those are kind of the polar ends.
[00:26:02]  The polar ends.
[00:26:03]  And both, yeah, pseudo Dionysus in his, in his celestial hierarchy, he, makes up.
[00:26:08]  He just makes it up.
[00:26:09]  Two angelic ranks to make it the number nine.
[00:26:11]  Yeah.
[00:26:12]  And he makes up the virtues in the potestas.
[00:26:15]  Yeah.
[00:26:15]  Which are the ones that exercise power over the other angels underneath them.
[00:26:21]  Yeah.
[00:26:21]  And then the virtues which counteract the vice of the demons.
[00:26:24]  That's their and it works cited.
[00:26:26]  He made it up.
[00:26:28]  Some like apocryphal sources, but pretty much he just but a lot of it had to do with to his credit, the rest of it's really good.
[00:26:33]  With things like balance and the beauty of numbers and things like that.
[00:26:38]  They were they were they had the triad of you certainly can't say that they didn't ask the why behind things like why, why would there be this number of angels and this type?
[00:26:47]  In fact, they would be accused of not being content with not knowing the yeah, however, we do that said, we look, we know a lot about these this class of spiritual beings.
[00:26:57]  One thing we haven't talked about though, guys, is a divine council, yeah, right, because that is a conversation that it's controversial, sure, but it also definitely has implication, it does for how you view a lot of scripture.
[00:27:11]  So, I don't know if you guys want to jump in on that at all.
[00:27:14]  Well, I feel like that might have to be its own thing.
[00:27:17]  But in terms of like.
[00:27:18]  Maybe we just reference it and say, this is also.
[00:27:19]  We are, whether it's Trinitarian language, we're aware of the divine council.
[00:27:23]  Whether it's Trinitarian language or in our image is a divine council of lower G.
[00:27:28]  The basic idea of the divine council is that there is a group of spiritual beings that are the divine council, that it is not improper to call them Elohim because the Bible does.
[00:27:40]  Gods.
[00:27:40]  Psalm 82.
[00:27:41]  Gods.
[00:27:42]  Psalm 82.
[00:27:43]  But none of them are gods in this sense.
[00:27:46]  Yahweh alone can create X and the Helo.
[00:27:50]  But it is perfectly permissible to call them gods.
[00:27:53]  It's a word that has range that can be used of even kind of, I'll give a crass example, but this is how language works.
[00:28:00]  People will look at another person and say, bro, you're a god.
[00:28:03]  Yeah.
[00:28:03]  And they mean that you are elite at this thing.
[00:28:06]  Right.
[00:28:06]  And in this sense, the divine council idea is also that part of what is happening in the ancient Near East and then also in scripture, you know, controverting it is that, again, from the one people go out all these demonic religions.
[00:28:21]  The nations are given over Deuteronomy 32 to be governed by table of nations, fallen spiritual beings of some sort, that there are spiritual powers behind thrones.
[00:28:33]  That are misleading the nations, that are actually have held the nations captive to deceit.
[00:28:38]  And that one of the things that the scriptures are doing is actually contradicting the idea of the false, of the pagan religions, like you see in Mesopotamia and Canaanite religion, that these are the real gods and that Yahweh is just another one of these.
[00:28:54]  And then it's to show, well, no, there is a divine council of angelic beings or of spiritual beings that God has set, as in Job, that he, Speaks to, he assembles this council of spiritual beings and he speaks with them.
[00:29:09]  And then, but that those false ones are actually liars and deceivers.
[00:29:14]  And that one thing Christ is doing is he's binding the strong man so that the nations will no longer be held captive to these beings.
[00:29:22]  He's supplanting them.
[00:29:24]  And the prince of Persia.
[00:29:25]  Yeah.
[00:29:26]  So this is a lot of like the Michael Heiser stuff.
[00:29:29]  And there's.
[00:29:29]  And honestly, there's a lot of good stuff.
[00:29:31]  Michael Heiser is, I mean, he's controversial for some, but.
[00:29:35]  I think there's a lot of things that he's pretty good.
[00:29:38]  It's when he has some really, what I think is tremendously sloppy theology when it comes to other areas like sovereignty and other areas as well.
[00:29:46]  But there's compelling biblical arguments that he makes that this, and not just like from ancient Near Eastern texts, which is an area of his expertise.
[00:29:55]  There's actually compelling biblical evidence in Psalm 82, Deuteronomy 32, that there is such thing.
[00:30:01]  Now, whether or not God, like you're referencing in Genesis, is saying.
[00:30:05]  Trinitarian, let us make man in our image.
[00:30:08]  That's yet to be classical interpretation of that verse that God is Trinitarian.
[00:30:12]  Divine counsel view is that God is speaking to the divine counsel and that these spiritual beings that he made are imagers in the heavenly realm and that men are imagers on the earthly realm to oversimplify.
[00:30:24]  So there's also a category then there that mixes up with how you, whether you accept that or not as biblically sound, and then where you'd fit the divine counsel in would be some subset.
[00:30:37]  Right.
[00:30:37]  Of angelic or spiritual being as well.
[00:30:39]  Right.
[00:30:40]  Okay.
[00:30:40]  So that's classifications.
[00:30:41]  I feel like we've got, we're, you know, so that we don't make this a two hour episode, we've got to now talk about physical spiritual dichotomy.
[00:30:50]  A lot of people think of angels.
[00:30:51]  This is what I'm saying.
[00:30:52]  They think of angels, messenger angels, like Gabriel appearing to Mary.
[00:30:57]  They think of them in the same way that you would think about a theophany.
[00:31:03]  Right.
[00:31:03]  Because God really is, if we're talking about ontologically, in terms of God's essence, he really is a most pure spirit.
[00:31:09]  This is the confessional position.
[00:31:11]  A most pure spirit without body, parts, or passions.
[00:31:14]  Meaning the parts, meaning that God is not divisible.
[00:31:16]  There's not one piece of God that could be subtracted from the rest of God and he'd still be God.
[00:31:21]  And philosophical, if we're doing philosophical theology, God is what we would call a simple being.
[00:31:27]  And we're not being demeaning in that sense.
[00:31:29]  God is the most complex being in all the universe.
[00:31:33]  But a simple being, we're complex beings.
[00:31:35]  If, pardon the crude analogy, but if we amputated your left arm, Ben, you would still be Ben.
[00:31:42]  You wouldn't lose your core identity.
[00:31:44]  You'd be Ben missing an arm, but you're still Ben.
[00:31:46]  There's nothing, all that is in God is God.
[00:31:49]  There's nothing that can be removed from God.
[00:31:52]  And God is not the sum total of all his parts.
