Marriage in Heaven – Us and Angels
(Blog 0023 AndrewHadden.org)
Christ wants me to address a topic he addressed on Earth, when he was here, with a huge number of people having something major wrongly understood related to it. Christ took up the challenge of a major party in Israel, and among the religious leaders, in a major ongoing “split” in the “Church” in Israel. This was to do with the religious leaders of Christ’s time, the time when the “Church” was the Temple in Jerusalem, and the synagogues elsewhere. So, permit me to obey to inject myself and pass along to you what Christ has taught scholars today, and has been teaching me, because there is now a big misunderstanding on what he meant when he answered that challenge long ago. Paul taught us what Jesus taught him, after he had resurrected and ascended, and the Church has been accepting it for how to do communion, a sacrament of the Church, from then on. So, there might be some basis for God using someone other than the original twelve Apostles to sort out a doctrinal misunderstanding.
To be certain that we are properly understanding scripture, we need to not just learn the language, but the culture in which that language was used. To do that right, you need to know their history, from whatever sources are available, and you need to know their other writings, of various kinds. On this issue, that kind of research and knowledge is important.
Christ spoke into a major doctrinal disagreement, in his day, between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the major parties within the religious leaders of Christ’s day. Let me help you keep them straight the way my minister father apparently learned in Sunday school, or back in Bible college, before he went to seminary. He was taught that “The Sadducees were sad, you see, because they did not believe in the resurrection,” whereas the Pharisees did. So, the Sadducees wanted to catch Jesus in that mess of a doctrinal fight, by presenting a situation that they thought made for an unresolvable mess in heaven, if there was a resurrection. Christ, in his answer, was basically telling them they did not understand how things were in heaven, and that their big concern was basically irrelevant. In that culture and time, and their understanding of scripture, Christ’s answer was a good answer. With us generally not understanding their views of scripture as well, and certainly not understanding their language and culture as well, AND us not knowing their understanding about how the angels in heaven were, we generally don’t understand Christ’s answer as well as they did. That causes problems.
I found myself thinking of a blog to straighten out the misunderstandings about marriage in heaven, and also, because of that same passage being misunderstood, angels being said to be neuter or only male. I then realized that this passage being misunderstood would keep people from understanding Genesis six, and hybrid babies from fallen angels/watchers mating with human women. That made for giants on the Earth and for their spirits becoming demons – evil spirits that do not leave Earth upon death and who can inhabit human bodies. That also affected references to the gates of hell, around Mount Hermon (in the north in Israel), where the fallen angels/watchers were said to have first come down to Earth. And also references to evil coming from the north in an end times related passage being related to that belief. And also references to a principality, a chief prince from the spiritual realm, in those passages being mistaken as a reference to a modern nation and/or its leader. So, a misunderstanding on Christ’s words about marriage and the angels in heaven unravels proper teaching on a number of subjects – some of which will soon become very important. And, if you will pardon my business expertise for a moment, let me say that the Church, because of this misunderstanding, is doing a poor job of selling the idea of heaven to young people, for whom marriage (and sex) are quite important. Christ was not saying what you likely think he was saying.
The Scripture Passages Misunderstood
Let’s get to the passages that cause all these misunderstandings. It is recorded in Matthew 22:22-33, and in Mark 12:18-27, and in Luke 20:27-40. The Sadducees used the case of brothers who all marry the same woman, and then die, in sequence, and they all get to heaven, at which point they all would try to lay claim to the same woman as their wife. They thought this somehow proved there could not be a resurrection. Let’s look at the applicable portion of Christ’s most thorough answer, recorded in Luke 20:34-36:
34 And Jesus answering said unto them, “The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage:
35 But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage:
36 Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection” (KJV).
Let’s focus in on the main points Christ is making. (1) there will be a resurrection. (2) Someone being married to more than one person over time in this life does not present a problem when they get to heaven.
Human Marriages in Heaven
What they missed was that the woman might actually have a choice, which she never had on Earth. In their culture, that choice belonged to her father, and there was a big economic transaction involved. He was basically selling his daughter to her new husband. And marriage ceremonies also had a big economic impact, or your reputation as a father, and a family, was at serious risk. Christ was basically saying that those cultural mechanisms, a father basically selling his daughter, and the required very expensive wedding ceremonies and celebrations, would no longer be required. And those “contracts,” from their life on Earth, were not binding in heaven, in eternity. Christ was saying their arranged marriages and required ceremonies and celebrations were going away – and people would no longer be bound by the ones they had on Earth.
This understanding did not come to me quickly. I always took these verses as saying there were no marriages (and no sex) in heaven. That’s the way a lot of people understood this when I was growing up, and beyond. I never heard anything different taught in a sermon, or at Bible college, or seminary. I was shocked when I heard about this from serious Bible scholar I knew, who was completing his Master of Divinity (a three-year program that included biblical languages) after earning his B.A. in Biblical Studies. He was attending the same denominational seminary I had graduated from years before, and he told me that they were teaching that this passage does NOT mean there would be no marriage (or sex) in heaven.
