In which we discuss Hebrews 12; the “myriads of angels;” rabbinic thoughts on “angels;” the Parable of the Wheat and Tares; futurism’s weakness; Satan and the devil.

Tim: This is such a beautiful and pivotal passage as it contrasts the two covenants, one of which is not the Gospel we embrace. Hebrews 12:18-24 says, “For you have not come to a mountain that can be touched and to a blazing fire, and to darkness and gloom and whirlwind, and to the blast of a trumpet and the sound of words which sound was such that those who heard begged that no further word be spoken to them.”

Sounds like a lot of sermons I’ve heard.

“For they could not bear the command, ‘If even a beast touches the mountain, it will be stoned.’ And so terrible was the sight that Moses said, ‘I am full of fear and trembling.’

Many evangelicals simply call that good preaching. It is considered good preaching if you want to get people into fear and trembling, and if you want to instill guilt to get them down the aisles and make decisions. The author is saying this is not what we have come to. He says this is not us and it does not describe who we are. He describes the Gospel community starting in verse 22.

But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the General Assembly and the Church of the first born who were enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks better than the blood of Abel.”

Today we are going to examine the phrase, “…you have come to … myriads of angels.”

Debbie: In revelation chapter 5, it uses the phrase, “myriads upon myriads.” I have a note that says its literal translation is ten-thousands upon ten-thousands, so that is a large number.

Tim: It is a large number! He is telling the Christians that they have come to this host of angels. What does that mean? In the Old Testament, angel sightings weren’t really the norm. They made sporadic appearances. David saw an angel when he stopped the plague. Peter was delivered from prison by an angel. After Jesus was tempted, we are told that angels came to minister to him.

The word in Greek is not actually a translation, but a transliteration. That means they didn’t actually translate the word from the Greek, but took the Greek word made it an English word. An example would be the Greek word βαπτιζω. In the days of translating the King James Bible, the church did not immerse, it sprinkled. The Greek word means to immerse, so they were in a bit of a quandary. Instead of translating it, which would have caused problems in the church, they transliterated the Greek word into an English word.

The Greek word άγγλος is similar. Fundamentally, it means someone who is a messenger. It described a servant who would go and deliver a message. In Hebrew, it could refer to either a heavenly being or a human who was delivering a message from God or someone else. The story of Sodom and Gomorrah interchanges the word with “men.” Sometimes we are told Abraham spoke with two men, and elsewhere in the narrative it’s two angels. In the household of Lot, they do something supernatural. Of course, men like Elijah were known to perform some supernatureal feats. Sometimes you have to rely on the context to know if the messenger was human or supernatural.

Debbie: It was not made clear if the angel Gabriel appearing to Mary was really a man or a supernatural being, was it?

Tim: When Gabriel appeared before Zacharias, there seems to be more of a supernatural element. He describes himself as one “…who stands in the presence of God” (Luke 1:19). Gabriel appeared to him in the Holy of Holies. He also declared Zacharias unable to speak, although humans have been known to do supernatural things in the Bible, as already noted.

The Jews held angels in remarkably high esteem according to Everyman’s Talmud by Abraham Cohen and the Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah by Alfred Edersheim.

Cohen says this: “The true purpose was the glorification of God. In their daily experience the people saw the sovereign of their country accorded the highest honors and held in the profoundest reverence. The more magnificent the surroundings of the monarch and the larger his retinue, the greater was the admiration extended to him” (p.47).  And, “As the ruler of so vast a Kingdom, God provided himself with an enormous host of ministers to carry out his behests.” (p. 48)

The appendix of Edersheim’s book contains an essay on “Jewish Angelology and Demonology” (Appendix XIII).  In it, he says this about angels: “Every day ministering angels are created, whose apparent destiny is only to raise the praises of God, after which they pass away into the fiery stream which they originally issued … The vast number of that angelic, and the consequent safety of Israel as against its enemies, was described in the most hyperbolic language … There were twelve groups, each having 30 chiefs of armies, each chief with 30 legions, each legion with 30 leaders, each leader with 30 captains, each captain with 30 under him, and each of these with 365,000 stars; and all were created for the sake of Israel!”

