God’s Messengers

Bless the LORD, you His angels, who excel in strength, who do His word, heeding the voice of His word.

Psalm 103:20

When someone in authority gives a directive, that command finds its way to the appropriate person, who makes it happen. Commands don’t execute themselves—it takes a person to carry out the authority’s desires.

Isaiah 55:10-11 pictures God as an authority who sends forth His Word. And it is always carried out: “It shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it” (verse 11). But how does that happen? Who carries out God’s words and translates them into action? Angels do—like the angel found in Daniel 10. This angel was dispatched from heaven to deliver to Daniel the answer to his prayers. The angel was delayed for three weeks by an evil angel, the power behind “the prince of the kingdom of Persia” (verse 13), and only the angel Michael, “one of the chief princes” (verse 13), was able to defeat the evil angel and see the messenger on his way to Daniel.

When you pray, realize that angels are at work to execute God’s answers. And they may be opposed by “principalities and powers in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 3:10).

Angels mean messengers and ministers. Their function is to execute the plan of divine providence even in earthly things.

THOMAS AQUINAS