R.C. Sproul
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
What do you mean that those who are with us are more than those who are with them?
And he said, Lord, I pray, open his eyes that he may see.
And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man and he saw.
And behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.
So when the Syrians came down to him, Elisha prayed to the Lord and said, Strike these people, I pray, with blindness.
And he struck them with blindness according to the word of Elisha.
As I said, there's so many things that we learn from this particular passage that
One has to do with an ongoing controversy among theologians in the history of the church, because when Jesus mentions in the New Testament to His disciples not to forbid little children to come, He says, for as such belong to the kingdom of God, and He later on goes on to say,
that behold, their angels are watching over them in heaven.
And the idea that was extrapolated from that statement of our Lord was that every person in the kingdom, every Christian, has a guardian angel assigned to him or to her to take care of them.
Because again, as we will see a little bit later,
that the author of Hebrews tells us that the primary function of angels in terms of this world is to minister to God's people.
And so as I say, there is a strong tradition in church history that every person has a particular angel assigned to them, sort of like it's a wonderful life, and every time you hear the tinkle of the bell, then angels get in their wings and that sort of thing.
What we find in this story is there's not one angel watching out for Elisha, but the whole heavenly host is mobilized to defend him in his critical hour of need.
Now, we see the same thing in the New Testament with respect to the multitudes of angels that attend
the ministry of Jesus, and we'll look at that a little bit later.
But for now, let's see that here we have multitudes of angels sent to intercede in behalf of Elisha.