Angels are created beings. There are warring angels, ministering angels and angels sent specifically to protect us. There are many different kinds of angels, but they really have only one purpose, and that is to help us.
Some people think an angel’s job is to defend God, but God does not need defending. If God were to raise His little finger, then boom!—whatever He wanted would be done. God just thinks a thought, and it’s done. He doesn’t need defending.
So angels are here to help us. They are the links between heaven and earth. God’s Spirit reveals Himself to us, and His angels are His logistic agents. So they help us get from one place to another. They protect us from certain things and events. They protect us from things that the enemy, Satan, wants to happen. Our goal is to live a life that allows God to be justified in sending angels to help us.
Some angels are sent to help other angels. For example, angels could be sent to help the angel who has been assigned to you. Some people have more than one angel because of the callings God has on their lives and because of the difficulty of what they are going through or will be going through.
The angels personally assigned to us for life are with us for all of our lives. When angels are assigned to us, they often take on an appearance like ours and look like us. In fact, angels who are assigned to children often will take the form of a child when they are assigned to a child.
We know angels can look like us because of the story in the New Testament when Peter was freed from jail and went to the house of Mary (Acts 12:5-17). We also know angels can look like humans because the Bible tells us we can be unaware we are entertaining angels (Heb. 13:2). How could we be unaware unless it’s because these angels look like people?
We also know angels can come in the glory of heaven—which is when, as many Bible stories say, we melt at their feet like dead men. For example, when the angels appeared to Daniel, he fell at their feet (Dan. 8:17). John also fell at the feet of the angel who came to him (Rev. 22:8). This is because those angels didn’t come as men; they came in their heavenly glory.
But when they come in human form, we can actually ask them to lunch! Abraham did this. When the Lord and two angels came to talk with Abraham, Abraham invited them to lunch, and they stayed (Gen. 18:1-8).
Considered an authority on dream interpretation, John Paul Jackson is a respected Bible teacher, speaker and author and the founder of Streams Ministries International.