God completed the change in my understanding on this when he spoke to me very clearly. He had reason to. God said to me, “They interpret my Word wrongly. It is not that marriage and sex won’t exist, just that it won’t be decided and formalized as it was then. Fathers don’t decide, ‘sell’ their daughters. That caused a lot of problems. I am ending it.” So that lines up with what I had been told based on serious Bible scholarship by people qualified to teach it, in a respected and fully accredited denominational seminary. But this was not the first time God had mentioned this; it was just that he was preparing to ask me to write about it.
Angels
Now let’s consider how this misunderstanding of these passages affected people’s views, and teaching, in the Church, on angels. In the passage above, Luke says that in heaven, humans will be “equal unto” the angels. Mark says we will be “like” the angels (Mark 12:25 KJV). So, there is a domino effect on this misunderstanding. If we misunderstand what Christ is saying about humans in heaven, and the passage says that we will be “equal to” or “like” the angels, we end up misunderstanding how the angels in heaven really are. Since the passage involved is in the Gospels, and probably gets read a lot more than some passages key to understanding other things said about angels in scripture, it probably affects their choice of interpretation on those passages too. And since there is no account of a female angel in scripture (that I have noted, even after reading a book covering every angel in the Bible), we can’t really fault the people who end up casually thinking angels are neuter/nonsexual beings. But what if that is not the case? What if female angels are all dedicated, stay at home mom angels? What if only male angels go off to work on the Earth every day, on their shift? Would God feel obligated to explain all that in the Bible?
And let’s not forget that “angel” is often used as a “catch all” term for a whole collection of different kinds of spiritual beings. But it can also be a specific reference to angels, who are, by definition, messengers in the spiritual realm, and do not have wings, so they can blend in with humans, unnoticed, when they don’t need to glow and make God’s formal announcements. Then we have seraphim and cherubim, who do have wings. And we have “watchers” and “sons of God,” and “lesser elohim” – the small “g” “gods.
Then there are these scriptures about fallen angels/spiritual beings:
Job 2:1
Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them to present himself before the LORD. (NKJV)
2 Peter 2:4-5
4 For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;
5 And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly; (KJV)
Jude 6
6 And the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day; (NKJV)
Genesis 6:1-4
1 Now it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, 2 that the sons of God [spiritual beings] saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose.
3 And the LORD said, "My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh; yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years." [The flood was coming.] 4 There were giants on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God [spiritual beings] came in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown. (NKJV)
I would point you to the works of Dr. Michael S. Heiser on these matters. His book, Reversing Hermon (about the fall of the watchers and how their descent at Mt. Hermon in Israel is more in reference with mention of the “fall” in the New Testament than the fall of Adam and Eve). He also wrote, Angels: What the Bible Really Says about God’s Heavenly Host, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible, and Demons: What the Bible Really Says about the Powers of Darkness. His books can do much to convince even tough to convince scholars that at least some beings from the supernatural realm are indeed sexual beings, and their breaking God’s rules are why they are chained in darkness, because their offspring with human women long ago, created giants, and demons, upon the Earth to trouble mankind ever since. There are convincing arguments that the spirits of hybrid angel/human giants became the demons that trouble mankind to this day. And that the nations God told the Israelites to destroy utterly were the ones that had giants in their history, and them living on would have continued to make more demons on the Earth from then on. (So, God was not cruel and arbitrary in wanting them removed, but was protecting humanity from more and more evil spiritual entities who would torment humans and lead them to destruction.) Dr. Heiser studied the languages and writings of Israel and those influencing the culture and understandings of Israel at the time of Christ. He had a better understanding of the context of the people Christ and the Apostles spoke to in scripture than almost anyone whose writings are accessible to everyday pastors and church attendees (accessible even on Amazon.com).
Why am I making a point of this? Why did God push me to explain this? The end times are beginning, and God wants his people to have a good understanding of these times, because they will see them fulfilled. The resurrection of the dead in Christ, whose spirits have been with Christ in heaven since their death, is coming (per First Corinthians 15). Those people will then suddenly be among us, in new spiritual bodies. And those alive and in Christ, and counted “worthy to escape” per Christ’s words at the end of Christ’s end times sermon in Luke 21, will be transformed into spiritual bodies as well (also per First Corinthians 15). (And note that the rapture is not mentioned in First Corinthians 15.) And Revelation 12 will be fulfilled – and not as a lot of people have been led to believe, with the most comforting interpretations possible. At some point, supernatural beings will be upon the Earth, fallen ones, likely creating the same mischief they have done before.