The Awesomeness of Angels
Angels are often depicted as sissy cherubim with hands folded, halos above the head, either singing a song or having their mouths formed in the shape of a perfect “O”.
These cookie-cutter angels—suggesting Heaven said, “I’ll take a million of those and a million of those”—hardly look like a formidable force to fear!
In contrast to this picture is the account from II Kings, chapter 19, where in one day one angel killed 185,000 Syrian soldiers! Can you imagine that? One angel!
By contrast, we know that at Hiroshima, 80,000 people died the day the atomic bomb dropped; and at Nagasaki, days later, 40,000 were killed when the bomb dropped. Their immediate death total combined is less than what that angel did that night.
And lest we make a theorem positing equivalency from this, we must keep in mind that 185,000 died because that’s all there were. Who knows how many would have died from this single-angel judgment had the Syrian army been larger?
We do know that a million soldiers from Ethiopia mounted an attack on Judah, and that “the Lord struck down the Ethiopians before Asa and Judah.” Notice: Asa and Judah watched it; they didn’t administer it. Apparently, there was at least one angel executing that judgment (II Chronicles 14:12).
If we assumed the minimum of 185 thousand destroyed by one angel as a hypothetical number for calculating purposes, then when we multiply this out it would mean that a legion of angels could kill over one billion, 100 ten million people.
This would mean that twelve legions of angels could annihilate in a single night thirteen billion, three hundred twenty million people.
That is almost twice the number of people on earth!
In saying all this, there’s no warmongering motive here; the significance for the believer today is very practical.
If angels have this much power, and if every believer has at least one angel guarding him or her, would it not be safe to say that a demon assessing this situation would do so with much alarm?
Absolutely!
Why, in the end, we’re told, just one angel, the arch angel Michael, will advance toward Satan with chains in hand, stare him down, and lock him up (Revelation 12:2)!
The awesomeness of angels!
