The Visit to Philadelphia

167:7.1As they jour­neyed up the hills from Jeri­cho to Beth­any, Na­than­iel walked most of the way by the side of Je­sus, and their dis­cus­sion of chil­dren in re­la­tion to the king­dom of heaven led in­di­rectly to the con­sid­er­a­tion of the min­istry of an­gels. Na­than­iel fi­nally asked the Mas­ter this ques­tion: “See­ing that the high priest is a Sad­ducee, and since the Sad­ducees do not be­lieve in an­gels, what shall we teach the peo­ple re­gard­ing the heav­enly min­is­ters?” Then, among other things, Je­sus said:

167:7.2“The an­gelic hosts are a sep­a­rate or­der of cre­ated be­ings; they are en­tirely dif­fer­ent from the ma­te­rial or­der of mor­tal crea­tures, and they func­tion as a dis­tinct group of uni­verse in­tel­li­gences. An­gels are not of that group of crea­tures called ‘the Sons of God’ in the Scrip­tures; nei­ther are they the glo­ri­fied spir­its of mor­tal men who have gone on to pro­gress through the man­sions on high. An­gels are a di­rect cre­ation, and they do not re­pro­duce them­selves. The an­gelic hosts have only a spir­i­tual kin­ship with the hu­man race. As man pro­gresses in the jour­ney to the Fa­ther in Par­a­dise, he does tra­verse a state of be­ing at one time anal­o­gous to the state of the an­gels, but mor­tal man never be­comes an an­gel.

167:7.3“The an­gels never die, as man does. The an­gels are im­mor­tal un­less, per­chance, they be­come in­volved in sin as did some of them with the de­cep­tions of Lu­cifer. The an­gels are the spirit ser­vants in heaven, and they are nei­ther all-wise nor all-pow­er­ful. But all of the loyal an­gels are truly pure and holy.

167:7.4“And do you not re­mem­ber that I said to you once be­fore that, if you had your spir­i­tual eyes anointed, you would then see the heav­ens opened and be­hold the an­gels of God as­cend­ing and de­scend­ing? It is by the min­istry of the an­gels that one world may be kept in touch with other worlds, for have I not re­peat­edly told you that I have other sheep not of this fold? And these an­gels are not the spies of the spirit world who watch upon you and then go forth to tell the Fa­ther the thoughts of your heart and to re­port on the deeds of the flesh. The Fa­ther has no need of such ser­vice inas­much as his own spirit lives within you. But these an­gelic spir­its do func­tion to keep one part of the heav­enly cre­ation in­formed con­cern­ing the do­ings of other and re­mote parts of the uni­verse. And many of the an­gels, while func­tion­ing in the gov­ern­ment of the Fa­ther and the uni­verses of the Sons, are as­signed to the ser­vice of the hu­man races. When I taught you that many of these ser­a­phim are min­is­ter­ing spir­its, I spoke not in fig­u­ra­tive lan­guage nor in po­etic strains. And all this is true, re­gard­less of your dif­fi­culty in com­pre­hend­ing such mat­ters.

167:7.5“Many of these an­gels are en­gaged in the work of sav­ing men, for have I not told you of the se­raphic joy when one soul elects to for­sake sin and be­gin the search for God? I did even tell you of the joy in the pres­ence of the an­gels of heaven over one sin­ner who re­pents, thereby in­di­cat­ing the ex­is­tence of other and higher or­ders of ce­les­tial be­ings who are like­wise con­cerned in the spir­i­tual wel­fare and with the di­vine prog­ress of mor­tal man.

167:7.6“Also are these an­gels very much con­cerned with the means whereby man’s spirit is re­leased from the taber­na­cles of the flesh and his soul es­corted to the man­sions in heaven. An­gels are the sure and heav­enly guides of the soul of man dur­ing that un­charted and in­def­i­nite pe­riod of time which in­ter­venes be­tween the death of the flesh and the new life in the spirit abodes.”

167:7.7And he would have spo­ken fur­ther with Na­than­iel re­gard­ing the min­istry of an­gels, but he was in­ter­rupted by the ap­proach of Martha, who had been in­formed that the Mas­ter was draw­ing near to Beth­any by friends who had ob­served him as­cend­ing the hills to the east. And she now has­tened to greet him.