[00:31:54]  So it's not that, well, God has justice and has peace and has this and has that.
[00:31:59]  And then, you know, these powers combined, I'm Captain Planet.
[00:32:02]  That's not how God works.
[00:32:03]  So, God is not without parts, God without passions, impassibility, divine impassibility.
[00:32:08]  What we're saying is that, first and foremost, in the simplest sense, the divine cannot suffer.
[00:32:14]  The divine cannot die.
[00:32:16]  The divine is immortal.
[00:32:17]  And partly because the divine cannot change.
[00:32:19]  Right, right.
[00:32:19]  Because impassibility is really a subset of immutability.
[00:32:23]  Yes.
[00:32:24]  Because change, even change in feelings or emotive states, God does not emote.
[00:32:30]  He's not a teenage.
[00:32:31]  Girl, and so what we have in in in Biblical language when speaking of god and we'll come back to angels, but when speaking of god is we have um, we should understand Biblical language underneath the banner of the doctrine of analogy, in two primary categories, one being anthropomorphic.
[00:32:47]  So his eyes are roaming to and fro.
[00:32:49]  Well, he's right, he doesn't have a body, he doesn't have eyes.
[00:32:51]  He doesn't have eyes right his, his right arm is, is not short, is mighty to save.
[00:32:55]  He doesn't have an arm.
[00:32:56]  Um, so that's anthropomorphic language, speaking of god in a physical way, but With analogy, not literally.
[00:33:04]  Anthropopathic is speaking of God in an emotional way.
[00:33:08]  So, like the Lord's anger flared up, and it flared up because in a moment, because he just came into new information that previously he was unaware.
[00:33:15]  No, of course not.
[00:33:17]  He's the omniscient one.
[00:33:18]  He doesn't flare up.
[00:33:20]  He's not a petty God.
[00:33:21]  He's not the Greek gods who just get mad all of a sudden and demand blood or wrath won't go away.
[00:33:28]  No, no, no.

=== Anthropomorphic Language Explained (06:12) ===

[00:33:29]  God, before the foundation of the world, he did demand blood, but he put that blood forward himself.
[00:33:34]  And he knew that he would require it since before the foundation of the world were even laid.
[00:33:38]  Propitiation is actually a pagan term to satiate the wrath of the gods, but it finds its place in Christian theology and even in the New Testament scripture.
[00:33:47]  But the one difference is that in Christian terms, a propitiation is the sacrifice that God requires, but that God also supplies.
[00:33:55]  It's the sacrifice that is God, the Son of God is the sacrifice put forward by God to satisfy God.
[00:34:02]  And that's, I mean, this is the pastor moment, preaching the gospel.
[00:34:07]  That's the gospel.
[00:34:09]  They substitutionary atonement and that God puts forward the perfect lamp.
[00:34:12]  Behold, the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world.
[00:34:15]  All that being said, anthropomorphic, emotional, I'm sorry, physical, but analogy.
[00:34:22]  And then anthropopathic, emotional, but analogy.
[00:34:25]  All that is true of God.
[00:34:28]  And when we see appearances of God, it is not him taking on flesh unless, until we're talking about the second member of the Trinity, the God-man Christ Jesus in the Uncle.
[00:34:39]  Incarnation 2000 years ago.
[00:34:41]  But everything preceding that, it's a theophany or Christophany.
[00:34:44]  But I don't think when the Bible talks about angels, that we should apply our classical theism lens in a one to one ratio to angels in the way that we do God.
[00:34:56]  For me, the framework texts that confuse me in this regard are the passages describing Christ's current state, that he is glorified man.
[00:35:10]  And he is at the right hand of God the Father.
[00:35:13]  In phrases like that, we have a mixture of literal language and anthropomorphic analogical language.
[00:35:19]  Because we know that Christ literally is seated because he is a glorified man.
[00:35:24]  He has flesh forever.
[00:35:27]  And yet he's not seated literally at the right hand of God the Father because God the Father does not have a right hand.
[00:35:33]  Right.
[00:35:33]  So we have a mixture of language and the same thing.
[00:35:36]  Half of it is purely literal.
[00:35:38]  It's univocal language.
[00:35:40]  The other half is analogical.
[00:35:43]  When we talk about the angels, it seems to do the same thing.
[00:35:47]  And so I am confused by it.
[00:35:49]  Yeah, they're called spirits and they're also described as very straightforwardly having these attributes that you can look at.
[00:35:56]  Right.
[00:35:57]  And it seems like we were talking about this last night.
[00:35:59]  When you describe the living creatures or the cherubim, is it describing what it actually is?
[00:36:07]  Right.
[00:36:07]  Or is it describing some analogy of what it is that's sensible to us?
[00:36:12]  Or an analogy that really comes as a physical description in the plain words of the text, but is actually describing less of what they are and more of why they are, their role and their function.
[00:36:23]  Yes.
[00:36:23]  So Boving does this.
[00:36:25]  In volume two of his Reform Dogmatics, he discusses the angels and he says that the.
[00:36:32]  The rule of analogical language also applies to them because they're pure spirit.
[00:36:37]  And it's my understanding that they take that from when he calls them ministering spirits.
[00:36:41]  But that's the only thing.
[00:36:43]  Pure spirit.
[00:36:44]  And they're saying they're angels.
[00:36:45]  Angels are pure spirit.
[00:36:47]  And so now.
[00:36:47]  And pure male.
[00:36:50]  Yeah.
[00:36:51]  But if you go, yes, angels are pure spirit, well, then you have to then say that all of the language regarding any physicality of them would be analogical with no exceptions.
[00:37:03]  And so he says that the cherubim being.
[00:37:06]  It's the majesty of the lion.
[00:37:08]  It's the strength of the ox.
[00:37:09]  It's the swiftness of the eagle to carry out God's decree.
[00:37:12]  And it's the dignity of the man that it matters that it's doing this.
[00:37:17]  But all of that is analogical.
[00:37:18]  It's all true knowledge.
[00:37:19]  It's genuine takeaways about their nature, but not about their appearance.
[00:37:24]  And so on the flip side of that right.
[00:37:26]  What you just said, true knowledge, people need to understand that analogical language in the Bible is not lying.
[00:37:32]  No, it's true.
[00:37:33]  It's all saying something true.
[00:37:35]  It's just, in what sense is it true?
[00:37:36]  We're not agnostics.
[00:37:37]  It's true, genuine knowledge of God.
[00:37:39]  And so then on the flip side of that, you have to reckon with, we've already brought it up in another episode, but texts like when Samuel's ghost appears to Saul and the Witch of Endor, they can, A, it's pure spirit.
