Ministry of Angels
Not until the providences of God are seen in the light of eternity shall we understand what we owe to the care and interposition of holy angels. Celestial beings have taken an active part in human life and business. They have appeared in garments that shone like lightning. They have come in human form, dressed like travelers. They have accepted the hospitality of human homes. They have acted as guides to lost travelers. They have defeated the robber’s purpose and turned aside the stroke of the enemy.TEd 189.2
Though the rulers of this world know it not, often in their councils angels have spoken. Human eyes have looked at them. Human ears have listened to their appeals. In the council hall and the court of justice, heavenly messengers have pleaded the cause of the persecuted and oppressed. They have defeated purposes and arrested evils that would have brought wrong and suffering to God’s children. To students in the heavenly school, all this will be unfolded.TEd 189.3
Every redeemed one will understand the ministry of angels in his or her own life. What will it be to hold converse with one’s guardian angel and learn the history of divine interposition in the individual life, of heavenly cooperation in every work for humanity!TEd 189.4
All the perplexities of life’s experience will then be made plain. Where to us have appeared only confusion and disappointment, broken purposes and thwarted plans, will be seen a grand, overruling, victorious purpose, a divine harmony.TEd 189.5
There all who have served with unselfish spirit will see the fruit of their labors. They will see the outworking of every right principle and noble act. Something of this we see here. But how little of the result of the world’s most noble work is in this life manifest to the doer!TEd 189.6
Parents and teachers lie down in their last sleep, their lifework seeming to have been in vain. They do not know that their faithfulness has unsealed springs of blessing that can never cease to flow. Only by faith they see the children they have trained become a benediction and an inspiration to the world, and the influence repeat itself a thousandfold.TEd 189.7
Faithful workers send out into the world messages of strength and hope and courage, words that carry blessing to hearts in every land. But as they work in loneliness and obscurity they know little of the results. Men and women sow the seed from which, above their graves, others reap blessed harvests. They plant trees, that others may eat the fruit. They are content here to know that they have set in motion agencies for good. In the hereafter the action and reaction of all these will be seen.TEd 190.1
Of every gift that God has bestowed, leading people to unselfish effort, a record is kept in heaven. To trace this in its wide-spreading lines, to meet those who by our efforts have been uplifted and ennobled, to see in their history the outworking of true principles—this will be one of the studies and rewards of the heavenly school.TEd 190.2