As you can see, that is a lot of angels! I’m not going to calculate all of that, but I think we can agree that heaven was populated with a large number of angels according to the Jewish rabbis. The interesting thing is that it was all created for the sake of Israel. If that idea was floating around in the early church, then it’s not a stretch to say that by the time Hebrews was written, the early church saw the myriads of angels created for their benefit. The early church would take the great things of God that were intentionally for Israel and co-opted those things to be for the benefit of the followers of Christ.

So, every good thing that was created for Israel now belonged to the followers of Christ under the New Covenant. What the rabbis taught about Israel being the recipients of the protective and benevolent functions of angels, was now adopted by the early church and designated for the benefit of early Christians.

Roger: I wonder if this connects back to the beginning of this chapter where he says, “…since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us…” If you look at the context of the previous chapter, it could be all those in the Old Testament who kept the faith looking forward to Christ. Perhaps our angels are the people who’ve lived in the past who have a message for us.

Tim: Remember in chapter 1 where the author argues that Jesus is better than the angels. It is a comparison to Jesus where he says, “To which of the angels did he ever say…” It’s an encouragement where he says, “You might think angels are great, but Jesus is greater!”

Ron: Didn’t it also say that we are better than the angels?

Tim: In Hebrews 2, the author quotes from Psalm 8 where he says, “… you have made him for a little while lower than the angels.” In verse 9 he clarifies that this was Jesus who was made lower than the angels. This was talking about his human form, but it was the prelude to crowning him with glory and honor at his death. In other words, whatever we say about angels, Jesus was better!

Roger: Then we have Revelation 2 and 3 where the angels of each church are addressed. These don’t seem like they would be spiritual beings if you’re sending letters. Saying it is a human messenger who serves those churches makes better sense.

Tim: The logistics were certainly different back in the early church. It was not like you could go online and check somebody’s Facebook to see what was going on or deliver a message. If they wanted to get a message to a church, somebody had to start walking.

In looking further at the subject of angels, let us look at Matthew 13. In particular, let us look at Matthew 13:24 and the following verses. This is known as The Parable of the Wheat and Tares. Here is the parable given to the crowds:

²⁴ Jesus presented another parable to them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. ²⁵ But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went away. ²⁶ But when the wheat sprouted and bore grain, then the tares became evident also. ²⁷ The slaves of the landowner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’ ²⁸ And he said to them, ‘An enemy has done this!’ The slaves said to him, ‘Do you want us, then, to go and gather them up?’ ²⁹ But he said, ‘No; for while you are gathering up the tares, you may uproot the wheat with them. ³⁰ Allow both to grow together until the harvest; and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather up the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them up; but gather the wheat into my barn.”’”

So, what does this have to do with angels? Let’s skip down to verse 36 where Jesus interprets the parable to his disciples.

³⁶ Then He left the crowds and went into the house. And His disciples came to Him and said, “Explain to us the parable of the tares of the field.” ³⁷ And He said, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man, ³⁸ and the field is the world; and as for the good seed, these are the sons of the kingdom; and the tares are the sons of the evil one; ³⁹ and the enemy who sowed them is the devil, and the harvest is the end of the age; and the reapers are angels. ⁴⁰ So just as the tares are gathered up and burned with fire, so shall it be at the end of the age. ⁴¹ The Son of Man will send forth His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all stumbling blocks, and those who commit lawlessness, ⁴² and will throw them into the furnace of fire; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. ⁴³ Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.

There are a couple of things to note about this parable; the first is that there is a time statement on this event. Jesus says that this will take place at the “end of the age.” This should jump out at the readers of Hebrews since that letter was written for Christians “in these last days” (Hebrews 1:2). The readers of Hebrews are closer to the fulfillment of this parable than Jesus was!

The second thing is that the good seed are the sons of the Kingdom. The readers of Hebrews would heartily embrace this and identify. They were the ones who were called to Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. They will be the ones that are gathered up and brought into the father’s storehouse.

