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Christians often ask the saints in heaven for their intercession—to be their heavenly prayer partners.
Normally, they’re thinking of the human saints who are up there, but occasionally they’ll ask their guardian angels or one of the other angels like St. Michael or St. Gabriel for prayers.
Either way, they often think of the idea of heavenly intercessors as something new, something that came in with the Christian age.
But, as we’re going to see today, that’s not true!
What Angels Do
Scripture describes angels performing a variety of functions. One is that they serve as messengers between God and man. In fact, that’s what the term angel means. It means messenger.
Scripture also shows them guarding God’s throne. It shows them worshipping God. And it shows them carrying out his will on Earth.
So angels have a lot of functions, but one function that there was a widespread Jewish belief in was intercession.
Second Temple Literature
The Second Temple period in Jewish history stretched from when the Jewish people rebuilt the temple after the Babylonian exile through its destruction by the Romans.
It covers the period between about 515 B.C. and about A.D. 70.
The literature of this period robustly attests to Jewish belief in the intercession of angels with God on behalf of men. This is seen in multiple books from the period.
For example, the book known as 1 Enoch contains a section called the book of the Watchers, which was written sometime in the 200s B.C.—or possibly even before that.
At one point in the book of the Watchers, the angels Michael, Sariel, Raphael, and Gabriel are up in heaven looking down at the situation on Earth just before the Flood, and they see all the violence and bloodshed that’s taking place.
Then they go back into God’s heavenly temple and discuss the situation.
And entering in, they said to one another, “The earth, devoid of inhabitants, raises the voice of their cries to the gates of heaven. And now to us, the holy ones of heaven, the souls of men make suit, saying,
‘Bring in our judgment to the Most High, and our destruction before the glory of the majesty, before the Lord of all lords in majesty’” (1 Enoch 9:2-3).
So this text portrays the humans down on Earth asking the angels of heaven to intercede for them with God to do something about all the problems they’re facing.
The angels then do intercede with God about what’s happening on Earth, and he sends them to address the problems. The root of the problems is a group of fallen angels called Watchers, and so one of the things God does is send Michael to take the fallen Watchers and chain them up until Judgment Day.
This is like in 2 Peter 2:4, where Peter refers to how
God did not spare the angels when they sinned but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of deepest darkness to be kept until the judgment (2 Peter 2:4).
It’s also like in Jude 6, where Jude says:
The angels that did not keep their own position but left their proper dwelling have been kept by him in eternal chains in the deepest darkness until the judgment of the great day (Jude 6).
Back in 1 Enoch, once these angels are chained up, they contact the human patriarch Enoch and ask him to go intercede with God for them. But when he does so, God is not sympathetic to them, and he tells Enoch:
“Go and say to the watchers of heaven, who sent you to petition in their behalf,
‘You should petition in behalf of humans, and not humans in behalf of you’” (1 Enoch 15:2).
So we see how this passage also envisions one of the proper functions of angels as interceding for mankind. They’re meant to be two-way messengers: They both carry messages from God to us and messages from us to God.
Another book from the Second Temple period is the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, which is a set of speeches given by the twelve sons of Jacob to the tribes that descend from them.
In the Testament of Dan, the patriarch Dan tells his descendants:
Draw near to God and to the angel who intercedes for you, because he is the mediator between God and men for the peace of Israel (Testament of Dan 6:2).
And in the Testament of Levi, Levi tells his descendants:
There with [God] are the archangels, who serve and offer propitiatory sacrifices to the Lord in behalf of all the sins of ignorance of the righteous ones. They present to the Lord a pleasing odor, a rational and bloodless oblation (Testament of Levi 3:5-6).
This highlights the function of angels as priests in God’s heavenly temple. One of the functions of priests is to intercede with God for the people. Here, the archangels are offering bloodless sacrifices to God on account of the sins that God’s righteous people commit in ignorance. So the archangels are interceding with God for the righteous.
In a book known as the Life of Adam and Eve, the Greek version of which is also known as the Apocalypse of Moses. In that work, Eve is recounting to their children what happened when she and Adam were kicked out of the Garden, and she says:
Your father wept before the angels opposite Paradise, and the angels said to him, “What do you want us to do for you, Adam?”
Your father answered and said to the angels, “See, you are casting me out; I beg you, let me take fragrances from Paradise, so that after I have gone out, I might bring an offering to God so that God will hear me.”
And they came to God and said, “Jael, eternal king, command that fragrant incenses from Paradise be given to Adam” (Greek Life of Adam and Eve 29:2-4).
So here the angels intercede with God on behalf of Adam, and he grants their request! God then orders that Adam be allowed to take fragrant substances from the Garden of Eden so that he can offer incense to God in the future.
Later, Adam dies at the age of 930, and Eve says to her son Seth:
Look up with your eyes and see the seven heavens opened, and see with your eyes how the body of your father lies on its face, and all the holy angels are with him, praying for him and saying, “Forgive him, O Father of all, for he is your image” (Greek Life of Adam and Eve 35:2).
And God forgives Adam! So—across all these works of Second Temple Jewish literature—we see a widespread belief that angels intercede with God on behalf of man, which is only natural since one of their other functions is to serve as priests in God’s heavenly temple, and interceding for people is what priests do.
By the way, I’ve done Mysterious Worlds on some of these books, so you can check them out for more information.
