Angels-EVANGELICAL AUTHORS

Evangelicalism is a Protestant movement emphasizing the Bible as
authoritative and reliable, involving personal trust in Christ and in
his work. It also emphasizes a spiritually transformed life marked by
moral conduct, personal devotion, Bible study, and prayer.
The term evangelical refers in particular to a distinct movement
that emerged from the religious awakenings of the eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries in the United States (which remained the
place where this movement had its greatest impact), England, and the
British Empire. This movement brought together several others, such
as New England Puritanism, continental pietism, revivalist Presbyterianism,
Baptist antiestablishment democratic impulses, Calvinist
revivalism, and Methodism.
American evangelicalism emphasizes conversion experiences evidenced
by lives freed from vices. Evangelicals also promote revivals and missions and view the church as a voluntary association of believers
founded upon the authority of the Bible alone.
In recent years several evangelical authors, including Billy Graham
(America’s leading evangelist), Marilynn Carlson, William D.
Webber, Gary Kinnaman, and Ron Rhodes, have investigated the
nature and the role of angels, reporting a variety of accounts of
encounters with them. Their books provide thoroughly biblical guides
to the world of angels and are filled with stories of personal experiences
that fit into the scheme of biblical angelology.
Evangelical authors generally agree with the theory that God created
the angels—countless thousands of them—some time before he
created the physical universe. A war in heaven resulted in the expulsion
of Satan and his angels. Humans were created later, in God’s
image, but a little lower than the angels in the order of being. Regarded
as messengers of God, the good angels serve him as well as his people,
whereas evil angels serve Satan and his purposes. God provides
assistance for his people in their spiritual conflicts through the actions
of the multitude of angels at his command, who provide unseen aid on
the humanity’s behalf. Evangelicals are united in asserting that,
although the Bible does not gives us much information about angels,
its teachings should be a source of comfort and strength for men in
every circumstance.