[00:37:53]  It's not his body.
[00:37:54]  Right.
[00:37:54]  Okay.
[00:37:55]  It's not his body coming out of whatever grave Samuel was born.
[00:37:57]  At that time, it is pure spirit.
[00:37:59]  Right.
[00:37:59]  And yet they can, A, recognize it as Samuel, and it is not omnipresent.
[00:38:03]  It's bound to a geography.
[00:38:05]  So pure spirit without a body can also speak.
[00:38:06]  It can also speak.
[00:38:07]  It's still a physical locale.
[00:38:08]  Right.
[00:38:09]  And it can speak.
[00:38:10]  And it can speak.
[00:38:12]  I told you guys this.
[00:38:13]  That's not analogical.
[00:38:14]  I think that the answer is that there is such a thing as a spiritual body or a type that is real.
[00:38:20]  And it would be improper for us to call it physical, even though some of the things that we mean by physical, I think, are true of it, that it's real.
[00:38:28]  And it's not just like a hologram, but that there's genuinely a different category that we're actually making a category error when we try to reason our physicality into this type of being.
[00:38:41]  And 1 Corinthians 15 is an interesting passage to me on this, where Paul's talking about the resurrection.
[00:38:45]  And there are two ways I think you could think about this.
[00:38:48]  One of them makes sense for what I'm saying, and the other interpretation wouldn't.
[00:38:50]  But he says, how are the dead raised?
[00:38:52]  1 Corinthians 15, 35.
[00:38:55]  With what kind of body do they come?
[00:38:57]  You foolish person, what you sow does not come to life unless it dies.
[00:39:00]  And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain.
[00:39:05]  But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body.
[00:39:09]  For not all flesh is the same.
[00:39:11]  So he's saying in the resurrection, there'll be different types of bodies.
[00:39:15]  Your body will be to your resurrected body as a tree is to the seed that grew it.
[00:39:20]  So it's related, but it's not identical.
[00:39:22]  He says, for not all flesh is the same.
[00:39:24]  Now he's making a more basic point about the nature of flesh in general or of bodies in general.
[00:39:29]  For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish.
[00:39:35]  There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind and the glory of the earthly is of another.

=== Resurrection and Body Types (02:05) ===

[00:39:41]  Then he's, you know, the glory of the sun.
[00:39:43]  So, two ways you can think about that.
[00:39:45]  Either Paul, when he says heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, is talking about celestial bodies like the stars.
[00:39:51]  That's one way you could think about that, that he's just talking, He's now explaining it further when he says the glory of the sun, the moon, and stars.
[00:39:58]  Another one would be to say that Paul is talking about the particular type of state of being that God gives to things like heavenly beings, like angelic beings, which I think is at least possible.
[00:40:11]  Which are, of course, just stars.
[00:40:13]  Yeah.
[00:40:13]  And then if you go one step further and you understand that even in your world, that is not what stars are, only what they're made of.
[00:40:20]  That's simply what they're made of.
[00:40:21]  But in that sense, then I think that we're talking about a class of being that is not.
[00:40:28]  It is spiritual, but that doesn't mean that it's everything we often think of when we think of spiritual in this sense.
[00:40:37]  Right Response Ministries 2025 conference is a go.
[00:40:42]  This is a three day full, jam packed conference with eight main sessions, three to four hour and a half long panels, and an all star super based lineup of speakers 15 speakers in all.
[00:40:55]  Who are they?
[00:40:56]  Steve Dace, Jeff Durbin, Orrin McIntyre, Stephen Wolfe.
[00:41:00]  Brian Sauvay, Andrew Isker, John Harris, Eric Kahn, A.D. Robles, Dan Burkholder, the Christian Prince himself, Dusty Devers, Ben Garrett, Zachary Garris, David Reese, and yours truly, Pastor Joel Webbin.
[00:41:15]  Again, this is April 3rd, 4th, and 5th, 2025, and the early registration is open right now.
[00:41:22]  This is the longest conference with the most speakers we've ever offered, and yet it is our all-time lowest price.
[00:41:30]  The early registration available today is only $140.
[00:41:35]  For an adult, so go to rightresponseconference.com again.
[00:41:39]  That is rightresponseconference.com to register right now because the early registration will not last long.

=== Spiritual Existence Beyond Earth (05:15) ===

[00:41:47]  Yeah, because we think of spiritual as living outside of any physical plane in an ethereal, strictly, you know, 17th dimension type thing that has no visible kind of, yeah, but that's and it's like a thought, right?
[00:42:01]  It's like a thought.
[00:42:02]  We think of spirit as like this thing that is totally intangible.
[00:42:07]  And what I'm saying is that I don't think the biblical evidence backs up that that is what, when we're talking about created spiritual beings, again, to make the distinction, there is this absolute gulf of being between the creator and the creature.
[00:42:21]  You cannot reason from one of the other.
[00:42:23]  God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.
[00:42:27]  And in terms of God in his essence, which is spirit, we're not really going there.
[00:42:32]  God is going there.
[00:42:33]  We're not touching that.
[00:42:34]  We're talking about angels.
[00:42:36]  And what does it mean for them that has a deity?
[00:42:37]  He alone has a deity.
[00:42:39]  He's self-existent.
[00:42:39]  He's not created.
[00:42:40]  But God did create heavenly bodies.
[00:42:43]  Okay.
[00:42:43]  So, and I'm not, again, just to be clear right now, because it's kind of in the zeitgeist, I'm also not talking about like a spiritual resurrection, full preterism type of stuff.
[00:42:51]  You get resurrected and you get a physical, glorified body.
[00:42:55]  But I'm saying that I think, I think we could argue right now, we're still awaiting the resurrection.
[00:43:01]  And so, both for the damned and for those who are righteous, there's a spiritual existence, but still has some kind of substance to it.
[00:43:11]  In the sense that Samuel, like you said, he could talk.
[00:43:13]  Yeah.
[00:43:14]  He could be recognized.
[00:43:15]  He recognized him.
[00:43:16]  Which is huge.
[00:43:17]  And even the woman, I mean, the witch of Endor, you can tell she's shocked.
[00:43:20]  It's like, you know, she had this familiar spirit that she was using that would take on the form and pretend to be whoever the dead, you know, and she's ripping people off.
[00:43:29]  Like, oh, you want to talk to your mom?
[00:43:30]  You miss her so much.
[00:43:31]  Let me go.
[00:43:31]  Congratulations.
[00:43:32]  It's the devil.
[00:43:33]  But at least back then, you know, the witches of Indor, the mediums, at least they put forth an effort.
