The Truth About Angels

The Council of Peace

The news of man's fall spread through heaven—every harp was hushed. The angels cast their crowns from their heads in sorrow. All heaven was in agitation.—The Spirit of Prophecy 1:42. TA 59.1

A council was held to decide what must be done with the guilty pair.—Spiritual Gifts 3:44. TA 59.2

The anxiety of the angels seemed to be intense while Jesus was communing with His Father. Three times He was shut in by the glorious light about the Father, and the third time He came from the Father, His person could be seen.... He then made known to the angelic host that a way of escape had been made for lost man. He told them that He had been pleading with His Father, and had offered to give His life a ransom, to take the sentence of death upon Himself, that through Him man might find pardon.... TA 59.3

At first the angels could not rejoice; for their Commander concealed nothing from them, but opened before them the plan of salvation. Jesus told them that He would ... leave all His glory in heaven, appear upon earth as a man, humble Himself as a man, ... and that finally, after His mission as a teacher would be accomplished, He would be delivered into the hands of men, and endure almost every cruelty and suffering that Satan and his angels could inspire men to inflict; that He would die the cruelest of deaths, hung up between the heavens and the earth as a guilty sinner; that He should suffer dreadful hours of agony, which even angels could not look upon, but would veil their faces from the sight.... TA 59.4

The angels prostrated themselves before Him. They offered their lives. Jesus said to them that He would by His death save many; that the life of an angel could not pay the debt. His life alone could be accepted of the Father as a ransom for man.—Early Writings, 149, 150. TA 60.1

The angels feared that they [Adam and Eve] would put forth the hand, and eat of the tree of life, and be immortal sinners. But God said that He would drive the transgressors from the garden. Angels were commissioned immediately to guard the way of the tree of life.—Spiritual Gifts 1:22. TA 60.2

The angels who had been appointed to guard Adam in his Eden home before his transgression and expulsion from paradise were now appointed to guard the gates of paradise and the way of the tree of life.—The Review and Herald, February 24, 1874. TA 60.3

When Adam and Eve realized how exalted and sacred was the law of God, the transgression of which made so costly a sacrifice necessary to save them and their posterity from utter ruin, they pled to die themselves, or to let them and their posterity endure the penalty of their transgression, rather than that the beloved Son of God should make this great sacrifice.... TA 60.4

Adam was informed that an angel's life could not pay the debt. The law of Jehovah, the foundation of His government in heaven and upon earth, was as sacred as God Himself; and for this reason the life of an angel could not be accepted of God as a sacrifice for its transgression.... The Father could not abolish nor change one precept of His law to meet man in his fallen condition. But the Son of God, who had in unison with the Father created man, could make an atonement for man acceptable to God.... TA 60.5

When Adam, according to God's special directions, made an offering for sin, it was to him a most painful ceremony. His hand must be raised to take life, which God alone could give, and make an offering for sin. It was the first time he had witnessed death. As he looked upon the bleeding victim, writhing in the agonies of death, he was to look forward by faith to the Son of God, whom the victim prefigured.—The Spirit of Prophecy 1:50-53. TA 61.1