Yep, someone actually asked this question…
…then, someone else actually answered it. Then, someone else said, “Yes, there are because I saw some in a revelatory experience.” Then, someone else actually said, “If you see a spirit being as a woman, she always represents something false or evil.” Then, someone else said, “No, because Jesus made it clear that angels have no gender because they are spirits.” Then, someone else said, “My neighbor is an angel; she’s always upon the air harping about something.”
First, let me clarify that I am speaking of God’s angels. Technically, there are no female or male angels because they are genderless as spirits, but they can assume many different forms and can function with a human body. They always seem to appear as males in Scripture, but really the Bible is more silent about this than technical. Angels are nonhuman spirits that can take on a physical form consistent with the assignment God sends them to fulfill.
So, clearly angels can take on human form, usually male because the assignment, but can be female as well. “Then lifted I up mine eyes, and saw, and, behold, there came forth two women, and the wind was in their wings; now they had wings like the wings of a stork; and they lifted up the ephod between earth and heaven.” [Zechariah 5:9]
Are these female angels? No, angels that appear in the revelation as women in a symbolic sense the same way many angels are revealed to represent what God is doing by what they are doing. The point is that the vision isn’t given to prove angels are female; what is portrayed here represents spiritual condition and happenings. To teach that angels are female or that anytime you see a female angel, it is evil, misses the point. Because visions and revelations are not given to be taught as principles.
We don’t know there are female angels because someone saw angels or someone revealed in female form in a dream, revelation, vision, or visitation. God speaks through all these ways today, particularly to people who are prophetic, but seeing angels in any form doesn’t mean that the angels revealed in that form are like that all the time. Visions of angels do not tell us much about angels that we can teach as fact or as principle. Doing so brings more confusion than revelation.
When we see angels, we can see what God is doing or saying because angels always represent what God is up to, not what angels are up to. Angels, by definition, are dispatched in a messenger form to carry something from God to His people, into a situation, for a purpose. We can see angels as clues to what God is doing or about to do, not to understand the nature of angels or know them personally or get an education in angelology.
We do err to make personal or revelatory experiences into principles.
All our visionary experiences from God arrive in spiritual code that requires interpretation, application, and implementation. God doesn’t give us spiritual revelation so we can write Scripture or build a doctrinal system, or teach the experience as principle. We cannot say, “I saw an angel. This is what angels always do and say and look like and smell like, etc.” The angel you saw then can appear in a different form a second later.
We cannot say, “I visited a place in the spirit and now I know how things are in the spirit” because such experiences are not the basis for teaching “how things are in the spirit.” These valid experiences can help us understand how God speaks and communicates through revelation, but they are not given for textbooks on heaven and spiritual reality.
These experiences can be the appropriate basis for talking about how God gives revelation, how God speaks to revelatory people through spiritual experiences, but spiritual experiences are not a good way to teach spiritual realities. You can write a dictionary of angels from visions.
I have many friends who have open revelations, and I have them as well. They are not drug-induced or altered states of consciousness. They are legitimate, God-inspired visions, trances, dreams, and combinations thereof. It is such a distraction to argue about these experiences and their content as a means of discovering whether or not the vision or dream is “of God” or the person is false or true in a prophetic sense. Blanket statements bump up the confusion instead of resolving it.
Those who don’t believe God speaks this way anymore: ignore. Those who attempt to argue the legitimacy of vision and dreams along the lines of “the Bible never shows a vision of a car, so it is not a vision of God if it has a car:” ignore. Those who argue that they have never had a vision, so God doesn’t speak this way: try to love them anyway. Those who teach their visions and dreams as if they are the basis for principles, creating dictionaries of angels from visions and dreams, and even saying “this is how it is in heaven and the spirit:” need a leader to help them properly communicate revelations. Those who have legitimate visions and revelations and use them to manipulate people, make money, sell themselves as spiritually advanced: should be rebuked by kingdom leaders.