[00:43:39]  At least they had a spirit that, you know, and whereas a lot of people today is like, well, just there's not even, they don't, they haven't even taken the time to get a familiar spirit.
[00:43:48]  But that does happen today.
[00:43:49]  It reminds me of what we were talking about with Egypt.
[00:43:53]  In that the gods of Egypt, their witchcraft stopped working at some point.
[00:43:57]  That there are times in places that are yet under darkness, or I think can return to darkness through apostasy and corruption and grievous sin.
[00:44:06]  Actually, the judgment's more severe.
[00:44:08]  Where the magic starts working again.
[00:44:09]  This is what I'm concerned about.
[00:44:11]  We're going to talk about this in another episode with DMT and some of these spiritual pathways opening through pharmacea and degeneracy, where some of those old doors that are genuinely closed when a people turn to Christ.
[00:44:23]  You find genuine protection because Paul says that we have power to tear down every stronghold and lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God.
[00:44:31]  2 Corinthians 10, 3 to 5.
[00:44:34]  And I think there's a corporate national application.
[00:44:37]  I believe that 100%.
[00:44:38]  This is true of peoples.
[00:44:40]  I think it's true of individuals.
[00:44:41]  I think it's true of families.
[00:44:42]  I think it's true of schools.
[00:44:44]  I think it can be true of business entities.
[00:44:45]  I think it can be true of nations.
[00:44:47]  And even empires of nations.
[00:44:51]  But the problem is when Jesus comes and casts the demons out.
[00:44:56]  And it's filled.
[00:44:57]  Yes.
[00:44:57]  The house is swept clean and put in order and then filled with devotion to Christ and the altar is erected to the true and living triune God.
[00:45:05]  But then the people become unfaithful and turn from God and the house is now empty of the spirit.
[00:45:11]  Then what happens is those demons don't disappear.
[00:45:14]  They went somewhere.
[00:45:15]  They're still around.
[00:45:16]  And then they come back with seven other demons worse than themselves.
[00:45:20]  And what Jesus talks about at an individual level, I think that there is a corporate application for nations.
[00:45:27]  The West.
[00:45:29]  Because honestly, you know, G.K. Chesterton talks about this.
[00:45:31]  Like, paganism is a hop and a skip away from Christianity.
[00:45:34]  Yeah, right.
[00:45:35]  And understand what I'm saying there in the sense that, like, paganism understands, paganism gets supernatural, they get spiritual, they get sacrifice, they get blood, they get all these kinds of things.
[00:45:45]  It's only secular humanists, it's only materialists that are, oh, so sophisticated that I feel like Jesus would look at Mr. Pagan Man and say, I tell you the truth, you're not far from the kingdom.
[00:45:56]  Yeah.
[00:45:57]  Whereas, you know, he would look at your Western Modern and say, goodness gracious.
[00:46:03]  This is why you can read a book like Till We Have Faces, by Cs Lewis, set in a Pre-christian pagan society, and walk away from the book thinking wow, what a great book expositing Christian virtue, yeah.
[00:46:15]  And then you can read you know, the Ransom trilogy and that hideous Strength Right, also written by Cs Lewis, about a pagan society, Post-christian and think those people are damned to hell right yeah, and there is no virtue in them whatsoever.
[00:46:28]  It's like what happened in Canaan, Canaan Joshua, who is Yeshua, I mean, he's like a Christ figure And the people of God drive out the giants and they drive out the Pagans, and they don't do it perfectly, but they do genuinely drive out Baal.
[00:46:41]  He's put to flight and Molech and these human sacrificial cults.
[00:46:46]  Well, then what happens?
[00:46:47]  By the time Christ comes, Israel has become like Egypt and Babylon.
[00:46:53]  It's full of unclean spirits.
[00:46:54]  People are all oppressed by unclean spirits.
[00:46:56]  It's just drenched in demons.
[00:46:57]  And full of the most base, like Herod slaughtering children, just like Pharaoh.

=== Driving Out Pagan Cults (15:42) ===

[00:47:02]  Right.
[00:47:04]  Do you see the exact principle play out that the Baals were cast out?
[00:47:08]  But then emptiness came.
[00:47:11]  It became a desert waste, a haunt of jackals.
[00:47:14]  And then, of course, what happens when you have a vacuum?
[00:47:18]  It's a job description to the demons.
[00:47:20]  And so they flood back in.
[00:47:22]  And we're in danger.
[00:47:23]  That is happening.
[00:47:24]  We're also in danger of that further happening in our nation with all of these trifling with demonic and we could get into UAPs and a bunch of other stuff.
[00:47:34]  And we will.
[00:47:35]  And overall, we believe that the trajectory is likely long.
[00:47:38]  It could be thousands of years and it's also up.
[00:47:41]  But we leave room for when we say, oh, a little dip, we're not talking about a bad week.
[00:47:46]  We're talking like I would say 100 years.
[00:47:48]  Yeah, we've been in a dip since the Enlightenment, America earlier.
[00:47:52]  And so big fall.
[00:47:53]  Yeah.
[00:47:54]  Oh, yeah.
[00:47:54]  America could absolutely.
[00:47:55]  In fact, it's in the terms of tipping point, like we're, we're very far gone.
[00:48:00]  Yeah.
[00:48:00]  It's likely.
[00:48:01]  And you look back over the history of, of nations and we see like many of the Eastern Christian realms that were conquered by Muslims are still Muslim today.
[00:48:12]  Right.
[00:48:12]  Muslim ruled today.
[00:48:14]  God sends chastening enemies in.
[00:48:17]  He doesn't withhold judgment ultimately from those chastening instruments in his hand, the demons or the pagans or whoever.
[00:48:24]  But he really does chasten his people.
[00:48:26]  Right.
[00:48:27]  And we really can be given over to these things.
[00:48:29]  So classes of angels, and we've already done some of that in terms of the how much should we understand literally versus analogically.
[00:48:36]  And okay, so angels are spirit, but there is a physical sense, a physical component, which back to the Samuel, he comes up.
[00:48:44]  He doesn't just appear, but he's called up.
[00:48:47]  You know, he's ascending from Sheol in the belly of the earth.
[00:48:51]  And we've talked about like the belly of the earth that it seems as though even though there's spirit, this is before the resurrection, still waiting, there.
[00:48:59]  Held in a physical space.
[00:49:01]  Right.
[00:49:01]  I just wouldn't call it.
[00:49:03]  In the belly of the earth.
[00:49:04]  Physical.
[00:49:05]  Yeah.
[00:49:05]  I would call it a heavenly body.
[00:49:07]  No, okay, but I'm saying the space that is under the earth.
[00:49:10]  They're held in a physical space.
