Biography of Archangel Michael
Archangel Michael was created by the power of God’s thought and given a name meaning “Who is like God.” The purpose of the archangel was to control the heavenly army of angels. In Orthodoxy, he is also called Archangel, which translated from Greek means commander-in-chief. The army of archangels was supposed to protect God's kingdom from the attacks of the devil, monitor compliance with God's laws and help all Christian believers fight evil.
Michael was one of the seven archangels who were given a name. This speaks to the importance of his position. The remaining angels remained nameless.
In Holy Scripture, the archangel is also called “the leader of the army of the Lord” or “prince.”
It is believed that Archangel Michael monitors the actions of people from above and when a critical situation arises, he comes to the aid of the laity. There are many miraculous cases in history that Orthodoxy associates with the intervention of the Archangel. When the Israelites attacked the Promised Land, the apostle came to Joshua with help. During the fall of the kingdom of Babylon, Michael appeared to the prophet Daniel and told that during the future persecution of the people by the Antichrist, the heavenly army would come to protect them.
The Holy Scriptures describe cases when an archangel appears on earth in the form of an element. One of these phenomena was a pillar of fire that put the Israelites to flight when they came to Egypt. The pillar drove a whole horde of pharaohs into the sea and many drowned there.
Orthodox Christians consider Michael the Archangel the defender of their faith and the main fighter against evil. When depicting the figure of a saint on icons, they put a spear or sword in his hand, with which he overthrows the devil.
What does Archangel Michael help with?
One who is “like God” has great strength and power. Based on the cases of miraculous help described in the previous chapter and described in the Old Testament, this character of the spiritual world is capable of any help.
As a ministering spirit, he is the commander of the Heavenly Host.
Its main purpose is to protect the people of God from visible and invisible enemies.
This task was entrusted to him from the beginning of the creation of the world until the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is ready to protect both the entire church and every Christian from heresies, illnesses and difficult situations.
Therefore, it is very useful to turn to the Archangel Michael for help in your daily prayers.
Biography of Archangel Lucifer
Archangel Lucifer, just like Michael, was created by the Lord by the power of thought. The Almighty made him his right hand and endowed him with enormous power. God's cherub had perfect beauty, was very smart and talented. The Lord himself admired the graceful features and complete wisdom of his creation.
The perfection of the body and the presence of a great mind gave rise to a criminal sense of pride in Lucifer. He really didn’t like that the Lord made his Son Christ his successor, and not him. He decided that such a perfect creature should be a level higher and have more power. Having power over the angels subordinate to him, the archangel began to persuade them to apostatize. He told the angels that God does not value them and they deserve better. If they rise up and Lucifer takes the place of the Lord, he will appreciate each one at their true worth and exalt them to the maximum. Having sowed confusion in the minds of his subordinates and gathered a team of like-minded people, Lucifer started a riot in the Kingdom of God. The Lord, seeing the turmoil going on in His Presence, expelled the cherub and a third of his minions to Earth.
So, the perfect creation of the Lord God turned into a devil due to excessive pride. The name Lucifer is considered synonymous with the words Satan, devil, gossip, slanderer. On earth, the former archangel began to dominate the expelled angels and people who reject faith in the Almighty.
Battle of Archangel Michael and Lucifer
Archangel Michael, having enlisted the support of angels faithful to God, made every effort to bring Lucifer and his group of like-minded people to reason. In conversations, he spent a long time and to no avail convincing the apostate to submit to the will of God and abandon his intentions. This case was the first in the Universe when eternal peace and tranquility was threatened. Disobedience to the Creator could have a detrimental effect on the harmony in nature and lead to the most terrible consequences.
Lucifer avoided such conversations in every possible way and called everyone who did not agree with his beliefs slaves. He convinced his like-minded people that when he came to power, he would introduce fairer forms of government and give his subordinates freedom. There were angels who believed him and already considered him their master. Seeing this, Lucifer consoled himself with confidence that gradually all the angels would be on his side. Then he will stand on the same level as the Lord himself, and God’s army will be subordinate to him.
