Angels

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Angels

The term angel derives from a Greek translation of the Hebrew word mal'akh, which first meant "Shadow side of God," and now means messenger (Jeremiah 59). Angels as an article of faith have become an unshakeable part of our society. One in every ten popular songs involves angels in some way (Freeman 2). They appear in paintings and in museums as sculptures. Our culture is filled with angels that appear on clothing, cards, or as souvenirs, and jewelry. It would be reasonable to assume that one might find the most information about angels in the Christian bible. However , the bible only mentions three angels by name and actually contains very little information about these beings. Almost all of the information we have about angelic attributes comes from the three great Chronicles of Enoch. In these chronicles Enoch describes his journey to the ten Heavens where he saw angels in heaven's penal and punishment area, punishing sinners. His view was that hell existed in small pockets that were distributed throughout heaven. This view was not consistent with the later Church that believed heaven and hell were two separate places. Because of this, St. Jerome declared these texts apocryphal (Godwin 9). However, a lot of material from these chronicles appears in the New Testament. Though much of what we know currently about what angels are and what they do is based on misconception and myth, the concern of this paper is with the genus Angelus Occidentalis. This is the term used to describe a number of angelic species and sub-species in Judaism, Islam, and Christianity (Godwin 7). The term angel describes not only the benevolent forces of heaven but also the malevolent forces of hell. When Lucifer fell from ...

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...or evil and one good God. God was responsible for creation and destruction, God encompassed both black and white. In Isaiah 45:7 God says "I form the Light and create Darkness; I make Peace and create evil."

Bibliography:

Crosby 10

Works Cited

Bloom, Harold. Omens of Millenium. New York: Riverhead, 1996.

Freeman, Eileen Elias. Touched by Angels. New York: Warner, 1993.

Godwin, Malcolm. Angels: An Endangered Species. New York:

Simon and Schuster, 1990.

Guiley, Rosemary Ellen. An Encyclopedia of Angels. New York:

Facts on File, 1996.

Jeremiah, David. What The Bible Says About Angels. Sisters:

Multnomah, 1996.

Lang, J. Stephen. 1,001 Things You Always Wanted to Know About

Angels, Demons, and the Afterlife. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2000.

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