[00:49:12]  Yeah.
[00:49:13]  It's not just on another plane.
[00:49:14]  It's in this world.
[00:49:16]  Yeah.
[00:49:16]  It's in this world in a physical space, like deep under the earth.
[00:49:20]  Same thing with, you know, the angels locked in gloomy dungeons.
[00:49:23]  Yeah.
[00:49:24]  Right?
[00:49:24]  They're not locked in a spiritual prison.
[00:49:27]  In an imaginary gloomy prison.
[00:49:29]  There probably are spiritual components to it, you know, like.
[00:49:32]  But it's also a prison, very arguably, down in a physical place.
[00:49:38]  Let me ask you this.
[00:49:39]  Yeah.
[00:49:39]  So I'm thinking about Enoch and Elijah and how they could maybe help conceptualize what we're talking about because they were still in their physical bodies when they were taken up to be with the Lord.
[00:49:51]  You know, and there's debate as to what happened to them after that.
[00:49:54]  But they were in a heavenly place with a physical body.
[00:49:58]  We know that, just like Christ is now.
[00:50:00]  Possibly.
[00:50:00]  Yeah, it's most likely.
[00:50:02]  Yeah.
[00:50:03]  What do you think?
[00:50:05]  Because you just said you don't like the word physical.
[00:50:08]  So man is made from the dust of the earth.
[00:50:10]  That's the earthly body, it is made from the dust.
[00:50:14]  Augustine in Book 8 or 11, I can't remember which, of City of God, says that the angels were created when God said, let there be light.
[00:50:21]  Are you comfortable with saying that a heavenly body could be, emphasis on could be, made of whatever light is that's not produced by a star or a source, but just whatever God says, whenever God says, let there be light, and it just is?
[00:50:34]  Well, the thing is, what we see is always light.
[00:50:37]  Yes.
[00:50:39]  It's always some kind of light.
[00:50:40]  I think I'm just most comfortable saying that I think that there is such thing as a heavenly body.
[00:50:45]  Yeah.
[00:50:46]  That is, if you want to call it physical with all the asterisks, that you don't necessarily mean that it is made of kneecaps and the same components that a physical, I would be, I would not want to say that, in fact, I would be much more comfortable saying, even if it came to this, that the angels, ministering spirits are able for a time.
[00:51:09]  To put on a physical body that is truly a physical body, but that's not their normative state at all times or in every situation.
[00:51:17]  I'm not necessarily saying I actually believe that, but I think I'd be more comfortable with that than calling them physical.
[00:51:24]  I think they have a different type of, I think it's a category error.
[00:51:29]  I think I would be most comfortable saying that they have a body that's not an earthly body.
[00:51:34]  Yes, it's a heavenly body, but it is a body.
[00:51:37]  But it's a real body.
[00:51:38]  Right.
[00:51:38]  And that the category doesn't mean that you couldn't touch it.
[00:51:41]  Yeah.
[00:51:42]  Or it doesn't mean you couldn't see it.
[00:51:43]  It doesn't mean you couldn't see it.
[00:51:45]  Or you couldn't hear it.
[00:51:46]  And it doesn't mean that they're even, that's pure analogy that they have eyes and wings and faces.
[00:51:52]  that I actually think that probably is what they are when you see that.
[00:51:56]  And I think that the angels that appear as men, I think that that actually is what they are.
[00:52:00]  Sure.
[00:52:01]  I just think it's a heavenly body.
[00:52:02]  It's just a, it's not exactly the same type.
[00:52:05]  And that there's some element there of mystery that is not explicated fully to us.
[00:52:11]  Okay.
[00:52:12]  Yeah.
[00:52:12]  I agree with that.
[00:52:13]  At least I think it's plausible.
[00:52:15]  Last question.
[00:52:16]  Angels being male.
[00:52:19]  Yeah.
[00:52:19]  Oh, wait.
[00:52:19]  Guardian angels.
[00:52:20]  Take it away, Joe.
[00:52:20]  I know, but we really have so much time.
[00:52:22]  The answer is yes, there are guardian angels.
[00:52:24]  They take care of you.
[00:52:25]  The answer is that every angel is a guardian.
[00:52:27]  Yeah, just like, okay, all angels are ministering spirits.
[00:52:31]  Whether or not each individual Christian has their own individual guardian angel, we don't know.
[00:52:35]  We don't know.
[00:52:35]  I've actually strongly grown in opposition to that idea.
[00:52:38]  Of to what?
[00:52:39]  That we each have our own.
[00:52:40]  That everyone has an individual guardian angel.
[00:52:42]  Right.
[00:52:42]  And the point is that we don't know because we're not supposed to know because we're great at making things that ought not to be accessories, accessories.
[00:52:47]  Yeah, like an angel's an accessory.
[00:52:48]  We're like, well, it's my angel.
[00:52:50]  No, it's not.
[00:52:51]  It's actually not your angel.
[00:52:52]  No, it's not.
[00:52:52]  Right.
[00:52:53]  But to your question about male, are they only male?
[00:52:56]  Okay, so.
[00:52:57]  What are some of the passages in scripture that talk about angels being female?
[00:53:02]  What is the passage?
[00:53:03]  What is Zechariah 3?
[00:53:05]  I'm going to look at it.
[00:53:06]  Is that something that everyone.
[00:53:07]  Yeah.
[00:53:07]  Zechariah.
[00:53:08]  I think it's 4.
[00:53:09]  Zechariah 4, probably.
[00:53:11]  Yeah.
[00:53:12]  Let me, you guys keep going because that is literally the only time.
[00:53:14]  But I don't know of any other time, arguably.
[00:53:17]  Ryan, you find it, but it talks about storks.
[00:53:23]  And it seems like, I mean, there's a strong argument to be made for like, these aren't even, this is not even positive.
[00:53:29]  This is negative.
[00:53:30]  These are like. demonic spirits, or there's also an argument to be made for these being speaking using corporate language and not individual angelic beings, but like the two witnesses in Revelation.
[00:53:46]  You could interpret that as two individual people bearing witness, but you could also interpret it as two churches, those kinds of things.
[00:53:53]  So Ben, take it away for a second.
[00:53:55]  Well, I was going to say the thing that I am curious about is, and I think it's a really compelling point, by the way.
[00:54:03]  That your loaded question is getting to, which is that there's no female, quote unquote, female angels.
[00:54:09]  But then, how do we get female demons?
[00:54:14]  Zachariah 5 9.
[00:54:16]  Then I lifted my eyes and saw, and behold, two women coming forward.
[00:54:20]  By the way, this whole section is full of angels, like the whole thing in Zachariah.
[00:54:24]  So it's like this is totally normal in the context.