Faithful archangels and cherubim tried to convey to the apostate that his disobedience to the Almighty could lead to dire consequences. If the Creator was able to create the world and all living things, including themselves, then it costs him nothing to destroy his creations. Also, the faithful angels tried to convince the followers of Lucifer. They invited the apostates to come to the Lord and submit to him, trusting in the Grace of God.
Archangel Michael is known primarily as a great commander, archangel. He is the conqueror of Satan himself, he is the great prince who stands for the sons of the Jewish people. According to legend, he saves Abraham from the fiery furnace, and Isaac from Abraham’s knife. It is he who leads the people through the desert to the promised land, and he who gives Moses the tablets of the Law. He is called the keeper of the magical words with which heaven and earth were created. He was seen at the gates of heaven with a fiery sword, and it was he who carried the body of the deceased Mother of God to heaven.
Several holidays are dedicated to Archangel Michael. The main and oldest of them is celebrated on November 21. It was established in 363 by the Council of Laodicea, which recognized the doctrine of angels as creators and rulers of the world as heresy, but preserved their cult. Officially, the holiday is called the Council of the Archangel Michael and other disembodied Heavenly powers. That is, angels. Therefore, to begin with, it is worth saying a few words about who angels are.
John of Damascus defines: “An angel is an entity endowed with intelligence, always moving, possessing free will, incorporeal, serving God, and by grace having received immortality for its nature.” The angelic doctor Thomas Aquinas elaborates: “God rules the corporeal world through angels.” “They differ from Divine energies,” explains Alexey Losev, “in that they are created, that is, substantially other-existent, while Divine energies are substantially inseparable from God himself and therefore are God himself. Ethereal forces, as the idea of all further otherness, comprehend and shape all otherness, and therefore the doctrine of the Guardian Angel is a completely elementary dialectical necessity. Not only man, but everything that exists in the world, every smallest grain of sand has its own guardian angel.”
Losev assures that such mental structures as Kant’s “category”, Hegel’s “concept”, Husserl’s “eidos”, Cohen and Natorp’s “hypothesis” are “only internally empty angelology. These structures are undoubtedly intelligent, ethereal; they comprehend and shape all existence and in this sense are its “guardians.” But still, an angel is not just a diagram, it is a being that comprehends and thus shapes the sphere of existence under its jurisdiction: a mosquito, citizen Medvedev, a variety of wheat, a star, a state or some bank. An angel is the living meaning of things. He himself is incorporeal, living outside of space and time. But it can appear in our corporeal world, as, for example, the same Michael appeared to the priest Archippus in Khonech and, with a blow of his rod, diverted the seething stream from his temple. You can even touch an angel, just as Jacob felt him, struggling with the unknown in a dream and receiving a leg injury as a result of the fight.
How do ethereal beings operate in our 3D world? Aquinas writes: “The angel comes into contact with a given place solely through his power. Therefore, the angel’s movements come down to the sequential application of his force to different points.” And he clarifies: “The angel moves in discontinuous time. He may appear here and there, and there will be no time gap between these points. The beginning and end of an angel’s movement cannot be called two moments, between which there is a time interval; in the same way, it cannot be said that the beginning of the movement covers a period of time ending with the instant of the end of the movement. The beginning is one moment, and the end is another. There is no time between them at all. You can say that an angel moves through time, but not in the same way as a body moves.”
The author of the theory of morphogenic fields, Rupert Sheldrake, believes that Thomas's idea of \u200b\u200bthe movement of angels refers to quantum physics: “The photon is in one place at the moment when, for example, light comes from the Sun, and in another place at the moment when sunlight comes into contact with anything on Earth. The time interval between these moments is about eight minutes. Thus, we can attribute speed to light. But according to the theory of relativity - and this was one of Einstein's starting points - from the point of view of the photon itself there is no time expenditure. There is an instantaneous connection between the light coming from the sun and the light coming into contact with an earthly object. The photon does not age” (more details here).
