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HOW BIG IS GOD'S ARMY?

I have a friendly little bone to pick with my friend Dr. Jack Blanco, who has produced a literary work I actually appreciate a great deal. We've used his volume, Clear Word, which is a very expanded paraphrase of the Bible, here on this program a number of times. But over in the book of Revelation, he's kind of taken a mathematical leap beyond what you find in the King James Version.

It's actually an interesting trivia question to bat around: how many angels does God have in His heavenly army? We could comfortably say, "Lots and lots," but here in Revelation chapter five we discover a specific number.

"And I beheld," John writes, "and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders: and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands and thousands."

Certainly you and I, if we're together on God's side of the battlefield, want for Him to have the biggest possible army. But let's stay close to our calculators. How much is "ten thousand times ten thousand"? Well, a hundred million, of course. I'm sure you did that in your head right there in the car on your Friday commute. So God has available for service "one hundred million" AND thousands of thousands. So substantially MORE than one hundred million.

Well, here's the UPGRADE Dr. Blanco provides for this same verse: Revelation 5:11:

"Suddenly, I [John] heard what seemed like a hundred BILLION angels joining their voices in a chorus of praise to the Lamb as they encircled the throne."

The King James has John putting the number at a hundred MILLION . . . PLUS thousands of thousands. Now, coming out of Dr. Blanco's computer screen we have a hundred BILLION angels. Did he take unwarranted license? Should he be chastised?

I guess maybe we should come to the other side and say some words in my friend's defense. First of all, the Bible clearly teaches that each of us has a guardian angel. God's Word promises us personal protection; you're probably thinking with me of the guarantee in Psalm 91:11:

"For He will command His angels concerning you, to guard you in all your ways."

Jesus told His listeners that even the smallest child is personally assigned an angel. Matthew 18:10:

"Don't think that little children are a nuisance. They, too, have angels watching over them, encouraging them to be good, and their angels are constantly going back and forth to My Father in heaven."

That WAS the Clear Word paraphrase right there, and you can understand why we appreciate its warm style. And from a mathematical point of view, we can see that if every citizen of Planet Earth has an angel guarding him or her, that would immediately put the number at six BILLION and growing.

We looked into a couple of respected Bible commentaries, just to get Dr. Blanco COMPLETELY off the hook. One set of scholars say this:

"‘Ten thousand.' This is evidently NOT meant to be a literal number, but rather implies NUMBERLESS hosts."

And another series we like, the Tyndale New Testament Commentaries, by Dr. Leon Morris, makes basically the same point.

"Expression is piled on expression," he writes, "to bring out their number. We should resist any temptation to multiply out the figures in an attempt to reach a precise number. John is concerned simply to indicate that the total was VAST. In fact what he means is ‘innumerable.'"

Let me make it very mathematically simple here. How many angels does God have at His command? This answer works for me: "Infinity." Actually, THIS answer works even better. How many angels does He have? ENOUGH!! Whatever the need, He has enough!

We've spent this week smiling over the resurrection story where the Sanhedrin and the priests and the enemies of Jesus asked Pilate to provide a cemetery guard so that the disciples couldn't get in and Jesus couldn't get out. "All right," he said, "make it as secure as you can." And a hundred Roman guards were provided, plus an official Roman seal on the huge stone guarding the tomb.
Well, if you read the conclusion to the story, in Matthew 28, how did Christ get out on Sunday morning? There was an earthquake, we read, and a sum total of ONE heavenly angel. ONE!

"An angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men."

So here's a pretty big encounter between good and evil, between God and Lucifer. And God is so nervous that He sends down exactly ONE angel. Friend, that gives me confidence — especially when I realize that heaven has at least a hundred million more, and maybe six billion more . . . and, if we let Dr. Blanco's interpretation triumph here, a HUNDRED BILLION!

There's a wonderful book we dip into sometimes, written by the late A. W. Tozer. It's entitled The Knowledge of the Holy — and you know, the more knowledge we have about this incredible God, the less fear we're going to have. He writes this, in a chapter entitled "The Omnipotence of God":

"To reign, God must have power, and to reign sovereignly, He must have ALL power. And that is what omnipotent means, having all power. The word derives from the Latin and is identical in meaning with the more familiar almighty which we have from the Anglo-Saxon." Then he shares this interesting and assuring piece of Bible information: "This latter word occurs fifty-six times in our English Bible and is NEVER used of anyone but God. He alone is almighty."

So how much power does God have? Well, He has all of it. He has enough. He has a sufficient amount. Tozer goes on to add this:

"[God] has never surrendered the least iota of His power. He gives but He does not give AWAY."

And then Tozer describes how a fellow preacher, a Presbyterian clergyman, A. B. Simpson, was extremely sick and discouraged, ready to quit the ministry, lay down and die. Then he happened to hear an old Negro spiritual:

"Nothing is too hard for Jesus, No man can work like Him."

Right there, Rev. Simpson determined to get well — and he did. He put in 35 more years in the vineyard of the Lord, setting up one of the biggest foreign missionary societies in the world.

Let me give you a bit more from this inspiring chapter:

"Since He has at His command all the power in the universe" — speaking of angel armies — "the Lord God omnipotent can do ANYTHING as easily as anything else. All His acts are done without effort. He expends no energy that must be replenished. His self-sufficiency makes it unnecessary for Him to look outside of Himself for a renewal of strength. All the power required to do all that He wills to do lies in undiminished fullness in His own infinite being."

Friend, our wonderful God has never once gotten tired. He's never once broken into a sweat. He's never once had to say, "Oh no, I didn't anticipate this; I don't know what to do next." He looked down on that Sunday morning and saw those one hundred guards and He saw that Roman seal protecting the place where His own Son was sleeping. And God simply smiled. "This is the biggest job I've ever assigned," He probably said, "but it's certainly not the hardest one. Let's send one angel."

Well, friend, that Sunday morning triumph was a wonderful one, the most vital in all Planet Earth's history . . . but it did happen a long time ago and many time zones away. How about this Friday? How about for each of us?

In the book of Second Kings, chapter six, is a very practical and personal story. The prophet Elisha has a servant who gets up one morning and goes out to get some wood for the breakfast fire. Lo and behold, the entire city is ringed with hostile troops from Syria. They've got the place surrounded, which meant that capture and death was imminent. This brought the crisis close to home; this is blood-and-guts reality time. And he runs back in and cries to Elisha: "We're doomed! We're surrounded! What shall we do?"

And Elisha responds in verse 16:

"Don't be afraid. We have a stronger force on our side than they have on theirs."

And the servant wonders: "Where? I don't see anything." Here's verse 17:
"Then Elisha prayed, ‘O Lord, open my servant's eyes so he can see what I see.' The Lord answered Elisha's prayer, and his servant looked outside and saw the surrounding hills FULL of horses and chariots of fire."

And friend, here in 2002, the skies and the hills are still filled with invisible forces. Heavily armed, HEAVENLY-armed angel warriors. How many? Well, how does "infinity" strike you? Or how does "enough" make you feel? Whatever the problem is, the infinite power of God means that there is "enough." Tozer closes with this:

"God has charged Himself with full responsibility for our eternal happiness and stands ready to take over the MANAGEMENT of our lives the moment we turn in faith to Him." Is that personal enough for you? Tozer again: "Here is His promise: ‘And I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not; I will lead them in paths that they have not known: I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight. These things will I do unto them, and not forsake them.'"