[00:54:27]  Two women coming forward.
[00:54:28]  The wind was in their wings.
[00:54:29]  They had wings like the wings of a stork, and they lifted up the basket between earth and heaven.
[00:54:34]  And then I said to the angel who, Talked with me.
[00:54:36]  What are they taking the basket?
[00:54:37]  Where are they taking the basket?
[00:54:38]  He said to me, To the land of Shinar to build a house for it.
[00:54:41]  And when this is prepared, they will set the basket down there on its base.
[00:54:45]  So that's the one passage in the whole Bible.
[00:54:47]  It says two women.
[00:54:48]  That some people say, Well, they had wings and they were women and they were doing this thing that seems.
[00:54:54]  In the context of other angels.
[00:54:55]  Of a lot of other angels doing stuff.
[00:54:57]  That's the only even plausible female manifestation of spiritual beings.
[00:55:05]  Right.
[00:55:06]  I'm not convinced that they're.
[00:55:08]  I don't know that we can be, but I'm not convinced that those are the same thing as an angel.
[00:55:15]  Right.
[00:55:15]  But I'm also not sure what to do with them if they're not right, you know, yeah, it's kind of a tough one Well, in the same way that like the church, you know, like Mother Kirk might like you can use or a ship, you know, like the wind threatened to to break her apart Well, God says he's like a mother hen.
[00:55:35]  Yeah, to us God God does use feminine language sparingly, but he does right one point that I this is exceedingly sparing a minute ago considering it's the only text Yeah, I would a minute ago before we recording had an idea that I'd never thought of before, which is the idea that maybe because in the heavenly realm, the heavenly beings, that this is a place where in the heavenly realm, there isn't the feminine in this sense that we're used to on earth because God himself is not,
[00:56:05]  he does not have a feminine component.
[00:56:07]  Even what we just said about analogy, he's not, there is no God the mother.
[00:56:11]  There is no sister God.
[00:56:14]  There is father, son, and spirit all referred to by male pronouns revealed as.
[00:56:20]  Men, which makes sense then in how we are created in God's image hierarchically and in our relationship as sex beings.
[00:56:27]  It makes sense to me that there wouldn't be, if that passage isn't a spiritual angelic being that exists in this class, and I'm just wrong, but it would make sense to me that there wouldn't be female angels in this heavenly realm, but that it would be a male, like it's weird to call it a male space because we're all, like, ladies are going to be saved, and, you know, obviously.
[00:56:49]  Yeah, of course.
[00:56:49]  Women are Christians too.
[00:56:50]  Women are going to be glorified.
[00:56:51]  They're not going to be.
[00:56:52]  They're not going to become men like some of the pseudopigra, some of the false gospels, right?
[00:56:56]  Fake.
[00:56:57]  What are they called?
[00:56:57]  That they're just like Gnostic gospels, like Thomas.
[00:57:00]  Yeah.
[00:57:01]  Well, now you can become a man because you're a true.
[00:57:03]  You've earned it.
[00:57:04]  Didn't Mary become a man?
[00:57:05]  You've earned it.
[00:57:06]  In the Gospel of Thomas.
[00:57:06]  Yeah, like in the Gospel of Thomas.
[00:57:08]  I'm pretty sure.
[00:57:09]  It's like, that's the whole thing.
[00:57:10]  She becomes a man now.
[00:57:11]  And she's like, you're saved.
[00:57:12]  You're a man.
[00:57:13]  Congratulations.
[00:57:13]  It's like, it's pretty funny.
[00:57:16]  I almost said based, but I really don't mean it.
[00:57:18]  I really don't mean it.
[00:57:19]  It would have been a joke.
[00:57:20]  No, no.
[00:57:22]  Woman is the glorious man.
[00:57:23]  She's an image bearer of God.
[00:57:25]  And in our class of being, it is good and fitting that there is male and female both, both male and female.
[00:57:30]  So god created angels are married or given a marriage.
[00:57:32]  God created man in his image, but then mankind, both male and female, he made them.
[00:57:37]  So both male and female are, are bearing the image of god uh, but in terms of glories uh woman, um is the glory of man, man is the glory of God yeah, and there is a but glory and image, that's two different concepts being spoken of um, so both male and female made in the image of god but, but man bearing the glory of god, woman bearing the glory of man um, as it pertains to the heavenly realm.
[00:58:01]  I think what I struggle with is that competing glories.
[00:58:06]  This gets into head coverings.
[00:58:07]  This gets into a bunch of stuff.
[00:58:09]  1 Corinthians 11.
[00:58:09]  I mean, there's a lot here that we don't have time for at all.
[00:58:13]  Not even a little bit.
[00:58:14]  But one of the ideas of 1 Corinthians 11 of covering the head is not just because even the angels that haven't fallen, that remained in an upright, you know, stayed in their proper abode, that they're just, those angels are just such horn dogs that, you know, if they look down and see, you know, the Christian church gathering on the hill and worshiping.
[00:58:33]  The black guy behind the tree, you know, with that insanely cool yellow coat.
[00:58:38]  And so you got to, you know, cover the head, you know, hide your wife, hide your kids.
[00:58:43]  I don't think that's, you know, I don't think that's it.
[00:58:46]  I don't think angels or rapists just wait for an opportunity.
[00:58:48]  No, and the other thing is, I agree with you that there was a fall of angels.
[00:58:53]  I don't believe that the angels are just willy nilly.
[00:58:56]  It's like, how many did we lose today?
[00:58:57]  Right.
[00:58:58]  You know, Michael's not reporting the number of angels.
[00:59:00]  So the reformed view is that much like with Adam and Eve, there was a period, uh, after which they would not have been tested anymore.
[00:59:09]  So had Adam not succumbed, an angel gets its wings.
[00:59:13]  Right.
[00:59:13]  So, yeah.
[00:59:14]  So, had Adam not succumbed, all of Adam and Eve's progeny would not have had the same test.
[00:59:18]  Right.
[00:59:18]  Because the covenantal head wouldn't have succumbed.
[00:59:20]  Right.
[00:59:21]  It was a probationary period.
[00:59:22]  Eventually, Adam would have achieved it, and all his posterity would have achieved it with him.
[00:59:26]  Angels.
[00:59:26]  The difference is, the fundamental difference is that angels are not covenantal, as far as we know, in the same way.
[00:59:31]  There's no federal headship.
[00:59:32]  Right.
[00:59:32]  Because they don't marry nor are given in marriage.
[00:59:35]  They don't marry in heaven.
[00:59:36]  They don't.
[00:59:36]  Right.
[00:59:36]  So, they're all unique creations that are uniquely created, not generated from previous generations.