Third, we have an understanding of the reapers who are angels.

Roger: The sons of the evil one would be the scribes and Pharisees. Jesus said to them that they were of their father, the devil.

Tim: Right! In the context of Hebrews, the sons of the evil one would be the persecutors of Christ’s followers. They were the ones arresting them, taking their property, and making life difficult for them. They are the tares who will be harvested by the reapers, that is, the angels. Since this is happening at the end of the age, we have a terminus for this event and a historical happening to put solidity to this parable.

If Jesus is describing what historically was the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in AD 66-70, then we could argue a case that God used the Roman army as his “messengers” or “angels.” It was a time when the angels burned with fire “…all stumbling blocks and those who commit lawlessness.”

Valori: Well, aren’t angels then just anybody that God sees fit to conduct his purpose?

Tim: Definitely!

Valori: In this case, they were more human.

Tim: Let us remember what we’ve learned about Hebrew parallelism. This is where a Hebrew poet will pen a line stating something and then, in the next line, repeat the same thing using different words. Look at this example in Psalm 148:2 –

² Praise Him, all His angels;
Praise Him, all His heavenly armies!

He is associating angels with God’s armies. Let us revisit the parables and Matthew 13 with The Parable of the Dragnet:

⁴⁷ “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet that was cast into the sea and gathered fish of every kind; ⁴⁸ and when it was filled, they pulled it up on the beach; and they sat down and gathered the good fish into containers, but the bad they threw away. ⁴⁹ So it will be at the ^[ab]end of the age: the angels will come forth and remove the wicked from among the righteous, ⁵⁰ and they will throw them into the furnace of fire; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

We have more repetition of a separation at the end of the age. Once again, Jesus is relating a future historical event for the sake of the righteous. Again, the dirty work will be conducted by the angels on behalf of the righteous. We are told multiple times that there will be angels associated with Jesus coming and the end of the age. “And he will send forth his angels with a great trumpet, and they will gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other” (Matthew 24:31).

When we connected this back to Hebrews, by saying they have come to a “myriad of angels,” he is trying to give his readers assurance that this is not like Sinai where they were supposed to be gripped with fear, terror and trembling. This is a message of triumph! This is what is missing in a lot of evangelical preaching, the note of triumph that Christ has in fact conquered his enemies and will be victorious after his angels have done their work.

Valori: Conquerors are proactive. They don’t sit back and wait.

Tim: Jesus knew this was going to happen. He knew before his death that he was going to be crucified and raised up. These parables tell us that he knew one day he was going to bring a host of angels who would be his conquering army to destroy his enemies and make them a footstool for his feet. This is his message to the Hebrews. He is telling them that if they hold on a bit, they will be vindicated in this victory.

Futurism blunts this message. Futurism delays the victory and pushes the conquest of Jesus’ enemies into the future. The enemies of Jesus are still running rampant. They still have power over us and we are still having to fight Satan and the forces of evil. If Jesus does conquer his enemies, the time is delayed until he does so.

Ty: We understand the context that the enemies of Christ were the established religious leaders of the time. Most Christians today don’t appreciate that he conquered his enemies two thousand years ago, and not sometime in the future. It is why he was so contentious with the Pharisees and the Sadducees. It is not something that modern day Christians look at.

Tim: It does make us think deeper when we look at what was going on in the first century, particularly regarding Jesus’ conflict with the scribes and Pharisees. Jesus came to declare, “I am here to take away the curse brought on by the law! I am here to tear down the veil that separates us from God! I am here to open the Holy of Holies so even the tax collectors and sinners will have access! I am here to remove the curse upon these lepers, the blind, the lame, and everyone who suffers condemnation!”

We see that his healing of these suffering people was a sign of his removal of the curse. The question is, why did they get angry at him for healing? We would think that the healing of a man born blind and suffering for forty years in that condition would be a great thing. We would think it would be a time for celebration, but the religious leadership wound up shunning him and banning him from the synagogue.

Valori: They were only interested in power.

