Michael the Archangel in God’s Word
The angel Michael is spoken of in four chapters of the inspired Scriptures: two in the Old Testament (both in Daniel) and two in the New Testament (the last two books of the Bible). Let us consider these passages in their canonical order.
Here are both verses in Daniel 10 that refer to this holy angel by name: “But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days: but, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia” (13); “But I will shew thee that which is noted in the scripture of truth: and there is none that holdeth with me in these things, but Michael your prince” (21). Clearly, Michael is very powerful fighter who battles against demonic powers and for God’s people as “one of the chief princes” and “Michael your prince.”
Daniel 12:1 declares, “And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.” This presents Michael as a mighty defender of God’s church, especially during terrible persecution in the days of Antichrist (11:21-45), and before the resurrection of the just and the unjust to everlasting life and shame, respectively (12:2-3).
Jude 9, which identifies Michael’s rank, is the verse we will discuss in the next few issues of the News: “Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee.”
Our final text on Michael is Revelation 12:7, which we shall quote along with the verse that follows it: “And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven.” This deals with the expulsion of Satan and his demons on the ascension of Christ and His sitting down at God’s right hand (5).
We can arrange these four passages on Michael the archangel chronologically. First comes Jude 9 on the body of Moses, which the Lord buried before Israel’s entry into the promised land (Deut. 34). Daniel 10 speaks of events about a millennium later involving the Medo-Persian Empire. The third passage, Revelation 12, refers to the enthronement of the risen Christ in heaven, which occurred some 2,000 years ago. Finally, Daniel 12 is a prediction of events that are yet future to us: the “great tribulation” (Matt. 24:21), the general resurrection and the eternal state.
All this helps us to understand the Hebrew name “Michael,” which means, “Who is like God?” Michael is an extremely powerful and just angelic warrior who fights for the church and against satanic forces. For all that, however, he is still only a creature and even his name points us to his Master, the incomparably great sovereign Lord, for who is like God? This is one factor among several in our identification of Michael not as Christ but as an “archangel” (Jude 9), a very high ranking angel. Rev. Stewart
God’s Foreknowledge and Open Theism
In I Samuel 23, David asked the Lord, ‘Will the men of Keilah deliver me up into his [i.e., Saul’s] hand? will Saul come down?’ (11). God replied, ‘He will come down’ and ‘They will deliver thee up’ (11-12). But what Jehovah told David would happen didn’t actually happen. He was not handed over by the men of Keilah. Saul did not come down. Did David ‘thwart’ God’s disclosure of the future? Did the Lord ‘lie’ to David or ‘get it wrong’? Is the future now not ‘fixed’ and ‘ordained aforetime,’ but rather ‘open’ and ‘determined by man’?
Similar instances in Scripture include these three examples. First, ‘Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown’ (Jonah 3:4). That didn’t happen. Did God ‘lie’ to the Ninevites? Second, ‘Set thine house in order: for thou shalt die,’ Hezekiah (Isa. 38:1)! Did the Most High tell an ‘untruth’ to Judah’s king? Third, ‘the soul that sinneth, it shall die’ (Eze. 18:4, 20; cf. Rom. 3:23). We’re all sinners, yet we are still alive?
I would love to hear your thoughts on these passages that are used by Open Theists to defend their denial that God has foreordained all things and that He only has knowledge of all possibilities regarding what ‘could’ happen.”
First, what is Open Theism?
Open Theism is a modern theological movement that has many different aspects but at its heart is the teaching that God is not sovereign. According to this heresy, God has not unchangeably and eternally foreordained all things, nor does He sovereignly and irresistibly bring all the things to pass. Though He knows all future possibilities, the future and what actually happens is “open” and subject to man’s free-will choices, to which God is only able to react and over which He exerts no control. This, of course, is not only heresy but rank unbelief, a blatant denial that God is GOD. Open Theism worships an idol like those of Psalm 115:5-7: “They have mouths, but they speak not: eyes have they, but they see not: They have ears, but they hear not: noses have they, but they smell not: They have hands, but they handle not: feet have they, but they walk not: neither speak they through their throat.”
But what about the verses our friend mentions? Do they support Open Theism?
I Samuel 23:11-12 is the easiest of the passages. David, by not going to Keilah, did not thwart anything God had planned. God did not lie to David. God was not disclosing a possible future that did not come to pass because of the choice David made to avoid Keilah. To interpret the passage that way is Scripture twisting and an attempt to make something out of nothing. All that God is revealing to David about the men of Keilah is their evil intentions, nothing more. Even a child can understand that, though these blind leaders of the blind cannot.