[00:59:43]  And so, there's no.
[00:59:45]  The concept that we have of the covenant.
[00:59:47]  Don't apply.
[00:59:48]  They may have a covenantal structure, but it would be completely foreign to us.
[00:59:52]  So, because of that, it seems like the Reformed view is that all of the angels were created at a single time, that they're not still being made, and they all had some period of testing probation.
[01:00:06]  And then that was it.
[01:00:08]  And now they all have positively endowed holiness such that they cannot fall.
[01:00:11]  They've all been created in a state of integrity, but not immutable, right?
[01:00:15]  So, without sin, without being fallen, but able to fall.
[01:00:20]  So state of integrity, but not immutable integrity.
[01:00:24]  But then angels, humanity would have achieved that collectively.
[01:00:27]  Angels made at the same time, but would achieve that individually.
[01:00:31]  And probably, I think it's safe to assume, we don't say it definitively, but it's plausible that they would achieve that individually in a task-based scenario.
[01:00:40]  Like an angel gets his wings.
[01:00:43]  It's a wonderful life.
[01:00:44]  Yeah, seriously, that's what I'm saying.
[01:00:45]  It is canon.
[01:00:46]  Basically, that's what I'm saying.
[01:00:48]  It's much like how Christ is Christ.
[01:00:50]  Right, and he represents and the pastor represents Christ, and then how the angelic ministers represent the deacons who are tested for a time until their worth is proven.
[01:00:58]  Well, it could have been getting to Daniel and beating the prince of Persia, immutable now, like you're already in a state of integrity.
[01:01:05]  Oh, yeah, even though there's no like positive, this is exactly what it is, I like this enough that I now it's pretty awesome.
[01:01:11]  Believe it whole.
[01:01:11]  I believe it, I will fight to the death.
[01:01:14]  It's like primary water level.
[01:01:16]  Well, here's the thing there's no it's like there's God for Jesus Christ, then primary water.
[01:01:21]  And then angels individually reaching a state of immutable integrity.
[01:01:25]  But I would almost see it.
[01:01:26]  Task-oriented.
[01:01:28]  I like the task-oriented thing, but I think it would have all been at one time.
[01:01:32]  Yeah, like I don't think that today.
[01:01:34]  I'm okay with that.
[01:01:34]  But I mean, I'm okay with that too.
[01:01:36]  It's just either one makes sense.
[01:01:37]  That would be my sensibility.
[01:01:39]  Yep.
[01:01:39]  Kicking it out.
[01:01:40]  My sensibility.
[01:01:41]  So all that being said, angels my point with competing glories, going back to that, I don't think so one, the reason we got off on that for the listener, just so that you're reminded, is we don't think that at this point in time, at this juncture, Um that uh, angels are still going to be able to fall no, even without.
[01:01:57]  Within my theory, it's absolutely plausible that by by these 6 000 years in um 2 000 years after Christ um, uh in his incarnation and coming that, even at an individual basis, that every angel, because so much of the angel's task was oriented to to seen through the messiah and so so that they fall, a third of the stars fall and they've already fallen exactly, and they at in a chunk, it seems, at one.
[01:02:21]  So so all the angels that uh, that stayed in heaven, exactly one, fall in a chunk.
[01:02:26]  All the angels that stayed uh were Remained in a state of integrity, but maybe individually, hitting immutability, meaning unable to fall.
[01:02:34]  But by this point, they've all hit it.
[01:02:35]  They've all maxed out.
[01:02:36]  You're all good.
[01:02:38]  Or collectively, that's perfectly plausible.
[01:02:40]  Either way, they're all good.
[01:02:41]  So, back to the glory kind of thing and female versus male angels.

=== Angels in Heaven Stayed Good (06:17) ===

[01:02:45]  The point is, I think it's silly to say that now, today, at this period of time, that angels in heaven, a woman needs to cover her head because they'll be tempted to rebel against God out of lust.
[01:02:59]  That's not it.
[01:03:00]  But this is what I do think that when we.
[01:03:02]  When we worship, there's a sense in which God in his mercy, there is a sense that we could speak of condescension and not God demeaning us.
[01:03:09]  It's not to spare it, but to say that God, that he tabernacles among us, that he is willing to step down, as it were, analogical language from his throne in order to inhabit the praises of his people and dwell with us.
[01:03:22]  But there's another sense, and maybe the more important biblical sense, in which when the church gathers for worship, it's not just God condescending, if there's any element of that at all, but it's the church ascending, that the church is now seated with him in heavenly places, Ascended the delectable hills.
[01:03:42]  We're getting a glimpse of the celestial, that the church is going to heaven on the Lord's day, that in the spiritual sense, we are gathered together and we are going to heaven.
[01:03:50]  And if we're going to heaven, so not about the angels and their lust problem for our women, it's not that, but if we're going to heaven, in heaven, there's no competing for the glory of God.
[01:04:03]  And man is the glory of God, woman, the glory of man.
[01:04:07]  So by concealing the woman, a head covering, It conceals woman, which is the glory of man, so that man's glory, woman who's the glory of man, is not competing with the glory of God.
[01:04:17]  The glory of man is not rivaling the glory of God.
[01:04:19]  The only visible glory on display in heaven and within church on the Lord's day goes to heaven for worship.
[01:04:27]  The only visible glory on display is the glory of God.
[01:04:30]  And that that is why the woman would cover her head.
[01:04:33]  Including the glory of God demonstrated in man?
[01:04:35]  Yes.
[01:04:36]  Because the idea isn't necessarily competing glory is kind of the right term, at least, but it seems to me like it's actually about all of the glories falling into their proper order.
[01:04:49]  Because the angels are glorious.
[01:04:51]  Right.
[01:04:51]  There's a glory of the heavenly body and a glory of the earthly body and a glory of the sun and the glory of the stars.
[01:04:57]  But the angels, I think, bear the glory of God.
[01:05:00]  Yes.
[01:05:00]  So it's all of it is God.
[01:05:03]  And the way that man is subordinate glory.
[01:05:05]  The way that I describe glory all the time is the glory of a thing is the weighty goodness of that thing being and doing what it was made to be and do.
[01:05:12]  Right.
[01:05:13]  So we have the glory of man who is the glory of God.
[01:05:17]  And then he's bearing glory.
[01:05:18]  The woman was given to him to be his helper, and she is his glory.
[01:05:23]  So that needs to be covered to demonstrate the ordering.
[01:05:27]  Okay, yeah, I think that's the same thing.
[01:05:28]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:05:29]  That's being covered.
[01:05:30]  So it's the only glory on display is the glory of God.
