Angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.

Jesus saw Nathan'a-el coming to him, and said of him, "Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!"

Nathan'a-el said to him, "How do you know me?" Jesus answered him, "Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you."

Nathan'a-el answered him, "Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!"

Jesus answered him, "Because I said to you, I saw you under the fig tree, do you believe? You shall see greater things than these."

And he said to him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man."

John 1: 47 - 51

Angels rejoice over one sinner who repents

Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God 

over one sinner who repents.

Luke 15:10

The angels of God rejoices over those who repent on earth. They see the guilt and danger of people; they know what God has done for the race, and they rejoice at the recovery of any from the guilt and ruins of sin.

They rejoice at his repentance because it recovers him back to the love of God, and because it will save him from eternal death.

The word may refer to angels as well as to people.

There are no "just" people on earth who need no repentance, Ecclesiastes 7:20; Psalm 14:2-3; Romans 3:10-18.

Our Saviour did not mean to imply that there were any such. He was speaking of what took place "in heaven," or among "angels," and of "their" emotions when they contemplate the creatures of God; and he says that "they" rejoiced in the repentance of one "sinner" more than in the holiness of many who had not fallen.

We are not to suppose that he meant to teach that there were just ninety-nine holy angels to one sinner. He means merely that they rejoice more over the "repentance" of one sinner than they do over many who have not fallen.

By this he vindicated his own conduct.

The Jews did not deny the existence of angels. They would not deny that their feelings were proper. If "they" rejoiced in this manner, it was not improper for "him" to show similar joy, and especially to seek their conversion and salvation. If they rejoice also, it shows how desirable is the repentance of a sinner.

They know of how much value is an immortal soul. They see what is meant by eternal death; and they do not feel "too much," or have "too much anxiety" about the soul that can never die. Oh that people saw it as "they" see it! and oh that they would make an effort, such as angels see to be proper, to save their own souls and the souls of others from eternal death! -- Clarke's Commentary on the Bible

There are some, and their opinion need not be hastily rejected, who imagine that by the ninety and nine just persons, our Lord means the angels - that they are in proportion to men, as ninety-nine are to one, and that the Lord takes more pleasure in the return and salvation of one sinner, than in the uninterrupted obedience of ninety-nine holy angels; and that it was through his superior love to fallen man that he took upon him his nature, and not the nature of angels.

I have met with the following weak objection to this: viz. "The text says just persons; now, angels are not persons, therefore angels cannot be meant."

This is extremely foolish; there may be the person of an angel, as well as of a man; we allow persons even in the Godhead; besides, the original word, δικαιοις, means simply just ones, and may be, with as much propriety, applied to angels as to men.

After all, our Lord may refer to the Essenes, a sect among the Jews, in the time of our Lord, who were strictly and conscientiously moral; living at the utmost distance from both the hypocrisy and pollutions of their countrymen. These, when compared with the great mass of the Jews, needed no repentance. The reader may take his choice of these interpretations, or make a better for himself. I have seen other methods of explaining these words; but they have appeared to me either too absurd or too improbable to merit particular notice. -- Clarke

ANGELS IN INDIANA

"See that you do not despise one

of these little ones, for I say to you

that their angels in heaven

always look upon the face

of my heavenly Father.”

MATTHEW 18-10

A Mother's Story . . .
In September 1960, I woke up one morning with six hungry babies and just 75 cents in my pocket. Their father was gone. The boys ranged from three months to seven years; their sister was two. Their Dad had never been much more than a presence they feared.Whenever they heard his tires crunch on the gravel driveway they would scramble to hide under their beds. He did manage to leave $15 a week to buy groceries.Now that he had decided to leave, there would be no more beatings, but no food either.If there was a welfare system in effect in southern Indiana at that time, I certainly knew nothing about it.

