Pastor Swope has posted a tale of a woman helped by an angel.

Which of course is a great opener for the debate on whether angels are real or not.

I've never met an angel. I've met fuzzy alligator people*, but no angels.

*They tried to eat me in St. Louis.

I haven't met any "supernatural" angels. But sometimes we are our own angels. It doesn't take a set of wings and a halo.

I think that later in that thread, "Richard" raised some valid points.

Again, why do angels help some and not others? Is there a limited number of them or something? And why disguise themselves as recognizable icons? Why a doctor with a travelling bag (in an age when doctors don't make house calls?) and a fireman?

Is it because in each of those situations, those in need got just what they were hoping for? Can these beings only be perceived based on our need? Or are they entirely figments of imagination?

What motivates them?

And why aren't they more active in the war between the shadows?

Do they even exist?

Stories are nice and all but I guess I'm still in the camp that thinks its up to people to help people. I'd rather take Miss Grace as an angel than some mythical winged entity.

Nemesis wrote:Stories are nice and all but I guess I'm still in the camp that thinks its up to people to help people.

You forgot to add "for the right amount of money" to end of your sentence.

You're right, Natasha.

I did forgt.

I'm sure it won't happen again though.

Nemesis wrote:You're right, Natasha.

Don't forget that either.

Natasha wrote:

Nemesis wrote:You're right, Natasha.

Don't forget that either.

Don't worry. I plan to make note of everything out of the ordinary from here on.

As lame as it sounds to quote a pastor I knew, "God works in mysterious ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts and His time is not ours."

We also forget that the bible describes a war amongst the angels. A large chuck of heaven revolted with Lucifer. If there are angels I cannot help but think a lot of the angelic host's time is spent dealing with the fallout from that.

The accounts of Isaiah and John's Revelation are most likely inspired by real life people: the King of Babylon and the Romans respectively. Consider the original audience of the prophets and why they were writing to help inspire them to endure their suffering. "Hey, God's on the way." That's the whole theme of the Bible, after all, and it's repeated through the various Judges of Israel and so forth.

As an aside, the Muslim tradition has no angelic war. Satan is the only angel that doesn't submit to Adam and as a result he is disgraced by God because he won't submit. Satan explained his refusal, "I am far better than him, You created me from fire and created him from clay!"

On the other hand, I'm an athiest so take what I say with a grain of salt.

That is all true. Each religion seems to have their own accounting for what we are calling the "Angelic Experience". Just as most religions explain most of the other phenomenon we deal with differently.

As for the how and why those texts were written, we will have to just settle for the fact that we don't know have no way of being 100% certain. If you are a traditionalist, most likely you believe those texts are prophecies of what was happening and will happen. If you are a secularist, then you most likely believe they were written after the fact and were mainly interpretations of what was then recent events.

One thing people reading texts like need to remember is that it was written for someone living thousands of years ago in a culture vastly different than ours in a language very different than English. What we have when we pick up a modern translation is the consensus of what modern scholars think was intended to be said based of past traditions and their current understanding of the (now long dead) language. That said no translation, no matter how close, is ever going to be a perfect match for the original.

Yip, I much prefer the original language when reading ancient and arcane texts.

I'm a little rusty old Hebrew texts; but Galya can read them easily.

Natasha wrote:Yip, I much prefer the original language when reading ancient and arcane texts.

I'm a little rusty old Hebrew texts; but Galya can read them easily.

At least you can read the language. I generally have to find textbooks that help me translate (very time consuming), find someone to do it (very expensive), or find a book where someone already had done it (not always helpful).