I discussed 1 Enoch in Episodes 323 and 324, which are at Mysterious.fm/323 and Mysterious.fm/324.
And I discuss the Life of Adam and Eve in Episodes 346 and 347, which are coming out in January.
The Old Testament
Of course, a person can object that the books we’ve quoted from aren’t in the Bible, so they’re not scripturally authoritative.
And that’s true! But they do testify to a widespread belief in angelic intercession in the Second Temple Jewish community, and that can shed light on biblical passages—both in the Old and the New Testaments.
So let’s take a look at that. Does the Old Testament contain any passages referring to angelic intercession in heaven?
Indeed it does!
First, in the book of Tobit, the angel Raphael reveals that he interceded for Tobit and Sarah and says:
And so, when you and your daughter-in-law Sarah prayed, I brought a reminder of your prayer before the Holy One; and when you buried the dead, I was likewise present with you (Tobit 12:12).
Now, Tobit is part of the Catholic and Orthodox Bibles—making it part of the Bible used by the majority of Christians—but it’s not part of the Protestant Bible, though even for them it would count as yet another work of Second Temple literature testifying to belief in angelic intercession.
However, there are also references to angelic intercession in books that are part of the Hebrew Scriptures and that are in the Protestant Old Testament. For example, in Job 16:19, Job refers to having an intercessor with God in heaven. He says:
Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven, and he who testifies for me is on high (Job 16:19).
Now—taking this verse out of context—you might think that Job is referring to God as his advocate in heaven, but he’s not, as the context makes clear. Job goes on to say that he wishes:
that he [the witness] would argue the case of a man with God, as a son of man does with his neighbor (Job 16:21).
So Job says he wishes his advocate would argue his case before God, which means that his advocate is not God. It’s an angel who is testifying or interceding for him.
Job’s friends also acknowledge that there are angels interceding in heaven. Later, in Job 33, his friend Elihu says:
If there be for him an angel, a mediator, one of the thousand, to declare to man what is right for him . . . then man prays to God, and he accepts him (Job 33:23, 26).
And it’s not just in Job that we find this. For example, Zechariah 1:12 reveals that the angel of the Lord intercedes for the Jewish people. The text says:
Then the angel of the Lord said, “O Lord of hosts, how long will you have no mercy on Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, against which you have been angry these seventy years?” (Zechariah 1:12).
So the angel of the Lord intercedes with God, asking him to have mercy on Judah after the seventy years of the Babylonian Exile. Once again, we find belief in angelic intercession.
The New Testament
And this isn’t confined to the Old Testament. It’s also in the New Testament. For example, in Matthew 18:10, Jesus himself says:
See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven (Matthew 18:10).
Now, you might think, “Oh! That’s nice! These angels always see God’s face. How nice for them!” But this would miss Jesus’ point.
What he saying is that the angels of the little ones have guaranteed access to God so that they can intercede for the ones under their care.
That’s why Jesus says not to despise the little ones. If you do, and you mistreat them, their angels are guaranteed to tell God about it and intercede for the little ones, and it won’t go well for you!
This text isn’t about God doing something nice for the angels. It’s about the angels doing something that will benefit the ones they guard.
We also see angelic intercession in the book of Revelation. Specifically, we see it in chapter 8, where John witnesses this:
And another angel who had a golden censer came and stood at the altar, and a large amount of incense was given to him, in order that he could offer the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar that is before the throne. And the smoke of the incense went up before God with the prayers of the saints from the hand of the angel (Revelation 8:3-4).
So here we see an angel in heaven that is offering incense at God’s altar in heaven. This again points to the angel being a priest in God’s heavenly temple, because offering incense was one of the duties of priests. In fact, there was an altar of incense in God’s earthly temple in Jerusalem, where human priests ministered. Here, we’re seeing the heavenly equivalent of that.
Incense is used in the Bible as a symbol of prayer, because the smoke of incense rises upward to heaven like we want our prayers to rise up to God. Thus, Psalm 141:2 says:
Let my prayer be counted as incense before you (Psalm 141:1).
Revelation is drawing on that imagery, and so it says that the angel was given the incense in order that he could offer the prayers of “all the saints” on the golden altar before God’s throne.
In New Testament, the term saint is often used to refer to living Christians—people down on Earth. So what we see here is the angel—functioning as a priest in God’s heavenly temple—taking the prayers of all the saints—including the living ones down on Earth—and presenting them to God using the symbol of incense. Thus we read that:
The smoke of the incense went up before God with the prayers of the saints from the hand of the angel (Revelation 8:4).
Except, angels aren’t physical beings, so they don’t literally have hands. Instead, angels are created intellects. Everything they do, they do mentally. So this symbol represents an angel mentally presenting the prayers of the saints to God. In other words, he’s interceding for them—just as you’d expect of a heavenly priest.
We thus see abundant evidence for ancient Jewish and Christian belief in the fact that angels intercede for us. We see this in the Old Testament. We see this in the Second Temple literature outside the Old Testament. And we see this in the New Testament. In fact, Jesus himself indicates that they’re doing this.
Of course, prior to the time of Christ, with few exceptions, the angels were the only ones with God up in heaven. Humans generally weren’t yet admitted.
So what do you think’s going to happen after the Resurrection of Jesus, when humans get to go to heaven . . . especially the ones who are a kingdom of priests?
That’s what we’ll talk about next.
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