Someone who sees an angel in female form and defends the validity of their experience with heightened rhetoric compounded the problem as much someone making a blanket statement that “there are no female angels with female names.” If someone saw an angel in a female form with a female name that wouldn’t mean the angel was girl, that angels have gender, or that the person is false or the angel is evil! It would mean that the revelation and the name was given to communicate something of what God is doing and the nature of the angelic assistance present at God’s command.
For example, a vision of an angel who appears like Joan of Arc could be a clear representation of what God is doing and what angelic assistance is available in a given circumstance, not that there is an angel named Joan of Arc who is a female angel. Or, the vision might not include an angel, merely a revelation of Joan of Arc. If the person who saw this revelation teaches that there is an angel named “Joan of Arc” who lives in heaven and gets involved in history at God’s command, the teaching brings confusion to the revelation, unneeded and unwanted controversy to the message, and misrepresents what the vision says and means.
In fact, better to not even share about the angel in communicating the revelation unless doing so makes the revelation more accurate. Better to share that God is working in a miraculous way through uncommon leadership, intervening in an unusual way to rally His people to victory in an uncommon way. Better to say, “As Joan of Arc rallied her people in victory, an unlikely champion in an unlikely time, so God is using unlikely people to rally this generation.”
If, on the other hand, someone who reacts to such a vision with “there are no angels named ‘Joan of Arc,’ no female angels, and such a vision isn’t of God,” has stepped over a different line. Technically, there are no female angels named ‘Joan of Arc’ but the appearance of an angel in this form is a revelation within itself; God communicates in code with symbols and people to represent a revelation.
Both outlooks on the vision need a bit of adjustment. It is especially harsh to say, “Anyone who sees a female angel has seen a demon.” Or, “anyone who claims to see a ‘Joan of Arc’ angel is a false prophet.”
Such statements miss the point. Yet, the situation begs needed correction and clarification, but drawing a line that moves true prophets and people of revelation into error because they need correction or clarification in the communication of their spiritual experiences is to move God’s visions and dreams into the same territory.
In other words, leadership is needed more to know what to do with visions and dreams than to experience them. It is usually simple to discern between a God-dream or vision and one of no consequence or from an evil source. It is much more difficult to learn what to do a God-revelation of an unusual form, complex code, or uncommon nature.
Some of God’s best leaders have experienced revelations that included odd creatures that do not exist in nature, angels doing things and appearing as people, angels doing things people do and wearing clothes that people wear. If God is giving any visions and dreams at this time of history – and He is! – we should expect that His revelations will include all the features of revelation the Bible reveals are consistent with His modes and styles of communication.
On the other hand, some needed correction should be available to teachable people about when and how to share revelation, how to communicate such revelation in a manner that brings clarity to what God is saying, and in a form of prophetic communication that is distinct from teaching revelation as principle. Prophetic experiences taught with a “this is how things are and work in the spirit” is not wise, helpful, nor part of the revelatory purpose.
As someone said, “The Bible doesn’t tell us everything about angels but what It does tell is absolutely true.” We learn everything we need to learn from Scripture to recognize God’s work through angels, to discern the spiritual nature and character of angelic beings, and to speak of revelations in revelation protocols.
For someone to say, “I saw an angel named ‘Joan of Arc’ who lives in heaven” probably means that person needs a leader to speak into their lives. The problem is not that the vision included such a revelation, but that the person who saw the angel or representation of a female in the spirit insists that there really is female angel in heaven named “Joan of Arc.” To insist in order to give validity to the vision is to misappropriate the purpose of revelatory experiences, and to open a danger zone for people unfamiliar with God’s legitimate prophetic communication processes.
I have avoided discussion of angels procreating with people, whether or not cherubim and seraphim are angels, fallen angels, and nephilim because this is not the purpose of this blog.
Actually, I’m not really talking about whether or not there are female angels. I am saying that angels can appear, function, and represent human beings physically and in revelations of spiritual reality. And, that proving this true or false misses the point of seeing angels in the first place.