Tim: Exactly! This is the way governments tend to work. Not just political governments, but also religious ones. A great illustration of this is Dostoyevsky’s “Grand Inquisitor” where the leaders of the church got angry when Jesus raised a little girl from the dead. They had trained the people to lay their freedom at their feet and Jesus was ruining that for them.

Valori: That is a very brilliant picture of another way and that’s what Christ came to demonstrate.

Tim: let’s go back to Ty’s comment. Jesus came to tear down and break the curse, to end the barriers between people and the veil that separated them from God. The scribes and Pharisees were the gatekeepers between man and God. They did not like that Jesus mission was to bring an end to what they had so much invested. These were the tares, the noxious plants that grew up among the wheat that God had sown in Christ.

If you see pictures of these plants, they look similar to wheat when put side by side. The differences are shown only in the later stages of maturity. This explains why the master commanded that they grow up together until the harvest. This is why there was no separation until the end of the age. It was a challenging time because the establishment were still proclaiming the curse of God upon the Christians due to their departure from the law. The Christians were told they were the targets of God’s curse.

That spirit continues today even though it should not because of the Gospel. If Jesus was a conqueror and he accomplished everything he said he was going to do in the first century, and if he did bring his angels – that being the Roman army – to separate the wheat from the tares, then there should be no more question about the removal of the curse.

Ty: For the Jewish Christians, this was important knowing that they could leave the city when they saw the Roman army and not worry that they were leaving God.

Tim: And in harmonizing the parable with history, the wheat was removed from the city at that time and the tares were left to be burned.

Ty: In Matthew 23 where Jesus is prophesying judgment upon the religious leaders, he calls them hypocrites and whitewashed tombs, condemning them for representing God but taking money from the poor and widows.

Tim: A commentary on the tares, isn’t it?

Ty: Yes, a commentary on the tares who were the Pharisees, the group in power.

Valori: I was just going to say that the field was a picture of the two mixing together.

Tim: It was certainly a time when the two worldviews clashed with one another.

Valori: That picture applies today because if those tares are in the field, it devalues the message of Christ.

Tim: We need to keep the perspective that the author of Hebrews is still a futurist. He says that the believers have come to “myriads of angels,” but from a historical perspective, those angels had yet to do their work. Jesus calling those angels together and using them to conquer his enemies and bring the tares to the fiery furnace was still a few years away.

It still baffles me as to why Christians today don’t embrace this! It is powerfully liberating to have a historical event that proves that Jesus conquered all. I think church leaders avoid it because it strips them of their ability to manipulate by guilt and fear. It’s easier to manipulate people who remain the victims. People who stand victorious are unmoved by guilt and fear.

Hal: It is also a fact that Christians have been taught for centuries that Jesus has yet to conquer. You repeat that to people enough times and they will believe it and refuse to change their mind.

Tim: A few days ago, I posted a quote from Thomas Sowell. “Some things are believed because they are demonstrably true, but many other things are believed simply because they have been asserted repeatedly, and repetition has been accepted as a substitute for evidence.”

Heather: Brainwashing.

Tim: Basically. We may accept a repeated adage, but that is no guarantee that it is truth. The author of Hebrews tells the Christians that they have come to these myriads of angels. They were experiencing difficult times and suffering. He was trying to encourage them that they are a family of conquerors. Their victory was soon to come.

We are a generation historically far beyond the conquest. We have the historical record of its accomplishment. The victorious message to them was that they would be the last ones standing when the end of the age came. They would be the living wheat watching the tares burn. It is the truth Paul explained in Romans 8, where all of creation was looking for the revealing of the sons of God. In September of AD 70, the sons of God were revealed because the sons of the evil one were thrown into the fire and burned. This is summarized in his statement; you have come to “myriads of angels.” He is saying, “Stand fast because Jesus has raised up these angels, these messengers in the form of the Roman army, and pretty soon that will leave us in the seat of victory.”

Debbie: I never heard this in church where this was directed at the Christians in the first century. We have been taught that the New Testament applies to all of us Christians now, but that does not take into account the timing statements.

