Perhaps one of the most abused verses in the Bible, not purposely abused but ignorantly so, is 2John 1:9, which says (paraphrasing) remain in the teaching of Christ, otherwise God is not in what you do. Paul writes similarly, saying don’t “…think (postulate) above what is written (1Corinthians 4:6; parenthesis mine). The fact is that one can search from Genesis to Revelation and one would not find a logical basis for the angelology that believers today accept as true and Biblical. What we believe about angels comes out of extra-biblical literature, the apocrypha and Jewish pseudepigrapha. Men love to be considered wise (Job 11:11-12; Romans 1:21-23), and in their attempts to be wise and helpful to the cause, they “make the word of God of no effect” (Mark 7:13).
Many, perhaps most, modern Christian scholars would have us believe there is an angel hierarchy in heaven, but nothing like this is revealed in the Bible. For example, Michael is the **only** one ever called an archangel in the Bible. One would have to go to extra-biblical literature to find others, and this is what at least some scholars have done in order to devise their levels of angel hierarchy. If one goes strictly by the Bible, all we could say about angelic responsibilities is that certain angels are given assignments in the same manner that men are given authority over groups of people.
The men who rule are not intrinsically different from those who are ruled. Neither is one nation or racial family of men greater or lower on the scale of humanity than any other nation or human family group. We could speak similarly about angels: cherubim, seraphim etc. They cannot rule men in their allotted assignments, because, if they did, men wouldn’t have free will, and neither could it legitimately be said that men have been given the authority to rule, if they are ruled by angels. Moreover, just as one nation and its leaders are not intrinsically evil, while another nation and its leaders are good, so angels are not good or evil, simply because they have specific nations assigned to them. Their perceived responsibilities may conflict, but each one serves the overall purpose of God, as best they understand. They are simply ministering spirits, sent forth to serve men, who are the heirs of salvation (Hebrews 1:14). If we stay within the doctrine of Christ (2John 1:9) and don’t postulate above what is written (1Corinthians 4:6), this is all we could say about angelic authority.
Who then is Michael, the Archangel (Jude 1:9), because his very title implies he does have authority to rule? If he is the **only** archangel, as the Bible implies by giving the title, Archangel, to him alone, then he is the Captain of the whole heavenly angelic host: cherubim, seraphim etc. In such a case, he could be someone who is not an angel at all. One doesn’t have to be an angel to be the leader of angels.
Daniel is the only Old Covenant prophet who mentions Michael, and he does so in only three places. First of all, we find that Michael is “one of the chief princes” (Daniel 10:13), but does he mean he is of equal rank with the other chief princes, who seem to have national responsibilities, peculiar to the specific nation to which each has been assigned by God? One might say they are of equal rank, but this doesn’t have to be the case, because as soon as Michael came to the aid of the first angel, whatever problem existed was immediately solved, implying Michael was in authority over the prince of Persia (Daniel 10:13)!
The second time Michael is mentioned in Daniel is at Daniel 10:21. There the angel told Daniel that only Michael stood with this angel concerning the things he had revealed to the prophet, and there Michael is revealed not simply as one of the chief princes, but was, actually, Daniel’s prince. Finally, in Daniel 12:1 it is revealed that Michael would stand up at the time of the end, and there he is said to be the great prince of the children of Daniel’s people. But, who are Daniel’s people? They are the same people whom the Lord had brought out of Egypt (Daniel 9:15). These same people are the people who belong to the one to whom Daniel prayed (Daniel 9:16). The Scriptures also reveal that 70 Weeks were determined for Daniel’s people (Daniel 9:24), which would culminate in what is referred to as the latter days (Daniel 10:14), at which time Michael would stand up to deliver his people (Daniel 12:1).
The word translated prince (H8269) in Daniel is the same word that is used for the Captain (H8269) of the Lord’s hosts in Joshua 5:14, before whom Joshua fell on his face and worshiped. In other words, Michael is the Angel of the Lord whose name is YHWH, the name of God, and is the one who became Jesus under the New Covenant. It is he, to whom Jude points in Jude 1:9. When Jesus disputed with the slanderer (the meaning of the word devil) about the body of Moses, meaning the Law, he never vilified or blasphemed the slanderer’s position of authority. Instead, he claimed the Lord, who gave the slanderer his authority, would rebuke him (cp. Matthew 26:64; Zechariah 3:1-2).
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