The Heavenly Choir

In the second half of the twentieth century, one of the leading New Testament scholars in the world was Rudolf Bultmann, who was known for his critical analysis of the Scriptures. In a little book entitled Kerygma and Myth, he called on the church to "de-mythologize" the content of the Bible.

He said that the Bible contains a mixture of history and what he called "mythology," that there is a kernel of historical truth encrusted within a husk of primitive mythology. Therefore, if modern humanity is to glean anything of value from the pages of Scripture, one must cut through that husk of mythology and reach the core, the kernel, of historical truth.

In one of his key statements in the book, Bultmann said that no one could live in the twentieth century and take advantage of modern science, use electricity, consume modern antibiotics, listen to radios, watch televisions, or turn on incandescent lights and still think of a universe that is constructed in three tiers, with the heavens above, hell beneath, and earth in the middle, populated by angels and demons. So when Bultmann leveled his critique against the so-called mythological content of the Bible, one dimension of that was the appearance and activity of angelic beings.

Many years ago, in the mining district of western Pennsylvania, not far from where I grew up, there was a terrible mine disaster. Men were trapped beneath the surface for a couple of weeks underground, and some weak tapping was heard. People waited for days and days with anxious anticipation and waning hopes that anyone would be rescued. Finally, two men who had been trapped underground were brought to the surface in fine condition. The morning edition of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette had a bold headline on the day of their rescue: "Miners Rescued by Miracle." The secular press did not hesitate to call the survival of these men, after all that time under the earth without food and water, a miracle. But the article had a sub-headline that said the men were suffering hallucinations. These men, when they were brought to the surface and were interviewed by the media, explained that they had been able to survive underground for so long

because they were ministered to by an angel. They both attested to this experience. One of the men afterward became a minister and spent the rest of his life going around the United States, telling people the story of his rescue and of being ministered to by an angel. In any case, I found the dichotomy in the paper very strange. On the one hand, the paper attributed the men's rescue to supernatural intervention. On the other hand, the men's claim that they had been visited by an angel was dismissed as a hallucination.

The reason for that is easily explained. As Bultmann noted, the existence of angels is not a part of the modern worldview. They're not a part of our secular perception of reality. The modern mindset is to dismiss the presence of angels as at best merely incidental elements of the biblical witness, and we think that what's really important from the biblical witness is the teaching about sin and the love of God. But when we come to the text of Scripture, which is bathed in the supernatural and is awash with a flood of miracles, particularly concentrated during the ministry and life of Jesus Himself, we find angels.

When I was in college, my professor gave me the assignment of writing a paper on the subject of angels. I don't remember learning a great deal from that assignment, but one of the things I do recall is that I looked up the references to angels in the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, and I discovered that the word angelos, which is the Greek word that is translated as "angel," occurs more frequently in the New Testament than the word we translate as "sin." The word angelos also occurs more frequently in the New Testament than the word agape, which is the chief and primary word for "love." When I made these discoveries, I knew I couldn't just push this subject to the edge of significance. Angels are part and parcel of the biblical message from early in creation, from the book of Genesis all the way to the book of Revelation. We don't simply see a flurry of angelic activity concentrated in the pages of the New Testament during the life of Jesus; we encounter them throughout the whole scope of redemptive history.

The word angelos, in its most basic definition, simply means "messenger," and there are times when angelos refers to a human messenger. Anyone who bears news can be called an "angel," and so we must make some kind of distinction between the heavenly beings that we call angels and earthly people who are engaged in the activity of message-

bringing. But almost exclusively when the Scriptures use the term angelos, it is in reference to a supernatural or heavenly being, not just to an earthly messenger.

When we examine the references to angels in the Old and New Testaments, we can place the activity of angels into two distinct locations.

There are different functions of angels in these locations, but first of all we must make a distinction between the locales in which we find them. The first is the heavenly realm. Much of what the Bible says about angels does not refer to their activity on earth but to their activity in heaven, and I want to look at some of the well-known texts wherein the heavenly mission of the angels is described.

Let me begin with one of my favorite texts, the sixth chapter of the book of Isaiah, where we have the record of Isaiah's vision into the heavenly temple. Isaiah tells us, "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled His temple" (v. 1). After he gives this brief description of the elevated Lord in His splendor of exaltation, he goes on to say, "Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, with two he flew. And one cried to another and said, 'Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory'" (vv. 2-3).

I have taught often on the holiness of God and written a book on the subject, and this is one of the most important texts on that topic, because here we have the first appearance in the Scriptures of the so-called trisagion, the three-times "holy," where that attribute of God is repeated in antiphonal response in the immediate presence of God by angelic beings.