The other passages are not that much more difficult. Jonah, in obedience to God, preached that Nineveh would be destroyed in forty days, something that did not happen (3:4). Jonah 3:10 even says, by way of explanation, that God repented of the evil He would do to them. Did God change His mind? Was the threat of Nineveh’s destruction a lie? Is God subject to the choices and actions of men? Not if Numbers 23:19, Malachi 3:6, Romans 11:29 and James 1:17 are true. God’s unchangeablity, His immutability, is fundamental to His divinity: He is not God if He changes or is subject to the variableness of men and events.
We agree with John Calvin’s explanation of Jonah 3:10: “Now as to what Jonah adds, that God was led to repent, it is a mode of speaking that ought to be sufficiently known to us. Strictly speaking, no repentance can belong to God: and it ought not to be ascribed to his secret and hidden counsel. God then is in himself ever the same, and consistent with himself; but he is said to repent, when a regard is had to the comprehension of men: for as we conceive God to be angry, whenever he summons us to his tribunal, and shows to us our sins; so also we conceive him to be placable, when he offers the hope of pardon. But it is according to our perceptions that there is any change, when God forgets his wrath, as though he had put on a new character. As then we cannot otherwise be terrified, that we may be humbled before God and repent, except he sets forth before us his wrath, the Scripture accommodates itself to the grossness of our understanding. But, on the other hand, we cannot confidently call on God, unless we feel assured that he is placable. We hence see that some kind of change appears to us, whenever God either threatens or gives hope of pardon and reconciliation: and to this must be referred this mode of speaking which Jonah adopts, when he says that God repented.”
God often speak this way to us in His Word, describing Himself and His works in a way that condescends to our understanding. This is called an “anthropomorphism.” It simply means that God, whose glory and majesty are beyond our comprehension, miraculously reveals Himself to us in a way we can understand. Such descriptions, just because they condescend to our understanding, must be understood in the light of other passages such as those that speak clearly of His unchangeableness.
Isaiah 38:1 must be interpreted along the same lines. It is not proof that God changes or that He has not unchangeably decreed all things or that He is not sovereign. Isaiah 38:1 must not be made to contradict Numbers 23:19, Malachi 3:6, Romans 11:29 and James 1:17. If it does contradict these passages, then Scripture is just nonsense.
Ezekiel 18:4 and 20 require a few further comments. For one thing, God is emphasizing the fact that every man is responsible for his own sins (20) and that He does not (except in Christ) punish one person for the sins of another. More importantly, Ezekiel makes it clear that those who sin and die for their sins are those who do not repent (30-32). To ignore the rest of the chapter in order to claim that God does not mean what He says or that He is changeable or that He has not irrevocably determined all things, is folly. He shows that He means what He says in the death of the unrepentant.
The sad thing is that many evangelicals have interpreted such passages along the same lines as the Open Theists, insisting that God’s Word, both threats and promises, is conditional. He neither unchangeably promises salvation nor threatens destruction. Such notions are simply to say, though not as blatantly as the Open Theists, that the future is “open,” and that God only knows future possibilities and not what will actually happen according to His own sovereign decree. Conditionalism and Open Theism are close relatives.
So is free-willism. It is not only a denial of Scripture’s teaching in Romans 9:16, “So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy,” but proclaims a god who is no more God than the god of Open Theism, a god who is subject to will of men, and to the changes of time and history. If God Himself depends on our choices and whims, then we are damned, for we cannot consistently chose even what colour of shoes to wear or what food to eat. If God lies, then despair and darkness are the only realities.
Interestingly, Arminianism, at the time of the Synod of Dordt (1618-1619), spoke like the Open Theists and indeed their theology (really no theology at all) was not essentially different. The Arminians at that time spoke of an “uncertain certainty,” which is, of course, mere babble (Canons I:R:7).
If God has not sovereignly foreordained all things, and does not powerfully and irresistibly bring them to pass, then the death of Christ on the cross, on which all our hopes rest, was a mere chance and no atoning sacrifice, a tragedy of men’s making and no work of God. Then we have no certainty or possibility of assurance and no hope in Jesus. Then our certainty of God’s electing love is an uncertain certainty, no certainty at all. Then Christ’s death and resurrection can come to nothing, then grace is powerless and the Spirit of God often works in vain.
Open Theism is unbelief and the conditional theology of many evangelicals is little better. Believing that all things happen not by chance, but by the almighty determination and action of God (Ps. 135:6; Isa. 46:10-11; Eph. 1:11), we believe that the fall of man into sin was not a tragedy to which God was forced to react and to attempt to undo. The cross was not an accident of history, but the God-ordained and only way of salvation. Thus the Lord’s gracious salvation is not a mere chance to be taken or lost, but the irrevocable work of God. Then the assurance that I am one of His own and have a place with Him for all eternity is not self-deception but truth.
Christianity and faith rest on the glorious unchangeableness of God and on His absolute sovereignty. “For I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed” (Mal. 3:6)! Rev. Ron Hanko
