When God Showed Up—Who Was It That Showed Up? (Part 1 of 2)

When God Showed Up—Who Was It That Showed Up? (Part 1 of 2)

Let’s take a brief pause in our current series—just for a couple of days. We’ve been looking at those times in the Bible that God interrupted history by showing up for a divine appointment with someone. Those moments each show us something about who God is and what He is like. But, we need to talk about something.

The Bible clearly teaches that any face to face encounter with God would actually be fatal. So, if these people weren’t actually seeing and speaking to God, who were they actually talking to?

That introduces us the “Angel of the Lord.”

The Angel of the Lord is one of the most mysterious figures in all of Scripture. This being appears repeatedly in the Old Testament—approximately 65 times in the Hebrew Bible—and in many cases speaks and acts as God Himself—using first-person divine language, accepting worship, promising what only God can fulfill and eliciting responses of awe or fear as if the person were encountering God directly (e.g., “I have seen God face to face” in both Judges 6:22 and Genesis 32:30).

Many Christian theologians interpret these as appearances of Jesus Christ before the incarnation because The Angel of the Lord often blurs the line between messenger and God, speaking as “I” for God. Often, in fact, those who witnessed The Angel specifically identified him as God.

It’s important to note that throughout the Bible, all other angels refuse worship, instead redirecting the glory to God. Look at these verses from Revelation:

Revelation 19:10

Then I fell at his feet to worship him. But he said to me, “Do not do that.”

Revelation 22:8-9

I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who showed me these things. But he said to me, “Do not do that. I am a fellow servant of yours and of your brethren the prophets and of those who heed the Words of this book. Worship God.”

Appearances of The Angel of the Lord largely disappear after Christ’s incarnation and birth. Then, we see that the New Testament writers connect these encounters to Christ Himself. Paul, for example, writes:

1 Corinthians 10:4

“…for they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them; and the Rock was Christ.”

(Continued tomorrow)