What the angels are doing here is worshiping God. They are, as it were, the heavenly choir, celebrating the transcendent majesty of the Creator by singing of His splendor and saying, "Holy, holy, holy."

Repetition is a Hebrew method for bringing emphasis. It is rare to find triple repetition in the Scriptures, but there are a number of instances of double repetition. When our Lord was teaching and wanted to indicate that something was especially important, He would say to His disciples, "Verily, verily, I say unto you," or, "Truly, truly, I say to you." That repetition was a tool for emphasis that the Jews used occasionally. But only in rare instances was something emphasized to the superlative degree by being mentioned three times. We find it in Jeremiah's temple speech, when he said that the hypocrisy of the people had reached superlative levels and commanded

them, "Do not trust in these lying words, saying, 'The temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD are these'" (Jer. 7:4). We find it negatively in the book of Revelation, when the sounding of the last three trumpets is preceded by an angel warning, "Woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth, because of the remaining blasts of the trumpet of the three angels" (Rev. 8:13b), indicating the worst of all possible manifestations of misery. And here in Isaiah 6 we see the holiness of God exalted to the third degree, and it's done by angels, whose function is to minister in the presence of God.

I'm interested in the physical description of the seraphim here in Isaiah.

They are said to have six wings. Two of the wings are used for flight. You would think that the other four would be useless appendages, but we know that God makes His creatures suitable for their environments. When He creates fish, He gives them gills, scales, and fins because their environment is the water. When He makes birds, He gives them lightweight skeletal structures, feathers, and wings so that they can move through the air. So, when God makes angels for His immediate presence, He gives them six wings: two with which to fly, plus two to cover their faces and two to cover their feet. Even the angels, these heavenly creatures, when they are in the immediate presence of the transcendent holiness of God, must shield their eyes from His glory because it is so dazzling. We are told in Scripture that God's glory is blinding to the eyes of creatures, even as Paul was blinded by the light that he saw on the road to Damascus. We saw earlier that when the book of Revelation describes the New Jerusalem, it says there is no sun or moon there, and yet there's no darkness, because the city is illumined by the glory of God and of the Lamb. It is in that immediate, intense brilliance of the divine glory that the angels are called to minister with their songs of praise and adoration. They are equipped by God to shield their eyes from the heavenly vision that they enjoy every day.

Let me say in passing that we sometimes overlook that the New Testament teaches us that the worship of the saints in this world involves a mystical transcendence. The communion of saints means that we're no longer separated from the presence of God, as the people of Israel were, when they were called to come near Mount Sinai when God came down to visit and give His law. God initially allowed Moses to come up on the mountain, but all the rest of the people were forbidden from even touching the mountain, lest they be summarily executed (Exod. 19). But the author of

Hebrews tells us we're no longer in that situation. We don't come now to a mountain that can't be touched by hands; now we ascend into the heavenly sanctuary, into the heavenly Jerusalem, so that when we come together for worship, mystically we participate in the immediate presence of God, in the presence of Christ, with the general assembly of the saints, of the spirits of just men made perfect, and of the angels (Heb. 12:18-24). So we're part of this choir when we gather for worship on Sunday morning. But this is the task that keeps the seraphim busy day after day after day—praising God in His sanctuary.

We also see that in addition to the two wings that cover their faces, the seraphim have two wings with which they cover their feet. That's not explained specifically in the text here, but I think that we can make legitimate inferences from the rest of Scripture as to why God equips the seraphim with a special set of wings to cover their feet. Remember the incident wherein Moses approaches the burning bush in the Midianite wilderness, having seen the bush burning but not being consumed? He turns aside to look at it, and the voice speaks to him out of the bush saying, "Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground" (Exod. 3:5). What made the ground holy? It wasn't Moses that made it holy.

It was that this piece of real estate was the place where God had descended to communicate in this special event with Moses. Because the presence of God has sanctified this spot, He tells Moses to take off his shoes. Why is that necessary? If you look through Scripture, you learn that we are of the dust and that we have feet of clay. It is our feet that attach us, as it were, to the creation, to the sphere in which we live out our days, of the earth. We're of the earth.

Well, angels are in heaven. Nevertheless, they are still creatures, and the sign of their creatureliness, just like the sign of our creatureliness, is their feet. So when they come into the presence of God, even though they're specially created for that purpose, not only do they cover their eyes from the glory of God, they cover their creatureliness from the divine view as they soar above the throne, singing constantly, "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!"