In my whole life the only angel figures i have seen was the angels at my parish(orthodox iconography) and some other pictures of them on google . Until i saw this
So do all those people, modern christians who claim to have seen an angel are instantly contradicting themselves? What about other people from other religions who said they saw an angel and gave them instructions to what to do (saying they give a special message from God) etc etc ,did they actually seen one? Or what about when the women went to the tomb ? The Gospel says they saw a man sitting there. Surely thats not very human looking.
you might want to read “A Wind in the Door” by Madeleine L’Engle–she incorporates those views. I would imagine that angels would take any form that would best communicate to the culture of those they’re sent to discuss with. I personally would prefer to see one of the Victorian type, rather than the many eyed ones, but I guess that’s OK.
Angels are most of all messengers from God, and as such can come in many flavors. That was brought to mind as John in Revelation talks of “the angel of the church at…” meaning the pastor of that church, so evidently flesh and blood people can be literal angels. Well, as literal as Revelation gets anyway.
Before I started school I was pretty good at seeing fantastic things. Once while laying out on some grass looking up at the sky, I saw the devil (classic Halloween costume style) run out over the edge of a cloud toward the ground. Then the torso of Jesus appeared at the point where the devil had jumped, shaking his fist and yelling something I couldn’t hear. His visage was exactly like the framed image of Jesus that hung on our living room wall. You could call these appearances but of course the substance of the appearances conformed to imagery in my environment. Who knows? Perhaps I was dropping off for a nap and got some dream imagery mixed in with my visual perception. That doesn’t mean all visions or appearances are of that nature but they might be. That is certainly how I understand those I had as a toddler.
When those angels were seen looking all crazy was it in person or was it visions?
If it was visions was it actually angels or was it a vision full of symbolism and what was those symbols meant to convey?
When it records a experience of men and woman meeting angels in the Bible outside of a vision did they look crazy or was they described as mostly human looking?
Your post isn’t very coherent. You talk like these particular pictures are a measure of the reality of angles and do not explain why.
Most of the time the Bible does not describe the angels that appear to them and those who see them act like there is nothing strange about them. When they visited Sodom, the people who saw them apparently found them attractive. This suggests that most of the time they appear quite human.
But a few descriptions are like these pictures posted.
Not particularly.
They do look like something from a dream or a trip on drugs. They certainly do not look like physical forms – too many physical inconsistencies.
Angels are spiritual beings - thus our experience of them is inherently subjective. It is more likely that people would see something more familiar. But people are different and have different expectations.
While it appears that those types of angels are a thing as seen in Ezekiel and Revelation, we also see humanoid angels as we see in Genesis, Daniel, the Nativity stories and also in Revelation. My understanding that those types of angels are the cherubim, those things of fire, many wings and many eyes and etc… Why God made such odd ball entities is honestly and humbly beyond my understanding. But the angels we think of are just large beings of light that somewhat appear human.
I struggled with the reality of angles myself when giving my first presentation in English to my colleagues trying to explain the difference the angles make in the interpretation of in light scatter signals in cytometry. They had a good laugh as I was very coherent spelling out angels all the time. The presentation was well received and someone in the audience said I was so enthusiastic speaking about my subject that they felt I was on wings -before explaining why the audience was smiling all the time.
Years later I was beaten by the autocorrect function when texting my colleagues from hospital, whilst recovering from a serious head injury, explaining to them that I had a gardening angel. The comments I got back were that they had heard it was an accident but now it sounded my wife did my head in because I had an affair with a gardener or that they could see the gardening angle to the story.
Hmmm it would make sense. The 8 eyed angel was visions and the humanoid like was actually seen. What purpose does it serve though?
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
12
It’s all endogenous opiate metabolization during hypnopompy/hypnagogy apart from when it’s waking hallucination through brain damage, psychosis, anoxia. Unless you’re Ezekiel or John of Patmos or those involved in the Incarnation. And even then.
The fantastical imagery of flying eyes notwithstanding, there are also the very different experiences (angels recognizable as a communicating personages despite being frightening - also an indisputable part of the lexicon); and yet there are also the balancing passages that refer to them walking among us and we occasionally entertaining them unawares. Nobody is going to invite a flying eyeball into their house or tents and eat dinner with it, while thinking it’s just another Thursday.
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Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
14
I think the last time anyone entertained an angel unawares was about 1100 BCE? Nobody reported one since.
Well … there wouldn’t be much to report, would there? If it really was “unawares” … then it would have seemed like just another Thursday. But all that aside, I think our fixation on trying to tease out some ontologically different beings as if we’re going to be able to add another taxon to the chart or another category to our tidily catalogued beings is all a rather misplaced emphasis to begin with. It’s all just part of our larger narrative.
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Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
16
Well, they reported them up until 1100 BC, regardless, so why not since? Unless like healings and other coincidences that don’t break the statistical surface, only encounters where we can never meet the person again and they can’t be traced could be with angels. So not on CCTV. No fingerprints.
No credit card transactions. What kind of encounter?
None that would be of interest to forensics investigators or inquisitive scientists. But when we take an interest in the narrative arc of history … !
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
18
That’s exactly right. Only I say it without the accompanied sneer that comes from such forensic minded empiricists who are fond of imagining theirs is the only truth that matters.
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Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
20
Everybody’s subjective truth matters in the pursuit of truth. And in the latter, the truth must nonetheless be pursued. The rational truth, first.
