Ministering Spirits of the Local Universe

38:2.1An­gels do not have ma­te­rial bod­ies, but they are def­i­nite and dis­crete be­ings; they are of spirit na­ture and ori­gin. Though in­vis­i­ble to mor­tals, they per­ceive you as you are in the flesh with­out the aid of trans­form­ers or trans­la­tors; they in­tel­lec­tu­ally un­der­stand the mode of mor­tal life, and they share all of man’s non­sen­su­ous emo­tions and sen­ti­ments. They ap­pre­ci­ate and greatly en­joy your ef­forts in mu­sic, art, and real hu­mor. They are fully cog­nizant of your moral strug­gles and spir­i­tual dif­fi­cul­ties. They love hu­man be­ings, and only good can re­sult from your ef­forts to un­der­stand and love them.

38:2.2Though ser­a­phim are very af­fec­tion­ate and sym­pa­thetic be­ings, they are not sex-emo­tion crea­tures. They are much as you will be on the man­sion worlds, where you will “nei­ther marry nor be given in mar­riage but will be as the an­gels of heaven.” For all who “shall be ac­counted wor­thy to at­tain the man­sion worlds nei­ther marry nor are given in mar­riage; nei­ther do they die any more, for they are equal to the an­gels.” Nev­er­the­less, in deal­ing with sex crea­tures it is our cus­tom to speak of those be­ings of more di­rect de­scent from the Fa­ther and the Son as the sons of God, while re­fer­ring to the chil­dren of the Spirit as the daugh­ters of God. An­gels are, there­fore, com­monly des­ig­nated by fem­i­nine pro­nouns on the sex plan­ets.

38:2.3The ser­a­phim are so cre­ated as to func­tion on both spir­i­tual and lit­eral lev­els. There are few phases of mor­ontia or spirit ac­tiv­ity which are not open to their min­is­tra­tions. While in per­sonal sta­tus an­gels are not so far re­moved from hu­man be­ings, in cer­tain func­tional per­for­mances ser­a­phim far tran­scend them. They pos­sess many pow­ers far be­yond hu­man com­pre­hen­sion. For ex­am­ple: You have been told that the “very hairs of your head are num­bered,” and it is true they are, but a ser­a­phim does not spend her time count­ing them and keep­ing the num­ber cor­rected up to date. An­gels pos­sess in­her­ent and au­to­matic (that is, au­to­matic as far as you could per­ceive) pow­ers of know­ing such things; you would truly re­gard a ser­a­phim as a math­e­mat­i­cal prodigy. There­fore, nu­mer­ous du­ties which would be tremen­dous tasks for mor­tals are per­formed with ex­ceed­ing ease by ser­a­phim.

38:2.4An­gels are su­pe­rior to you in spir­i­tual sta­tus, but they are not your judges or ac­cusers. No mat­ter what your faults, “the an­gels, al­though greater in power and might, bring no ac­cu­sa­tion against you.” An­gels do not sit in judg­ment on man­kind, nei­ther should in­di­vid­ual mor­tals pre­judge their fel­low crea­tures.

38:2.5You do well to love them, but you should not adore them; an­gels are not ob­jects of wor­ship. The great ser­a­phim, Loy­ala­tia, when your seer “fell down to wor­ship be­fore the feet of the an­gel,” said: “See that you do it not; I am a fel­low ser­vant with you and with your races, who are all en­joined to wor­ship God.”

38:2.6In na­ture and per­son­al­ity en­dow­ment the ser­a­phim are just a tri­fle ahead of mor­tal races in the scale of crea­ture ex­is­tence. In­deed, when you are de­liv­ered from the flesh, you be­come very much like them. On the man­sion worlds you will be­gin to ap­pre­ci­ate the ser­a­phim, on the con­stel­la­tion spheres to en­joy them, while on Sal­ving­ton they will share their places of rest and wor­ship with you. Through­out the whole mor­ontia and sub­se­quent spirit as­cent, your fra­ter­nity with the ser­a­phim will be ideal; your com­pan­ion­ship will be su­perb.