Who
or what are the Seven Stars of the Apocalypse? The question has
nothing to do with fame, but only with the meaning words. As used in
the Apocalypse, the word star (aster) has a range of meaning that can literally
refer to those astronomical bodies that shine in the sky at night, or to
meteoric bodies that fall to the earth; or figuratively, it can refer to Christ
himself (when combined with the descriptor, morning) or to
angels. The antecedent of the figure of the Seven Stars,
however, is plainly stated in the text as being seven angels; therefore, the
seven stars are seven angels.
Though I really should be stating the
obvious here, two widespread interpretive errors make that not the case at
all. One of those errors interprets the angels as the human bishops of
churches (or some permutation of the same). The other interprets them as human
prophetic spokesmen of their age (or some permutation of the same). Either
error misses the mark by ignoring the consistent and therefore obvious use the
word angel in the Revelation. So even though the angels in Anaheim are
nothing but human, in the Apocalypse they're anything but.
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That
of course leads us to the question: what or who are the Seven Angels? The
meaning of a word, once again, becomes paramount in finding an answer. The word
translated in English bibles as angel can have varying meanings. In the OT, the
Hebrew word translated angel (malak) can mean, rather innocuously,
"messenger" or it can mean "angel" in the spiritual,
heavenly sense. It is used about equally one way or the other, the context
determining which meaning is used in translation.
In
the NT, the Koine word translated angel (aggelo) has the same quality and
specification in meaning as does "malak" in the Old. In the NT,
however, context demands just about every occurrence of the word to be
translated in the spiritual, heavenly sense. Perhaps that it why the English
word, angel, which is borrowed, ultimately, from Greek, has as its primary meaning, "a heavenly,
spirit being that serves God."
The
use of the word angel in the
Apocalypse
is abundantly clear--over and over again it refers to spirit beings, the
servants and messengers of God. Therefore, the Seven Stars are merely
those angels
tasked by Christ with attending to the Seven Churches to which he sends
messages in chapters 2 and 3. Since the sevens here are
representative of "the whole", one could justifiably infer that any
locality with a body of believers would be likely to have such an angel
attending them.
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