Angel, Office of or Ministry of

The primary purpose of angels is to cry repentance to the individual — because every individual before God is in need of repentance. No one has gone through life without giving daily offense; however unintended and however slight, mankind gives offense to his fellow man and to God. The responsibility of their ministry is to call people to repentance, and to fulfill and do the work of the Father’s covenants that He’s made to mankind, to prepare the way among people by declaring Christ’s word to the Lord’s chosen vessels, so they can bear testimony of Him. And by doing this, the Lord God prepares the way for the remainder of mankind to have faith in Christ, so the Holy Ghost can have a place in their hearts according to the power of the Holy Ghost. This is how the Father vindicates the covenants He’s made to mankind (Moroni 7:6 CE; Moroni 7:31 LE defines it as the office of their ministry). “We excuse ourselves — we just don’t measure up. The office of the angelic ministrant is to snap you back out of the fog of ‘indifference to the casualness in which you discharge your daily obligations’ and to awaken you to the peril that each of us face if we don’t repent and return to God. It’s to make us soberly assess our own personal inadequacies. But their office isn’t to get someone, somewhere, to pay attention to them and to try and be a better boy or girl. Their office is to invoke the salvation process, itself, for the benefit of mankind. Those to whom angelic ministrants have come from heaven are given assignments to labor for the salvation of others. They use their own resources, and they wear out their lives and their time in pursuing the obligations imposed upon them, which include: the salvation of others, the crying of repentance to others, and the bringing to pass the fulfillment of the covenants that God made with the Fathers. If they’re not laboring on an errand such as that, but they claim to be receiving ‘God and Jesus in their living room who came and told them all about this or that,’ I don’t know who they’re entertaining — but it certainly doesn’t fit the model, and it certainly doesn’t fulfill the covenants of the Father nor do the work that’s necessary in order to prepare the people for the coming of the Lord so that the whole earth is not utterly wasted at His coming. Salvation for the souls of men is something that no one ought to be trifling with, least of all those who are vain and proud. And I don’t care if that vanity comes because they think they’re somehow specially chosen by some imagined encounter with the Great Beyond, or if they think they’ve been so careful in their study of scripture that they know better than all others because they can clearly see a pattern through their own study, labor, and effort. I don’t care what you think the correct interpretation of the scriptures are or will be. It’s fair game to look at them in whatever fashion you want to look at them. But when an angel from heaven tells you what God is doing — or when the Lord Himself declares what and how He intends to go about vindicating the covenants that He made with the Fathers — then there’s no room to come up with a contrary interpretation. Angels align with the work of God, and they help bring about the repentance of all mankind.”¹ The word angel is derived from the Greek word ággelos (ἄγγελος) which means “messenger.” The messenger brings a message from the Lord; it does not matter if the messenger is mortal.² The office or ministry of the angels or messengers is to educate and to prepare and to cause men (who receive and entertain the angels or messengers) to then behold the glory of God (the glory of God being intelligence or, in other words, Light and Truth). Ultimately, the greatest truth is God Himself. “….If you entertain angels (and if the angels instruct you and if you have been in their presence), you acquire from them the strength, the fortification, the knowledge — or in other words, the ordination — by which you’re able to go on and pass by them (because they surely are sentinels) and enter into the Glory of the Lord. And so, if you will give heed to the process, it really should not matter that you are left in a dispensation in which the only authority gives you the ministering of angels. Because the ministering of angels is sufficient to bring you into the glory of God — if you will receive them — if you will give heed to them. That’s the office of their ministry; that’s what they’re responsible to do.”³

The religion that Joseph restored divided things up into categories that the vocabulary of the Book of Mormon clarifies: One has belief if he has a correct understanding of true teachings that are given in an authentic way that actually reflects the religion that God would like him to possess. One has unbelief when he has something other than that; when an error creeps in, one has unbelief. By and large, Christianity today is composed, essentially, of unbelief held by unbelievers because they cannot have belief without true doctrine, and one cannot reject the words of God and claim to be a believer in Him. Faith is applied to those to whom angels have ministered, and knowledge is applied to those who have entered into the presence of the Lord. Joseph Smith was attempting to restore a form of Christianity designed to give mankind knowledge in which they shall see my face and know that I am (T&C 93:1) The Book of Mormon describes this process: He sent angels to explain it to them, who let mankind see His glory (Alma 9:7 CE).Angels come to visit with and minister to people. Those who have faith receive the ministering of angels and are then able to behold the glory of God. Once they understood, they began to call on His name. So God communicated with mankind (ibid.). This angelic “faith” secures for them “knowledge” — because it’s the angels’ ministry to bring them into the presence of God. Angels declare things to men, women, and children who are then declared and called as chosen vessels (Moroni 7:6). This is the purpose of this ministry: to declare things to the chosen vessels that will bring about the fulfillment of the covenants. These chosen vessels then have the obligation to disseminate this information to the residue of the people so the residue may have faith in and receive ministering by the Holy Ghost.⁴ Angels have the role of teaching. Those of a firm mind to whom they appear bring the same message and discharge the same angelic assignment and, therefore, have been regarded as angels themselves.⁵