[01:05:35]  Man is the glory of God.
[01:05:36]  He is the glory of God.
[01:05:37]  Man's glory is not on display, but man, who is God's glory, is on.
[01:05:42]  So God's glory and angels, I think, fall into the same principle.
[01:05:46]  Man is the glory of God.
[01:05:47]  Woman, the glory of man.
[01:05:48]  Angels are the glory of God.
[01:05:50]  Full stop.
[01:05:52]  I guess I still don't think that precludes the possibility of an angelic feminine because the glory would be properly ordered anyway.
[01:06:02]  Could be at least.
[01:06:02]  Right.
[01:06:03]  Sure.
[01:06:03]  They could be there and covered.
[01:06:04]  And it could just be one of those things that we don't.
[01:06:06]  Or whatever the covering is.
[01:06:07]  Or even in the way God designed them, they have a built in covering or whatever.
[01:06:11]  Yeah.
[01:06:11]  And if there was a feminine.
[01:06:13]  Absolutely possible.
[01:06:14]  You say it would be fitting that we don't see it a lot.
[01:06:17]  Yeah.
[01:06:17]  No, that's what I'm saying.
[01:06:19]  It would actually be like they're in the mess hall of heaven and they're.
[01:06:23]  Cooking up the man.
[01:06:25]  Here's the thing.
[01:06:27]  God doesn't say, this is actually interesting.
[01:06:28]  I've never thought about this.
[01:06:30]  I'm kind of opening a door a little bit in my mind because Jesus does not say that in heaven there aren't lady angels.
[01:06:38]  He just says there aren't married or given in marriage.
[01:06:41]  Right.
[01:06:41]  So it would seem like you could just say.
[01:06:45]  So I think that it's, I think what you're saying is compelling.
[01:06:48]  But then what I'm also saying is that I can't get, I can't.
[01:06:51]  But it doesn't have to be what I'm saying.
[01:06:52]  No, no.
[01:06:53]  And I understand that too.
[01:06:54]  I know that you're not like making dogma or anything.
[01:06:56]  Yeah.
[01:06:56]  But I'm also saying I'm not unconvinced that Zechariah 5 is not mentioning feminine angels.
[01:07:02]  And because I can't actually think of anything, even with properly ordered glories and hierarchy of creation, all of that being a basic presupposition, I can't think of anything that would preclude the possibility of a feminine spirit as an ministering angel.
[01:07:20]  As a possibility.
[01:07:21]  Yes, as a possibility.
[01:07:22]  So conclusively, what we're saying is that maybe.
[01:07:26]  Maybe, right?
[01:07:28]  Yep.
[01:07:28]  So we're out there.
[01:07:29]  Definitely different classifications of angels.
[01:07:31]  And definitely masculine.
[01:07:32]  Yep.
[01:07:32]  And definitely masculine.
[01:07:34]  Maybe feminine.
[01:07:35]  And so definitely different classes of angels.
[01:07:37]  Definitely guardian angels.
[01:07:38]  Definitely guardian angels.
[01:07:39]  But in a sense, not just you and this one out.
[01:07:41]  Not like the Padre Pio way, but in the Calvin way.
[01:07:44]  Right.
[01:07:45]  There you go.
[01:07:46]  And then, yeah.
[01:07:47]  And then definitely the masculine angel, maybe the feminine angel.
[01:07:50]  And then in terms of spirit, yeah, spiritual bodies.
[01:07:54]  But that doesn't mean what you probably think it means.
[01:07:57]  Heavenly being.
[01:07:59]  Doesn't mean that there's no heavenly body, isn't nothing.
[01:08:01]  It doesn't mean no, it doesn't mean gelament.
[01:08:03]  Floaty, you could see it with your eyes, yes, right now.
[01:08:05]  You could see it, you could touch it, yes, it could come to you, mm hmm.
[01:08:10]  And and they don't all just look alike, it's bound to space.
[01:08:13]  You'd be able to pick one out that's Samuel, oh, that's uh, the rich man, that's Lazarus, that's you know, um, and then apply that to angels, those are people, but same kind of yes, okay, and that's before the resurrection.
[01:08:25]  I think we've solved like 80 to 90 percent of the problem.
[01:08:28]  You're all welcome, Christendom.
[01:08:30]  Yep, yes, guys, within that framework.
[01:08:33]  Male angels could absolutely procreate with the daughters of men.
[01:08:38]  Well, I think they did.
[01:08:39]  Especially those male angels in rebelling to God who left their heavenly abode.
[01:08:43]  Jesus only says that the angels in heaven.
[01:08:46]  They don't.
[01:08:47]  Yeah, and they don't.
[01:08:48]  It doesn't say they can't, but he says the angels in heaven.
[01:08:50]  In marriage, there's two elements.
[01:08:52]  They don't.
[01:08:53]  That's meaning they're not willing to rebel against God in that way.
[01:08:56]  And angels who are in heaven.
[01:08:58]  We're talking about angels who left heaven.
[01:08:59]  Well, and categorically.
[01:09:01]  They can do.
[01:09:02]  He's not talking about marriage.

=== Debunking Fornication Text (01:20) ===

[01:09:03]  They're accused of doing something horribly unnatural.
[01:09:05]  Well, he's not talking about it.
[01:09:07]  Copulation, he's talking about marriage, those are not the same thing.
[01:09:09]  Otherwise, fornication is an impossible category, right?
[01:09:12]  Is another objection as well.
[01:09:14]  So, yeah, I mean, to me, it's for other reasons, it's clear that this did happen, and so you have to add that as a data point into your understanding of the thing.
[01:09:25]  Your angel, all some would call that a circular that is that I'm begging the question.
[01:09:28]  I get that, but I'm convinced from the text.
[01:09:30]  Frankly, the using that text as a proof text against angels fornicating with women and producing offspring is a midwit take.
[01:09:39]  See our published works.
[01:09:40]  Right.
[01:09:40]  Like it's been addressed right here.
[01:09:42]  Dude.
[01:09:43]  I'm with you.
[01:09:45]  All right.
[01:09:45]  Well, thank you guys for tuning in.
[01:09:46]  Real quick, right here at the end, I just wanted to remind you to become a member at patreon.com forward slash right response ministries.
[01:09:54]  Exclusively for our Patreon members, we have all 10 episodes early access, ad free.
[01:10:01]  Some of my favorite episodes to be looking forward to are episodes that deal with Bigfoot or fairies or ghosts or angels or giants or particularly our episode on witches.
[01:10:12]  If you want to watch these episodes now, And you want to watch them without any ads, then you've got to join us by becoming a member at patreon.com forward slash right response ministries.