What’s with the Angel Craze?
Angels, angels, everywhere.
Angels have made a big comeback in the last few decades, but not necessarily in a good way. The 80s TV series “Touched by an Angel” and “Highway to Heaven” portrayed angels as benevolent beings whose mission it was to help people with their problems, while later shows like “Supernatural” and “Dominion” turned angels into malevolent predators who operate as free agents since God had apparently left heaven. (Where did He go?)
Misconceptions about angels persist today. That angels are all-powerful, omniscient, and uncreated (all false), or fat flying babies that make you fall in love (false). Everyone has a guardian angel (possible but not wholly biblical), and people become angels when they die (false). Angels have wings and halos (nope) or are beautiful women (untrue).
There is something fascinating about God’s heavenly host, these supernatural beings who show up at the strangest times in the Bible, delivering messages and sometimes food to God’s people and fighting their unseen enemies. Only two are mentioned by name in the Bible—Gabriel, who proclaimed the news of the coming Messiah, and Michael, the guardian of Israel and captain of the Lord’s armies. Others appear as human, so human that the actual humans don’t even know they are angels until they do something cool.
Then, of course, there’s Satan and his cohorts, the fallen angels, who disobeyed God and have been trying to tear down humanity ever since. Such mysterious beings, angels. Billy Graham called them “God’s secret agents.”
New Agers have latched onto the angel craze, as they do with every biblical concept they can twist and exploit to serve their own ends. It makes sense. Angels are, in many ways, preferable to God. They are not judgmental. They minister, they help, they comfort. They are all the good stuff people want with no strings attached, perfect for New Agers, who want their “god” to serve them rather than the other way around. New Age spiritualists “channel” angels and use “angel oracle cards” like tarot cards, except with pictures of angels, their names, and primary attributes.
A friend once gave me an “angel caller”—a pendant containing a bell that will call an angel if you are in distress. Angel callers date back to the Mayans, who believed the chimes would protect pregnant women and their unborn babies from evil spirits. Now they are ubiquitous for anyone who wants an “angel on their shoulder.”
All of this might seem harmless and silly. But some people go so far as to pray to angels and worship them, which goes against biblical teaching.
'Don’t let anyone who wants to practice harsh self-denial and worship angels rob you of the prize. They go into detail about what they have seen in visions and have become unjustifiably arrogant by their selfish way of thinking. Colossians 2:18
In Revelation, an angel rebuked John when he tried to worship him:
'Then I fell at his feet to worship him. But he said, “Don’t do that! I’m a servant just like you and your brothers and sisters who hold firmly to the witness of Jesus. Worship God! The witness of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy!” Revelation 19:10
More troubling is the New Age worship of Satan, the “fallen” angel of the Bible who has become an occult hero to New Agers. They view the story of Adam and Eve through a fractured lens: it was Satan, the renegade angel, who desired to free the humans from the oppression of God by giving them access to knowledge, something YAHWEH wanted to deny them. Satan, in other words, is the good guy of the story, yet he’s been given six thousand years of bad press.
Satanists are actively trying to infiltrate our culture, and they are targeting children. A school district near where I live recently announced that an after-school “Satan Club” sponsored by the Satanic Temple would be coming to their middle school. This is happening all over the country. The school districts claim they can’t stop Satan Clubs because they are bound by the First Amendment. Parents are outraged.
The Satanic Temple’s mission, as stated on its website, is “to encourage benevolence and empathy among all people, reject tyrannical authority, advocate practical common sense, oppose injustice, and undertake noble pursuits.” Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? So why do they invoke the name of Satan? Because they are liars, just like their hero. On the same website, they tout “abortions for religious ritual” and recently opened their first abortion clinic, “Sam Alito’s Mom’s Satanic Abortion Clinic,” in New Mexico.
Like all good things, angels are ripe for misuse and abuse. I’ve been writing about angels for a decade, and while I’ve tried to stick as close as possible to the true concept of biblical angels, I’m sure I’ve blown it a few times. But I write speculative fiction, so I hope I am forgiven.
If you are still confused and want to learn more about angels and demons, I recommend the two books by Michael Heiser, “Angels” and “Demons.” Mike recently went to be with the Lord (who is still in heaven, by the way)—he is greatly missed. No one did more to reveal the supernatural world of the Bible than he did.