As we see, modern ideas about the movement of quantum particles have the same mental roots as the Thomist idea of the movement of angels. In modern science fiction this seems to be called "null transport". Be that as it may, angels, who are often described by spirit seers as beings of light, may well be of a wave-particle nature. They are incorporeal, like waves propagating in some angelic field, and they are corporeal, since they appear to man in the material world. But this is just a special physicality. Perhaps it is best to call it virtual. And turn on the TV. The plots with which it is filled, of course, were created by angels placed in the service of propaganda. Media is one of the most visible areas of their activity today. The point is not that some Konstantin Ernst is an angel. But who will argue with the fact that there is a reliable guardian angel behind him?
Let's go back to Heaven. Dionysius the Areopagite, whose taxonomy of angels is considered classic, distinguishes three tripartite orders of the hierarchy of heavenly entities. In descending order of proximity to God, these are, firstly, Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones. Secondly, Dominance, Strength and Authority. Thirdly, the Principalities, Archangels and Angels. Nine angelic ranks. Michael - Archangel. That is, it belongs to the lower, third hierarchy of angelic ranks. However, he managed to rise very high. As it is sung in a revolutionary song: “He who was nothing will become everything.”
It so happened that the most powerful, beautiful and high-ranking angel Lucifer became proud and rebelled against God. The situation was critical, because many angels of different ranks joined the troublemaker. But the other angels still hesitated. And then Michael called on those who hesitate to remain faithful to God. The valiant archangel led an army of angels who did not abandon the deity, and defeated Lucifer, casting him and his minions into the underworld. As a result, a kingdom arose there led by Satan (Lucifer) and with the same angelic hierarchy as in Heaven. But only the fallen angels began to be called not angels, but devils. At the same time, their angelic nature was preserved.
In the book of the prophet Ezekiel, Satan is called a “cherub.” Thomas Aquinas discusses in detail the question of how it was possible that he rebelled. This is instructive: “Cherub means “knowing,” and seraphim means “fiery” or “igniting.” The first name speaks of knowledge that is compatible with mortal sin; the second is about burning love, which is incompatible with sin. This is the reason for considering the first fallen angel to be a cherub rather than a seraphim. The names of two angelic ranks, Seraphim and Thrones, are not classified in the Bible as evil spirits, for these names mean something incompatible with mortal sin, that is, burning love and the presence of God. But the demons are called “Cherubim”, “Powers” and “Principles”, since these words mean knowledge and power, which both good and evil have. If we consider that sin has a moving cause, then it is clear that the greatest of the angels must rather have fallen into sin: as we have seen, the devil's sin was pride, and the moving cause of pride was natural superiority.
Many believe that the story of the struggle of angels comes from Iranian mythology, where Ormuzd and Ahriman fight. Others remember the war of the Titans and the Olympian gods. In general, all nations have myths about the wars of the gods. And each has its own characteristics. For Jews, this story is connected with their chosenness. Explaining the structure of the lower angelic hierarchy (Principalities, Archangels and Angels), Dionysius the Areopagite says: “The Bible entrusts the leadership over us to the Angels when it calls Michael the prince of the Jewish people, as well as other Angels the princes of other nations.” The fact that every nation has its own angel is completely natural, since every speck of dust has its own angel. But the fact that the Jewish people received an angel who defeated Satan himself is very significant. This explains the amazing properties of the chosen people, because the angel, as mentioned above, is what forms the object under its jurisdiction.
It's not all that simple. After all, other nations also have their angels. So, are these angels imperfect? This is how it turns out, since the peoples under their jurisdiction prayed to some untrue gods, that is, they behaved approximately the way the fallen angels once behaved. And only the Jews, whose prince is Michael, who defeated the rebels, remained faithful to God (a pagan would clarify: to their god). However, Dionysius comes to the defense of the angels active in history: “If anyone asks: how was it that the Jewish people alone were honored with Divine revelations? – To this it must be answered that the deviation of other nations to false gods should not be imputed to the good rule of the Angels; but the peoples themselves voluntarily fell away from the straight path leading to God, out of pride, pride and reckless veneration of things in which they thought to find the Divine.” That is, the problem is the freedom that God gave to man, but the angels are not to blame for the fact that people use it so badly.
