Angels and their life in heaven; the fallen angels: Satan and his demons

Angels are mentioned in the Bible about 400 times. They were created by God long before He created the earth and man. Just like He did with everything He created, God used His Son with the creation of the angels. Just like God and His Son the angels are spirits. They have no material body which is discernable for the human senses. However: there are Bible passages in which angels use a human body to become visible and audible for humans.

The Bible often calls the angels the sons of God. Together with God and His Son they live in heaven.

Just like God Himself and God’s Son the angels are neither male nor female. But when the Bible refers to God, to God’s Son or to angels, it always uses masculine words. In short: within the Biblical way of speaking God, His Son and the angels are presented as males.

In Bible passages in which angels adopt a human body to be seen and heard by people, they always use the body of a male.

As the angels are neither male nor female, they do not reproduce. Every angel is the product of a separate act of creation by God’s Son.

In the Bible angels usually act as messengers who pass on messages from God to persons. They also communicate with each other and with God. It appears from the Bible that angels have individual personalities and characters. They also have individual names. The names of only two angels are mentioned in the Bible: Michael and Gabriel.

The Bible says that angels have greater mental capacities than humans. They use these capabilities in the first place to praise and honor their creator.

When God and His Son created man the angels were very enthusiastic and from the whole Bible it appears that the angels are greatly interested in the well-being of both individual people and humanity as a whole.

It appears from the Bible that the angels have duties and tasks within an organization which has a clear allocation of tasks and which also has a hierarchy: higher and lower ranks. Two of the higher ranks within the organization which are mentioned in the Bible are the Seraphs and the Cherubs. It is obviously the main duty of The Seraphs to see to it that all over the universe, including the earth, God is given the honor and the praise that are due to Him.

In addition to all this, the word archangel is used in the Bible. The word obviously refers to two angels who have very high positions: Michael and Gabriel. Both the Bible-book Daniel and the Bible book Revelation make it clear that Michael will play a vital part in the establishing of God’s Kingdom at the end of the present human history. The Bible book Revelation also demonstrates that during the period in which God will put an end to our present human history and will establish His Kingdom on our earth Michael will be the chief officer of the heavenly army which will fight the army of Satan.

Gabriel appeared to Daniel twice to show him visions of the future. Gabriel was also the angel who announced the birth of John the Baptist to Zachariah and Elizabeth and the birth of Jesus to Mary.

The angels also form an invincible army: an organization which can annihilate any form of resistance to God at any moment when God desires this. JHWH is not called the God of armies in the Bible (really hundreds of times) for nothing.

It was a chief of God’s army who repeatedly gave the Israelites instructions regarding the military strategies they should follow when they were conquering the Promised Land.

In the Bible book 2 Kings, chapter 19 verse 35, we read how one angel in one night killed no fewer than 185,000 Assyrian soldiers.

And, like we have said before, during the establishment of God’s Kingdom at the end of our human history God’s army, led the archangel Michael, will play a decisive role in extinguishing those who will try to prevent the establishment of this Kingdom.

Satan and the devils or demons. The Bible shows that angels, just like people, are free to cooperate with God and His plans or to resist them. They can obey God and they can rebel against Him. Just like God did not desire a mechanical, robot like love and obedience from people, He also made the angels such that they were free to love Him and to follow Him or to reject Him.

An angel who obviously chose to turn against God and God’s plan is an angel called Satan in the Bible. The bible clearly states that Satan was once a perfect angel who carried out the commands he received from God in a perfect way. But at a given moment he allowed wrong desires to settle and to grow in his heart and in his mind. Desires which were incompatible with appreciation of God and servitude to God.

The first act of rebellion against God from the side of Satan which is described in the Bible is his advice to Eve to eat an apple from a tree of which God had said that Adam and Eve were not allowed to eat from it. By acting in this way Satan demonstrated towards Eve that he had doubts regarding God’s righteousness, God’s honesty and God’s intentions. Thereby he showed himself to be a real adversary of God and God’s plans.

Just before the Flood the rebellion against God spread among a number of angels. Disobedient angels stopped honoring and obeying God as their creator. They left heaven, went to the earth and there adopted male bodies to be able to marry attractive earthly women. From these unnatural liaisons there arose children who were extremely violent and formed an important reason why God decided to annihilate all earthly people, except for eight righteous ones, in the days of Noah.

The male bodies which the demons adopted were not real male bodies. At the Flood the fallen angels got rid of the human bodies they had used temporarily and returned to the spirit world. Here they still live in a condition of deep spiritual darkness. Yet, they still possess a lot of power, also on the earth. In the gospels there are many stories about demons which have taken possession of animals or humans. In His days on earth Jesus threw out quite a number of demons from demon possessed individuals.

As regards Satan: immediately after his act of rebellion in the garden of Eden God spoke to the three rebels, Satan, Adam and Eve, the well-known words: I will put enmity between you (Satan) and the woman and between your seed and her seed. He (the seed of the woman) will crush you in the head and you will crush him in the heel. With these words God indicated right after Satan’s rebellion that he would ultimately be annihilated. Angels are mortal, just like people. The dying of fallen angels like Satan and the demons means their total and definitive destruction. Angels do not have to possibility of getting a resurrection after their death.

The way in which Satan and the demons will one day be annihilated for once and for all is described in the last chapters of the Bible book Revelation.