A Brief Study of Angels
Where do angels come from?
Now that we have established from the authority of the Bible and the testimony of Jesus Christ that angels do exist, we must now consider their origin. How long have they been around? Have they always existed? If they have not always been here, what brought them into existence? There are many ideas and opinions about the answers to these questions.
Some think that angels are simply human beings who have previously died and now are available to help and inform people who are still living. Some believe that angels are spirits who live in inanimate objects (mountains, trees, rivers, etc.) which nature or the cosmos generates. Some assert that what we call angels are really aliens from another planet who are keeping their true nature concealed. What is true? Once again we must turn to the Scriptures to find this sort of information.
First we see that angels have not existed forever (they are not eternal) but were created by God Himself. Psalm 148 calls for all the angels to praise God (v. 2) because God created them with a command (v. 5). This implies that it was done as a singular act and that more angels were not and are not being created after that one time event. John 1:3 makes a sweeping statement about the scope of the creation by the Word of God who is Christ (v. 14). Colossians 1:16 is similar and tells us that the Lord Jesus (God the Son) created “all things...in heaven and...on earth.” That in itself would certainly include angels but Paul also included the words “visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers” which specifically refer to angels (we’ll look at these words a little closer in a later question). The probable reason for Paul doing that was to refute the heresy of Gnosticism which taught that angels were actually responsible for the Creation.
The natural follow-up to this question would be to ask the time of God’s creation of the angels. The short and simple answer is we do not know for sure. But the Bible does give us one insight about how long the angels have been around. In Job 38 God is rebuking Job for his presumptousness in thinking that he could understand the ways of the Lord enough to question and defend himself before God. God is describing His own power in creation and asking Job where he was and what he was doing while all this was going on. In v. 7 God mentions that as He was accomplishing these great acts of creation “all the sons of God shouted for joy.” The Old Testament term “sons of God” (Hebrew bene elohim and others that are similar in Dan. 3:25 & Psalm 89:6) consistently refers to angels (with one possible exception which we’ll examine later) and certainly that is the case earlier in the book of Job (1:6, 2:1). Thus we know at least that God created angels before He created the earth and the rest of the natural universe. How long before? Again we simply do not know.
One final aspect of God’s creation of the angels we will consider concerns the number of them that He made. This has been a subject of much interest among theologians of bygone days--especially in the Middle Ages. Some gave much thought to questions such as “How many angels can stand (or dance) on the head of a pin?” and similar contemplations. Lightner tells us they tried to estimate the numbers of the angels and one group came to “the precise figure of 301,655,722 (Angels, Satan and Demons, p. 25).
Again from the Bible we can find no definitive answer to this question. However, we are not completely left in the dark. In both the Old and New Testaments with regard to the number of angels we see words used like “host” (I Kings 22:19; Luke 2:13) which has reference to a great army; “thousands of thousands” (Psalm 68:17; Rev. 5:11); and “myriads” (Dan. 7:10; Heb. 12:22; Rev. 5:11 NASV) which literally means “ten thousand” or figuratively speaks of an “innumerable company.” It is obvious then that there is are quite a few angels around. The specific number is not knowable to us (or perhaps even very important) but we know for sure there are millions (1000 times 1000 = 1 million), and perhaps billions or even trillions of these beings. All created and sustained by God. Amazing to think about.