The Son of God and Second Person of the blessed Trinity is the supreme revelation of God. We may justly conclude that any vision of God in the Old Testament is by the particular agency of the Son, whose office it is to reveal him to mankind. In short, I would agree with Matt Foreman and Doug Van Dorn.
I apologize if my post insinuated Christ was the angel John bowed down to. My point was if the Angel that appeared in the Old Testament to Joshua and others was not God, he would not have condoned worship of himself
Ah. No need to apologize. It was me who read your post too quickly. I should have known you would not make that mistake, and read what you said more closely.
I find it interesting to survey the various appearances of the angel of the Lord, with the preincarnate Christ lens. He appears early on to stop Abraham from sacrificing his son (and Christ’s biological forefather) in or around the vicinity of Mount Golgotha and offers a substitutionary ram. He appears later In the same area to slay the Israelites in response to David’s census and prompts the site of the temple. He protects Jerusalem by slaying 185,000 Assyrians during the reign of Hezekiah and later pleads on behalf of Israel for God to restore them in (Zechariah 1:12) from their 70 year exile. And upon his incarnate arrival to Jerusalem, he would be crucified at the behest of the Jews.
I am slightly persuaded that Michael the Archangel is Christ. There is a significant fabric of interconnecting verses that lead me to that conclusion. I’ll provide one for you to consider. Daniel 10:21: “But I will tell you what is inscribed in the book of truth: there is none who contends by my side against these except Michael, your prince.” Does not Christ contend for us? Would he leave our salvation in the hands of a mere created angel?
I interpret the speaker as the angel Gabriel. Earlier in Chapter 8, there appears to be a similar alternating interaction between Gabriel and what appears to be Christ with Daniel.
I've heard of people doing that too, but isn't that difference in our English Bibles actually a choice made by the translators? I've never been trained in Hebrew, but I seem to recall hearing that the Hebrew text doesn't have either "the" or "an" in these passages. Translators rendering it in English have to pick either a definite or indefinite article based on their reading of the context. In fact, I believe that in the case of malak they have to decide between "angel" and "messenger" too. So if you're just looking at the Hebrew words, there's no difference between "messenger" and "regular angel" and "theophany angel." You have to figure it out (or guess at it) from context.
I’m inclined to think in Daniel chapter 10; verses 5-9 describe Christ (possibly aka “Michael”), 10-15 involves Gabriel, 16-17 involves Christ, and 18-21 involves Gabriel.
Isn't this what Jehovah witnesses believe? Don't they say Jesus is Michael the archangel?
Ok I figured there was some more nuance involved.