I scrubbed the kids until they looked brand new and then put on my best homemade dress, loaded them into the rusty old 51 Chevy and drove off to find a job.The seven of us went to every factory, store and restaurant in our small town. No luck.The kids stayed crammed into the car and tried to be quiet while I tried to convince whomever would listen that I was willing to learn or do anything. I had to have a job.Still no luck.

The last place we went to, just a few miles out of town, was an old Root Beer Barrel drive-in that had been converted to a truck stop. It was called the Big Wheel.An old lady named Granny owned the place and she peeked out of the window from time to time at all those kids. She needed someone on the graveyard shift, 11 at night until seven in the morning. She paid 65 cents an hour, and I could start that night.

I raced home and called the teenager down the street that baby-sat for people. I bargained with her to come and sleep on my sofa for a dollar a night. She could arrive with her pajamas on and the kids would already be asleep. This seemed like a good arrangement to her, so we made a deal.

That night when the little ones and I knelt to say our prayers, we all thanked God for finding Mommy a job. And so I started at the Big Wheel.When I got home in the mornings I woke the baby-sitter up and sent her home with one dollar of my tip money--fully half of what I averaged every night. As the weeks went by, heating bills added a strain to my meager wage.The tires on the old Chevy had the consistency of penny balloons and began to leak. I had to fill them with air on the way to work and again every morning before I could go home.

One bleak fall morning, I dragged myself to the car to go home and found four tires in the back seat. New tires! There was no note, no nothing, just those beautiful brand new tires. Had angels taken up residence in Indiana ? I wondered.

I made a deal with the local service station. In exchange for his mounting the new tires, I would clean up his office. I remember it took me a lot longer to scrub his floor than it did for him to do the tires.I was now working six nights instead of five and it still wasn't enough. Christmas was coming and I knew there would be no money for toys for the kids.I found a can of red paint and started repairing and painting some old toys. Then hid them in the basement so there would be something for Santa to deliver on Christmas morning. Clothes were a worry too. I was sewing patches on top of patches on the boys pants and soon they would be too far gone to repair.

On Christmas Eve the usual customers were drinking coffee in the Big Wheel. These were the truckers, Les, Frank, and Jim, and a state trooper named Joe.A few musicians were hanging around after a gig at the Legion and were dropping nickels in the pinball machine. The regulars all just sat around and talked through the wee hours of the morning and then left to get home before the sun came up.

When it was time for me to go home at seven o'clock on Christmas morning, to my amazement, my old battered Chevy was filled full to the top with boxes of all shapes and sizes. I quickly opened the driver's side door, crawled inside and knee led in the front facing the back seat.Reaching back, I pulled off the lid of the top box. Inside was whole case of little blue jeans, sizes 2-10! I looked inside another box: It was full of shirts to go with the jeans. Then I peeked inside some of the other boxes. There was candy and nuts and bananas and bags of groceries.There was an enormous ham for baking, and canned vegetables and potatoes. There was pudding and Jell-O and cookies, pie filling and flour. There was hole bag of laundry supplies and cleaning items. And there were five toy trucks and one beautiful little doll.As I drove back through empty streets as the sun slowly rose on the most amazing Christmas Day of my life, I was sobbing with gratitude. And I will never forget the joy on the faces of my little ones that precious morning.

Yes, there were angels in Indiana that long-ago December. And they all hung out at the Big Wheel truck stop....

THE POWER OF PRAYER.

I believe that God only gives three answers to prayer:

1. "Yes!"
2. "Not yet."
3. "I have something better in mind."

God still sits on the throne, the devil is a liar. You maybe going through a tough time right now but God is getting ready to bless you in a way that you cannot imagine.

This prayer is powerful, and prayer is one of the best gifts we receive. There is no cost but a lot of rewards. Let's continue to pray for one another. Here is the prayer:....

Father, I ask You to bless my friends, relatives and email buddies reading this right now. Show them a new revelation of Your love and power.Amen.

"Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice.

It is not a thing to be waited, it is a thing to be achieved."