Throughout Scripture the phrase "the angel of the Lord" pops up from time to time, who exactly is this angel of the Lord? Well lets take a look at a few characteristics. Lets start in Genesis 16 and in particular verse 10

And the angel of the LORD said unto her, I will multiply thy seed exceedingly, that it shall not be numbered for multitude. (Genesis 16v10)

Here the angel of the LORD is speaking to Hagar and promises to multiply her seed. Question, can any angel multiply seed? Only God can make this promise, especially when we consider God's promise to Abraham that He would multiply his seed back in Genesis 15. Moving on we come to:

And the angel of the LORD called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I. And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me. Genesis 22v11-12

Again we see that the angel of the LORD must be God as why would an angel claim that "thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me"? Similarly we see in Exodus 3 that it must be God that is the angel of the Lord. It is when faced by the angel of the Lord in Numbers 22 that Balaam confesses his sin. Lets move on to the book of Judges

And an angel of the LORD came up from Gilgal to Bochim, and said, I made you to go up out of Egypt, and have brought you unto the land which I sware unto your fathers; and I said, I will never break my covenant with you. (Judges 2v1)
Then the angel of the LORD put forth the end of the staff that was in his hand, and touched the flesh and the unleavened cakes; and there rose up fire out of the rock, and consumed the flesh and the unleavened cakes. Then the angel of the LORD departed out of his sight.(Judges 6v21)
For it came to pass, when the flame went up toward heaven from off the altar, that the angel of the LORD ascended in the flame of the altar. And Manoah and his wife looked on it, and fell on their faces to the ground. (Judges 13v20) In the first instance the angel of the Lord talks about a covenant He had made with Israel, this is the covenant made with Abraham back in Genesis 12, a covenant that only God could make and keep. While in chapters 6 and 13 the angel of the Lord consumes the sacrifice, accepting the offering made in worship, no angel would dare do this as we see in Revelation 19 when John mistakenly worships an angel.

As we go on we again find the angel of the Lord mentioned in 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings, 1 Chronicles, Psalms, Isaiah. One more in paricular I'ld like to draw your attention to and that is Zechariah 3and ask the quesion who but God could cause Joshua's iniquity to pass from him? Aside from the subject in hand, this is a lovely reminder of what Christ does for us today. Like Joshua we have but filthy rags, but by God's grace and Christ's blood our sins pass from us.

The angel of the Lord, apart from in historical comments, is rarely mentioned in the New Testament. In Matthew 1 it would appear to just be an angel telling Joseph what is to happen. However, in Luke 2 the text would seem to indicate that this is God in view. While in Acts 5 it could well be God leading Peter out of prison.

So if the angel of the Lord in the Old Testament is God, which member of the Godhead is He? Jesus Christ is the only member of the Godhead we read of appearing in human form throughout our Bible and therefore one would presume that is indeed Jesus Christ that is the angel of the Lord but I wouldn't argue with anyone who disagreed with this last statement. What we do see is that the angel of the Lord many times protected Israel and stood up against the devil to defend Joshua, as He does today for us.

Please send any comments you have on this article to a.wood@assemblyyouth.net

Editorial Easter challenge		Spending time in the Scriptures Psalms part 5
	The ministry of angels
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All quotes are from the King James version of the Bible unless otherwise specified.