We know that Michael is the prince of the Jewish people from the book of the prophet Daniel, to whom someone appeared in human form and explained (among other things) why he had not appeared earlier: “The prince of the kingdom of Persia stood against me twenty-one days; but behold, Michael, one of the first princes, came to help me, and I remained there with the kings of Persia” (Dan. 10:13). We are talking about military operations carried out by invisible forces (by the hands of people). And the Persian angel clearly opposes God (who is represented by the angel talking with Daniel), but Michael comes to God’s aid. That is, the pattern of the rebellion of angels is repeated. So it is in vain that Dionysius is trying to present the angels responsible for the nations as beings who cannot be imputed with the actions of their charges. The “Prince of the Kingdom of Persia” is clearly at one with the “kings of Persia”; he stands against the god of the Jews and against the prince of the Jewish people, Michael.
No one has seen God; he is beyond this world. Angels speak to prophets; they also act in nature and history. Nevertheless, even the most primitive people have an idea of the One Supreme God (ethnologists record this with surprise). Having created everything visible and invisible, the Almighty rested from his work, and the forces that he created continue to operate in the world. In the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) these forces are called angels. In other religions, these are a wide variety of deities (“everything is full of demons and spirits,” says Thales). Their functions are the same as those of angels: to comprehend, design, and protect the zones of the world under their jurisdiction. They may be called angels. Or they may be called something else. For example, in Rome they were called geniuses.
Every person, clan, nation, country has a genius (angel). Mikhail is the genius of the Jewish people, he is what unites this people, creates its unique physiognomy, and determines its destiny. It is not at all necessary to believe that this is a people chosen by the Almighty, but it is impossible to doubt that the Jewish people have a genius that, if you like, chose them (as other geniuses “chose” other peoples). He chose and designed it in his own, so to speak, image and likeness. Therefore, the character of Archangel Michael is a paradigm of the character of the Jewish people under his jurisdiction. Having risen from the very bottom of the angelic hierarchy, Michael took a central place in heaven (just like Joseph did in Egypt). He leads the angelic ranks and, of course, is irreconcilable with the angels of those peoples (like the Persian or Egyptian) who allow deviations from the true path and oppress his people. This is the secret of the success of the Jews, who have taken commanding positions in the world.
There is no need to doubt: it was the high-ranking angel Michael who arranged so that the Jewish belief that their national god was the Most High God stepped (in the form of Christianity and Islam) far beyond the limits of Jewish limitations. Having spread to other nations, this faith imposed a Jewish matrix on the life of the pagans. The culture of the converts was reformatted and became, in a certain sense, Jewish. In particular, the gods of these peoples began to be presented as opponents of the god of the Jews, entering the same devilish category as the fallen angels. But now any believer can have such a powerful patron as Michael. Without it, a person is just a person. And with the archangel, who managed to drive the best of the best into hell, a person carries in his soul a powerful charge of upward movement and a naive belief that the one who stands in his way is Satan, who belongs in hell.
But having become the main angel of Orthodox heaven, Michael, of course, remains the “prince of the Jewish people.” How else? An angel cannot suddenly change his nature for no reason at all. If he had changed it, he would no longer be Mikhail, but someone else. All sorts of embarrassments happen to those who don’t understand this. For example, there was the “Union of the Archangel Michael,” a Black Hundred organization that spun off from the “Union of the Russian People,” which became famous for the Jewish pogroms. The “Union of Michael the Archangel” was not noticed in the pogroms, it seems, but fought to deprive Jews of voting rights and carried out mass campaigns to expose Jewish and liberal-Masonic intrigues. What does it mean? So much so that the archangel rallied not very smart people into his “Union” in order to punish the Jews who had forgotten God with their hands and at the same time discredit the Russians. Torturing your people at the hands of the natives is, judging by the Bible, the favorite pastime of the God of the Jews. But, as you can see, he also likes to make fun of the native fools.