Tim: As we’ve said before, the New Testament was written to them, but it was written for us. Jesus’ work completed in the first century gave us a worldview of liberty and victory. When we ponder that all things were fulfilled victoriously in the first century, the implications are tremendous!

I find the modern portrayal of the Gospel to be debilitating in its delay of victory. The idea means that one of these days Jesus will overcome and vanquish our enemies, so all you can do is sit around and wait for the day to happen. Do your best to keep fighting off your enemies until you die and only then will you have victory over sin. That’s pathetic!

Valori: That negates the purpose for this life, because if Christ did not free us to live in this life, why not just go straight to heaven? Why even bother spending time on this life?

Tim: The attitude is, “I guess I’ll just hang out until I die, then I’ll get everything in my heavenly reward.” This is the spirit of futurism. It treasures a hope that has yet to come instead of a victory that has been accomplished. The author of Hebrews promises the first century Christians that they are the terminal generation who will see the promise fulfilled. They will not be waiting centuries in the grave waiting for promises still to come. They will be the generation who sees those promises fulfilled. The work of Christ was not meant to be stretched out for millennia. It was meant to be carried out and the conquest happened within the lifetime of those who knew Jesus.

Ty: We are told in the previous verse that they had come to the heavenly Jerusalem. In other words, the early Christians did not have to stay in old Jerusalem and defend it to the death. They were given a heavenly Jerusalem they would be liberated to leave the old Jerusalem when the armies surrounded it.

Tim: Exactly! So, the “myriads of angels” are just a few words, but the phrase is a summary of triumph so the early Christians would understand that their redemption was close. The promise of Jesus’ victory over their enemies was meant to encourage them. We too find strength when we look back and see those words fulfilled.

Debbie: What does the word “angels” mean?

Tim: Broadly, it means “messengers.” We usually have to consider the context as to whether it means a human messenger or referring to a supernatural being. Sometimes, translators were in a quandary, so they transliterated the word instead of translating it. That is, they would take the Hebrew or Greek word and turn it into an English word.

A good example of this is the Hebrew word Satan. In Hebrew, it is the word for adversary. Most of the time, we read the transliteration of that word in Hebrew and Greek. I’ve found that most of the time, the Hebrew context refers to an invading army, an enemy of Israel.

Debbie: And then the word devil also means “gossipers” or “slanderer.” So why are they using the word devil if it really means “slanderer?”

Tim: The Greek word diabolos (διαβολος) is transliterated devil. But once the idea of a malevolent spiritual being arose, they transliterated the word diabolos into “devil.” It does not necessarily have to refer to a spiritual being. I think it describes function. The scribes and Pharisees in human flesh attacked Jesus through gossip and slander. Why couldn’t diabolos refer to them?

By redirecting the force of this word from the religious leaders to some malevolent, spiritual being, the horrific nature of gossip and slander is blunted. If the “accuser of the brethren” is some spiritual entity, that tends to camouflage modern religious leaders who regularly engage in ministries of gossip and slander. I think some churches feel like the “accuser of the brethren” should be an official church staff position. Many preachers want you to be convinced that you are guilty before God, and they relish in being the accuser. That the “accuser of the brethren” was thrown down 2000 years ago is a powerful truth!

Heather: It seems like a message that “you’re worthless” would not exactly draw crowds.

Tim: Heather, there’s a strange psychology to this. To call others “worthless” feeds our own self-righteousness. That is why the evangelical ranks tend to love hellfire and brimstone preaching.

Heather: I do not know a lot of people who don’t like that kind of preaching.

Tim: Those who were raised up in the evangelical ranks think it’s good because it gets results. Fear and guilt are valuable tools in getting people motivated to walk the aisle.

Heather: That makes sense.

Tim: It is common in modern Christianity to have Christians who believe that one of the greatest things you can do is to call out people’s sins. Remember, 23 years ago, someone thought they were doing God’s work by calling out our “sins.” We were told we could not be Christians by holding to a particular eschatology. To show love and patience with the intent of restoration was dismissed.